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’
