Trait Approach

Gordon Allport

Founder of the trait approach

Trait is “a generalized and focalized neuropsychic system (peculiar to the individual) with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior” (Allport, 1937)

Two main aspects:

  • Traits do exist as neuropsychic structures that are particular to individuals
  • They really cause behaviour

Exist in a unique way in one personality (idiographic approach and are distributed in the population (nomothetic approach)

  • Idiographic = unique organisation of a trait within an individual
  • Nomothetic = we can differentiate all people on a particular trait (we are all able to be placed on any trait dimension)

Complexity of Human Traits

  • Around 18,000 traits in the English language
  • But are there 18,000 traits on which people really differ?
  • Factor analysis to reduce the complexity to manageable simplicity

Factor Analysis

  • A mathematical procedure that can reduce a large number of correlations to a smaller number of factors → Latent variables that cause the intercorrelations

Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis

Explanatory = when you don't know how many factors you have

Confirmatory = better at hypothesis testing and theory testing, want to confirm a hypothesised structure of personality

  • Now the most widely used with powerful computers

Latent variable factor causes correlations between variables

If there is a good fit between the model and data the model/theory is corroborated

Big Five Factors

Dominant model - most widely used personality scales

McCrae & Costa - personality scales
Goldberg - argued for the Big Five

The traits: OCEAN

Openness - intellect , imaginative, curious, liking art and creative. High on openness like changes and dislike routine

Conscientiousness - preferences for a kind of organised approach to life, don’t like spontaneous lifestyles, like to plan and are reliable and consistent. Strive for achievement

Extraversion - friendly and outgoing, energentic, like to be in the company of other people

Agreeableness - compassionate, cooperative, considerate of other people

Neuroticism - emotional stability is the opposite, tendency to experience negative emotions, anger, guilt, mood swings, depression, stress and anxiety

Five Factor Theory (McCrae & Costa, 2008)

Abstract basic tendencies include a wide range of characteristics, such as language abilities and the give basic traits

  • They are relatively stable, internally caused, heritable, and generally unaffected by the environment

Model:

  • Basic tendencies are genetic and heritable
  • Characteristic adaptations are culturally conditions phenomena (are not traits but are various beliefs, goals etc.)
  • Part of characteristic adaptation is our self concept
  • Also partly influenced by the environment
  • But our life is the objective biography - this is the behaviour we engage in
  • External influences affect characteristic adaptation and objective biography, and vice versa

Evidence for the Five Factor Model

Can Facebook Likes Reveal Your Personality? (Kosinski et al., 2013)

  • 58,000 participants provided FB likes, demographic information
  • Found that FB likes significantly predicted personality profiles of participants - as well as demographic information
  • Using FB likes is almost as useful in predicting personality as knowing ones previous personality test score for Openness (self-reported)

Are Computers Better Judges of Personality Than Humans? (Youyou et al., 2015)

  • 86,220 participants completed the 100-item International Personality Item Pool (IPIP)
  • Computer-based personality judgements, based on computer likes were obtained
  • A sample were judged by one friend, A sample judged by two friends

Main results:

  • Computer outperforms colleauge when it comes to personality when you only provide it with 10 likes
  • If you provide the computer with 70 likes you can outperform a friend
  • If you provide computer with 150 likes you can outperform a family member
  • If you provide 300 likes you can outperform a spouse

Implications for Marketing

  • Psychographics for marketing purposes - much better at predicting buying behaviour than demographics

Prediction

  • Life outcomes associated with personality traits
  • Individual outcomes, interpersonal and institutional outcomes
  • This is why personality has been shown to have good applied value - you can infer a lot about dating satisfaction, leadership, humour, political views, etc.

Critique of the Five Factor Model

Strengths

  • Highly influential - the dominant model of personality today
  • Parsimonious - just 5 traits which reduces complexity and is useful in data organisation
  • Generated mostly supportive research
  • Empirical support - cross-cultural and longitudinal, various kinds of data, based on reliable and valid measures

Weaknesses

  • Inductive approach - should start with theory and not with traits and then develop theory
  • Factor analysis - is very subjective, not everyone agrees on the five factors
  • Psychology of a stranger - is it too crude for understanding humans (external factors more important?)
  • Correlation between specific instances of behaviour and traits is not strong
  • Criticism of genetic and biological basis

Orthogonal meaning people's scores on one of the factors are not significantly positively or negatively related to their scores on any other factor

Situationist critique - the most dominant

  • Traits weakly predict people's behaviour
  • Situations are the primary determinants of people's behaviour - traits are irrelevant
  • Social psychology sits in the situationist discipline

Argue that stability in individual behaviour is only due to:

  • Stability in external situations
  • Unstable external situations create unstable individual differences

Situationism: weaknesses

  • No agreement on how to define, describe, and measure situations
  • Variance that situations explain in behaviour is not usually high (similar to variance traits explain)
  • Different individuals can perceive the same situation in different ways - these relate to individuals' personality
  • Situations in experiments are often artificial and don't allow participants to express personality

Resolution - Interactionism

  • To predict behaviour we need to understand situations, traits, and their interaction
  • Can be experimentally tested but real-world applications are difficult as we have dynamic complex interactions

Problem: to study interactions well need longitudinal data which is time consuming and expensive