PSY230: Trait Perspective

Descriptive Models §

Gordon Allport §

Gordon Allport: father of trait approach

• Lexical Approach: all important personality characteristics should be reflected in the language that human use to describe other people
  • Lexical Hypothesis
• Nomothetic Approach: people can be described along a single dimension according to their level of particular trait
  • Most modern assessment approach. Ex. Big-Five
  • Focus on research, not on specific individual
• Idiographic Approach: identifies the combination of traits that bes accounts for the personality of individual
  • Ex. MBTI
  • Focus on individual
• Cardinal Traits: dominate a person’s personality; connected to persona
• Central Traits: traits that best describe a person (limited amount)
• Secondary Traits: less relevant traits, only present in certain situations

Factor Analysis §

• By Raymond Cattell
• Was used to determine structure of human personality
• Factor Analysis: does score on particular item tend to group together
• Found large groups of traits could reduced down to 16 core personality traits

The 5 Factor Model §

Five-Factor Model

• Connected to the temperament dimensions
• Openness: (+) - forgive people; (-) - substance abuse (get bored)
• Conscienceless: (+) - stable job
• Extraversion: (+) - higher satisfaction in intimate relationship
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism : (-) - mental health issue
• The result is a percentile score, compared to average results of population
  • Assume normal distribution
  • Middle => variability of trait depending on situation
  • Extreme => consistent across situation

HEXACO Model §

• Other Model
• Honesty/humility as the 6th factor
• High: honest, humble, not interesting in wealth, not manipulative
• Low: dishonest, strong sense of self, motivated material, manipulative

Dark Triad §

Reflection: PSY230 Packback Discussion

• Machiavellianism: manipulation, self-interest, disregard for others
• Narcissism: grandiosity, egotism, entitlement
• Psychopathy: remorselessness, impulsively, lack of empathy
• Not personality disorder, but over the level, can become clinical
  • Narcissism -> narcissism clinical disorder
  • Psychopathy -> antisocial disorder
• Lack empathy, even though with similar level of cognitive empathy
  • Understand, but cannot feel it
• Connection to Big-Five
  • Low in Agreeableness
  • Psychopathy is related to low Neuroticism (no negative emotion)

Health and Social Influence §

Type A&B Personality

• Type A: have a higher competitive achievement striving.
  • Respond to frustrating situations with anger
  • Tend to dominate a group discussion
  • Health: correlated with cardio-vascular disease

Optimism & Pessimism §

• Dispositional optimism: extend to which people adopt to positive viewpoints
  • Health: helps coping, well-being
• Active strategies for coping
  • Healthy strategies
  • Problem solving, cognitive restructuring (Viktor Frankl’s attitude of suffering), express emotions, social support
• Avoidance strategies
  • Less healthy strategy
  • Problem avoidance, wishful thinking, self-criticism, social withdraw

Physiological Stress Response §

• Acute stress: short term stress (traffic jam)
• Chronic stress: long term stress (abuse relationship)
• People all experience stress, the important thing is how to recover from stress
• Allostasis: how the body respond to stressors to maintain homeostasis
  • Advantage for optimistic people

Biopsychosocial Model of Stress §

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Tend to perceive things as challenge or a threat (in goal-orientated task)

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• Treat response: a pattern of cardiovascular stress response exhibited when one perceives they cannot handle the demands of a situation
• Character: increase strength of heart contraction, increased heart rate, decreased blood output, constriction of cardiovascular vessels
• Zajonc’s Model social facilitation ★

Social Anxiety §

• Social Anxiety: extreme anxiety surrounding social interactions
  • Increased Physiological arousal
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Feelings of nervousness
• No direct association with Introversion
• Can be explained in part of high evaluation apprehension
  • Other aspect of social facilitation

Social Cognitive Model §

Walter Mischel

Social-cognitive Process

Key Factors §

• Encoding: categories of encoding information about one’s self, other, events, and situation
  • Learnt from Group and Culture
• Expectations and Beliefs: expectations for what will happen in certain situations
  • For outcomes of behaviors, and for one’s personal efficacy, in Self Schema
• Affects: feelings, emotions, and emotional responses
  • Emotions somewhat shapes part of the personality
• Goals and Values: individual goal, value, and life pro
  • Values
• Competencies and Self-Regulatory Plans: perceived abilities, plans, and strategies
  • Related to Conscienceless
  • The goal of the Marshmallow Study
• Consistency of personality is due to identification of situation-behavior relationship that become behavior signature of personality
  • High consistency within situation
  • Inconsistency with variability depending on situation

Consistency of Traits §

• Personality have both a biological/genetic and environmental basis
  • Extraversion variability explained by genetic
• Big Five traits and relation to brain regions

Situational Variability §

• By Kurt Lewin (father of social psychology)
• Argues that behavior is a function of a person and their environment
  • $B=f(P,E)$
• Unique: book’s argument
• Little evidence for cross-situational consistency
• Corresponsive Principle

Whole-Trait Theory §

Whole Trait Theory Fleeson, Jayawickreme

• 2 distinct parts of personality: Descriptive and Explanatory aspects of traits
• Descriptive parts: density distribution (Big-Five Model)
  • Measure variation of the trait (stability)
• Explanatory parts: social-cognitive mechanism (Social Cognitive Model)
  • Explain cause of variation
• Measurement (descriptive)
  • Parameter: location on dimension; width captures variability within an individual behavior
  • Shape: normal or skewed

Input ==> Intermediates ==> Output

• Input: environmental event & internal event
• Intermediates: activation of goals, initiation of homeostatic forces
• Output: change in manifestation of the traits Study: Emotional and its relationship to Big-Five Model
• Methods:
  • Ecological momentary assessment
  • Asked about state personality, what they were doing, and their affect
  • Looked at within and between person variation
• Result
  • Openness: positive mood -> high
  • Conscienceless: positive mood -> little higher
  • Extraversion: positive mood -> high
  • Agreeableness: positive mood -> high
  • Neuroticism: positive mood -> low ★

Change in Personality §

The Personality Myth

• Maturity Principle
  • Personality get more stable with age
  • Theory of Development enter different development stage
• Single behavior change would result change in personality trait