Notes on all assigned reading materials for the course Psychology of Personality. With these notes (combined with the lecture slides), I got a 9.7 on the exam, and a final grade of 10 for the course.
PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1 (ONLINE CHAPTER – PERSONALITY TRAITS)
personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts feelings and
behaviors/ reflect basic dimensions on which people differ
personality traits imply stability and consistency
the stable patterns that traits possess can have broad-ranging consequences for many areas
of our life
health psychology and organizational psychology (applied settings) have a growing
interest in personality psychology
the Five-Factor Model (the Big Five) – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion,
agreeableness and neuroticism (OCEAN)
scores on the Big Five traits are mostly independent – where one person stands on a
particular traits says little about their standing on another separate trait → the scores on
all Big Five traits are required to describe an individual’s personality
openness and conscientiousness are predictors of success
extraversion and agreeableness are predictors of how good people work with others
the 5 major traits can be divided into smaller facets = lower-level units (subtraits) – since
there are different ways of being extraverted or conscientious shows that there is value in
considering lower-level units of personality that are more specific than the Big Five traits
there is no widely accepted list of facets that should be studied
, NEO-PI-R facets (Costa & McCrae)
facets provide a more specific description of what a person is like and there are better
predictors of behavioral patterns in certain situations
the Big Five model emerged from Allport and Odbert’s factor analysis
people can be low, medium or high on any specific trait
personality traits reflect continuous distributions rather than distinct personality types
criteria that characterize personality traits:
- consistency – people have to be consistent across situations in their behaviors related to
the trait
- stability – traits tend to remain the same over time
- individual differences – people differ from one another on behaviors related to the trait
scientists wanted to find a way to reduce the number of traits systematically in order to
discover the basic major traits that describe most of the differences between people
Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert (checked the dictionary for all descriptors of
personality) were guided by the lexical hypothesis – it states that all important personality
characteristics should be reflected in the language that we use to describe other people
the lexical approach showed that many personality descriptors indeed do overlap (they are
synonyms)
Allport and Odbert used statistical techniques to see which words “go well together”
factor analysis – a statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to
how highly they are associated ; used to determine whether a small number of dimensions
might underlie all of the thousands of words we use to describe people
Hans Eysenck – PEN model (extraversion and neuroticism are the 2 most important traits)
Eysenck tried to link those 2 major dimensions to underlying differences in people’s
biology
Jeffrey Gray – suggested that these 2 broad traits are related to fundamental reward and
avoidance of punishment systems in the brain
the HEXACO model – is adds Honesty-Humility as the 6th dimension of personality/
Neuroticism is Emotionality (Ashton & Lee)
there are traits which are not included in the Big Five model but they capture interesting
aspects of our behavior and attitudes
, person-situation debate – Walter Mischel: the
power of personality against the power of
situational factors as determinants of the behavior people exhibit
- Mischel suggested that psychologists should focus on people’s distinctive reactions to
specific situations
- behavior itself results from the person’s unique evaluation of the risks and rewards
present at that moment, along with their evaluation of their own abilities and values
- Mischel argued that the social-cognitive processes that underlie people’s reactions to
specific situations provide some consistency when situational features are the same
studying these broad traits might be more fruitful than cataloging and measuring narrow,
context-free traits like Extraversion or Neuroticism
- studies show that the effect of the “situation” is about as large as that of personality traits
- in order to best capture broad traits one must assess aggregate behaviors averaged over
time and across many different situations
the Big Five model DOES NOT explain the causality of traits on behaviors/feelings/
thoughts
openness=culture=intellect
neuroticism=emotional instability
low end of agreeableness – competitive character
low end of neuroticism – deal with stress well
, low end of conscientiousness – chaotic
strengths of the Big Five/Six
- comprehensive descriptive model of traits
- provide structure for comparable research and application
- the broad trait domains (OCEAN/HEXACO) encompass and organize many more
specific subtraits
- the Big Five provides a comprehensive taxonomy of inter-individual differences in personality
traits
- the Big Five correlates with a wide range of relevant life outcomes even across years
- the Big Five/Six is a good predictor of life outcomes
weaknesses of the Big Five/Six
- possible omissions include: positive/negative evaluation, sexiness, psychopathy
- derived in Anglo-Saxon/Germanic cultures and languages – not always cross-culturally
replicable (especially openness and honesty-humility)
- useful for researchers and laypersons but it is still unsure why these 5/6 factors emerged
in the first place (biological causes/mechanisms)
- the Big Five DOES NOT explain causality of traits
- purely descriptive and has no explanation of effects – there are personality descriptors that
go well together but the biological underpinnings of traits are unclear
kind/helpful/friendly = agreeableness; organized/diligent/hard-working =
conscientiousness
there are personality descriptors that go well together but the biological underpinnings of
traits are unclear – the Big Five is simply a descriptive tool
people with high neuroticism are likely to be more volatile
heritability of personality 50%
- studies on monozygotic/dizygotic twins – the differences between monozygotic twins who
live in different environments should be based 100% on their genes while the differences
between dizygotic twins that live in different households should be based on their shared
genes which are about 50%
- additive genes effect – occurs when 2 or more genes source a single contribution to the
final phenotype
free traits – culturally scripted patterns of conduct that are strategically crafted to advance
projects about which a person cares deeply
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