Week 03: Chapters 4 and 6

Question 1

interactionism

Answer 1

The principle that aspects of personality and of situations work together to determine behavior; neither has an effect by itself, nor is one more important than the other.

Question 2

single-trait approach

Answer 2

The research strategy of focusing on one particular trait of interest and learning as much as possible about
its behavioral correlates, developmental
antecedents, and life consequences.

Question 3

many-trait approach

Answer 3

The research strategy that focuses on a particular behavior and investigates its correlates with as many different personality traits as possible in order to explain the basis of the behavior and to illuminate the workings of personality.

Question 4

essential-trait approach

Answer 4

The research strategy that attempts to narrow the list of thousands of trait terms into a shorter list of the ones that really matter.

Question 5

typological approach

Answer 5

The research strategy that focuses on identifying types of individuals. Each type is characterized by a partic- ular pattern of traits.

Question 6

California Q-Set

Answer 6

A set of 100 descriptive items (e.g., “is critical, skeptical, not easily impressed”) that comprehensively cover the personality domain.

Question 7

lexical hypothesis

Answer 7

The idea that, if people find something is important, they will develop a word for it, and therefore the major personality traits will have synonymous terms in many different languages.