Personality II Flashcards
What do personality models need to be in order to be trustworthy?
Need to be robust
Replicable using the same data sets as well as different data sets
Not driven by our own views about what should be the case
What are some problems with earlier models of personality?
Didn’t have much practical use
Personality measures were weakly associated with behaviours
Argued that we are better off focusing on the impact of the situation we are in
Driven by theory rather than data
What did Goldberg et al. (1980); Saville and Holdsworth (1984) do?
Reconsidered the factors in personality
Came up with a very similar pattern of 5 factors, repeated many times since
Good correlations with patterns of behaviour
Good correlations with individual behaviours under stress
Outline the Five Factor Model
Established as superior to other models at beginning of 1990s
OCEAN:
O - Openness to experience
C - Conscientiousness: rises in young adulthood, declines in later years
E - Extraversion: those who are more extravert are likely to be happier, possibly because they do more activities, have more opportunity for positive reinforcement
A - Agreeableness: more likely to get on with team members, seen as ‘transformational’ leaders
N - Neuroticism: strong links to psychological distress and work stress
The factors only weakly correlate with each other
Individuals can be anywhere along each of the dimensions allowing us many more personality profiles than other models
What is an example of a factor?
Extraversion
What are examples of facets?
Assertiveness, Gregariousness
What predicts behaviour better?
Facets but is that just because they are descriptions of those behaviours
Big Five measures that include the facets have a lot more items than those that focus just on factors
Outline measures of the Big Five that use facets and factors
NEO-PI-PR: widely used and validated across cultures
Factors have better psychometric properties than the facets (243 items)
Big Five Inventory: 44 items, also exists in a 10 item version without facets.
Outline measures of the Big Five that only uses factors
IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers: good psychometric properties, 50 items
TIPI: 10 items, correlates well with longer measures, also a 5 item version but this is less robust.
What are some controversies of the Big Five?
Phenomenological rather than theory based
Limited ability of TBF to predict behaviours
Doesn’t cover all traits
Is there a sixth factor? Honesty/Humility suggested facets including sincerity, modesty and fairness.
Do we have a valid model of personality in the Big Five? Or is this just another step en route to such a valid model?
Big 5 is the best we have at present but should not be assumed to be perfect
The big 5 doesn’t contain all there is to say about personality
Isn’t sufficient to account for mental health and personality disorders
Question whether it is clinically valid in explaining the difference between people with different personality disorders
We are seduced by convenience, and love the idea of making measures and once we have a measure we convince ourselves that all is perfect and need never change.
Do our models of personality development reflect real differences or the belief systems of the people who propose those models?
Yes it is likely that there are real differences but the beliefs of model developers may also come into play
Both can be true, better over time in being more data-led than theory-led
Historically the belief systems of the model developers have slowed down our understanding of personality and its differences but the evidence in more recent times has led us to a better, albeit imperfect, set of models of behaviour.
