Lecture 2 Flashcards
(36 cards)
What is Allport’s lexical hypothesis about personality traits?
(3)
- Personality characteristics that are important to a group of people will eventually become a part of that group’s language
- More important personality charac. are more likely to be encoded into a language in many words
- Principle Component Analysis of the covariance-structure of traits can be used to extract the most important aspects of variation in a population
How are traits defined?
Traits are words in natural language to describe individual characteristics
What three steps are there in the method for studying covariance patterns (of traits)?
- Take a large list of trait words in a language
- Use a method to derive principal components (or factors) on these traits
- Arrive at a factor structure of 5-7 factors
What is a popular personality theory that is an example of the principal component analysis?
The Big Five
What is meant with covariance patterns of traits?
That in a language, certain words covary a lot (e.g., assertive, charismatic and charming)
meaning they go together
How are these principal components relevant for clinical psychology?
Because one can relate the factors to clinical categories/scales (e.g., HiTOP or AMPD)
What are four questions that come from this component analysis, that are currently still debated?
- Why do we so often find these 5 (6/7) principal components across the world?
- What is the reason for covariance between specific traits
- Why do we find persistence (consistency time)
- Why do we find pervasiveness (consistency situatios)
What four interpretations are there for covariance structures? just name them
- Trait realism and temperament
- Situationism
- Network stability
- The self as an actor
What is trait realism and temperament theory?
the theory
- A trait (like extraversion) is defined as an inferred organismic underlying structure for a broad range of behavioural dispositions
- These dispositions are seen as inclinations to behave in certain ways in a set of trait-relevant situations
so not generalized action tendencies - hinge on context
What is the multidimensional personality questionnaire and what trait theory uses it?
Realist trait perspective:
- Basically one “big” trait or principal component is measured through a bunch of “smaller” traits/behavioural dispositions
What are the big three in the realist trait perspective?
so traits + components
- Positive Emotionality = well-being, social closeness, achievement and social potency
- Negative Emotionality = Stress reactivity, alienation and aggression
- Constraint = Harm avoidance, controlm and traditionalism
A small trait, “absorption” is also a part of the realist trait perspective, what is it?
Absorption falls outside of the big three because it doesn’t really fit into the rest; it is about how easily you get absorbed in situations/pictures/day-dreaming that type of stuff
associated with psychoticism and creativity
So how does variation between individuals happen according to the realist trait perspective?
Variation in the sensitivity for the biological underpinnings accounts for differences (as mentioned in the flash prior)
What are the big three in temperament, specifically this is in infants
related to realist trait perspective
- Surgency = approach, vocal reactivity, high intensity pleasure, smile and laughter, activity level and perceptual sensitivity
- Negative affectivity = sadness, distress to limitation, fear and falling reactivity
- Orienting/regulation capacity (ORC) = cuddliness, low intensity pleasure, duration of orienting and soothability
How do the big three in infant temperament relate to the big three in the realist trait perspective?
- Surgency = positive emotionality
- Negative affectivity = negative emotionality (lol)
- Orienting/regulation capacity = constraint
thus infant big three are predictors for later realist traits
What is situationism?
theory; Walter Mischel
- Critique on trait realism/temperament
- Generalized behavioural consistencies have not been demonstrated (possible excluding intelligence)
- thus, personality traits as broad dispositions is a myth
this strong position = no longer compatible with evidence
So what stance does situationism take on behaviour (e.g., liking a party)
That is completely hinges on the situation (how nice it is, etc.) and the trait does not correlate (or very little) with behaviour
There is a common myth about what traits predict, which is also the myth situationism is working from; what is this myth and what do traits actually predict?
- Myth = traits predict behaviour at a single time point/situation
- Actually, traits are predictive of behaviour over a large course of time (thus, many time points)
I mean, yeah they are group measures lol
So situations are important; people behave very differently across occasions. Yet people also act very similarly from one week to the next (thus across time points). So what is the solution/answer to this conundrum?
There is none; they’re simply both correct
- Traits are best regarded as person-specific distributions of certain states-of-mind and behaviours (thus traits indicate likelihood of such states over a certain period of time)
- The distributions are quite stable; personality
- The specific outcomes at a particular moment vary a great deal (situationism)
thus traits predict your personal distribution
What is the network stability theory of traits?
Basically turn the model of trait realism around:
- Interactions of particular acts/feelings/thoughts give rise to covariance between them
- The above results in generalized patterns and broad traits
To summarize, compare the visual model for network stability and trait realism
Trait realism:
- (biopsych system) broad trait > generalized patterns/dispositions > acts/thoughts/feelings < transient factors (e.g., being tired)
- General > specific
Network stability:
- transient factors > acts/feelings/thoughts (these interact) > generalized patterns > broad traits
- Specific > general
So what is the main difference between network stability and trait realism?
- Trait realism sees dispositions as arriving from inborn structures
- Network stability sees traits as emerging from interactions of particular situations/etc.
How does the network become stable over time? (thus the traits emerge)
As these interactions are happening, basically they start to strengthen over time and set into stable patterns of predictable traits
idk if this is clear but ye
Are trait realism and network stability mutually exclusive?
No, at least not completely. Certain inborn structures can certainly be present, but the interactions are then what results in later stable traits
