Trait theories

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What type of approach does classical personality theories take?
Categorical, introvert, extrovert
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Categorical?
possession of a type is regarded as none or all
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what is wrong with categorical?
it fails to capture the complexity of human personality
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What is assumed about traits?
They are normally distributed, i.e. most people have a moderate level of
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The trait approach
continuum, continues variable, stable
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What is the TA a useful predictor of?
how individuals generally behave
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What does personality traits reflect?
a style of behaviour
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What are the 3 essential trait approach?
Cattle -16, Eysenck -3, Big 5 -OCEAN
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what is factor analysis?
a stat technique
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what does it allow us to do?
identify groups or clusters of variables underlying a set of measures
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what are variables called when they cannot be directly observed?
Latent variables or factors e.g. determined, persistent
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How did Allport classify personality traits?
cardinal traits, central traits and secondary traits
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Cardinal traits?
single traits that dominate and heavily influence behaviour
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Central traits?
5-10 that best describe the personality
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Secondary traits?
individual preference (situational specific)
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Who updated Allports version?
Cattell
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How many trait names did Cattell give?
171 trait names
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what did he look for?
P factors that correlated with each other, questionnaires
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What did he use?
rating scales
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what did the observes do with these rating scales?
rated p's on each trait
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what happened after?
a factor analysis response was produced
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why?
to see which p descriptors clustered together
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What model did his questionnaire lead to the development of?
The 16 personality factors model
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Why was it good?
good predictive value, good predictor of success in different school subjects
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what was low?
internal consistency of some scales - however has been revised and improved
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Examples?
Reserved Vs warm, Concrete reasoning Vs abstract, Shy vs soc
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What did it aim to study?
motivation
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what type of traits were included/
dynamic
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3 types (1)
1. attitudes express our particular interests in other subjects/objects
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3 types (2)
2. sentiments i.e. opinions and interests about how we feel about people/situations
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3 types (3)
3. Ergs = innate drives, recognise and attend to stimuli more readily than others
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What does Ergs include the the others don't?
Sex, food-seeking and gregariousness - they have big roots
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what was good about it?
good test-retest, good predictive value in real life, used with normal pop
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what was bad about it?
it was over-ambitious, and 5 replicable factors rather than 15/16 (Norman, 1963)
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Who claimed 16 was too many in 1944?
Eysenck
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How many and what kind of patients did he initially use?
700, all suffering from neurotic disorders
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What kind of analysis did he use?
factor on continuous variables
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what are the 3?
Extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism
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Extraversion?
sociable, lively, active, dominates - related to cortical arousal (e.g. brain activity)
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Neuroticism?
anxious, depressed, irrational, shy - relates to autonomic system e.g. rapid HR
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Psychoticism?
aggressive, cold, egocentric, impulsive - high scorers more likely to develop schizophrenia
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Why was psychoticism introduced?
couldn't differentiate between schizophrenics, borderline S and normal subjects
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What does '3 mutually orthogonal p dimensions' mean?
knowing one score on one dimension doesn't predict other score
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What neural mechanisms the E's bio model of P and arousal include?
excitatory and inhibitory
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what was balance regulated by?
Ascending reticular activating system (ARAS)
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What were the individual differences a result of?
brain functioning i.e. patterns of arousal
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what do excitatory mechanisms do?
keep the individual alert, active and aroused
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What does the ARAS do?
ARAS operates in different ways
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how?
extreme extra --> under aroused, extreme intro --> over-aroused
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What does this mean?
seeking out more or less stimulations is a way of maintaining optimal level of arousal
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Evaluation of Eysenck's super traits...
only used yes/no answers - not Likert; more
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Who created the big 5?
Costa and McCrae
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What is the Big 5?
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
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why was it created?
3 = not enough, 16 = too many
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According to C&M each super trait has what?
6 facets
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Openness...
Feelings, actions etc
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Conscientiousness...
Order, self discipline, deliberation etc
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Extraversion....
Warmth, assertiveness, excitement seeking etc
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Agreeableness...
Trust, altruism, compliance etc
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Neuroticism...
Depression, impulsiveness, vulnerability etc
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What was found to support the big 5?
found across different languages (1997), racial groups and ages (1992) - all M&C
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Additional evidence...
positive associations between: openness and cog ability & conscientiousness with slower rates of cognitive decline
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Are the big 5 stable across lifespan?
yes, and by around 30 people's p's are relatively resistant to change
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When can cog decline start?
30/40 - however not obvious
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critique..
approach is atheoretical - the theory is data driven, no hypothesis
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the big 5 was derived from what?
Data - this minimises research bias but is a critique
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Evalute the big 5...
Maltby et al., chapter 7
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The trait approach, critique...
Situational not traits that determine behaviour
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Critique.. who denied concept of 'p' had any validity at all
Mischel
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What was the statistical sig result? (critique)
Correlation between traits and behaviour is between .1 and .3
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why is .1 and .3 bad?
we make important decisions based on the basis of these traits, when 1 is a perfect results, the stat is not significant
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Categorical?

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possession of a type is regarded as none or all

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what is wrong with categorical?

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Card 4

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What is assumed about traits?

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The trait approach

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