Week 4 - Traits Flashcards
What did Allport argue about traits?
- traits are a neuropsychic system that make consistent forms of behaviour
- bigger than nominal existence and can predict behaviours
- traits exist despite habits that are inconsistent with the traits
What does factor analysis ask in personality?
how many unique traits are there and can be grouped in humans?
What does factor analysis do and what does it use?
mathematical analysis to reduce many correlations to small number of factors
uses latent variables/factors = discrete variables
What is confirmatory factor analysis?
- uses competers, calculates the interrelationships between items
- used for hypothesis and theory testing and compares models to determine which is best
- good for KNOWN factors
What is an example of confirmatory factor analysis?
the IPIP: International personality item pool
How does factor analysis find the best model?
undergoes model fit = examines the relationship between the model and the data / which model is better?
uses fit indices like RMSEA
What is the difference between EFA and CFA?
EFA is used when it is not known how many factors there are between the items and which factors are determined by which items while CFA is used if there is a strong theory about the structure.
What is the coefficient alpha?
How high does coefficient alpha need to be?
a measure of reliability, inter-tem consistency in factor analysis
at least 0.7+
What is EFA?
- latent variable factor analysis causes correlates between variables
loadings represent the relationship between the item and its factor
the loading correlations need to be at least 0.3 or higher - more difficult to find out similarities between items and group them
How is the average item correlation related to alpha?
those measures that have lower average item correlation tend to have lower alpha coefficients
Do factors intercorrelate?
Some correlations also between the factors themselves, eg. agreeableness + openness = 0.23 conscientiousness + neuroticism = -0.305
Who came up with 5-Factor model and is it reliable?
1.McCrae, Costa and Goldberg
- from many different approaches resulted in the same findings
Psychopathological symptoms
Self reports
Expert and peer reports
Questionnaires NEO-PI-R
What are the 5 bipolar dimensions on the Big 5?
- Openness to experience / intellect: imaginative, curious, culture, art, creativity
- Conscientiousness = preferes organisation, don’t like spontaneity, well-planned, reliable and good workers, want high achievement
- Extroversion = friendly, outgoing, energetic, like people’s company, stimulated by the external world
- Agreeableness = compassionate, cooperative, trusting, friendly
- Neuroticism = tend to have anxiety, mood swings, depression, guilt and shame, opposite to emotional stability
What are the 4 assumptions about human nature in the 5 factor theory?
- knowability = we can understand people with scientific methods
- rationality = people are ration and understand themselves and others
- Variability = people differ in meaningful ways
- productivity - people can influence their own behaviour and lives
What things are assumed about the Big 5 traits?
- present at birth and biological stable
- pretty stable across lifespan
- caused internally and unaffected by the environment
- everyone has a particular amount of 5 traits which contain narrower subdimensions
- thus personality exists in a 30 dimensional space
What are 3 advantages to the Big 5?
- Very stable, moderate to strong relationship between Big 5 personality traits with individual, interpersonal and institutional outcomes
Highly influential and parsimonious + Valid and reliable measures
Supportive research across different approaches, S, I, B, and L data
- Easy to understand, applied to organisations, self-understanding
- Can predict job outcomes, relationship satisfaction, unhappiness, health, friendships, artistic pursuit, criminal behaviour
What are the criticisms of the Big 5?
- criticised for inductive approach
- might not be useful for people in middle of a trait
- factor analysis is subjective!
- downplays role of environment
- weak correlation between trait and behaviour
- weak cross cultural evidence
What did McCrae and Costa mean about biological bases, characteristic adaptations and behavior?
- biological bases produce basic tendencies
- tendencies are genetic and ingrained
- personality is expressed by characteristic adaptations informed from basic tendencies and the environment
- characteristic adaptations shape our self-concept
What did McCrae and Costa mean about environmental influence?
The environment can change personality but ONLY through directly affect our BIOLOGY, eg. brain disease/damage
Are computers better at judging personality than humans?
Computers outperforms work colleagues on judgements on your personality with 10 facebook likes, outperforms friend/roommates with 70 likes, outperforms family member with 150 likes, outperforms spouse with 300 likes
What were the findings of the one click personality test?
- 90% could predict gender and race
- 10 likes to match how well co workers know you
- 70 likes for friends, 300 for spouse
facebook likes significantly predicted personality profiles and demographic information
Implications for computer predictions?
Psychographics = values, lifestyles, interest, personality: can predict consumer choices/voter support COMPARED TO demographics, eg. SES, gender, age
What is the situationist critique of the trait approach?
Situationists critique the trait approach because traits weakly predict people’s predict behaviour and situations SHOULD BE CONSIDERED THE PRIMARY DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOUR
What assumptions does sitationanism make?
- Assumes stability of behaviour is due to stability of your environment
- Changes in environment change people’s behaviour
- No internal traits drive people’s behaviour
What are the 6 criticisms of situationism?
- No accurate definition, measurement and description of ‘situations’
- Not very accurate prediction of behaviour
- Traits can predict behavioural trends across situations
- Traits influence behaviour in most situations
- Our personality influences how we chose situations
- Different people interpret the same situation in different ways, these perceptions relate back to personality traits
What is the additive approach to trait/situation tension?
What is the limitation?
Additive approach - both traits and situations can explain aspects of behaviour and both are important, independently predict behaviour
Problem: Cronbach: “one discipline subject matter becomes another’s error variance” - eg. individual differences are error variance in social psychology, situations are error variance in trait psychology
What is the solution to the additive approach?
- Interactionism - to predict behaviour, we need to understand the interaction between situations and traits
a) mechanistic interactionism: manipulating situation: praised or threatened for essay, measured IV: narcissism trait, measured the interaction
b) Real world interactionism = dynamic interactionism: people choosing certain or creating certain situations, shaped by personality, situations reinforcing behaviours and may affect personality
What are the implications for dynamic interactionism?
Behaviour, personality and situations are all influencing each other!
Situation is not something external to you, but can change your personality!
What are the criticisms of interactionism?
- Hard to replicate in research
- Require very large samples
- Many people accept interactionism but have different opinions, stable vs. unstable differences
- Hard to empirically study it: science is better at nomothetic approach, better at studying principles and not interactions
What 3 levels does McAdams use?
- Traits
- goals/values/beliefs/attitudes
- Narrative identity/life story - influences behaviour
“We create a particular environment/situation due to our personality, and that situation then affects our personality back”
conscientiousness and grit are…
in essence the same
an active and busy life changes the likelihood of getting alzheimers in what way?
it decreases it
