The Trait Approach

Question 1

What is a trait?

Answer 1

personality characteristic describing/determining behaviour across many situations

Question 2

What 2 types of psychology are at play when it comes to the person-situation debate?

Answer 2

social vs. personality psychology

Question 3

What is situationism?

Answer 3

situation drives behaviour and personality is unimportant

Question 4

What are the 3 core arguments for situationism?

Answer 4

1. predictability
2. situationism
3. erroneous perceptions

Question 5

Predictability:
How did Mischel, a psychologist, view correlations between personality and behaviour?

Answer 5

rarely exceeds 0.30

Question 6

Predictability:
Another psychologist, after Mischel, revised the correlation between personality and behaviour to what value?

Answer 6

0.4

Question 7

Predictability:
What does Funder propose to be crucial counterpoints to the arguments that Mischel made?

Answer 7

1. unfair lit review
2. can do better
3. 0.4 is not small at all

Question 8

Predictability:
In the study conducted by Funder and Ozar, when they reviewed classical social psychology what conclusions did they come across?

Answer 8

• same effects as Nisbett’s assessment of personality
• wide review = r = 0.21 (small correlation)

Question 9

What is key idea within the erroneous perceptions theory?

Answer 9

• people act differently in same situation
• there are 1000 words to describe personality

Question 10

Erroneous perceptions:
What is absolute versus. relative consistency?

Answer 10

relative: people act same in same situation
absolute: how similar is everyone’s behaviour across different situations?

Question 11

What is the main idea of interactionism?

Answer 11

personality + situation = behaviour

Question 12

What are the 3 ways that people and the situation can interact with each other?

Answer 12

1. effect of personality depends on situation (vice versa)
2. situations are not randomly populated (people go to a place for a reason)
3. people change situations (ex. life of the party)

Question 13

What is the trait perspective?

Answer 13

individual differences in personality and behaviour

Question 14

What are the 3 core aspects of the trait perspective?

Answer 14

1. describe + predict
2. empirical research = correlational designs mainly
3. focus is on individual differences

Question 15

What are 3 strengths of the trait perspective?

Answer 15

1. basic (parsimonious)
2. long history
3. predictive

Question 16

What are 2 limitations of the trait perspective?

Answer 16

1. we don’t know why or how a person behaves, just that they do
2. tautological reasoning may happen

Question 17

What are the 4 different approaches that researchers use to connect traits to behaviours?

Answer 17

1. single-trait
2. many-trait
3. essential trait
4. typological

Question 18

What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the single-trait approach?

Answer 18

What do people like that do?

Question 19

What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the many-trait approach?

Answer 19

Who does that?

Question 20

What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the essential -trait approach?

Answer 20

Which traits are most important?

Question 21

What type of question would one ask if they were to take on the typological approach?

Answer 21

Which type are you?

Question 22

If a researcher were to ask, “what are the things that lead into narcissism?” what type of approach within the trait perspective would they be implementing?

Answer 22

the single-trait approach

Question 23

What is the single-trait approach?

Answer 23

focus is on 1 trait of interest and learning all about the related behaviour, life consequences, and developmental antecedents

Question 24

What type of approach do self-monitoring and narcissism use?

Answer 24

single-trait approach

Question 25

Which term describes the following? => personality trait that revolves around sensitivity to social context and the ability of a person to adapt to it

Answer 25

self-monitoring

Question 26

Which type of self-monitors are easier to predict?

Answer 26

low

Question 27

What is the many-trait approach?

Answer 27

many different traits are looked at in order to explain the basis of 1 behaviour

Question 28

When looking at political orientation, what type of approach would that be implementing?

Answer 28

many-trait approach

Question 29

Political Orientation: There are several social and interpersonal behaviours that can predict our political orientation and some argue that this trait is rooted in?

Answer 29

an attempt to lessen fear

Question 30

T/F => children's personality can predict adulthood political beliefs

Answer 30

T

Question 31

What are some traits that influence our political behaviour?

Answer 31

- authoritarianism - threat sensitivity - disgust sensitivity - intelligence - morality

Question 32

What is the essential trait approach?

Answer 32

research strategy that takes 1000s of traits and tries to narrow them down into whats actually important

Question 33

What are the names of the theoretical and empirical approaches that were used for the essential trait approach?

Answer 33

theoretical - eysenck's 3 dimensions empirical - cattell's 16 factors

Question 34

"The Big Five" is an example of what type of trait approach?

Answer 34

the essential trait approach

Question 35

What are the 5 factors of the five-factor model?

Answer 35

1. openness to experience 2. conscientiousness 3. extraversion 4. agreeableness 5. neuroticism

Question 36

The 5 factors in the five-factor model are known to be categorized under stability and plasticity, and are also...

Answer 36

orthogonal (independent of one another)

Question 37

What is the five-factor model rooted in?

Answer 37

language

Question 38

What is extraversion?

Answer 38

being sociable and outgoing

Question 39

What trait in the 5 factor model is also known as "emotional instability?"

Answer 39

neuroticism

Question 40

What is neuroticism?

Answer 40

not being able to deal with problems in life effectively and having stronger negative reactions to stressful events

Question 41

Which trait in the five-factor model is known for capturing a general tendency towards psychopathology?

Answer 41

neuroticism

Question 42

If a person obeys, conforms, is dutiful, rule-abiding and ambitious, what trait would they score high in? (5 trait model)

Answer 42

conscientiousness

Question 43

What is agreeableness?

Answer 43

being cooperative

Question 44

Which trait in the 5 trait model is able to predict many socially relevant outcomes?

Answer 44

agreeableness

Question 45

What is "openness to experience?"

Answer 45

being creative, imaginative, open-minded

Question 46

What is major drawback to the trait "openness to experience?"

Answer 46

can overclaim

Question 47

What is the biggest critique of the "Big Five?"

Answer 47

that personality can be defined with more than 5 traits

Question 48

What type of hypothesis and analysis developed the HEXACO approach?

Answer 48

lexical hypothesis and factor analysis

Question 49

What is the name of the hypothesis that argues that a groups main personality characteristics are encoded in language?

Answer 49

lexical hypothesis

Question 50

What are the 6 dimensions of personality in the HEXACO approach?

Answer 50

H- honesty-humility E - emotionality X - extraversion A - agreeableness C - conscientiousness O - openness to experience

Question 51

What is the key difference between HEXACO and the Big Five?

Answer 51

1. H added 2. neuroticism = emotionality 3. H is different from A and react differently to Dictator and Ultimatum games

Question 52

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is rooted in Jungian theory and is based on 4 personality dichotomies:

Answer 52

1. Extroversion vs. Introversion 2. Sensing vs. Intuition 3. Thinking vs. Feeling 4. Judgment vs. Perception

Question 53

Is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator a valid measure?

Answer 53

not really

Question 54

However, not all typologies are invalid. What research that has been done in the past indicates this?

Answer 54

Caspi (3 types in cross-cultural studies) - well-adjusted - maladjusted overcontrolling - maladjusted undercontrolling

Question 55

What does The Dark Triad consist of?

Answer 55

1. narcissism 2. machiavellianism 3. psychopathy

Question 56

What is narcissism in the dark triad?

Answer 56

- high self-regard - extraverted and confident behaviour

Question 57

What is machiavellianism in the dark triad?

Answer 57

- bad attitude towards human relationships - ends justify means, ruthless

Question 58

What is psychopathy in the dark triad?

Answer 58

- untruthfulness - manipulativeness - callousness - no remorse or shame - impulsive and antisocial tendencies

Question 59

The Dark Triad has aspects that all lead negatively to agreeableness. What is the level of neuroticism that psychopathy predicts?

Answer 59

low

Question 60

The Dark Triad has aspects that all lead negatively to agreeableness. What is the level of conscientiousness that machivellianism and psychopathy predict?

Answer 60

low

Question 61

What is the association between psychopathy and physical aggression?

Answer 61

positive

Question 62

What is the association between narcissism and hostility?

Answer 62

negative

Question 63

What is the association between machivellianism and hostility?

Answer 63

postive

Question 64

What term describes the following: maintaining individual differences in behaviour/personality over time or across situations

Answer 64

rank-order consistency

Question 65

What is the numerical value that personality traits have ben found to correlate across 10 years?

Answer 65

0.60-0.90

Question 66

What is temperament?

Answer 66

"personality" of young, pre-verbal children

Question 67

What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when an aggressive person goes to a bar or when an introvert avoids social gatherings?

Answer 67

active person-environment transaction

Question 68

What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when extraverts find parties enjoyable and introverts find that same party unbearable?

Answer 68

reactive person-environment interaction

Question 69

What type of person-environment interaction is taking place when a conscientious person tells a group that its time to get back to work?

Answer 69

evocative person-environment behaviour

Question 70

What is the cumulative continuity principle?

Answer 70

personality is more stable as we grow older

Question 71

Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one's life. What happens to the levels of extraversion?

Answer 71

decrease then level off

Question 72

Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one's life. What concept does neuroticism interact with?

Answer 72

gender

Question 73

Cross-sectional studies show levels of personality traits changing throughout one's life. What happens to the levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness?

Answer 73

increase

Question 74

What is the name of the principle that shows that traits associated with effective functioning increase with age?

Answer 74

the maturity principle

Question 75

What is a social clock?

Answer 75

expectation that we need to have certain goals done at a specific time

Question 76

Which term describes the story that one tellls oneself about who one is?

Answer 76

narrative identity