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lexical approach
The approach to determining the fundamental personality traits by analyzing language. For example, a trait adjective that has many synonyms probably represents a more fundamental trait than a trait adjective with few synonyms.
statistical approach
Having a large number of people rate themselves on certain items, and then employing a statistical procedure to identify groups or clusters of items that go together. The goal of the statistical approach is to identify the major dimensions or "coordinates" of the personality map.
theoretical approach
identifying important dimensions of individual differences starts with a theory, which then determines which variables are important. The theoretical strategy dictates in a specific manner which variables are important to measure.
lexical hypothesis
states that important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language. Over ancestral time, the differences between people that were important were noticed and words were invented to communicate about those differences.
synonym frequency
In the lexical approach if an attribute has not merely one or two trait adjectives to describe it, but rather six, eight, or ten words, then it is a more important dimension of individual difference.
cross-cultural universality
if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures so that its members have codified terms within their own languages to describe the trait, 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.
factor analysis
A commonly used statistical procedure for identifying underlying structure in personality ratings or items. essentially identifies groups of items that covary (i.e., go together or correlate) with each other, but tend not to covary with other groups of items. This provides a means for determining which personality variables share some common underlying property or belong together within the same group.
factor loadings
Indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by the factor. indicate the degree to which the item correlates with or "loads on" the underlying factor.
sociosexual orientation
According to Gangestad and Simpson's theory , men and women will pursue one of two alternative sexual relationship strategies. The first mating strategy entails seeking a single committed relationship characterized by monogamy and tremendous investment in children. The second sexual strategy is characterized by a greater degree of promiscuity, more partner switching, and less investment in children.
interpersonal traits
What people do to and with each other. They include temperament traits, such as nervous, gloomy, sluggish, and excitable; character traits, such as moral, principled, and dishonest; material traits, such as miserly or stingy; attitude traits, such as pious or spiritual; mental traits, such as clever, logical, and perceptive; and physical traits, such as healthy and tough.
adjacency
In Wiggins circumplex model, this indicates how close the traits are to each other on the circumference of the circumplex. Those variables that are adjacent or next to each other within the model are positively correlated.
bipolarity
In Wiggins circumplex model, traits located at opposite sides of the circle and negatively correlated with each other. Specifying this is useful because nearly every interpersonal trait within the personality sphere has another trait that is its opposite.
orthogonality
Discussed in terms of circumplex models, 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 unrelated to each other. In general, the term "orthogonal" is used to describe a zero correlation between traits.
five-factor model
A trait taxonomy that has its roots in the lexical hypothesis. The first psychologist to use the terms was Warren Norman, based on his replications of the factor structure suggesting the following five traits: Surgency (or extraversion), Neuroticism (or emotional instability), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect-Openness to Experience (or intellect). The model has been criticized by some for not being comprehensive and for failing to provide a theoretical understanding of the underlying psychological processes that generate the five traits. Nonetheless, it remains heavily endorsed by many personality psychologists and continues to be used in a variety of research studies and applied settings.
extraversion
The first fundamental personality trait in the five-factor model, a taxonomy which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers are "talkative," "extraverted" or "extraverted," "gregarious," "assertive," "adventurous," "open," "sociable," "forward," and "outspoken."
social attention
The goal and payback for surgent or extraverted behavior. By being the center of attention, the extravert seeks to gain the approval of others and, in many cases, through tacit approval controls or directs others.
agreeableness
the second of the personality traits in the five-factor model, a model which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Agreeableness are "good natured," "cooperative," "mild/gentle," "not jealous."
conscientiousness
The third of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers are "responsible," "scrupulous," "persevering," "fussy/tidy."
emotional stability
The fourth of the personality traits in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers are "calm," "composed," "not hypochondriacal," "poised."
intellect-openness
The fifth personality trait in the five-factor model, which has proven to be replicable in studies using English-language trait words as items. Some of the key adjective markers for Openness are "creative," "imaginative," "intellectual." Those who rate high on Openness tend to remember their dreams more and have vivid, prophetic, or problem-solving dreams.
combinations of Big Five variables
"Traits" are often examined in combinations. For example, two people high in extraversion would be very different if one was an extraverted neurotic and the other was extraverted but emotionally stable.
personality-descriptive nouns
As described by Saucier, ... differ in their content emphases from personality taxonomies based on adjectives and may be more precise. In Saucier's 2003 work on personality nouns, he discovered eight factors, including "Dumbbell," "Babe/Cutie," "Philosopher," "Lawbreaker," "Joker," and "Jock."
honesty-humility
High scorers on ... are individuals who show a lot of prosocial behavior, treating other people reasonably and fairly, and not being overly concerned with self-promotion.
HEXACO model
Humility-Honesty (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O).
differential psychology
Due to its emphasis on the study of differences between people, trait psychology has sometimes in the interest of distinguishing this subfield from other branches of personality psychology (Anastasi, 1976). ... includes the study of other forms of individual differences in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, aptitudes, and intelligence.
rank order stability
Maintaining one's relative position within a group over time. Between ages 14 and 20, for example, most people become taller. But the heights tends to remain fairly stable because this form of development affects all people pretty much the same. The tall people at 14 fall generally toward the tall end of the distribution at age 20. The same can apply to personality traits. If people tend to maintain their position on dominance or extraversion relative to the other members of the group over time, then we say that there is high stability to the personality characteristic. Conversely, if people fail to maintain their rank order, we say that the group has displayed instability or rank order change.
consistency
Trait theories assume there is some degree of ... in personality over time. If someone is highly extraverted during one period of observation, trait psychologists tend to assume that she will be extraverted tomorrow, next week, a year from now, or even decades from now.
situationism
A theoretical position in personality psychology that states that situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, determine behavior. For example, how friendly a person will behave or how much need for achievement a person displays will depend on the situation, not the traits a person possesses.
person-situation interaction
trait theory states that one has to take into account both particular situations (e.g.,frustration) and personality traits (e.g., hot temper) when understanding a behavior.
aggregation
Adding up or averaging several single observations, resulting in a better (i.e., more reliable) measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behavior. This approach implies that personality traits refer to average tendencies in behavior, how people behave on average.
situational specificity
The view that behavior is determined by aspects of the situation, such as reward contingencies.
strong situation
Certain situations that prompt similar behavior from everyone.
situational selection
A form of interactionism that refers to the tendency to choose or select the situations in which one finds oneself. In other words, people typically do not find themselves in random situations in their natural lives. Instead, they select or choose the situations in which they will spend their time.
evocation
A form of person-situation interaction discussed by Buss. It is based on the idea that certain personality traits may evoke consistent responses from the environment, particularly the social environment.
manipulation
Researchers conducting experiments use .. in order to evaluate the influence of one variable (the ... or independent variable) on another (the dependent variable).
density distribution of states
Refers to the idea that traits are distributions of states in a person's life over time, and the mean of that distribution is the person's level of the trait.
infrequency scale
A common method for detecting measurement technique problems within a set of questionnaire items. contains items that most or all people would answer in a particular way. If a participant answered more than one or two of these unlike the rest of the majority of the participants, a researcher could begin to suspect that the participant's answers do not represent valid information. Such a participant may be answering randomly, may have difficulty reading, or may be marking his or her answer sheet incorrectly.
faking
The motivated distortion of answers on a questionnaire. Some people may be motivated to "fake good" in order to appear to be better off or better adjusted than they really are. Others may be motivated to "fake bad" in order to appear to be worse off or more maladjusted than they really are.
false negative and false positive
There are two ways for psychologists to make a mistake when making decisions about persons based on personality tests (e.g., when deciding whether or not to hire a person, to parole a person, or that the person was lying). When trying to decide whether a person's answers are genuine or faked, the psychologist might decide that a person who was faking was actually telling the truth . Or they might conclude that a truthful person was faking.
Barnum statements
Generalities or statements that could apply to anyone. A good example is the astrology column published in daily newspapers.
personnel selection
Employers sometimes use personality tests to select people especially suitable for a specific job. Alternatively, the employer may want to use personality assessments to deselect, or screen out, people with specific traits. In both cases an employer is concerned with selecting the right person for a specific position from among a pool of applicants.
integrity tests
Because the private sector cannot legally use polygraphs to screen employees, some companies have developed and promoted questionnaire measures to use in place of the polygraph. These questionnaires, , are designed to assess whether a person is generally honest or dishonest.
overt and covert integrity measures
Both are self-report measures of integrity used in business and industry. ... include questions directly related to past violations of workplace integrity, such as excessive absenteeism or theft. ... include questions that are indirectly related to integrity, such as questions about personality traits that are correlated with workplace integrity, such as conscientiousness.
negligent hiring
A charge sometimes brought against an employer for hiring someone who is unstable or prone to violence. Employers are defending themselves against such suits, which often seek compensation for crimes committed by their employees. Such cases hinge on whether the employer should have discovered dangerous traits ahead of time, before hiring such a person into a position where he or she posed a threat to others. Personality testing may provide evidence that the employer did in fact try to reasonably investigate an applicant's fitness for the workplace.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
A specific section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that requires employers to provide equal employment opportunities to all persons, regardless of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin.
Griggs v. Duke Power
Prior to 1964, Duke Power Company had used discriminatory practices in hiring and work assignment, including barring blacks from certain jobs. After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Duke Power instituted various requirements for such jobs, including passing certain aptitude tests. The effect was to perpetuate discrimination. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled that the seemingly neutral testing practices used by Duke Power were unacceptable because they operated to maintain discrimination. This was the first legal case where the Supreme Court ruled that any selection procedure could not produce disparate impact for a group protected by the Act (e.g., racial groups, women).
Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide a set of principles for employee selection that meet the requirements of all federal laws, especially those that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. They provide details on the proper use of personality tests and other selection procedures in employment settings.
Ward's Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio
Ward's Cove Packing Co. was a salmon cannery operating in Alaska. In 1974 the non-White cannery workers started legal action against the company, alleging that a variety of the company's hiring and promotion practices were responsible for racial stratification in the workplace. The claim was advanced under the disparate impact portion of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In 1989 the Supreme Court decided on the case in favor of Ward's Cove. The court decided that, even if employees can prove discrimination, the hiring practices may still be considered legal if they serve "legitimate employment goals of the employer." This decision allowed disparate impact if it was in the service of the company. This case prompted Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which contained several important modifications to Title VII of the original act. Most important, however, the new act shifted the burden of proof onto the employer by requiring that it must prove a close connection between disparate impact and the ability to actually perform the job in question.
Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins
A Supreme Court case in which Ann Hopkins sued her employer, Price Waterhouse, claiming that it had discriminated against her on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, on the theory that her promotion denial had been based on sexual stereotyping. The Supreme Court accepted the argument that gender stereotyping does exist and that it can create a bias against women in the workplace that is not permissible under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. By court order Ann Hopkins was made a full partner in her accounting firm.
female underprediction effect
On average, college entrance exam scores underpredict grade point average for women relative to men with the same entrance exam scores. Women tend to do better in college than one would predict from their entrance exam scores alone.
disparate impact
Any employment practice that disadvantages people from a protected group. The Supreme Court has not defined the size of the disparity necessary to prove . Most courts define it as a difference that is sufficiently large that it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. Some courts, however, prefer the 80 percent rule contained in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Under this rule, adverse impact is established if the selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group is less than four-fifths (or 80 percent) of the rate for the group with the highest selection rate.
race or gender norming
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 forbids employers from using different norms or cutoff scores for different groups of people. For example, it would be illegal for a company to set a higher threshold for women than men on their selection test.
Americans with Disability Act (ADA)
The ... states that an employer cannot conduct a medical examination, or even make inquiries as to whether an applicant has a disability, during the selection process. Moreover, even if a disability is obvious, the employer cannot ask about the nature or severity of that disability.
right to privacy
Perhaps the largest issue of legal concern for employers using personality testing is ?. The right to ? in employment settings grows out of the broader concept of the right to ?. Cases that charge an invasion-of-privacy claim against an employer can be based on the federal constitution, state constitutions and statutes, and common law.
job analysis
When assisting a business in hiring for a particular job, a psychologist typically starts by analyzing the requirements of the job. The psychologist might interview employees who work in the job or supervisors who are involved in managing the particular job. The psychologist might observe workers in the job, noting any particular oral, written, performance, or social skills needed. He or she may also take into account both the physical and social aspects of the work environment in an effort to identify any special pressures or responsibilities associated with the job. Based on this , the psychologist develops some hypotheses about the kinds of abilities and personality traits that might best equip a person to perform well in that job.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
One of the most widely used personality tests in the business world. It was developed by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers, based on Jungian concepts. The test provides information about personality types by testing for eight fundamental preferences using questions in a "forced-choice" or either/or format. Individuals must respond in one way or another, even if their preferences might be somewhere in the middle. Although the test is not without criticism, it has great intuitive appeal.
psychological types
A term growing out of Carl Jung's theory implying that people come in types or distinct categories of personality, such as "extraverted types." This view is not widely endorsed by academic or research-oriented psychologists because most personality traits are normally distributed in the population and are best conceived as dimensions of difference, not categories.
Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)
A questionnaire measure of personality based on the Big Five model but modified to emphasize the assessment of traits important in the business world, including the motive to get along with others and the motive to get ahead of others.
personality development
The continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time, and the ways in which people change over time.
mean level stability
A population that maintains a consistent average level of a trait or characteristic over time. If the average level of liberalism or conservatism in a population remains the same with increasing age, we say that the population exhibits high ??? on that characteristic. If the average degree of political orientation changes, then we say that the population is displaying mean level change.
mean level change
Within a single group that has been tested on two separate occasions, any difference in group averages across the two occasions is considered a ???.
personality coherence
Changes in the manifestations of personality variables over time, even as the underlying characteristics remain stable. The notion of ??? includes both elements of continuity and elements of change: continuity in the underlying trait but change in the outward manifestation of that trait. For example, an emotionally unstable child might frequently cry and throw temper tantrums, whereas as an adult such a person might frequently worry and complain. The manifestation might change, even though the trait stays stable.
temperament
Individual differences that emerge very early in life, are likely to have a heritable basis, and are often involved in behaviors linked with emotionality or arousability.
longitudinal study
Examines individuals over time. ??? have been conducted that have spanned as many as four and five decades of life and have examined many different age brackets. These studies are costly and difficult to conduct, but the information gained about personality development is valuable.
actometer
A mechanical motion-recording device, often in the form of a watch attached to the wrist. It has been used, for example, in research on the activity level of children during several play periods. Motoric movement activates the recording device.
stability coefficients
The correlations between the same measures obtained at two different points in time. are also called test-retest reliability coefficients.
validity coefficients
The correlations between a trait measure and measures of different criteria that should relate to the trait. An example might be the correlation between a self-report measure of agreeableness and the person's roommate's reports of how agreeable they are.
self-esteem
"The extent to which one perceives oneself as relatively close to being the person one wants to be and/or as relatively distant from being the kind of person one does not want to be, with respect to person-qualities one positively and negatively values" (Block & Robbins, 1993, p.911).
cohort effects
Personality change over time as a reflection of the social times in which an individual or group of individuals live. For example, American women's trait scores on assertiveness have risen and fallen depending on the social and historical cohort in which they have lived. Jean Twenge has posited that individuals internalize social change and absorb the cultural messages they receive from their culture, all of which, in turn, can affect their personalities.
cognitive approaches
Differences in how people think form the focus of ??? to personality. Psychologists working in this focus on the components of cognition, such as how people perceive, interpret, remember, and plan, in their efforts to understand how and why people are different from each other.
personalizing cognition
Processing information by relating it to a similar event in your own life. This style of processing information occurs when people interpret a new event in a personally relevant manner. For example, they might see a car accident and start thinking about the time they were in a car accident.
objectifying cognition
Processing information by relating it to objective facts. This style of thinking stands in contrast to personalizing cognitions.
cognition
A general term referring to awareness and thinking as well as to specific mental acts such as perceiving, interpreting, remembering, believing, and anticipating.
information processing
The transformation of sensory input into mental representations and the manipulation of such representations.
perception
One of the three levels of cognition that are of interest to personality psychologists. the process of imposing order on the information our sense organs take in. also what we "see" in the world can be quite different from person to person.
interpretation
One of the three levels of cognition that are of interest to personality psychologists. the making sense of, or explaining, various events in the world. Psychoanalysts offer patients ??? of the psychodynamic causes of their problems. Through many ???, patients are gradually led to an understanding of the unconscious source of their problems.
conscious goals
A person's awareness of what he or she desires and believes is valuable and worth pursuing.
rod and frame test (RFT)
An apparatus to research the cues that people use in judging orientation in space. The participant sits in a darkened room and is instructed to watch a glowing rod surrounded by a glowing square frame. The experimenter can adjust the tilt of the rod, the frame, and the participant's chair. The participant's task is to adjust the rod by turning a dial so that the rod is perfectly upright. To do this accurately, the participant has to ignore cues in the visual field in which the rod appears. This test measures the personality dimension of field dependence-independence.
field dependent ; field independent
In Witkin's rod and frame test, if a participant adjusts the rod so that it is leaning in the direction of the tilted frame, that person is said to be ???. If a participant disregards the external cues and instead uses information from his body in adjusting the rod to upright, he is said to be ???; appearing to rely on his own sensations, not the perception of the field, to make the judgment. This individual difference may have implications in situations where people must extract information from complex sensory fields, such as in multimedia education.
embedded figures test (EFT)
A method of assessing field dependence/independence by seeing how quickly a person can identify smaller figures hidden inside larger and more complex figures.
pain tolerance
The degree to which people can tolerate pain, which shows wide differences between persons. Petrie believed that individual differences in ... originated in the nervous system. She developed a theory that people with low ... had a nervous system that amplified or augmented the subjective impact of sensory input. In contrast, people who could ... well were thought to have a nervous system that dampened or reduced the effects of sensory stimulation.
reducer/augmenter theory
Petrie's theory refers to the dimension along which people differ in their reaction to sensory stimulation; some appear to ... sensory stimulation, some appear to ... stimulation.
construct
A concept or provable hypothesis that summarizes a set of observations and conveys the meaning of those observations (e.g., gravity).
personal construct
A belief or concept that summarizes a set of observations or version of reality, unique to an individual, which that person routinely uses to interpret and predict events.
postmodernism
In personality psychology, the notion that reality is a construct, that every person and culture has its own unique version of reality, and that no single version of reality is more valid or more privileged than another.
locus of control
A person's perception of responsibility for the events in his or her life. It refers to whether people tend to locate that responsibility internally, within themselves, or externally, in fate, luck, or chance. Locus of control research started in the mid-1950s when Rotter was developing his social learning theory.
generalized expectancies
A person's expectations for reinforcement that hold across a variety of situations (Rotter, 1971, 1990). When people encounter a new situation, they base their expectancies about what will happen on their ??? about whether they have the abilities to influence events.
external locus of control
Generalized expectancies that events are outside of one's control.
internal locus of control
The generalized expectancy that reinforcing events are under one's control, and that one is responsible for the major outcomes in life.
learned helplessness
Animals (including humans), when subjected to unpleasant and inescapable circumstances, often become passive and accepting of their situation. Researchers surmised that if people were in an unpleasant or painful situation, they would attempt to change the situation. However, if repeated attempts to change the situation failed, they would resign themselves to being helpless. Then, even if the situation did improve so that they could escape the discomfort, they would continue to act helpless.
causal attribution
A person's explanation of the cause of some event.
attributional style
Whenever someone offers a cause or explanation for some negative event, that cause can be analyzed in terms of the three categories of attributions: internal-external, stable-unstable, and global-specific. The tendency a person has to employ certain combinations of attributions in explaining events (e.g., internal, stable, and global causes) is called their ???.
pessimistic explanatory style
Puts a person at risk for feelings of helplessness and poor adjustment, and emphasizes internal, stable, and global causes for bad events. It is the opposite of optimistic explanatory style.
optimistic explanatory style
A style that emphasizes external, temporary, and specific causes of events.
personal project
A set of relevant actions intended to achieve a goal that a person has selected. Psychologist Brian Little believes that ??? make natural units for understanding the working of personality, because they reflect how people face up to the serious business of navigating through daily life.
cognitive social learning approach
A number of modern personality theories have expanded on the notion that personality is expressed in goals and in how people think about themselves relative to their goals. Collectively these theories form an approach that emphasizes the ??? whereby people learn to value and strive for certain goals over others.
self-efficacy
A concept related to optimism and developed by Bandura. The belief that one can behave in ways necessary to achieve some desired outcome. ??? also refers to the confidence one has in one's ability to perform the actions needed to achieve some specific outcome.
modeling
By seeing another person engage in a particular behavior with positive results, the observer is more likely to imitate that behavior. It is a form of learning whereby the consequences for a particular behavior are observed, and thus the new behavior is learned.
promotion focus
One focus of self-regulation whereby the person is concerned with advancement, growth, and accomplishments. Behaviors with a ??? are characterized by eagerness, approach, and "going for the gold."
prevention focus
One focus of self-regulation where the person is concerned with protection, safety, and the prevention of negative outcomes and failures. Behaviors with a ??? are characterized by vigilance, caution, and attempts to prevent negative outcomes.
