The Individual Module 4 Chapter 11 Traits and Traits Taxonomies

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46 Terms

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dispositional domain

The aspects of personality that are stable over time, are relatively resistent over situations and make people different from each other.

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disposition

Refers to an inherent tendency to behave in a specific way.

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taxonomies

Classification systems/Organised schemes

Example: the five fundamental traits (OCEAN): Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

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trait-descriptive adjectives

Words that describe traits, that is, attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the person and perhaps even enduring over time.

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‘‘…’’ also called dispositions

traits

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three fundamental questions about traits

  • How should we conceptualise traits?

  • How can we identify which traits are the most important traits from among the thousands of ways in which individuals differ?

  • How can we formulate a comprehensive taxonomy of traits - a system that includes within all of the major traits of personality?

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traits purely as descriptive summaries

Descriptions of traits of persons that don’t assume anything about their inner thoughts or causes.

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behaviours change over time

The manifestation of personality traits shifts with age.

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personality coherence

Even when the behaviours are different at different ages, people nevertheless express the same underlying trait.

Continuity in the underlying trait but change in the outward manifestation of that trait.

infancy → temper tantrums

adulthood → being argumentative and having a short temper

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states

Vary across time and situations, and can therefore be regarded as within-subject variations of behaviour.

Examples: Emotions; one moment you’re happy that you don’t have to do the dishes, yet half a minute later you feel miserable after learning you must clean the toilets.

At home you may be cheerful, sociable and rather dominantly present, whereas in the first weeks at your new job you may be more reserved, quiet, and submissive.

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act frequency approach

  • Traits are categories of acts (e.g., dominance, he issued orders that got the group organised).

  • Scoring high on a trait reflects or summarises the trend of performing a large number of acts within a certain category relative to other persons.

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act nomiation (first step act frequency approach to traits)

A procedure designed to identify which acts belong in which trait categories.

It involves asking a large number of people to name (‘nominate’) all kinds of behaviours (‘acts’) they feel pertain to a certain category and then determine the most frequently named behaviours of that category.

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prototypically judgement (second step act frequency approach to traits)

Identifying which acts are most central to, or prototypical of, each trait category.

To do this correctly and to be as unbiased as possible, several raters must independently rate these acts and the inter-rater reliability must be determined.

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recording of act performance (third step act frequency approach to traits)

Securing information on the actual performance of individuals in their daily lives.

People can rarely give an accurate estimate of their daily behaviours and often largely under- or overestimate the frequency.

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lexical approach

Identifying important traits.

All traits listed and defined in the dictionary form the basis of the natural way of describing differences between people. Thus the logical starting point for this is the natural language.

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statistical approach

Identifying important traits.

Uses factor analysis, or similar statistical procedures, to identify major personality traits.

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theoretical approach

Identifying important traits.

Researchers rely on theories to identify important traits. Some personality researchers use these approaches in combinations.

Starts with a theory that determines which variables are important to identify important dimensions of individual differences.

The theory strictly determines which variables are important.

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lexical hypothesis

All important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language.

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synonym frequency

Criterion for identifying important traits.

If an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it but, rather, six, eight or nine words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference.

The more important is such an attribute, the more synonyms and subtly distinctive facets of the attribute will be found within any one language.

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cross-cultural universality

Criterion for identifying important traits.

If a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures that its members have codified terms to describe it, then the trait must be universally important in human affairs.

In contrast, if a trait term exists in only one or a few languages, but is entirely missing from most, then it may be of only local relevance.

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goal of statistical approach

To identify the major dimensions, or ‘coordinates’, of the personality map, much the way latitude and longitude provide the coordinates of the map of Earth.

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factor analysis

The most commonly used statistical procedure to identify the dimensions (or ‘coordinates’).

Identifies groups of items that covary (i.e., go together) but tend not to covary with other groups of items.

Useful in reducing the large array of diverse personality traits into a smaller and more useful set of underlying factors. It provides a means for organising the thousands of personality traits.

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factor loadings

Indexes of how much of the variation in an item is ‘explained’ by the factor.

Indicate the degree to which the item correlated with, or ‘loads on’, the underlying factor.

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sociosexual orientation

Example of the theoretical strategy.

Theory that says that men and women will pursue one of two alternative sexual reltionship strategies.

  • seeking a single commited relationship, monogamy, tremendous investment in children.

  • greater degree of promiscuity, more partner switching, less investment in children.

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Eysenck’s theory of personality

Example of the theoretical strategy.

……..

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the three main traits of Eysenck

  • Extraversion-Introversion (E)

  • Neuroticism-Emotional Stability (N)

  • Psychoticism (P)

Easiliy remembered as PEN

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psychoticism

Consists of the constellation of narrower traits that include aggressive, egocentric, creative, impulsive, lacking empathy, and antisocial.

High-P scorer is typically a solitary individual, often described by others as a ‘loner’.

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two aspectsof the biological underpinnings

  • Heritability

  • Identifiable physiological substrate

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Jerry Wiggins

Developed measurement scales to assess the traits in the circumplex (circle) model.

Started with the lexical assumption.

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the lexical assumption

The idea that all important individual differences are encoded within the natural language.

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interpersonal traits

A kind of individual difference that pertains to what people do to and with each other/ interactions between people involving exchanges (Wiggins).

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categories of the interpersonal traits

  • mental traits (clever, logical, perspective)

  • physical traits (healthy, though)

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interpersonal events

Dynamic interactions that have relatively clear-cut social (status) and emotional (love) consequences for both participants’.

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three advantages of the Wiggins circumplex (circle)

  • Explicit definition of interpersonal behaviour.

  • specifies the relationship between each trait and every other trait within the model.

  • (i could not find the third one kms)

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adjacency

How close the traits are to each other in the circumplex.

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bipolarity

Traits that are located at opposite sides of the circle and are negatively correlated with each other.

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orthogonality

Specifies that traits that are perpendicular to each other on the model (at 90 degrees of separation, or at right angles to each other) are entirely unrelated to each other.

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five-factor model

(I) Surgency or Extraversion

(II) Agreeableess

(III) Conscientiousness

(IV) Emotional Stability

(V) Openness-Intellect

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social attention

Cardinal feature of extraversion.

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score high/low on agreeableness

Favour using negotiation to resolve conflicts, avoiding of situations that are unharmonious/ Try to assert their power to resolve social conflicts (aggressiveness).

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score high/low on conscientiousness

Hard work, punctuality, and relible behaviour / likely to perform more poorly at school and at work.

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score low on emotional stability

Variability of moods overtime - such people swing up and down more that emotionally stable individuals.

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score high/low on openness

A liking for novel experiences, and even .. to having extramarital affairs, more difficulty ignoring previously experiences stimuli/ More tunnel vision and find it easier to ignore competing stimuli.

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HEXACO model

  • (H) Honesty-Humility

  • (E) Emotionality

  • (X) Extraversion

  • (A) Agreeableness

  • (C) Conscientiousness

  • (O) Openness to Experience

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personality-descriptive nouns

Nouns that describe people in terms of their personality characteristics—such as leader, joker, coward, or bully. Unlike adjectives (like kind or lazy), these nouns categorise individuals by a trait-related role or type.

Saucier identified these as a useful and distinct way to capture aspects of personality, complementing trait-descriptive adjectives in personality research.