Samenvatting Reader Klinische Psychologie 1 'Persoonlijkheidsleer' | 1e druk, 2015
7.3 Trait theories of personality: basic perspectives shared
by trait theorists ............................................................... 3
7.4 The trait theory of Gordon W. Allport (1897-1967) ...... 3
7.5 Identifying primary trait dimensions: factor analysis) ... 5
7.6 The factor-analytic trait theory of Raymond B. Cattell
(1905-1998) ...................................................................... 5
7.7 The three-factor theory of Hans J. Eysenck (1916-
1997) ................................................................................ 7
8. Trait theory: the five-factor model; applications and
evaluation of trait approaches to personality .................. 10
8.1 The five-factor model of personality: research
evidence ......................................................................... 10
8.2 Proposed theoretical model for the Big Five .............. 12
8.3 Age differences throughout adulthood ...................... 13
8.4 Maybe we missed one? The six-factor model ............. 15
8.5 Applications of the Big Five model ............................. 15
8.6 The person-situation controversy .............................. 16
8.7 Critical evaluation...................................................... 16
9. Biological foundations of personality ........................... 19
9.1 Temperament ........................................................... 19
9.2 Genes and personality ............................................... 21
7. Trait Theories of Personality: Allport, Eysenck, and
9.3 Mood, emotion, and the brain ................................... 25
Cattell ............................................................................... 2
9.4 Plasticity: biology as both cause and effect ................ 28
7.1 Trait theory's view of the person ................................. 2
9.5 Neuroscientific investigations of 'higher level'
7.2 Trait theory's view of the science of personality .......... 2
psychological functions ................................................... 29
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S23232-Klinische Psychologie 1: reader Persoonlijkheidsleer | juli 2016 - v 1.1 | Jasper Verkroost 1
, 7. Trait Theories of Personality: Allport, Eysenck, and Cattell
7.1 Trait theory's view of the person (p. 10-11)
personality traits
- consistent patterns in the way individuals behave, feel and think over time and across situations,
despite variations in social life and roles people play during their lives
consistency
- the trait describes a regularity in the people's behavior
- traits often are referred to as 'dispositions' to capure the idea that the person appears predisposed
(=heeft aanleg) to act in a certain way
- trait terms implicitly refer to behaviors in a type of social context; it does not mean that a person
will always act like this across all settings in life
distinctiveness
- trait theorists are primarily concerned with psychological characteristics in which people differ,
features that therefore make one person distinct compared to others
7.2 Trait theory's view of the science of personality (p. 11-13)
functions of trait constructs
description
- traits describe what a person typically is like; trait theories could be seen as providing basic
descriptive facts that need to be explained by any theory of personality
- most trait theorists try to establish a personality taxonomy (a scientist's way of classifying the things
being studied); a trade taxonomy is a way of classifying people according to their characteristic,
average types of experience and action
prediction
- the knowledge of people's personality trait scores can be used to predict things; people with
different levels of a given personality trait may differ predictably in their everyday behavior
- often one can make predictions that have important practical value (e.g. with a personality test)
explanation
- if personality psychology aspires to be a science, then it must tackle the most important challenge
for a scientific theory, namely, explanation
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S23232-Klinische Psychologie 1: reader Persoonlijkheidsleer | juli 2016 - v 1.1 | Jasper Verkroost 2
,- some trait theorists suggest that trait constructs can be used to explain a person's behavior; some
other confine themselves to description and prediction only
- some psychologists try to move from description to explanation by identifying biological factors
underlying a given trait; most trait theorists believe that inherited biological factors are a primary
determinant of individual differences in traits
7.3 Trait theories of personality: basic perspectives shared by trait theorists (p. 13-14)
assumptions that define the trait approach
- people possess broad predispositions, called traits, to respond in particular ways: personality can be
characterized in terms of an individual consistent likelihood of behaving, feeling, or thinking in a
particular way; people who have a strong tendency to behave in these ways are described as being
high on these traits
- there is a direct correspondence between the person's performance of trait-related actions and his
or her possession of the corresponding trait; the research procedures of a trait theory assume that
overt behavior and underlying traits are linked in a one-to-one manner
- human behavior and personality can be organized into a hierarchy; at its simplest level, behavior
can be considered in terms of specific responses; some of these responses are linked together and
form more general habits, groups of habits that tend to occur together form traits; various traits
may be linked together to form secondary, higher-order factors or superfactors (Hans Eysenck)
7.4 The trait theory of Gordon W. Allport (1897-1967) (p. 14-18)
traits according to Allport
- believed that traits are the basic units of personality and are based in the nervous system
- traits represent generalized personality dispositions that account for regularities in the functioning
of a person across situations and over time
- traits can be defined by three properties: frequency, intensity, and range of situations
traits (Allport & Odbert, 1936)
- generalized and personalized determining tendencies; consistent and stable modes of an
individual's adjustment to his environment
- are different from psychological states or behavioral activities that are temporary and induced by
external circumstances
- are often aroused in one situation's characteristic and not in another; a trait expresses what a
person generally does over many situations, not what will be done in any one situation
- Chaplin, John and Goldberg (1988) replicated Allport and Odbert's classifications of personality
descriptors into three categories: traits, states and activities
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S23232-Klinische Psychologie 1: reader Persoonlijkheidsleer | juli 2016 - v 1.1 | Jasper Verkroost 3
, trait and situation concepts
- are both necessary to understand behavior
- trait concept: is neccesary to explain the consistency of behavior
- situation concept: is necessary to explain the variability of behavior
kinds of traits
- cardinal trait: expresses a disposition that is so pervasive and outstanding in a person's life that
virtually every act is traceable to its influence; generally people have few, if any, such traits
- central traits: express dispositions that cover a more limited range of situations than is true for
cardinal traits (e.g. honesty, kindness, assertiveness)
- secondary dispositions: traits that are the least conspicuous (=opvallend), generalized and
consistent; in other words, people possess traits with varying degrees of significance and generality
functional autonomy of human motives
- although the motives of an adult may have their roots in the tension-reducing motives of the child,
as Freud suggested, the adult grows out of the early motives
- in adult life, motives become independent of, or autonomous from, earlier tension-reducing drives
(e.g. what began as activity designed to earn a living can become pleasurable and an end to itself)
- thus, what was once extrinsic and instrumental becomes intrinsic en impelling (=stuwend); the
activity once served a drive or some simple need, it now serves itself or, in a larger sense, serves the
self-image (self-deal) of the person
comment on Allport
limited empirical contributions
- he clarified the trait concept but did little research to establish its utility; he believed that many
traits were hereditary (=erfelijk) but conducted no research on their genetic basis
- he documented that people display distinctive patterns to trait-related behavior and that traits
interact with situational influences, but provided no detailed processing that could explain these
observations
antiscientific
- some people felt that the study of individual idiosyncrasies (=eigenaardigheden) conflicted with
science's search for general laws
- this was poor reading of Allport's idiographic efforts: to build an adequate science of human beings,
it may be necessary to study individual persons in detail; Allport recognized that detailed case
studies may yield insight into general principles that are found across individual cases
- the idiographic approach is not the one pursued by most trait theorists other than Allport; they
studied populations of individuals and tried to identify the most important individual differences in
the population at large
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