This summary includes all important information treated in the online modules for psychology of personality. It also includes a separate list of terms at the end of the document.
PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY
MODULE 1: PERSONALITY TRAITS
Introduction to Personality Traits
Personality is the characteristic ways that people differ from one another. Personality traits imply
consistency and stability: trait psychology suggests people differ from one another in terms of where
they stand on a set of basic trait dimensions that persist over time and across situations.
The most widely used system of traits is OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Critics might say not all traits are captured in this or
people’s personality is situation dependent.
Personality traits reflect continuous distributions rather than distinct personality types.
Three criteria to characterize personality traits:
Consistency: individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their
behaviors related to the trait.
Stability: individuals must be somewhat stable over time in their behaviors related to
the trait.
Individual differences: individuals differ from one another on behaviors related to
the trait (frequently wise).
Challenge was to discover major traits on which all people differ and use them globally, instead of
using hundreds of different ones. The approach to this was guided by the lexical hypothesis (the idea
that the most important differences between people will be encoded in the language that we use to
describe people).
The Five-Factor Model of Personality
As many used personality descriptors overlap, we found 5 terms that include most of them and most
generally describe people’s personalities. They are independent of each other, meaning the score on
one trait does not influence the score of another.
Trait Definition
Openness The tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors..
Conscientiousness The tendency to be careful, on-time for appointments, to follow rules, and to
be hardworking.
Extraversion The tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others; the tendency to
have a dominant style.
Agreeableness The tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to assert one’s
own opinions and choices.
Neuroticism The tendency to frequently experience negative emotions such as anger,
worry, and sadness, as well as being interpersonally sensitive.
Why is this interesting?
Traits describe stable patterns of behavior that persist for long periods of time. These patterns can
have broad-ranging consequences for many areas in our lives (e.g. how successful one will be in the
future). They’re not just tools to describe people, but also to predict things about them.
Facets of traits (Subtraits): As only 5 traits might not accurately reflect the complexity of people’s
characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, there are lower-level units of personality
(facets). Facets can explain behaviors that go against the general pattern of ‘big-five personality’.
,Other Traits Beyond the Five-Factor Model
One of the first comprehensive models on personality traits was by Hans Eysenck, who suggested
that extraversion and neuroticism account for many differences in personality. He tried to link these
two traits to biological factors (like sensory stimulation).
Another model is the HEXACO model, which is similar to the big five but adds Honesty-Humility as a
sixth dimension of personality.
Researchers have suggested many important personality traits besides OCEAN
Trait Description
Machiavellianism Refers to individuals who manipulate the behavior of others, often
through duplicity. Often interested in money and power, and
pragmatically use others in this quest.
Need for achievement Refers to individuals who want to accomplish a lot and set high standards
for themselves. Able to work persistently and hard for distant goals.
Need for cognition Refers to individuals who find it rewarding to understand things, and are
willing to use considerable cognitive effort in this quest. Enjoy learning,
and the process of trying to understand new things.
Authoritarianism Refers to individuals who believe in strict social hierarchies, in which they
are totally obedient to those above them, and expect complete
obedience from their subordinates. Rigid in adherence to rules,
authoritarian personality is very uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Narcissism Refers to individuals who have self-love that is so strong that it results in
high levels of vanity, conceit, and selfishness. Often has problems with
feeling empathic and grateful toward others.
Self-esteem Refers to individuals who tend to evaluate oneself positively.
Optimism Refers to individuals who tend to expect positive outcomes in the future.
Alexithymia Refers to individuals who are unable to recognize and label emotions in
themselves. Often also has difficulty recognizing emotions in others and
keeping relationships.
The Person-Situation Debate and Alternatives to the Trait Perspective
Walter Mischel suggested that consistency is not really impressive when behavior across many
different situations are closely investigated. He also suggested that observers may believe that broad
personality traits exist, but this is an illusion.
What followed is the person-situation debate, which wonders whether personality traits or
certain situations are what influence people’s behaviors.
Mischel suggested that instead of studying broad, context-free descriptions (like trait terms),
psychologists should be focusing on people’s distinctive reactions to specific situations. He
concluded that specific behaviors are driven by the interaction between very specific,
psychologically meaningful features of the situation in which people find themselves, the
person’s unique way of perceiving that situation, and his or her abilities for dealing with it.
These social-cognitive processes that underlie people’s reactions to specific situations that
provide some consistency when situational features are the same.
, More recent studies show that the effects of situations are about as large of that of personality traits.
Personality traits give an indication about how people will act on average, but frequently they are not
so good at predicting how a person will act in a specific situation in a certain moment in time.
MODULE 2: PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT
Objective Tests
Objective Tests are the most familiar and widely used approach to assessing personality, where a
standard set of items is answered using a limited set of response options (true/false, strongly
disagree to strongly agree).
Responses are scored in a standardized, predetermined way to create an overall score on a
certain personality traits.
“What is objective about such a procedure is that the psychologist administering the test
does not need to rely on judgment to classify or interpret the test-taker’s response; the
intended response is clearly indicated and scored according to a pre-existing key.”
Basic Types of Objective Tests
Objective tests can be subdivided into two basic types
Self-report measures ask people to describe themselves. This has two key advantages:
Self-raters have access to an unparalleled wealth of information: direct access to
their own thoughts, feelings, and motives.
Asking people to describe themselves is the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective
approach to assessing personality.
These tests show impressive validity however they are also limited in some areas
Raters may present themselves overly favorable and socially desirable (problem in
high-stakes testing, where test scores are used to make important decisions).
Raters may ignore or downplay some of their less desirable characteristics and focus
on positive attributes instead (self-enhancement bias).
Subject to the reference group effect: we base our self-perceptions, in part, on how
we compare to others in our own sociocultural reference group.
Informant ratings make use of those who know a certain person well to describe their
personality characteristics. They’re generally similar to self-ratings and especially valuable if
self-ratings can’t be collected or aren’t seen as valid. Several advantages:
Well-acquainted informants have observed large samples of behavior.
Observations are presumably not subject to defensiveness that distorts self-reports.
They too have certain limitations
Informants do not have full access to relevant information such as thoughts.
Also subject to the reference group effect.
Parent ratings are often subject to sibling contrast effect, where parents exaggerate
the magnitude of differences between their children.
Informants are often chosen by the researched individual themselves, causing them
to pick those who produce overly favorable personality ratings (letter of
recommendation effect and honeymoon effect (in case of newlyweds).
Other ways of classifying objective tests
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller isiskl. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for £3.88. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
