chap. 8 Flashcards
(33 cards)
What is the fundamental lexical hypothesis?
- states that people encode in their everyday languages all those differences between individuals that they perceive to be salient and that they consider to be socially relevant in their everyday lives
- “The most important individual differences in human transactions will come to be encoded as single terms in some or all of the world’s languages” (Goldberg, 1990, p. 1216)
→ people use terms to describe other people in their lives because they’re helpful
→ help us differentiate people
What is the basic research procedure for the analysis of trait terms in natural language and in questionnaires?
- Individuals rate themselves or others on a variety of traits sampled from the dictionary
→ Ratings are then factor-analyzed to find out how many factors are needed to understand the patterns of correlations
→ the goal: how many factors and what are these factors?
True or false: Early works indicated that five factors are necessary to explain personnality.
True: Five-factor solutions were found repeatedly in a wide range of data sources, samples, and instruments
Each trait (of the Big Five) is a universal psychological ___ that everyone has in varying amounts that causally influence people’s psychological development.
Structures; this idea of structures was unique to Costa and Mccrae
According to Costa & Mccrae, factors have a ___ basis.
Biological; combination of genes which determines where we find ourselves on the continuum of a certain trait
Name the Big five traits and the characteristics of having them at a low and a high score.
1) Openness: Breadth depth and complexity of an individual’s mental and experiential life; both mental in how philosophical you are and experimental in how open you are to trying new things
- High: Curious, creative, broad interests
- Low: Conventional, unartistic, narrow interests
2) Conscientiousness: Describes task-oriented and goal-directed behaviour and socially required impulse control; tend to be persevering, good impulse control, trying to achieve their goals, hardworking, good performance
- High: Organized, reliable, punctual
- Low: Aimless, lazy, careless
3) Extraversion: How sociable you are
- High: Sociable, active, talkative
- Low: Reserved, aloof, quiet
4) Agreeableness: Your likeability, how friendly and understanding you are
- High: Kind, cooperative, trusting
- Low: Cynical, rude, manipulative
5) Neuroticism: Broad range of negative feelings; contrasts emotional stability
- High: Worrying, nervous, emotional
- Low: Calm, relaxed, secure
Identify the associations between Big Five scores and variations in brain volume found by DeYoung et al.
1) Openness to experience was not significantly related to any of the examined brain regions
2) Conscientiousness correlated with volume in a region of the frontal cortex known to be active when people plan events and follow rules
3) Extraversion correlated with brain volume in a region of the frontal cortex that contributes to the processing of information about environmental rewards
4) Agreeableness correlated with brain volume in regions of the brain that contribute to people’s ability to understand others’ mental states (empathy, understanding)
5) Neuroticism correlated with great volume in brain regions known to be associated with the processing of environmental threats (associated with a fear response)
In relation to DeYoung’s research on the association between brain volume and the big 5, is it safe to conclude that they have identified the neural origins of the big 5 traits?
- No for 3 reasons
1) The study yielded a number of null results and unexpected results
2) Cause-effect relationships were impossible to determine with theses data
3) The brains’ various regions are enormously interconnected’ focusing on volume in one region of the brain may yield an incomplete portrait
Costa and Mccrae created the revised personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) which included 6 facets for each factor. Name one facet for each trait.
O: Fantasy, aesthetics, feelings
C: Self-discipline, dutifulness, competence
E: Gregariousness (enjoying other people’s company), activity level, assertiveness
A: Straightforwardness, trust, altruism
N: Anxiety, self-consciousness, depression
True or false: Depending on the researcher, warmth can linked to either extraversion or agreeableness.
True
True or false: Scores on the NEO-PI-R correlate with Eysenck’s inventories and Cattell’s 16 factors.
True: These correlations allow one to integrate the older models within the Big Five
True or false: NEO-PI-R is only available as self-report.
False: It is also available as ratings by others
True or false: People tend to be worse at predicting their own conscientiousness than other people
True: people who are high on conscientiousness are not going to report it being that high because they have high standards (they’re hard on themselves and underestimate themselves)
Despite stability in the personality, there are some changes that are found between younger adults and older adults in the Big 5; what are these high-low differences?
1) Openness
- higher in younger adults
- lower in older adults
2) Conscientiousness
- lower in younger adults
- higher in older adults
3) Extraversion
- Higher in younger adults
- Lower in older adults
4) Agreeableness
- lower in younger adults
- higher in older adults
5) Neuroticism
- higher in younger adults
- lower in older adults
Ravenna Helson and colleagues conducted a longitunidal study on a group of women in northern California, explain this research and its results.
- Researchers asked participants “how is the women’s movement important” when they were seniors in college
- They then studied them again when they were 61 years old
- Changes in personality across adulthood were found due to a major sociological factor (women’s movement):
→ those who said it was important to them increased in self-acceptance, assertiveness, dominance, empathy
→ those who said it wasn’t important to them did not have this increase
→ the women who were paying attention to this movement had a significant change due to their environment
True or false: Data suggests that personality is more stable over long periods of time rather than over short periods.
False: It is the other way around
How is the Big 5 applied in the workplace?
- Conscientiousness is related to performance across a variety of jobs and tasks
- in what workplace would it not be beneficial to have high C?
→ jobs requiring creativity and being interested in thinking outside the box; jobs with more chaos; EMT or firefighter where it’s a different situation every day (no daily plan, or by the book); musician - Others find weak results and do say that you need to look at more specific traits to determine how people will perform in the workplace
How is the Big 5 applied in health?
- More conscientious people may live longer
- Adults who were conscientious as children lived longer and were about 30% less likely to die in any given year, even when ruling out environmental variables
- What explains the relationship?
→ good health behaviours, you’re taking care of yourself, taking less risks
How is the Big 5 applied in physical activity?
- Lower Neuroticism and higher Conscientiousness associated with more physical activity and less sedentary behaviour
- Extraversion and Openness are associated with more physical activity, but these traits are mostly unrelated to specific sedentary behaviours (e.g., TV watching)
How is the Big 5 applied in music choice?
- People high in openness to experience increased the choice for browsing music by mood (they feel deeply and think deeply)
-
Conscientiousness increased the choice for browsing music by activity
→ compartmentalizing different types of music by activity -
Neuroticism the choice of music by activity or genre
→ tend to listen to the same thing
True or false: People high on neuroticism are least likely to listen to music to cope.
True: Even though using music to cope helps decrease neuroticism
How is the Big 5 applied in a clinical context and in choosing psychological treatment?
Diagnosis:
- Compulsive personality might be seen as someone extremely high on C and N
- Antisocial personality might be seen as someone low on A and C
- Maybe the five-factor framework can be a useful tool for clinical diagnosis
Treatment:
- There is no “trait” therapy
- Individuals with different personalities may benefit more or less from different forms of psychological treatment
- Individuals high in O may benefit more from therapies that encourage exploration and fantasy than those low on the factor
- Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness are often associated with positive outcomes; typically more likely to seek therapy
- Neuroticism is often associated with negative outcomes; not as likely to seek therapy
Individuals high in ___ may benefit more from therapies that encourage exploration and fantasy than those low on the factor
Openness to experience
What did Nikčević et al. (2021)’s study on the Big Five and anxiety and depressive symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic find?
- Found that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were negatively correlated with generalized anxiety and depressive symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Neuroticism, health anxiety, and Covid-19 psychological distress were positively associated with generalized anxiety and depressive symptom
- people high on positive traits likely handled the pandemic better rather than those high on neuroticism
- people high on O experienced more health anxiety during COVID
→ they can imagine the more bad things that could be happening
