Trait Theories of Personality

• They believe that we can describe people’s personalities by specifying their main characteristics (traits).

• Traits like honesty, laziness, ambition, outgoing are thought to be stable over the course of your lives.

Trait

• A characteristic of behavior or a disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-reported inventories or peer reports.

Gordon Allport

• Founder of the trait perspective

• Interview with Freud – What about the

conscious mind?

Other Trait Theorists

• Carl Jung – introversion (psychic energy flows inward) vs. extraversion (psychic energy flows outward)

• Hans Eysenck 2 axes; researched biological causes of differences

• Raymond Cattell (16 personality factors) – warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, etc.

Factor Analysis• A statistical procedure used to identify

different components of your intelligence or personality (depending on the test).

•FA takes the answers you give on tests and compiles them into general traits.

The Big Five

• Emotional Stability (calm/anxious, secure/insecure, self-satisfied/self-pitying).

•Extraversion (sociable/retiring, fun-loving/sober, affectionate/reserved).

•Openness (imaginative/practical, variety/routine, independent, conforming)

The Big Five (Continued)

• Agreeableness (soft-hearted/ruthless, trusting/suspicious, helpful/uncooperative).

•Conscientiousness (organized/disorganized, careful/careless, disciplined/impulsive).

The Big Five

According to Big Five trait theory:

Your traits are stable over time.

They can be attributed to your genetics

They describe personalities equally well across different cultures

They predict other attributes.

Correlations with the Big Five:stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness,

conscientiousnessProtested injustice

- Emotionally stable, openFell in love at first sight

- ExtravertedHave not been in therapy

- Emotionally stableBeen in therapy

- OpenNot likely to have a lover whose name

they forgot- Agreeable

Thrown a large party- Extraverted

Kept a diary- Open

Listen to music by self in dark- Open

Correlations with the Big Five:stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness,

conscientiousnessRead fewer than 12 books per year

- ExtravertedNever cheated on a test

- ConscientiousNever pulled all-nighter to finish

assignment - ConscientiousNot likely to become addicted to

Internet-Extraverted

Dated a person of a different race- Open

Written a poem spontaneously- Open

Smoke marijuana- Open

Assessing Our Traits

• Personality Inventories: a questionnaire where people respond to items attempting to gauge different aspects of their personality

Examples of personality inventories: Myers-Briggs (Kiersey Temperament Sorter), 16PF, MMPI, BFI, NEO-FFI)

MMPI

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory:

•the most widely used personality test.

•Originally used to identify emotional disorders.

Now used for screening purposes.

MMPI put to the Test

The Person-Situation Controversy

• Are traits really stable?

Kind Of….

They change according to the situation.

Biological Theories of Personality

• What % of the variation in a population is attributable to genes? - heritability

• We are not sure BUT temperaments do seem to be stable from infants to old age.

Somatotype Theory• A biological Theory by

William Sheldon.• Endomorphs (Fat)

tend to be friendly and outgoing.

• Mesomorphs (muscular) tend to be more aggressive.

• Ectomorphs (thin) tend to be more shy and secretive.

• Study has not been replicated.