9/17/2009

Trait Approaches

Gordon Allport

1. Rejected psychoanalysis' fixation on the past and the unconscious

2. Did not study people who were already suffering from psychological disorders

3. Midwestern approach to personality, interested in everyday life, people, and conscious experience

4. Major contributions to the psychology of prejudice and religion

Founder of psychology of religion

Allport's definition of personality

The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustment to the environment (1937)

1. "Dynamic"

2. "Within the Individual"

3. "Unique"

4. "Adjustment"

The Proprium

 1. Allport's term for The Self

2. Aspects of experience that are essential, precious (or warm), and central.

3. Allport saw this "sense of self" developing from childhood to adulthood.

How the Proprium Develops

1. Sense of Body (first 2 years of life)

2. Self-Identity (first 2 years)

3. Self-Esteem (2-4 years, liking yourself)

4. Self-Extension (4-6 years, investing in things outside your life)

5. Self-Image (4-6 years, how others see you matters)

6. Rational Coping (6-12 years, problem solving)

7. Propriate Striving (after about age 12, goals, life dreams)

The Functional Autonomy of Acquired Motives

A system of motivation in which the tensions that drive behavior are fundamentally different from those that first caused the behavior. 

Ex: Why do you brush your teeth?

Why is someone neat and tidy?

Why is someone messy and generous?

Two types of Functional Autonomy

 1. Preservative Functional Autonomy

Habits, chemical addictions

2. Propriate Functional Autonomy

Motives that retain their potency because they are our most cherished self wishes.

Implications of Functional Autonomy

1. Human behavior is contemporary and so are human problems. We need to talk about what is driving behavior NOW, not some childhood experience.

2. Explains how we become the person we hope to be. 

3. Explains how motives can be learned just as skills can be learned. (learning to like hard work...)

4. It explains the drive that accompanies talent. 

5. The more functionally autonomous a person's behaviors, the healthier and more mature they are. 

The Healthy, Mature Person

1. Capacity for self-extension-engage in things outside themselves

2. Warm relationships with others

3. Emotional security and self-acceptance

4. Realistic Perception-grounded in what is actually happening

5. Problem-Centeredness/Common Sense

6. Self-Objectification-Insight into one's own behavior, the ability to laugh at oneself, etc.

7. A unifying philosophy of life, often but not always through religion

Allport and Contemporary Personality Psychology

Traits

Traits: Allport defined traits as "Neuropsychic structures" within the person that "render different situations functionally equivalent" for the person.

1. Different situations are responded to the some way by the person-because traits make us see different situations as "the same"

2. Implies "cross situational consistency" of behavior

9/22/2009

Trait Approaches:

Gordon Allport

The Lexical Approach to Personality Traits

1. Lexicon=dictionary

2. The lexical approach, invented by Allport, involves looking at the natural language people use to talk about each other and look there for the evidence of the importance of particular traits

3. Allport and Odbert (1936) took an unabridged dictionary and pulled out all the words that might describe a person (18,000 words)

4. They winnowed the list to 4,500 words

The Lexical Approach

 1. In 1946, Raymond Cattell analyzed the data and identified 16 factors that would explain the data

2. Later researchers noted that 16 was still too many

3. FACTOR ANALYSIS...

Factor Analysis

1. A statistical procedure for answering the questions: "What items are people responding to as if they mean the same thing?"

2. Factor analysis involves examining the reoponses that people give to different items, then analyzing the realtionships (or correlations) among those responses

3. "Factors" are the underlying dimensions that are thought to explain the relationships between the items

Brief Primer on Correlations

1. A correlation is a statistic, r, that tells us about the relationship between two variables-Its direction and strength

2. Correlations range from -1.0 to +1.0; A positive correlations means as on variable goes up , so does the other one. A negative correlation means that as one variable goes up the other variable goes down

3. The number tells us the strength of the relationship (So -6.0 is a stronger relationship that .30)

How a Correlation is Calculated

1. Make a chart

2. Then plot the points on a plot diagram-One with little dots connecting

3. The scope of the line is the correlation

Example

Julie completes a:

Rate each item on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much)

1. _outgoing

2. _hardworking 

3. _gentle 

4. _shy

5. _reliable

6. _helpful

Example Condt...

Rate each item...

1. 7 outgoing

2. 2 hardworking

3. 2 gentle

4. _shy

5. _reliable

6. _helpful

Example Condt...

What might she say to those other items?

1. 7 outgoing

2. 2 hardworking

3. 2 gentle

4. 1 shy

5. relaiable

6. helpful

The Big Five Factors of Personality

 1. Extraversion

2. Neuroticism (or emotional stability)

3. Openness to Experience (or intellect or culture)

4. Agreeableness

5. Conscientiousness

9/24/2009

Trait Approaches

Gordon Allport

The Big Five Factors of Personality (lexical)

The Five Factor Model

 Cost and McCrae took all of the various questionnaires of many different trait personality psychologists are interested

in and factor analyzed those

They found...the same five factors

Neuroticism (vs. emotional stability)

1. Unstable moods, to worry, be e easily upset, etc.

2. Lowered happiness (esp. in western cultures)

3. Poorer romantic relationship quailty

4. Lower financial security

5. Adverse reactions to illness diagnoses (pooer coping)

6. Criminal behavior

7. Anxiety disorders

8. More objectively negative disorders

Extraversion

1. Outgoing, sociable, dominant

2. Happier (esp. in Westerners)

3. Higher martial and job satisfaction

4. Social enterprising occupations

5. Positive peer relationships

6. More objectively positive life events

Openness to Experience

1. Interest in culture, art, ect., open-mindness, complex thinking.

2. Higher IQ (but id more than just and IQ)

3. Politically liberal, less prejudice, more tolerance

4. Religious interests in terms of existential meaning

5. More education

6. Creative accomplishments

7. Greater identity development

8. Investigative and artistic occupations

9. The Big 4 and Little 1?

Agreeableness

1. Niceness, kindness, being gentle

2. Better friendships as kids, less likely to be victimized

3. Better job performance for teamwork

4. Higher occupational attainment

5. More empathy, higher quality marital and romantic relationships

6. Altruistic wished

7. (low hostility=longer life and less heart)

Conscientiousness

1. Hardworking, responsible, reliable, stick-to-itveness, achievement motivation

2. Longer lives

3. Better health behaviors, lower risk-taking

4. Job performance

5. Higher GPA

6. Low criminality

Note:

C, O, and low N (in childhood) all predict making more money as an adult

Traits can combine in interesting ways:

1. A and C are often linked to children, and only separate later

2. Low A and Low V: really bad behaviors

3. High O and Low C: Drug Abuse

4. High N and Low C: Depression

 5. High E and High A: More likely to volunteer

6. High E and High C: Leadership

Do/Can Traits Change?

1. These characteristics are considered relatively stable dimensions or personality

2. Some personality psychologists argue that these traits are highly unlikely to change after about age 30

3. Some argue that if they change, they are not "real"

4. Others say that change is possible, and often does happen

Trait Change as Personality Development

1. Longitudinal studies involves measuring the same group many times over years and years on the same characteristics. Looking for "normative change"

2. Such studies show systematic changes on the Big Five:

-N goes down (we get more stable)

-E goes up, then down (we get more dominant, then less so)

-O goes up in early adulthood, then goes down

-A goes up

-C goes up

Can Experiences Change our Personalities?

1. Hardcore trait psychologists generally argue, NO

2. When we think of important experiences we often feel like they have "changed us" in a central way

3. However, some research has examined whether major life even can influence traits:

-Finding "The One" can lead you to Lower N

-Having good relationships and a good job can predict Lower N and Higher R, even beyond young

9/29/2009

Alternative Trait Approaches:

The "HEXACO" Model (the Big 6?)

1. Humility/Honesty (honest, sincere, helpful, fair, vs. dishonest, conceited, boastful) (integrity)

2. Emotional Stability (vs. neuroticism)

3. Extraversion

4. Agreeableness (vs. anger) (gentle, peaceful vs. belligerent, quick tempered, hostile)

5. Conscientiousness

6. Openness to Experience

The Big 3 (one version)

1. Lexical approaches cross-culturally...some evidence that one 3 factors really make sense across many different languages

2. Extraversion

3. Agreeableness

4. Conscientiousness

The Big 2

ALPHA

Aka "socialization" "stability" or "communion"

1. Agreeableness

2. Conscientiousness

3. Emotional Stability (-N)

The Big 2

BETA

Aka "personal growth" "plasticity" or "agency"

1. Extraversion

2. Openness to Experience

The Big 1: The General Factor of Personality

The two higher order factors are themselves correlated. 

The Big 1

1. +Extraversion

2. +Conscientiousness

3. +Agreeableness

4. +Openness to Experience

5. +Neuroticism

The Big 1

1. Essentially: A "good" personality

2. Could be a purely evaluative dimension

3. Could be response biases

The Traitiverse

GFP

ALPHA BETA

A C -N E O

H HEXACO A

Trait Psychology

1. The current dominant approach to personality psychology

2. Enormously powerful tools for analyzing data, understanding information gleaned from very large samples

3. Cross-Cultural research has been and continues to be done

Trait Psychology: Some Criticisms

1. Is this "the psychology of the stranger?"

2. If two people have identical five factor scores, are they really the "same person?"

3. Very broad focus, what about more specific measures?

4. Complete reliance on self-report--whatever happened to the unconscious?

5. Are traits important? 

-Do they predict "real" (discrete) behavior?