Chapter 4 - Theoretical and measurement issues in trait psychology PDF

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Chapter 4 - Theoretical and measurement issues in trait psychology The Dispositional Domain: Matching on personality traits sounds like a great idea, but it works only to the extent that people are telling the truth about themselves when they answer the questionnaires People can represent themselves falsely in terms of physical characteristics (e.g., say they are petite when they are not, say they have thick, wavy hair when they are in fact bald), and they may represent themselves falsely in terms of their personality Theoretical Issues: Trait theories of personality offer a collection of viewpoints about the fundamental building blocks of human nature Trait theories share three important assumptions about personality traits, these three important assumptions are meaningful individual differences, stability or consistency over time, and consistency across situations Meaningful Differences Among Individuals: Trait psychologists are primarily interested in determining the ways in which people are different from each other Any meaningful way in which people differ from each other may potentially be identified as a personality trait Differential Psychology o Includes the study of other forms of individual differences in addition to personality traits, such as abilities, aptitudes, and intelligence Trait perspective concerned with accurate measurement, quantitative, most mathematically and statistically oriented According to trait psychologists, every personality, no matter how complex or unusual, is the product of a particular combination of a few basic and primary traits Consistency Over Time: The view that many broad-based personality traits show considerable stability over time has been supported by a large number of research studies o Traits such as intelligence, emotional reactivity, impulsiveness, shyness, and aggression show high test-retest correlations, even with years or decades between measurement occasions o Personality traits that are thought to have a biological basis, such as extraversion, sensation seeking, activity level, and shyness, also show remarkable consistency over time

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o Attitudes, however, are much less consistent over time, as are interests and opinions Rank Order: if all people show a decrease in a particular trait at the same rate over time, they might still maintain the same rank order relative to each other, accounting for general change with age can be compared to subtracting or adding a constant to each participant’s score on the trait measure i.e. how a general decrease in impulsiveness with age might have no real effect on the correlation between measures obtained 20 years apart, people in general can show a decrease in impulsiveness as they get older, yet those individuals who were the most impulsive at an earlier age are still the ones who are most impulsive at a later age

Consistency Across Situations: - The third assumption made by trait psychologists is that traits will exhibit some consistency across situation, the question of consistency in traits from situation to situation has been more hotly debated If situations mainly control how people behave, then the idea that traits are consistent across situations holds less promise as an approach to explaining behaviour Situationism: o Mischel suggested that personality psychologists should abandon their efforts to explain behaviour in terms of personality traits and recommended that they shift their focus to situations o If behaviour differs from situation to situation, then it must be situational differences, rather than underlying personality traits, that determine behaviour Person-Situation Interaction: As Mischel’s debate with trait psychologists made clear, there are two possible explanations for behaviour, or why people do what they do in any given situation: o Behaviour is a function of personality traits, B = f(P) o Behaviour is a function of situational forces, B = f(S) § Truth in both statements o 𝐵 = 𝑓(𝑃×𝑆) § This formula suggests that behaviour is a function of the interaction between personality traits and situational forces -  Situational Specificity: o certain very specific situations can provoke behaviour that is otherwise out of character for the individual, in which a person acts in a specific way under particular circumstances There is no way to predict all of the people all of the time

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Larsen, Diener, and Emmons were able to predict who would overreact to a minor or moderately stressful event, when something bad really happened people would react with a strong emotion Strong Situation: o Refer to situations in which nearly all people react in similar ways o i.e. funerals, religious services, crowded elevators because they elicit similar reactions, uniformity of behaviour o i.e. ink blots are an example of weak/ambiguous situation ● Three addition ways in which personality and situation interact to produce behaviour: 1. Selection 2. Evocation 3. Manipulation Situational Selection: Situational selection, the tendency to choose the situations in which one finds oneself, people typically do not find themselves in random situations, select situations in which they will spend their time Diener, Larsen, & Emmons examined whether personality traits predict how often people enter into specific situations i.e. the researchers found that the trait of need for achievement correlated with spending more time in work situations, the need for order with spending time in more familiar situations, and extraversion with choosing social forms of recreation The idea that personality influences the kinds of situations in which people spend their time suggests that we can investigate personality by studying the choices people make in life When given a choice, people typically choose situations that fit their personalities Bidirectional relationship between persons and situations Evocation: Evocation: o The idea that certain personality traits may evoke specific responses from the environment o i.e. people who are disagreeable and manipulative may evoke certain reactions in others, such as hostility and avoidance People may create their own environments by eliciting certain responses from others Manipulation: Manipulation: o Defined as the various means by which people influence the behaviour of others o Intentional use of certain tactics to coerce, influence, or change others o Changes the social situation

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o Differs from selection in that selection involves choosing existing environments, whereas manipulation entails altering those environments already inhabited o Individuals differ in the tactics of manipulation they use Three different tactics: o Charm tactic—complimenting others, acting warm and caring, and doing favours for others in order to influence them. o Silent treatment, ignoring or failing to respond to the other person o Coercion, which consists of making demands, yelling, criticizing, cursing, and threatening the other to get what one wants

Aggregation: Aggregation: o The process of adding up, or averaging, several single observations, resulting in a better (i.e., more reliable) measure of a personality trait than a single observation of behaviour o Longer tests for reliability o Any single behaviour on any single occasion may be influenced by all sorts of extenuating circumstances unrelated to personality Aggregation is a technique designed to improve trait measures by adding items to a questionnaire or adding observations to obtain score Implies traits are only one influence on behaviour o At any given time, for any given behaviour, many factors influence why a person does one thing and not another o Aggregation also implies that traits refer to a person’s average level o Traits are similar to the set-point concept in weight; a person’s weight will fluctuate from day to day, but there is a set point, or average level, to which he or she typically returns Density Distribution of States (Fleeson): o Each trait is associated with specific states, within an individual, the states are distributed over time o Density distribution refers to the idea that people high in a particular trait will state distribution more dense with state manifestations of that trait Highlight on Canadian Research: Personality factor measures are too broad, personality behavior measures are too narrow, but personality trait measures are just right Paunonen and Nicol (2001) compared the predictive value of broad personality factors versus narrower traits in a variety of behavioural criteria related to academic

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performance and participation in research, such as grade point average, questionnaire neatness, and tardiness Most criteria were predicted with confidence by at least one broad factor in the Big Five model Yet in nearly all of those cases, a narrower trait contained within one of the broad factors was an even better predictor of the behavioural criterion in question Aggregating personality traits into their underlying personality factors could result in decreased predictive accuracy due to the loss of trait-specific but criterion-valid variance...