traits Flashcards
1
Q
personality types
A
- diagnosing people as members (or not members) of particular categories
- “He’s anal”, “She’s authoritarian”, etc
- encourages dichotomous and polarised thinking: you either ‘are; (perhaps always and in every way) or you ‘are not’
2
Q
Jung’s “types”
A
- more introverted - dominant concern with internal objects of knowledge, i.e., the self
- more extroverted - dominant concern with external objects of knowledge, ie., the world
- both ‘types’ use all four functions
3
Q
Jung’s functions
A
- four ‘dynamics’ by which all people know themselves and the world
- all of us have them, with one of them being the more dominant one as it is favoured, but this is different with everyone
1) sensing (=perception)
2) thinking (=logic)
3) intuiting (=via UCs)
4) feeling (=evaluation/judgement)
4
Q
Myers and Briggs
A
- modified and extended “Jung’s” ideas
- paired and contrasted sensation vs intuition and thinking vs feeling
- added judging vs perception
- mixed in introversion vs extraversion
- categorised people according to ‘which side’ dominated for each of these ‘alternatives’
5
Q
controversy
A
- not reliable - test-retest reliability shocking
- not valid - no evidence of 16 types, the types predict little
- not comprehensive - missing, e.g., emotional stability, conscientiousness
- not independent - easy to e high in ‘opposite’ functions, e.g., thinking and feeling
6
Q
traits
A
- traits - dimensions of personality on which individuals vary
- e.g., everyone is introvert and extrovert to some extent, likely to differ across situations, but nevertheless differ on balance (i.e., averaging across time and situations) relative to other individuals
7
Q
traits - the gist
A
- personal (internal) rather than situational (external)
- stable rather than transitory (across time)
- consistent rather than inconsistent (across ‘similar’ situations)
- can be relatively broad or narrow (across ‘different’ situations)
- potentially universal dimensions: individual differences (across people)
8
Q
the lexical hypothesis
A
- “all aspects of human personality which are or have been of importance, interest, or utility have already become recorded int he substance of language”
9
Q
drowning in traits
A
- Websters (1925) new international dictionary = 400,000 words
- single words usable “to distinguish the behaviour of one human being from that of another”
- “real traits” distinguished from moods/states, character evolutions, behaviour explanations, physical qualities, and capabilities/talents
10
Q
All[prt’s non-common traits
A
- cardinal traits - single defining traits that (rarely) characterise some individuals, a bit like types
- central traits - typically 5-10 traits; “those usually mentioned in careful letters of recommendation…. Or in belief verbal descriptions of person”
- secondary traits - like central traits but more specific to particular stimuli or particular responses
11
Q
factor analysis
A
- the principal statistical method of most trait theorists
- it clusters lower-level items according to ‘distinctive overlap’
- two crucial decisions - input variable selection, factor labelling
12
Q
methods: correlation
A
- if two measures “correlate”, they have a ‘linear’ relationship with each other, such that if scores on one measure go up, scores on the other measure also tend to go up (“positive correlation”) or go down (“negative correlation”)
13
Q
methods: factor analysis
A
- one method of findings among lots of variables
- looks for clusters of measures that correlate strongly with each other but less so with other measures
14
Q
methods: measures (not) included in FA
A
- clusters of measures are nearly inevitable if those measures are almost identical
- clusters of measures can only be found for measures that have been included
15
Q
methods: findings unsurprising if ‘rigged’
A
- replication of factors is weak support for the existence of ‘real’ entities if the ‘input’ data is specifically constrained in ways that increase the likelihood of those factors being ‘found’
16
Q
Raymond Cattell’s 16PF
A
- in various analyses, Cattell factor analysed ‘representative’ items from Allport and Odbert’s list, supplemented by specialist jargon he felt was important and missing
- from among various solutions, he created the 16PF
17
Q
professions’ 16PF profiles
A
- given this to people from three different professions pilot, creative artists, and writers
- pilots were more tough-minded then the artists and writers
- gives the chance to profile personalities
18
Q
Eysenck’s ‘Big Two’
A
- can tell an awful lot about people by just knowing if they are emotionally stable or emotionally unstable
19
Q
Eysenck’s Big 3 (PEN) model
A
- he only really sampled from the general population, and he wanted more exceptional people (e.g., mental institutions, prisons)
- psychoticism or impulse control
- 3 traits: psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism
20
Q
Costa and McCrae’s five-factor model (FFM) of personality traits
A
- openness - seeking and tolerant
- conscientiousness - ordered and persistent
- extraversion - exuberant and scoiable
- agreeableness - caring and considerate
- neuroticism - neurotic
21
Q
BF-2
A
- you will always get these 5 traits which will be in the five-factor model
22
Q
stability coefficients
A
- if you do the test in a short period of time, your answers are more likely to be the same, whereas if it’s a long period of time it can be different
23
Q
other species
A
- dog owners can tell the difference in personalities in dogs
- can use this scheme in many different type of animals
24
Q
comprehensiveness
A
- The claim that the FFM is comprehensive does not mean that it exhaustively measures individual differences in personality, any more than a comprehensive examination asks every single question a student should be able to answer on a topic. What the model hypothesizes is that almost every personality trait is substantially related to one or more of the five factors, and that any remaining traits…form a miscellaneous category rather than covarying to define a sixth or subsequent factor (p. 218, f. 1
25
Q
validity
A
- multiply recovered - Schmitt et al, 2007
- neuroscience support - DeYoung et al, 2010
- convergence
26
Q
conclusions
A
- a useful, global, broad-brush hierarchal taxonomy
- largely descriptive of manifest characteristics
- explanation and prediction tricky unless is boarders on the tautological/circular
27
Q
mean level stability/change
A
- the average of a cohort’s trait score (s) compared across time
- on average, people within a cohort will increase in ____ and decrease in ____
- a “variable centred” concept/measure
28
Q
rank order stability/change
A
- the average of people’s traits scored relative to other people’s trait scores across time
- on average, a person high in a trait relative to their peers at t1 will be high in that trait relative to their peers at t2
- a “variable centred” concept/measure
29
Q
McAdams (1993)
A
- level 1: dispositional traits - potentially unchanging biology (basic tendencies)
- level 2: personal concepts - enduring but developing motivational and strategic individual concepts (characteristic adaptations)
- level 3: life narrative - actively choosing a meaningful life story
30
Q
individual personality change
A
- context affects 0 with friends or parents; awake or asleep
- life-changing events - trauma, dementia, etc
- dissociative identity disorder - the three faces of Eve
31
Q
DSM-V personality psychopathology
A
- a hybrid dimensional-category model:
1) six-ten specific personality disorder types, including antisocial, diagnosed with…
2) multiple traits, including negative affectively, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition vs compulsivity, and psychoticism
