Cattell

Psychological type vs trait

A psychological type is a broader description of personality than a trait and is often characterised by abnormal psychology

Ex. A villain is a type of person characterised by traits such as sadism, cruelty, and psychopathy

Personality traits, according to Cattell

The basic structural units of personality

What are the seven types of traits, according to Cattell

Common

Unique

Ability

Temperament

Dynamic

Source

Surface

Common traits

Common traits are universal and possessed by everybody

Ex. Extroversion

Unique traits

Traits that are peculiar to an individual

Ex. Cattell classified hobbies, such as crocheting, as unique traits, but personality psychologists don’t

Ability trait

How well you can achieve a goal–how well you can perform something, and how fast you can do something.

Ex. Significant musical aptitude

Temperament trait

Largely inherited—how a person behaves–the emotional tone of their behaviour

Ex. A dominant individual being very rude

Dynamic trait

Explain why a person behaves in a given way; what defines their motivations

Ex. A person’s commitment to their aspiring career causes a desire for a 4.0 GPA

Source traits

Stable and permanent; they are the fundamental underlying traits of someone’s behaviour.

Surface traits

Unstable and impermanent characteristics of the source traits

Surface/source trait example

Being kind is a surface trait that is a compound of the source trait of agreeableness

What was Cattell’s field of study used to measure various aspects of people’s mind?

Psychometry

Psychometry and the personality sphere

A personality sphere is a concept or look into an individual’s total behaviour, which is required for a psychometrist to get a complete and unbiased measure of an individual’s personality

What three types of data did Cattell believe were necessary to get an understanding of an individual’s personality sphere

L-Data

T-Data

Q-Data

L-Data

Life outcome data, which is a measure of someone’s life record—any type of behaviour that can be observed and recorded via metric.

Ex. GPA, number of parking tickets, or the number of arrests

Q-Data

Information provided by questionnaires

Ex. Completing the five-factor scale

T-Data

Test-data provided from objective tests.

Ex. Researchers often confine behaviour in these lab tests—to study neuroticism, you may tell the participants that they may get a big test

How many of these types of data did Cattell believe you needed to use?

Cattell thought that if you were studying personality, you had to use more than 1 of these types of data

What are Cattell’s six life stages of personality development?

Infancy

Childhood

Adolescense

Maturity

Middle Age

Old Age

Infancy

Birth - 6 years

An excellent formative period of life, where you’re developing relations with family members, and basic attitudes, such as security and insecurity

Childhood

6-14 Years.

The child grows toward independence, develops relationships with their peers, and gets to know themself

Adolescence

14-23 Years.

Period of psychological stress with lots of adjustments and readjustments

Abnormalities begin to show up during this time

Maturity

23-46 Years.

Where you end up in adulthood, find a mate, create a family, and buy a home. It is a happy time for most people, but a shipwreck for those who failed to solve their struggles in adolescence.

NOTE: Personality finishes developing during this period

Middle age

46+ Years.

Demands a reevaluation of one’s life, because this stage is characterised by the beginning of certain physical and mental changes that begin the inevitable decline toward old age and death.

Old age

No beginning point, but Miranda thinks of the starting period as retirement

How do you maintain a positive attitude about your life, and how do you prepare for death? 

Fluid vs. Crystallized intelligence

Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason quickly and solve novel problems independently of prior knowledge, while crystallized intelligence s the accumulation of knowledge, facts, and skills acquired over a lifetime, which tends to increase with age

Cattell’s controversial viewpoint on intelligence

Intelligence differed meaningfully across racial and ethnic groups and that these differences had implications for education, social policy, and reproduction.

Namely, that “low” groups, such as African Americans, should not have educational spending wasted on them, that they should stop having children, and the “high” groups should have more children and educational resources.

Similarities between Allport and Cattell

Each treat traits as relatively enduring dispositions that help explain consistent patterns of behavior, and both distinguish between traits that are widely shared and traits that are more individual

Allport described common traits versus personal dispositions, and Cattell accepted the distinction between common and individual traits, though he preferred the term unique traits

Differences between Allport and Cattell

Allport was more idiographic, humanistic, and centered on the individual person’s unique organization of traits and motives, whereas Cattell was more nomothetic, psychometric, and focused on reducing personality to measurable underlying factors that could predict behavior.

Differences between Cattell and psychoanalytic theories

Behaviour is caused by personality traits rather than the unconscious

Tests personality through Q-data, T-data, and L-data rather than through free association and dream analysis

No emphasis on sex

(Unlike with Freud), he believed personality finished developing in mid-adulthood, around age 46, rather than finishing in childhood. Although both agreed that it begins developing in childhood.