Week 5: Personality background & theories Flashcards
(43 cards)
1
Q
Early Conceptualisations: Galen (expanding on hippocrates)
A
○ Imbalance of humours determine personality & disease
○ Blood
○ Yellow
○ Phlegm
○ Black
Still personality type grouping today
2
Q
blood
A
sanguine (warm hearted, cheerful, optimistic and confident)
3
Q
yellow bile
A
choleric (fiery, energetic, passionate)
4
Q
Phlegm
A
Phlegmatic - slow, quiet, shy, rational, consistent
5
Q
Black bile
A
Melancholic - sad, fearful, depressed, poetic and artistic
6
Q
early conceptualisations: Freud’s tripartite model of personality 1923
A
Id (innate desires)
Superego (morals)
Ego - balances these
7
Q
The introduction of personality psychology 1930’s
A
- (American) psychology dominated by experimental psychology and behaviourism, focusing on relations between external stimuli and observable responses
- The study of personality, in contrast, tended more to the whole person, unobservable dynamics, and how people were different from each other (e.g. Freud)
8
Q
Allport 1937
A
book “Personality: a psychological interpretation” seen as formal arrival of personality psychology in 1937
Allport emphasised traits – neuropsychic systems with dynamic or motivational properties – as the fundamental unit of study for personality
9
Q
Allport concept of traits
A
- Traits are not theoretical structures or constructs but are real and found within the individual
- Traits guide and direct behaviour and enable the individual to behave in a particular manner
- Traits are verified empirically
- Different traits are not absolutely independent of each other but have overlapping functions
- Stable traits can also change over time
10
Q
Allport: The proprium
A
the highest in the personality structure which consists of all aspects of personality and brings about inward unity and consistency in the person
* Proprium develops through stages, from development of sense of body to self-identify, self-esteem, and so on * In the final stage, the individual is able to look back on his varied experience in life, and then strive for internal satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment
11
Q
Murray 1938
A
Contrary to Allport’s emphasis on unified self, Murray viewed personality as constituted by (conscious and unconscious) conflicting voices
* The primary motivational construct is need, which interacts with “press” (situation). ○ Each need stands for a driving force
12
Q
Murray 1938 - Unity Thema
A
a dominant pattern of need-press interaction, was viewed as the central, organising motif of a person’s biography
13
Q
Murray’s psychogenic needs
A
(expands on Freud’s theory, formulating 20 needs)
- Primary needs
- secondary needs
(not in order of importance, they’re secondary as they develop later)
Needs differ in prepotency: unsatisfied needs are more urgent and dominate behavior, taking precedence over all other needs
14
Q
Murray: Primary needs
A
arising from internal bodily states and include needs required for survival as well as sex and sentience needs
15
Q
Murray: secondary needs
A
concerned with emotional satisfaction and include most of the needs on Murray’s original list
16
Q
Murray: thema
A
- Through early childhood experiences thema is formed, which combines personal factors (needs) with the environmental factors that pressure or compel our behavior (presses)
- A dominant thema, called a unity thema, organises or gives meaning to a large portion of the individual’s life, and becomes a powerful force in determining personality
Thema combines personal factors, the needs with environmental factors (e.g. experienced hunger in childhood, combines with themas to personality as a whole)
- A dominant thema, called a unity thema, organises or gives meaning to a large portion of the individual’s life, and becomes a powerful force in determining personality
17
Q
Murray’s view on personality development
A
- Murray recognized that childhood events can affect the development of specific needs
- Later in life, needs can be activated by specific situations, known as press – because they press the individual to act a certain way
- Through early childhood experiences thema is formed, which combines personal factors (needs) with the environmental factors that pressure or compel our behavior (presses)
- A dominant thema, called a unity thema, organises or gives meaning to a large portion of the individual’s life, and becomes a powerful force in determining personality
- Thema combines personal factors, the needs with environmental factors (e.g. experienced hunger in childhood, combines with themas to personality as a whole)
18
Q
Cattell
A
For Cattell, trait is a “mental structure”, an inference made from observed behavior to account for regularity or consistency in behavior
- surface traits
- source traits
- lexicon criteria of importance
- sixteen personality factors questionnaire (16PF)
19
Q
Cattell: Surface traits
A
which represent clusters of manifest variables
20
Q
Cattell: Source traits
A
which are underlying factors that determines surface manifestations
§ (source traits more important than surface traits)
21
Q
Lexicon criteria of importance
A
importance of a trait can be determined by how many words describe it
22
Q
Cattell’s method
A
Cattell (1943) collated 4500 trait names, and finally reduced these to 171 key trait names. He collected ratings of these words and factor-analysed the ratings
23
Q
Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF)
A
measures 16 trait dimensions
24
Q
Factor-analytic approaches
A
- By 1946 the main concepts and issues of personality psychology were established
- The success of intelligence testing early in the 20th century convinced many personality psychologists that personality could (and should) also be measured by scales of “items”
- Since then, statistical methods of scale construction and refinement continued to become increasingly sophisticated
- Over time personality psychology shifted from the interpretive study of persons as unique wholes to the psychometric analysis of the dimensions along which people differ from each other
25
Factor-analytic studies based on the lexical approach
analyzing personality descriptors laypeople use
This approach assumes that:
1. people encode in their everyday languages all those individual differences that they perceive as most salient and socially relevant
2. frequency of use of personality descriptors corresponds with importance
3. the number of words in a language that refer to each trait will be related to how important that trait is in describing personality
26
Eysenck’s hierarchical model of personality
- specific responses
- habitual responses
- traits
- Super trait (personality type)
* At the lowest level are the specific responses – any behavioural responses of individuals to their environment
* Specific responses that are found together in the individual make up habitual responses – the ways that individuals typically behave in a situation
* Collections of habitual responses that the individual produces make up traits – relatively stable, long-lasting characteristics of the individual
* Using factor analysis, Eysenck found certain personality traits that he believed were fundamental, referred to as super traits
27
Eysenck: Super traits
- extraversion
- neuroticism
- (later psychoticism)
28
Extraversion
Extraverts are sociable and impulsive people who like excitement and whose orientation is towards external reality.
Introverts are quiet, introspective individuals who are oriented towards inner reality and who prefer a well-ordered life
29
Neuroticism
Neurotics are emotionally unstable individuals, who may have unreasonable fears of certain objects, places, animals or people, or obsessional or impulsive symptoms
30
Psychoticism
Psychoticism – Psychotics display the most severe type of psychopathology, frequently being insensitive to others, hostile, cruel and inhumane with a need to ridicule and upset others
* Eysenck’s identification of psychoticism originated from his observation of psychopaths, who are free from anxiety and fear, and are likely to be found within the prison population
31
Eysenck's PEN model
* Eysenck (1967) claimed that these 3 super traits (personality types) make up the basic structure of personality
* Measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; H. Eysenck and S. Eysenck, 1975)
* Eysenck (1982) argued that about two-thirds of the variance in personality development can be attributed to biological factors
(whether this is expressed is due to environment)
* He also suggested individuals who score highly on neuroticism or psychoticism are predisposed to develop clinical neurosis and psychosis respectively under adverse circumstances
32
Strengths & limitations to Eysenck's theory
1. It combines both descriptive and causal aspects of personality in one theory. This characteristic distinguishes the PEN model from most other trait theories such as the five-factor model
- clear heirarchy & order
- Eysenck took an experimental approach to studying personality, which makes the model more testable
- The EPQ neuroticism and the extraversion scales have good reliability, and have been shown to predict a range of behaviours
- However, EPQ psychoticism scale has poorer reliability, and whether it really predicts clinical psychosis was questioned (e.g. Knežević et al., 2019) (it was originally only created for neuroticism and extraversion)
- analyses of personality measures based on Eysenck’s model showed that the data are better explained by a 5-factor model than the intended 3-factor model (Costa & McCrae, 1995)
33
5 factor model of personality: Costa and McCrae (1985; 1987)
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism
developed the 240-item Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) to these personality dimensions (with 6 facets in each dimension)
shorter 60-item NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) is also available
34
Some features and potential problems of FFM
* The Big Five model is data-derived (the five factors are derived from analysis of data) as opposed to theoretically based (therefore, if the data indicated a new trait, this would need to be added/ others may need to change)
* The Big Five traits are essentially descriptive and may suffer from the problem of circular explanation of behaviour
35
HEXACO model of personality
* Despite wide acceptance of FFM in the 1990s’, recent research has suggested that there is an additional factor to the five factor model of personality
* Ashton, Lee, and Son (2000) found that among a number of studies in the USA, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Korea and Poland a sixth factor emerged
* On this basis, Lee and Ashton (2008) developed the HEXACO model of personality, with a sixth trait Honesty–humility added
36
Criticism of the HEXACO model
Saucier (2002) criticisms of the HEXACO model:
1. In some studies the sixth factor correlated with agreeableness, raising questions in whether the HEXACO really represents six independent factors
2. There are other constructs that have been found to be independent of the big five and could be added as the sixth factor, e.g., spirituality and religiosity, sexuality-related traits
3. Some of the analyses to which Ashton and Lee refer are unpublished; among the published analysis, the first five factors are not precisely the Big Five
37
General factor of personality
* Having factor anlaysed data from three samples of Slovakian adults, Musek (2007) found that a single factor explained much of the variance in people’s scores on the big five
* Further, Musek found from the factor analysis that the five-factor model of personality first combined into two factors:
– Stability (alpha) – conforming and being stable [conformity]
– Plasticity (beta) – being open and capacity for change [non-conformity]
* and these two factors reduced down to a single factor: the general factor of personality (GFP)
38
Stability (alpha)
conforming and being stable [conformity]
39
Plasticity (beta)
being open and capacity for change [non-conformity]
40
Interpretation of Big Two and Big One (DeYoung, Peterson, and Higgins (2001) Stability and plasticity
- Stability is linked to the neurophysiological functions of the ascending rostral serotonergic system
- Plasticity is linked to the central dopaminergic system
Also, conformity measures are positively related to Stability and negatively related to Plasticity
Regarding the GPF, Musek (2007, 2017) suggested that it may reflect a psychobiological disposition that contributes to general social and personal adjustment or effectiveness
41
Criticism of GPF
* Ferguson et al. (2011) argued that the correlations between the five factor domains may be an artefact (of e.g., social desirability) caused by self-report measures of personality
* However, Musek (2017) argued that after controlling for social desirability loadings on the GFP remained practically the same
* He also argued that “social desirability itself is probably more a personality trait than a response style…" Thus, the correlations between the GFP and social desirability can perfectly fit the interpretation of GFP as a measure of social effectiveness or social efficacy” (Musek, 2017)
42
Beyond personality traits: what is missing?
* Under a hierarchical structure of personality with 5/6 traits at a middle hierarchical level, descriptions of personality are relatively rich
* However, contemporary trait theories are mostly atheoretical (data-driven) and descriptive (non-explanatory).
* They per se do not explain where traits come from, how they operate, and how they produce differences in behavior
* Fleeson & Jayawickreme (2015) suggested that social-cognitive mechanisms should be added to constitute an additional, explanatory part of trait theories, which explains within-person variation in addition to individual differences
43
does contemporary personality psychology only study traits?
no
* A wealth of research has been done on personality processes in terms of attitudes, beliefs, attribution, emotions, motivation, and self-regulation, to name a few
* Methodological advancement has enabled scientific research on constructs proposed by early theorists, e.g., needs, unconscious process, and neurobiological substrates of personality
There has also been considerable amount of work on unpacking personality traits to explain the why of individual differences
