Seminar 4 - Critiquing trait theories of personality

Question 1

The big five?

Answer 1

Factor analysis is not perfect
- subjective interpretation of results
- we have to decide hat items are included
- what if we forget or miss something?
Ongoing issues:
- too broad?
- are there missing or more important factors?

Question 2

The big six?

Answer 2

HEXACO model of personality
Adds 1 factor to big five
- honesty-humility (H)
- emotionality/neuroticism (E)
- extraversion (X)
- agreeableness (A)
- conscientiousness (C)
- openness to experience (O)

Question 3

Issues with the big 5

Answer 3

Derived from the lexical approach
- but what if this approach is flawed?
- assumes personality is captured by everyday language
- uses personality surveys to derive basic factors
Hans Eysenck
- major opponents of lexical approach
- proposed two-factor model
- later propped a third - psychoticism

Question 4

Controversies in trait psychology

Answer 4

Trait psychology is a widely accepted approach in personality
- simple descriptive unit
- simple dimensional framework of personality factors
- nevertheless, it had been controversial
Are personality traits consistent?
Is there structure of traits universal?
Traits or types?
Are traits sufficient for describing personality?

Question 5

Are individual differences consistent?

Answer 5

traits capture behaviour that is consistent across situations
- but is behaviour really consistent?
- do traits interact with the situation or environment?
Person vs situation
- personality may override the situation
- situation may overrides personality

Question 6

Walter Mischel (1968)

Answer 6

Observed behaviour and personality traits correlated weakly (< 3)
The situation is the main determinant of behaviour
Traits are weak predicators of behaviours alone

Question 7

Hartshorne and May (1928)

Answer 7

Gave thousands of children multiple behavioural tests of dishonesty
- lying
- cheating
- stealing
Dishonest varied widely across situations, with little consistency
Average correlated among tests = 0.26

Question 8

Critiquing Mischel

Answer 8

Weak correlations are still important
- consistency is greater for “average” behaviour vs single trait
- situational influences are about as weak as personality influences
Need for an interactionist view that recognised traits, situations, and their combined effects
- personality and environment interact

Question 9

Is the structure of personality universal?

Answer 9

Trait model (e.g. the big five) assume they are universal
- potential cultural biases
- result of the language is was developed in
~ lexical approach
~ English dictionary
How do we test if traits are universal?
- translate tests to other languages
- are factors consistent?
Strong congruency for most factors across European languages
- French
- German
- Polish
- Hungarian
- Dutch
- Italian
- Czech
Openness to new experiences least consistent
Culture specific traits
- differences in non-western vs western cultures
- Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory
~ adds “Chinese Tradition” factor
~ captures cultural practises and customs

Question 10

Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory

Answer 10

Harmony
- peace of mind, contentment, harmony, avoidance of conflict
Ren Qing (relationship orientation)
- adherence to cultural norms based on reciprocity, exchange of social facotes, and exchange of affection
Modernisation
- responses to modernisation and attitudes towards traditional Chinese beliefs
Thrift vs extravagance
- virtue of saving rather than wasteful-hedonistic spending
Ah-Q mentality (defensiveness)
- defence mechanisms, including externalisation of blame and belittling others’ achievements
Face
- social behaviours to enhance one’s face and to avoid losing one’s face

Question 11

Traits vs types

Answer 11

Traits are dimensional and have a continuum
- often assessed as continuous variables
- liker scales
Types are categorical or nominal
- individuals are grouped by ‘type’
- proposed by Carl Jung
- common in popular psychology (Myers-Briggs)

Many reproachers examine whether personality characteristics are better presented as categories or dimensions
- very little evidence for true or predictive personality type
- Jungian ‘types’ may be better used as continuous variables

Question 12

Traits effective for describing personality?

Answer 12

Alternative units for describing personality beyond traits:
- motives, needs and goals (humanistic)
- genetics (biology)
- self-schemas (cognitive)
- life narrates (qualitative)
There is more to personality than traits
- but they are useful and simple place tp start
Trait approach vs the rest
- trait approaches focus on quantifying and categorising personality
- biological, humanistic, cognitive, etc approaches are concerned with identifying sources of personality
Shift for ‘why’ to ‘what’ in personality psychology
- the ‘what’ is more useful in predicting behaviour
- often applied to contest outside of psychology (e.g. workplace)

Question 13

Trait approach

Answer 13

Traits are valuable units for descrying personality
There is evidence for five basic factors (probably)
Traits are relatively constant across cultures
However
- there are other ways to capture personality (e.g. schemes and motives)
- trait theory is the dominant approach today