2016PSY Personality Psychology - Tutorial 5: EYSENCKIAN SPACE AND REINFORCEMENT SENSITIVITY THEORY

Eysenck's Big Three

  • Eysenck's Big Three includes:

    • Introversion-Extraversion

    • Neuroticism-Stability

    • Psychoticism

  • The Funder text devotes very little space to the coverage of Eysenck’s model (and even less on RST)

Eysenckian Space

  • Eysenck’s dimensions are sometimes set up in “Eysenckian Space”, usually focusing on Extraversion and Neuroticism.

  • You can plot where you lie within this space.

  • The extraversion and neuroticism scales from the Mini-IPIP are very similar to Eysenck’s scales.

  • Each “tick” in the Eysenckian Space represents one Z score.

  • Example: A Z score of 1.5 on Extraversion and a Z score of -0.9 on Neuroticism places you in the “Stable Extravert” quadrant.

  • Implications of placement in the Eysenckian Space:

    • Some may be very close to the mean, while others are further out.

Eysenck’s Explanation for Extraversion

  • The Big Five traits were derived from how we describe people (Lexical Hypothesis) and so (until very recently) did not offer an explanation as to why someone is extraverted or more stable.

  • Eysenck offered a causal explanation that was based in brain functions.

  • Eysenck’s theory was based on individual differences in brain structures.

  • Eysenck proposed differences in the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS) for Extraversion-Introversion.

    • Extraverts have a greater threshold for stimulation of the ARAS (regulates arousal) compared to introverts.

    • Introverts are more easily aroused to relatively lower levels of stimulation (more quickly overwhelmed by stimulation).

    • Extraverts require more stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal (need more things happening to perform at their best).

Eysenck and Gray

  • Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) originally consisted of two systems:

    • Behavioural Approach System (BAS): reward sensitivity

    • Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS): punishment sensitivity

    • (there was a Fight/Flight system but this was largely ignored)

  • Gray argued that these systems were the primary personality systems, not Eysenck’s dimensions.

  • Eysenck’s dimensions needed to be rotated (initially 45 degrees and later 30 degrees).

  • Gray mapped his dimensions onto Eysenck traits.

Eysenck and Gray: Exercise

*Completion of a measure of Gray’s original BIS and BAS.
*Comparison with a graph from a previous week.
*Questionnaire completion from Learning@GU.
*Scoring:
*Sensitivity to Punishment Scale: sum all odd numbered items.
*Sensitivity to Reward Scale: sum all even numbered items.
*All YES responses are scored as 1 for the respective scale.
*All NO responses are scored as 0.
*Z score formula:
Z=(yourscore−mean)/SDZ = (your _ score - mean)/SD
*Descriptive statistics (based on 443 Australian University women):
*Sensitivity to Reward:
*Mean = 9.95
*SD = 4.16
*Sensitivity to Punishment:
*Mean = 11.47
*SD = 5.55
*Corr, Philip J. & Cooper, Andrew J.. 2016. The Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of Personality Questionnaire (RST-PQ): Development and Validation. Psychological Assessment, 28, 1427 - 1440.
*RST and the FFM