Week 22: Personality Flashcards
Learning Objectives
List and describe the “Big Five” (“OCEAN”) personality traits that comprise the Five-Factor Model of personality.
Describe how the facet approach extends broad personality traits.
Explain a critique of the personality-trait concept.
Describe in what ways personality traits may be manifested in everyday behavior.
Describe each of the Big Five personality traits, and the low and high end of the dimension.
Give examples of each of the Big Five personality traits, including both a low and high example.
Describe how traits and social learning combine to predict your social activities.
Describe your theory of how personality traits get refined by social learning.
personality
Characteristic, routine ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to others.
*characteristic ways that people differ from one another
personality traits
Enduring dispositions in behavior that show differences across individuals, and which tend to characterize the person across varying types of situations.
*limited number of these dimensions (dimensions like Extraversion, Conscientiousness, or Agreeableness)
- people can fall under low, medium or high
continuous distributions within personality traits
Characteristics can go from low to high, with all different intermediate values possible. One does not simply have the trait or not have it, but can possess varying amounts of it.
three criteria that characterize personality traits
(1) consistency
- consistent across situations in their behaviors
ex. talkative at home and at school
(2) stability
- stable over time in behaviors
ex. talkative at the age of 30 & 40
(3) individual differences.
Extraversion
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive.
The lexical hypothesis
Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert
Idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves and others.
factor analysis
A statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to how highly they are associated.
five factor model OCEAN
Five broad domains or dimensions that are used to describe human personality.
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neurotism
Openness
Associated with higher curiosity, creativity, emotional breadth, and open-mindedness.
*People high in openness to experience are more likely to experience interest and awe.
Low
- prefers not to be exposed to other moral systems
- narrow interests
- inartistic
- not analytical
High
- untraditional
- curious
- imaginative
- would think that person with the new cut and piercings is kinda cool
Conscientiousness
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be careful, organized, hardworking, and to follow rules.
Low
- spur of the moment action planning
- unreliable
- careless
- lax
High
- Never late
- organized
- hardworking
- neat
- punctual
- persevering
Extraversion
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive.
Low
- prefer quiet evening more than a loud party
- sober
- aloof
- unenthusiastic
High
- life of the party
- active
- optimistic
- fun loving
- affectionate
Agreeableness
Reflects a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, warm, and caring to others.
*People low in agreeableness tend to be rude, hostile, and to pursue their own interests over those of others.
Low
- Quickly and assertively asserts boundaries and rights
- irritable
- manipulative
- uncooperative
- rude
High
- agrees with others about politics
- good natured
- forgiving
- gullible
- gullible
Neurotisicism
Reflects the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive and the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger.
Low
- irritated by small annoyances
- calm
- unemotional
- secure
- self satisfied
High
- constantly worrying about little things
- insecure
- feeling inadequate
Facets of Traits (Subtraits)
Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets or aspects of the trait. For example, extraversion has several facets, such as sociability, dominance, risk-taking and so forth.
HEXACO model
The HEXACO model is an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five
(Emotionality [E],
Extraversion [X],
Agreeableness [A],
Conscientiousness [C],
Openness [O]).
The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model.
Honesty-Humility (From HEXACO)
low
- manipulative
- narcissistic
- self-centered
high
- sincere
- fair
- modest
Personality and Assessment (1968)
Walter Mischel
Evolved into ‘Person-Situation debate’
People behave differently based on the role their playing in certain contexts
*basically code switching
The person-situation debate is a historical debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behavior. The situationist critique, which started the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which personality traits are consistent across situations.
SO… Mischel thought that psychologists should focus on people’s distinctive reactions to specific situations.
The enduring dispositions that people show across situations are called personality ______.
traits
______ refers to the fact that traits tend not to change very much over time. As an example, if a person tends to be very anxious as a 30-year old, they would probably be rather anxious as a 40-year old.
stability
Richard tends to be a very positive person but Kenny is a rather grumpy person. This contrast reflects one of the three main criteria of a personality trait, which is ______.
individual differences
What was the basic premise of the lexical hypothesis, introduced by Allport and Odbert?
Personality characteristics should be reflected in the language that we use to describe people.
______ is a statistical technique that allows one to group things together according to how highly they are associated (or how similar they truly are).
factor analysis
What is the best way to describe the relationship between the personality traits in the Five-Factor Model?
a. The traits are relatively independent. A high score on one trait tells little about a score on another trait.
b. Two of the traits – Extraversion and Conscientiousness – are positively correlated..
c. Three traits– Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Openness – are positively correlated..
d. The traits are all negatively correlated. A high score on one of the traits tends to predict a low score on another.
e. The traits are all positively correlated. A high score on one of the traits tends to predict a high score on another.
a. The traits are relatively independent. A high score on one trait tells little about a score on another trait.
In a new revision of the Five-Factor approach to personality traits, called the HEXACO model, a sixth trait has been added. What is that newer trait?
Honesty/Humility
Learning Objectives:
Define heterotypic stability, homotypic stability, absolute stability, and differential stability.
Describe evidence concerning the absolute and differential stability of personality attributes across the lifespan.
Explain the maturity, cumulative continuity, and corresponsive principles of personality development.
Explain person-environment transactions, and distinguish between active, reactive, and evocative person-environment transactions.
Identify the four processes that promote personality stability (attraction, selection, manipulation, and attrition). Provide examples of these processes.
Describe the mechanisms behind the possibility of personality transformation.
heterotypic stability
Consistency in the underlying psychological attribute across development regardless of any changes in how the attribute is expressed at different ages.
*attributes may represent themselves in behaviour differently throughout time
homotypic stability
Consistency of the exact same thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across development.
stress reaction
The tendency to become easily distressed by the normal challenges of life.
absolute stability
Consistency in the level or amount of a personality attribute over time.
absolute stability: group level
A focus on summary statistics that apply to aggregates of individuals when studying personality development. An example is considering whether the average score of a group of 50 year olds is higher than the average score of a group of 21 year olds when considering a trait like conscientiousness.
Ex. how are most 18-year-olds different than most 38-year-olds?
absolute stability: individual level
A focus on individual level statistics that reflect whether individuals show stability or change when studying personality development. An example is evaluating how many individuals increased in conscientiousness versus how many decreased in conscientiousness when considering the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Ex. how is 18-year-old you different than 38-year-old you?
Differential Stability
Consistency in the rank-ordering of personality across two or more measurement occasions.
Differential stability is often interesting because many psychological attributes show average changes across the lifespan.
Ex. whether a 20-year-old who is low in stress reaction relative to her same-aged peers develops into a 40-year-old who is also low in stress reaction compared to her peers.
cross sectional study
A research design that uses a group of individuals with different ages (and birth cohorts) assessed at a single point in time.