PERSONALITY Flashcards
(111 cards)
Personality
**–> ‘BENEATH THE MASK’
–> the authentic ‘TRUE SELF’, separate from social roles, linked to INDIVIDUALISM.
–> Enduring, broad differences btwn ppl that are PSYCHOLOGICAL but not cognitive abilities.
Individual differences
- These ‘dispositions are fundamental;
- personal identity,
- social communications/gossips
- persona perception,
- stereotypes
Personality and self-concept study - “Describe yourself” (Prentice, 1990)
- Likes, beliefs, values (33%)
- Personality traits (25%)
- Behaviours (9%)
- Interpersonal attributes (9%)
- Demographic attributes (9%)
- Physical characteristics (8%)
- Abilities (6%)
Personality and social communication
- Much of our communication aims to learn what others are like
(eg: thru personalities) - Robin Dunbar argues that human intelligence evolved to HANDLE COMPLEXITIES of group life
Person Perception (Personality)
- Person perception is largely devoted to judging other people’s personalities
- Rapid personality judgements
- ‘DISPOSITIONAL INFERENCE’(integrated info to predict a person’s motives/intentions) and ‘correspondence bias’
Stereotypes
largely made up of personality
traits BELIEVED (rightly / wrongly) to be associated with social groups
- competence
- warmth
Personality Pscyhology
Dedicated to understanding the ‘WHOLE PERSON’
- Focus on study of differences btwn people
- Closely related to clinical psych
- Emphasis on INTRINSIC (essential) factors
* contrast with social psychology,
person vs the situation
* The PERSON vs the SITUATION
Every person is in certain
respects; (Murray & Kluckhohn, 1953)
- like all other people (human nature)
- like some other people (systematic variation)
- like no other person (personal uniqueness)
Personality traits
A trait is a CONSISTENT PATTERN of behaviour, thinking or feeling.
- Relatively stable over time
- Relatively consistent across situations
- Varying between people
- Dispositional (integrating context into potential actions)
–> Trait vary in generality or ‘bandwidth’ : some are broad, others narrow
Hierarchy of traits
High-level trait: Extraversion
Mid-level trait: sociability, sensation-seeking
Low-level trait: physical sensation-seeking, sexual sensation-seeking
Illustrative behaviour: sky-diving, raunchy Tinder ad
Trait organisation
- Basic dimensions or types of personality
- One theory: poeple come in 4 types:
- (pomegranate) = hard on outside, hard on inside
- (walnut): hard-soft
- (prune) = soft-hard
- (grape) = soft-soft
Structure of personality traits
–> Survey the traits encoded in language - ‘lexical approach’
- It assumes that important distinctions for describing ppl are incorporated in everyday SPEECH
study of personality trait structure -
Allport and Odbert 1963
- attempt to survey the ‘trait universe’
- Searched large dictionary for words that could describe differences between people
- 18,000 out of 550,000
- These were then filtered
*Remove physical attributes
*Remove cognitive abilities and talents
*Remove transient states
*Remove highly evaluative terms - 4500 terms remained
Raymond Cattell study (further of Allport and Odbert’s)
- 4500 trait words still too many
- Mostly synonymous / related
- Cattell progressively reduced the set
- Sorted words into 171 groups of
synonyms/antonyms - Reduced these to 16 ‘factors’ using
a technique called ‘factor analysis’ - These factors represented the basic
dimensions of personality
Cattel’s 16 factors
- Reserved-outgoing
- Stable-neurotic
- Expedient-conscientious
- Shy-venturesome
- Tough-minded-tender-minded
- Trusting-suspicious
- Practical-imaginative
- Forthright-shrewd
- Less intelligent-more intelligent
- Humble-assertive
- Sober-happy-go-lucky
- Placid-apprehensive
- Conservative-experimenting
- Conforming-independent
- Undisciplined-controlled
- Relaxed-tense
Cattell’s 16 factors were still correlated
- Different factors might both reflect a single underlying “super-factor”
- Ideally, the dimensions of personality should be independent of one another
- Donald Fiske showed that the 16 factors could be FURTHER REDUCED by factor analysis to 5
The Big Five
- Openness to Experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
Which of the following statements accurately reflects the idea that personality is “beneath the mask”?
Personality is part of our true self, behind the social roles we enact
Extraversion
HIGH- sociable, energetic, enthusiastic, assertive
LOW- shy, reserved, quiet, retiring
Agreeableness
HIGH- highly warm, modest, kind, helpful, trusting
LOW- cold, unfriendly, quarrelsome
conscientiousness
HIGH- highly efficient, organised, thorough, self-controlled
LOW- careless, irresponsible, frivolous
Neuroticism
HIGH- highly tense, irritable, moody, nervous, high-strung
LOW- stable, calm, unemotional, content
Openness to experience
HIGH- higly imaginative, intelligent, original, sophisticated
LOW- simple, shallow, conventional, narrow
Value of the Big Five
–> suggest that there are 5 fundamental ways in which ppl differ in personality.
considering all 5 values helps …
- Assessment of personality
- Investigation of personality correlates
- Explanation of the underpinnings of personality
- Provides a way to map specific personality traits
- EG: shyness is a combination of (low) Extraversion and (high) Neuroticism