week 22 - personality Flashcards
List and describe the “Big Five” (“OCEAN”) personality traits that comprise the Five-Factor Model of personality.
Openness - open to new ideas, enjoys seeing people with new things about themselves (ex. haircut)
Conscientiousness - being careful, following rules, never late
Extraversion - being social and talkative, the life of the party
Agreeableness - agreeing and going along with others, forgiving
Neuroticism - often experiencing negative emotions, insecure, worrying about little things
Describe how the facet approach extends broad personality traits.
Facets of traits = subtraits
You may know people who are warm and friendly and find it easy to talk with strangers at a party yet are terrified if they have to perform in front of others or speak to large groups of people. The fact that there are different ways of being extraverted or conscientious shows that there is value in considering lower-level units of personality that are more specific than the Big Five traits. These more specific, lower-level units of personality are often called facets.
Facets can be useful because they provide more specific descriptions of what a person is like. For instance, if we take our friend who loves parties but hates public speaking, we might say that this person scores high on the “gregariousness” and “warmth” facets of extraversion, while scoring lower on facets such as “assertiveness” or “excitement-seeking.”
Explain a critique of the personality-trait concept.
Some suggest that there are more than five major traits, or perhaps even fewer. For example, in one of the first comprehensive models to be proposed, Hans Eysenck suggested that Extraversion and Neuroticism are most important.
More recently, Jeffrey Gray suggested that these two broad traits are related to fundamental reward and avoidance systems in the brain—extraverts might be motivated to seek reward and thus exhibit assertive, reward-seeking behaviour, whereas people high in neuroticism might be motivated to avoid punishment and thus may experience anxiety as a result of their heightened awareness of the threats in the world around them.
Another revision of the Big Five is the HEXACO model of traits. This model is similar to the Big Five, but it posits slightly different versions of some of the traits, and its proponents argue that one important class of individual differences was omitted from the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO adds Honesty-Humility as a sixth dimension of personality.
There are other important traits that are not included in comprehensive models like the Big Five. Although the five factors capture much that is important about personality, researchers have suggested other traits that capture interesting aspects of our behaviour.
Describe in what ways personality traits may be manifested in everyday behaviour.
Furthermore, Mischel suggested that observers may believe that broad personality traits like honesty exist, when in fact, this belief is an illusion. The debate that followed the publication of Mischel’s book was called the person-situation debate because it pitted the power of personality against the power of situational factors as determinants of the behaviour that people exhibit.
Because of the findings that Mischel emphasised, many psychologists focused on an alternative to the trait perspective. Instead of studying abroad, context-free descriptions, like the trait terms we’ve described so far, Mischel thought that psychologists should focus on people’s distinctive reactions to specific situations. For instance, although there may not be a broad and general trait of honesty, some children may be especially likely to cheat on a test when the risk of being caught is low and the rewards for cheating are high. Others might be motivated by the sense of risk involved in cheating and may do so even when the rewards are not very high. Thus, the behaviour itself results from the child’s unique evaluation of the risks and rewards present at that moment, along with her evaluation of her abilities and values. Because of this, the same child might act very differently in different situations.
Thus, Mischel thought that specific behaviours were driven by the interaction between very specific, psychologically meaningful features of the situation in which people found themselves, the person’s unique way of perceiving that situation, and his or her abilities for dealing with it. Mischel and others argued that it was these social-cognitive processes that underlie people’s reactions to specific situations that provide some consistency when situational features are the same. If so, then studying these broad traits might be more fruitful than cataloguing and measuring narrow, context-free traits like Extraversion or Neuroticism.
Describe how traits and social learning combine to predict your social activities.
Although the behaviours are very different, they nevertheless all fit with the meaning of the underlying trait. Psychologists also found that, because people do behave differently in different situations, personality will only predict behaviour when the behaviours are aggregated or averaged across different situations.
Describe your theory of how personality traits get refined by social learning.
We are always learning by things happening to us. We modify our behaviour to fit our environment and to get what we want. Our personality traits will modify overtime to suit our goals, desires, and needs to change.
agreeableness
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, warm, and caring to others. People low in agreeableness tend to be rude, hostile, and to pursue their own interests over those of others.
conscientiousness
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be careful, organised, hardworking, and to follow rules.
continuous distributions
Characteristics can go from low to high, with all different intermediate values possible. One does not simply have the trait or not have it, but can possess varying amounts of it.
extraversion
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive.
facets
Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets or aspects of the trait. For example, extraversion has several facets, such as sociability, dominance, risk-taking and so forth.
factor analysis
A statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to how highly they are associated.
five factor model
(also called the Big Five) The Five-Factor Model is a widely accepted model of personality traits. Advocates of the model believe that much of the variability in people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours can be summarised with five broad traits. These five traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
hexaco model
HEXACO model - The HEXACO model is an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five (Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeableness [A], Conscientiousness [C], and Openness [O]). The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model.
Independent - Two characteristics or traits are separate from one another– a person can be high on one and low on the other, or vice-versa. Some correlated traits are relatively independent in that although there is a tendency for a person high on one to also be high on the other, this is not always the case.
lexical hypothesis
The lexical hypothesis is the idea that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use to describe themselves and others.
neuroticism
A personality trait that reflects the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive and the tendency to experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger.
openness to experience
A personality trait that reflects a person’s tendency to seek out and to appreciate new things, including thoughts, feelings, values, and experiences.
personality
Enduring predispositions that characterise a person, such as styles of thought, feelings and behaviour.
personality traits
Enduring dispositions in behaviour that show differences across individuals, and which tend to characterise the person across varying types of situations.
person situation debate
The person-situation debate is a historical debate about the relative power of personality traits as compared to situational influences on behaviour. The situationist critique, which started the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which personality traits are consistent across situations.
Define heterotypic stability, homotypic stability, absolute stability, and differential stability.
Heterotypic stability refers to the psychological coherence of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours across development. Questions about heterotypic stability concern the degree of consistency in underlying personality attributes. The tricky part of studying heterotypic stability is that the underlying psychological attribute can have different behavioural expressions at different ages. Shyness is a good example of such an attribute because shyness is expressed differently by toddlers and young children than adults. The shy toddler might cling to a caregiver in a crowded setting and burst into tears when separated from this caregiver. The shy adult, on the other hand, may avoid making eye contact with strangers and seem aloof and distant at social gatherings.
Homotypic stability concerns the amount of similarity in the same observable personality characteristics across time. For example, researchers might ask whether stress reaction or the tendency to become easily distressed by the normal challenges of life exhibits homotypic stability from age 25 to age 45. The assumption is that this attribute has the same manifestations at these different ages. Researchers make further distinctions between absolute stability and differential stability when considering homotypic stability.
Describe evidence concerning the absolute and differential stability of personality attributes across the lifespan.
Absolute stability refers to the consistency of the level of the same personality attribute across time. If an individual received a score of 45 on a hypothetical measure of stress reaction at age 20 and at age 40, researchers would conclude there was evidence of absolute stability. Questions about absolute stability can be considered at the group level or the individual level. At the group level, it is common for personality researchers to compare average scores on personality measures for groups of different ages. For example, it is possible to investigate whether the average 40-year-old adult has a lower (or higher) level of stress reaction than the average 20-year-old. The answer to this question would tell researchers something about typical patterns of personality development.
Differential stability refers to the consistency of a personality attribute in terms of an individual’s rank-ordering. A typical question about differential stability might be whether a 20-year-old who is low in stress reaction relative to her same aged peers develops into a 40-year-old who is also low in stress reaction compared to her peers. Differential stability is often interesting because many psychological attributes show average changes across the lifespan. Regardless of average changes with age, however, it is common to assume that more trait-like attributes have a high degree of differential stability. Consider athletic performance as an attribute that may exhibit differential stability. The average 35-year-old is likely to run a 5K race faster than the average 55-year-old. Nonetheless, individuals who are fast relative to their peers in their 30s might also be fast relative to their peers in their 50s. Likewise, even if most people decline a stress reaction as they age, it is still useful to investigate whether there is consistency over time in their relative standing on this attribute.
Explain the maturity, cumulative continuity, and corresponsive principles of personality development.
Maturity - The maturity principle of adult personality development states that as we age we adjust our traits to fit with our new, adult responsibilities.
Average levels of personality attributes seem to change in predictable ways across the lifespan in line with the maturity principle of personality development. Traits that are correlated with positive outcomes (such as conscientiousness) seem to increase from adolescence to adulthood. This perspective on personality stability is gained from considering absolute stability in the form of average levels of personality attributes at different ages.
Cumulative continuity - Roberts and DelVecchio found that differential stability increased with age. The correlations ranged from about .30 for samples involving young children to about .70 for samples involving older adults. Fergeson updated and replicated this basic pattern. This pattern of increasing stability with age is called the cumulative continuity principle of personality development. This general pattern holds for both women and men and applies to a wide range of different personality attributes ranging from extraversion to openness and curiosity. It is important to emphasise, however, that the observed correlations are never perfect at any age (i.e., the correlations do not reach 1.0). This indicates that personality changes can occur at any time in the lifespan; it just seems that greater inconsistency is observed in childhood and adolescence than in adulthood. Personality attributes are relatively enduring attributes that become increasingly consistent during adulthood in line with the cumulative continuity principle. This perspective on stability is gained from considering differential stability in the form of test-retest correlations from longitudinal studies.
Corresponsive - . This positive matching typically produces personality consistency because the “press” of the situation reinforces the attributes of the person. This observation is at the core of the corresponsive principle of personality development. Preexisting personality attributes and environmental contexts work in concert to promote personality continuity. The idea is that environments often reinforce those personality attributes that were partially responsible for the initial environmental conditions in the first place. For example, ambitious and confident individuals might be attracted to and selected for more demanding jobs. These kinds of jobs often require drive, dedication, and achievement striving thereby accentuating dispositional tendencies toward ambition and confidence.
Explain person-environment transactions, and distinguish between active, reactive, and evocative person-environment transactions.
Personality stability is the result of the interplay between the individual and her/his environment. Psychologists use the term person–environment transactions to capture the mutually transforming interplay between individuals and their contextual circumstances. Several different types of these transactions have been described by psychological researchers. Active person–environment transactions occur when individuals seek out certain kinds of environments and experiences that are consistent with their personality characteristics. Risk-taking individuals may spend their leisure time very differently than more cautious individuals. Some prefer extreme sports whereas others prefer less intense experiences. Reactive person–environment transactions occur when individuals react differently to the same objective situation because of their personalities. A large social gathering represents a psychologically different context to the highly extraverted person compared with the highly introverted person. Evocative person–environment transactions occur whenever individuals draw out or evoke certain kinds of responses from their social environments because of their personality attributes. A warm and secure individual invites different kinds of responses from peers than a cold and aloof individual.
Identify the four processes that promote personality stability (attraction, selection, manipulation, and attrition). Provide examples of these processes.
Attraction - Current researchers make distinctions between the mechanisms likely to produce personality stability and the mechanisms likely to produce changes Brent Roberts coined the helpful acronym ASTMA to aid in remembering many of these mechanisms: Attraction (A), selection (S), manipulation (M), and attrition (A) tend to produce personality stability, whereas transformation (T) explains personality change.
Individuals sometimes select careers, friends, social clubs, and lifestyles because of their personality attributes. This is the active process of attraction—individuals are attracted to environments because of their personality attributes. Situations that match with our personalities seem to feel “right”. On the flipside of this process, gatekeepers, such as employers, admissions officers, and even potential relationship partners, often select individuals because of their personalities. Extraverted and outgoing individuals are likely to make better salespeople than quiet individuals who are uncomfortable with social interactions.
All in all, certain individuals are “admitted” by gatekeepers into particular kinds of environments because of their personalities. Likewise, individuals with characteristics that are a bad fit with a particular environment may leave such settings or be asked to leave by gatekeepers. A lazy employee will not last long at a demanding job. These examples capture the process of attrition (dropping out). The processes of selection and attrition reflect evocative people–environment transactions. Last, individuals can actively manipulate their environments to match their personalities. An outgoing person will find ways to introduce more social interactions into the workday, whereas a shy individual may shun the proverbial water cooler to avoid having contact with others.
Although a number of mechanisms account for personality continuity by generating a match between the individual’s characteristics and the environment, personality change or transformation is nonetheless possible. Recall that differential stability is not perfect.
The simplest mechanism for producing change is a cornerstone of behaviourism: Patterns of behaviour that produce positive consequences (pleasure) are repeated, whereas patterns of behaviour that produce negative consequences (pain) will diminish. Social settings may have the power to transform personality if the individual is exposed to different rewards and punishments and the setting places limitations on how a person can reasonably behave. For example, environmental contexts that limit agency and have very clear reward structures such as the military might be particularly powerful contexts for producing lasting personality changes.
