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Personality - Trait theories (Y1) - Coggle Diagram
Personality - Trait theories (Y1)
About the trait approach
Trait - dimension of personality used to categorise people according to the degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic (Burger, 1997)
Better definition = relatively enduring, automatic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that people exhibit in similar situations across time (Roberts, 2009)
Better differentiates from characteristics like values, motives and abilities - traits are stable, the rest are not
Types v traits -
Types = discrete categories we place people in, e.g. introverted v extroverted, which is not helpful as personality is clear cut and it ignores the rich variation between people; continuous variables provide greater precision
Traits - continuous dimensions - a person can be positioned along the dimension according to how much of the trait they possess
How to identify traits -
idiographic approach, in which personality traits are extracted from the assessment of individuals - bottom up process of inferring personality structure through looking at the person and deciding relevant traits / characteristics
Nomothetic approach - identifying a common set of personality dimensions across people - personality is a limited set of traits - top down approach in which we take all traits and apply each dimension
Trait approach is inherently nomothetic - takes all personality traits and applies them
False dichotomy - Allport, 1937; individuals represent unique configurations of a common set of traits
Unique (idiographic) and common traits (nomothetic)
Defining personality traits - two assumptions underlie trait theory
Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time, and personality traits can also show stability across situations
A person's behaviour may alter on different occasions but the assumption is that there is some internal consistency in the way individuals behave
Personality traits also influence behaviour
Internal traits and qualities of the individual and have to be distinct from the behaviour, and trait theorists are more interested in general descroptions than making predictions about behaviour - take trait continuum and make descriptions of how groups of people at different points may be expected to behave
Interest in typical group behaviour - descriptive not explanatory approach
Often leads to circular reasoning
Trait theory allows easy comparison between people - continuum - but says little about personality change
Sheldon and Somatotypes (1970) - founder of terms of introversion and extraversion:
Somatotypes - personality is based on physique and temperament
3 types - each associated with a particular temperament, and each one has a body part that is the focus
Endomorph - focus on digestive system, particularly the stomach, physique of a rounded body trending towards fatness, viscerotonia temperament and associated with a love of relaxation and comfort, like food and are sociable
Mesomorph - Focus on muscles and circulatory system, large, bony with well-defined muscles, somatotonia temperament, physically assertive, competitive, keen on physical activity
Ectomorph - nervous system and brain are focus, light-boned with a slight musculature, cerebrotonia temperament, have a need for privacy, restraint and inhibition
Marked the start of psychometric approaches to personality, carried out large surveys, collected different measures and explored relationships between physique and criminality in particular, claiming somatotypes are only a correlational variable, not causative
Body type viewed as a factor in antisocial behaviour, but BMI is used instead
History of the trait approach - Aristotle and his students presented a collection of dispositions and traits to explain personality and is students suggested 30 different traits based on accepted differences between people
Hippocrates and Galen - 4 humours out of balance leads to a melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic or sanguine temperament rather than an equitable one
Englightenment - Kant - presented the personality types in association with the amount of activity a person has and the strength of their feelings
However, these early theories looked at personality types rather than traits - personality types are discrete categories, traits are continuums
Wundt - changed categorical types into trait dimensions - mood stability and strength of emotions became new scale - emotional-unemotional and changeable-unchangeable
Little progress in trait theory in comparison to clinical theories - factor analysis only way to advance scientifically
The factor analysis approach - Cattell
What is factor analysis?
A questionnaire with a certain amount of items aiming to identify factors about an individual, such as political leaning and musical preferences - take a questionnaire and identify what factors it is trying to question (e.g. 12 questions but 2 factors)
They can help to identify unknown underlying factors (latent factors) that underpin unrelated variables - patterns in the data are used
Identify the most frequently used sets of words or items that make up a personality aspect and then ask large samples of people to rate them on how much they apply to them
This is then factor analysed to identify which attributes cluster together, and correlated traits form one singular factor which you could then attain from measuring the traits in an individual
16 Factor personality test - consisted of surface traits and source traits:
Surface traits - traits that cluster together (46) - the traits we show which indicate the source trait
Source trait - factors underlying surface traits
Allport and Odbert's 4,500 trait descriptors - Cattell reduced this to 171 by removing synonyms
Rated people on the 171 traits
Source of data - L-data, or life record data, measurements of behaviour taken from actual life and Q-data, questionnaire results
Standardised testing conditions used - T-data that represents truly objective test data
Factor analysis resulted in 36 unique traits with a literature review adding 10 more, leading to 46 surface traits
Cattell's 16 personality factors (1965) - 16 source traits:
Outgoing-reserved - largest factor (affectothymia-schizothymia); most important in mental illness
Intelligence - second best predictor of behaviour
Stable-emtional - extent of impulse control
Assertive-humble
Happy-sober
Conscientious-expedient
Venturesome-shy
Tender-minded - tough-minded
Suscipicious-trusting
Imaginative-practical
Shrewd-forthright
Apprehensive-placid
Experimenting-conservative
Self-sufficieent-group-tied
Controlled-casual
Tense-relaxed
Descending order of importance - how predictive they are about how people are behaved
Variation in these explain variation in behaviour and personality
Generally measured in a self-report questionnaire
Example - Schuerger (1995) - use of personality questionnaire to identify suitable employment
16PF scores can be mapped to typical 16PF scores among those already in a specific occupation
Provides a way of profiling typical personality of people in specific occupations an guiding people into an occupation that best suits their personality
He distinguished two types of trait - constitutional traits, which are genetically determined, and environmental-mold traits which are environmentally induced traits
Aimed to determine if individual difference was caused by inherited aspects of personality or are they explained by how we have been treated and the environmental experiences we have had
Relative contribution of both to personality traits
Statistical procedure - multiple abstract variance analyses to accomplish these
-> Personality tests administered to assess a particular trait in relation to complex samples consisting of family members raised together, apart, MZ twins raised together, apart and unrelated children raised apart
-> Evaluated the precise degree of influence that is genetic and environmental in the development of a personality trait
Cattell also defined three other types of traits -
Ability traits - how well you deal with a particular situation and how well you reach your goals in that situation
Temperament traits - individual differences in the styles people adopt when pursuing their goals
Dynamic traits - interest in what motivates behaviour - dynamic traits energise and motivate our behaviour (Cattell, 1965) - motivation is at the heart of personality theorising
Three types of dynamic traits
-> Attitudes - hypothetical constructs that express our particular interests in people or objects in specific situations - predict behaviour in specific scenarios
-> Sentiments - complex attitudes that include opinions and interests that determine how we feel about people or situations
-> Ergs - inner motivations or drivers - recognise and attend to some stimuli more readily in order to seek satisfaction for our drives
These dynamic traits are organised in complex and interrelated ways in a lattice - explains how we acquire traits to achieve particular goals; how others react to you also affects the lattice as it changes your attitudes towards others and the mood you are in
Another distinction -
Common traits - shared by many people and motivate general activity
Unique traits - rare and specific to individuals, specialised interests that motivate certain activities
Different individuals have different mixtures of common traits, making them unique
Surface and source traits - by identifying source traits, we can narrow down the amount of surface traits using personality traits to measure individual differences more effectively
Contributions of Cattell - comprehensive, empirically based trait theory of personality - complexity of factors that all contribute to explaining human behaviour, including genetics and environmental factors alongside abilities and personality characteristics
16PF questionnaire - standard measure of personality and used in many settings
However, internal consistencies of scales are quite low, and so it has been revised and improved by Conn and Ricke (1994) - 16PF changed substantially
Earlier measure still had good predictability, making results comparable
16PF good predictor of school success in specific subjects - used recently by sports psychologists to assess elite high altitude mountaineers for their tough-mindedness, achievement-orientation and perseverance
Not parsimonious or strong in explanatory power
Puts great emphasis on objectivity of his work and did not acknowledge the subjectivity of factor analysis, linked to biased initial selection of traits
The Big Five Personality traits
Most empirically supported trait theory for personality framework - evidenced by lexical approach, Factor analysis and lots of other studies
Development of the big five - Fiske (1949(; reanalysed Cattell's data but found 5 factors instead of 16, and these findings were ignored for a long time
Goldberg (1990) also concluded that there are 5 major features in personality; love, work, affect, power and intellect
Costa and McCrae conducted factor analysis and found that the data supported 5 factors (OCEAN)
Each o the big five traits is based on facets (6 per trait)
The Big Five model is supported by research and is compatible with Cattell's16PF and Eysenck's model
Costa and McCrae developed the NEO-PI-R questionnaire to measure the Big Five traits which has become the standard
Compatible with Eysenck's and Cattell's models
Why is the same analysis giving different results?
factor analysis is not one single homogenous procedure
Many potential sources of variation
Properties of data, who was studied, and different properties of the analysis
-> Confirmatory factor analysis (test what you believe to be a good starting point)
-> Exploratory factor analysis (where you do not impose any preconceptions)
-> Factor rotation v non rotation and varimax v quartimax
OCEAN - hierarchial - surface level of 240 items, which load onto 6 different facets, and the 6 facets then load onto one of the five categories
Openness to experiences - curious, creative, conventional
Conscientiousness - organised, disciplined and impulsive
Extraversion - sociable, enthusiastic and reserved
Agreeableness - warm, sympathetic and critical
Neuroticism (emotional stability) - anxious, easily upset, emotionally stable
Personality profiles - Robins et al, 1996 - applying inverse factor analysis to test for the clustering of personality traits in individuals, and three profiles emerged
Resilitent (86%) - confident, stable and energetic
Overcontrolled (14%) - sensitive, emotionally brittle, dependable
Undercontrolled (20%) - stubborn, disobedient and impulsive
Personality across cultures: Schmitt et al, 2007 - analysed responses on NEO-PI-R in 56 nations, 29 languages with 17,408 people
Factor analysis replicated five factors in almost every region
Mean levels - differed across countries
Variability - higher in more developed nations
Some inconsistencies in specific nations - perhaps due to translation or cultural issues
Personality across life - Bleidorn et al, 2022 - meta analysis of the stability and change of personality
189-276 longitudinal studies including up to N = 242,542 participants
Findings suggested that -
-> Young adulthood is a formative period of personality development and maturation with significant change up to the age of 20-30 years
-> Middle adulthood is a period of stability - agreeableness and conscientiousness increase, other three decrease
Late adulthood is characterised by decreases in all traits except emotional stability
Benefits of conscientiousness -
Bogg and Roberts, 2004 - meta-analysis based on 194 studies, predicts better health and are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviours
Pluess and Bartley, 2015 -
Conscientiousness in childhood predicts less smoking at age 50 years independent of intelligence, adult conscientiousness, academic achievement and social class
Eysenck and the EPQ - 1995
An alternative structure - personality can be inferred from studying overt behaviours (specific responses)
These are underpinned by common patterns of behaviour across all situations - habitual responses
Clusters of habitual responses reveal underlying traits
Traits represent manifestations of underlying types of personality (aka super traits)
Specific responses (tip of iceberg) -> habitual responses (below surface) -> traits -> personality types (bottom of iceberg)
EPQ - way of studying the PEN model of personality (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire)
Three supertraits -
Extraversion-introversion
-> extraverts; impulsive, sociable, oriented to external reality
-> introverts - quiet, introspective, people oriented towards internal reality
-> relevant traits - dominant, active, assertive, lively and carefree
Neuroticism - stability; neurotic distinguishing feature is a disproportionate anxiety or fear level to the realities of situations
-> Neurotics - emotionally unstable, may have obsessional or impulsive symptoms, disproportionate fear of realities of situation
-> Relevant traits - irrational, self-esteem, shy, depressed, anxious and moody
Psychoticism - a special group of neurotics free from anxiety and fear, but much more severe in disorder
-> Psychopaths - antisocial, no conscience, no remorse, hostile, cruel, inhumane, with a need to ridicule and upset
-> Relevant traits - unempathetic, cold, egocentric, creative
Model of personality:
Specific responses - observations of individual behaviour
Habitual responses - ways individuals typically behave in situations
Specific responses makeup habitual responses, and these then produce a personality trait
Traits such as sociability, liveliness, activity, assertiveness and sensation seeking and highly correlated specific responses, making a habitual response on extraversion - collection of traits produces a super trait or personality type
Each supertrait is a continuum
Supertraits - extraversion, neuroticism and psychopathology (unable to see the consequences of their actions, overly free from anxiety and fear)
Psychotics are extreme neurotics who are insensitive to others, hostile, humiliate others, cruel and inhumane
However, they are also often geniuses or very creative individuals - being egocentric and tough minded are very relevant to these careers, not paying much time or empathy to others due to competitive careers
Simonton (1994) - often these individuals have creative and bizarre ways of reaching their goals
Eysenck (1995) - often display divergent thinking
EPQ in the classroom - Chamoro-Premuzic and Furnham (2003) - can personality traits predict academic performance?
N = 75 undergraduates
Better exam grades for people scoring lower in neuroticism and psychoticism
Better coursework grades for people higher in extraversion and lower in psychoticism
Scoring highly on the EPQ for neuroticism and psychoticism predisposes development of these disorders
Claimed that most of the variations in the PEN model are genetic, with environments impacting how they are expressed within the parameters biology provides (1982a)
The way children are socialised is crucial to personality development, but it is influenced by genes (1990b)
1965b - extraverts prefer to socialise more than introverts
1975 - extraverts have more career changes and are more likely to change relationships
Campbell and Hawley (1982) - looked at the study habits of extraverts and introverts and found that the latter prefer quiet spaces
Some individuals are more likely to suffer from psychopathological disorders because of inherited vulnerabilities - those who have high personality neuroticism are more likely to have clinical neuroticism
Comprehensive explanation of personality and focus on genetic factors - very influential in terms of heuristic value, significant applied value (Journal of Personality and Individual Differences)
Stressed for the need for integration between personality theorists who develop theories an experimental psychologists who had little interest in individual differences
Aimed to identify main dimensions of personality, how to measure and test them quantitatively
Accepted ideas of inheritance of personality characteristics, but the main narrative was that of blank slates where the environment shapes personality development was also an influence - Eysenck stressed the importance of genetic inheritance
Aimed to understand underlying structures of personality
Defined personality as the way an individual's character, temperament, intelligence, physique and nervous system are organised, which is generally stable and long lasting
Used factor analysis - three basic personality dimensions
The lexical approach and Allport
Galton (1884) - language has evolved to meet our needs, the more frequently a word can be found must indicate its importance to us, and more important traits must have more words available
Lexical hypothesis - we infer core traits by consulting the dictionary e.g. many synonyms for kindness
Cultural specificity - are we only extracting words that are important in Western cultures and ignoring others?
-> looking at dictionaries across the languages will reveal universally important characteristics
Allport and Odbet (1936) - 18,000 words, 4,500 involved in personality, situationism (do not apply all the time)
Three types of trait - differing in situational specificity -
Cardinal traits - main traits that are constant in all situations - not everyone has these, they are traits like narcissism
-> Narcissism - need for attention and respect from others, lack of empathy for others etc
-> Similar to obsessions - they are traits that infuse into everything a person does
Central traits - not as salient as cardinal traits, everyone has them, we all have 5-10 traits - Kindness etc, tend to generalise across situations but we can mask these
Secondary traits - situation specific, less visible and less stable e.g. anger
Individual differences between people that are important become encoded as single terms
Assumptions
-> Frequent use of a term is corresponded to importance of trait
-> Number of words used to refer to each trait also indicate importance in describing personality
-> Norman (1963) - cross cultural application - words common across languages are the most important
Allport -
unified approach to personality - the way component traits come together is important, and this is what produces behaviour and unique individuals - traits produce a unified personality capable of change
Change is a component part of the personality system necessary to adapt and cope with new situations - positive conceptualisation of humans as rational, creative, active and self-reliant
Personality traits have a physical presence - advances in technology would enable the identification of personality from nervous system inspection
Highlighted that the trait approach is limited as it is impossible to use an individual's personality traits to predict how they will behave in a specific situation
Variability and constancy in behaviour
Nomothetic approaches useful for identifying common personality traits to classify groups of individuals
Idiographic useful to learn the personal disposition of an individual - unique characteristics
Concept of self is important to the development of identity and individuality - children are not born with a concept of self, but it gradually develops and is a lifelong process
Children becoming aware of this separateness of themselves and from others in their environment, and this forms sense of self identity - this integrates them into society, leading to self-esteem
Concept of self - proprium - term represented all the constituent parts that make up the concept of the self
Biggest contribution - raised the limitations of the trait approach and relative influence of personality and situation in influencing behaviour and his inclusion of the self as a central concern of personaliyy is also important in approach
Distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches also important
No practical use in lexical approach of 4,500 traits
Recent developments
Could be 6 factors -
Ashton and Lee (2000) - based on studies featuring lexical approaches, recent research suggests that there is an additional factor to the Big Five (honesty and trustworthiness)
Resulting in the 6 factor model of HEXCO
Other potential additional factors
-> Reverence, deception, sensuality, frugality, conservativeness, masculine-feminine, egotism and risk-taking
Explored humility and honest (Ashton and Lee, 2007), agreeableness and emotionality
Reciprocal altruism - Trivers
-> A form of altruism in which an organism makes an altruistic act without expecting any benefit immediately in reutn
-> Made with two conditions - wider context in which the act benefits the recipient more than it costs the act to be made, and that the altruistic act is only carried out with the understanding the act will be returned at a later date
-> Distinction between honesty-humility and agreeableness - honesty-humility is a reflection of reciprocal altruism as it is fair, and agreeableness reflects through its tolerance
Honesty-humility in this context comprises a tendency to be fair and genuone when dealing with others when cooperatng and not expoit them
Agreeableness represents the tendency to be tolerant and understanding of others and to not act aggressively
Both dimensions increases altruistic relationships - being honest/humble leads to a decrease in people withdrawing, and being agreeable adds to more effort being put in
Kin Altruism - Hamilton -
natural selection - family and species help one another out, leading to more honesty/humility and emotionality is also relevant to this
Attachment to others is important to this, as people are more likely to support those they love
Extraversion, conscientiousness and openness - three dimensions of engagement and behaviour:
Extraversion represents engagement in social behaviours
Conscientiousness relates to proper and full engagement of activities
Openness to experience corresponds to engagement in learning, using one's imagination and thinking
Gains and losses as part of the theoretical interpretations of the HEXACO factors - showing too high levels of a trait could lead to potential losses emotionally
Honesty-humility losses - being too honest when the individual could have exploited someone from being too fair
Agreeableness - being exploited by others as the individual enters relationships where they tend to be exploited or continue relationships where they have been exploited
Emotionality - investing too much in others, such as family and friends particularly in terms of potential personal gains
General personal actor - Musek (2007) - applying factor analyses, he found that the Big Five load on two factors of stability and plasticity which then load onto a general factor personality
Rushton and Irving (2002) - found further evidence for the existence of a general factor
General factor reflects successful adaption, but it is considered controversial - where does the slimming down and expansion of traits stop?
Stability - low neuroticism, high conscientiousness and high agreeableness
Plasticity of high extroversion and high openness
Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) - personality test developed in 1944 by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, inspired by Jung's theorising on psychological types
Both without formal psychological training - this is why it is not trusted
MBTI has been revised continuously and become one of the most popular personality tests in HR and business
MBTI categorised people in 16 possible combinations across 4 dimension / dichotomies:
Introversion v extraversion (I, E)
Sensing v intution (S, N)
Thinking v feeling (T, F)
Judgement v perceiving (J, P)
Different frequencies of the 16 personality types
Evaluation - not supported by empirical research, poor validity and reliability, categories are not independent and not comprehensive
Therefore, MBTI is generally not accepted in academic psychology and is unscientific
Evaluation of the trait approach -
Explanation of personality - Not clear if these explain personality or are simply linguistic categories, atheoretical and does not predict behaviour
Empirical validity - factor analysis is closely data-driven, factor analysis is also sensitive to the properties of data, and of the analysis, situation-specificity of behaviour and difficulty in standardiising interpretations and labelling / operationalising traits
Legacy - Costa and McCare's ideas continue to dominate
Applications - human resource management, psychometric testing for job roles
-> Goldberg (1993) - job success is heavily linked to noncognitive factors of personality, and so it is important to match jobs to personalities
Summary - traits are the building blocks of personality, and the trait approach seeks to identify the core traits - lexical approach based on word frequency to identify important traits, factor analysis as the dominant scientific approach, various core traits proposed and the current dominant account is Costa and McCrae's Big Five (OCEAN)
The Dark Triad
Focus on the darker and more antisocial side of individual's personalities:
McHoskey, Worzel and Syzarto (1998) suggested the trait of Machiavellianism was very similar to that of psychopathy
Psychopathy research was based on clinical populations who indulged in antisocial behaviour and were less successful and of lower intelligence than those studied for M
M - relatively successful individuals; deceptions used in politics by leaders to manipulate others and keep control over them and these came to be identified as Machiavellian behaviours
M - manipulative individuals who are very focused on their interests who are good at deceiving, exploiting and manipulating others for personal gain, emotionally cold and with little concern for moral values
Psychopathy - selfish, antisocial behaviour, cruelty and lack of concern, absence of guilt and remorse
However, the two personality types share similarities despite being measured in general opposed to clinical populations
Paulhus and Williams (2002) - added narcissism; tendency to display grandiosity, sense of entitlement, feelings of superiority and dominance
These are the dark triad personalities
The three are separate distinct traits in the normal population, but they do correlate positively with one another
However, levels of conscientiousness were lower in the three personalities, and all scored low on agreeableness
Sindermann - internet use being higher than normal is positively correlated to Machiavellianism and psychopathy in males and females, and there is increasing research on the impact of leaders and managers in the workplace who score highly on the Dark Triad