Essay - Aport and Cattell - Trait Theory PDF

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Question: Within the literature of traits, compare and contrast two researchers on trait theory? Traits are one of the major constructs within the literature of individual differences . One definition of traits comes from Gaines (2016), who described traits as an answer to the question are you Both ...

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Question: Within the literature of traits, compare and contrast two researchers on trait theory? Traits are one of the major constructs within the literature of individual differences . One definition of traits comes from Gaines (2016), who described traits as an individual’s answer to the question ‘’what are you like’’. Both Allport’s Ascendance-submission scale and Cattell’s Sixteen personality Factors Questionnaire are surveys that try to measure traits Allport’s Ascendance-Submission scale Outline  Gordan Allport’s (1961/1963) psychology of individuals, looks at a variety of personality constructs. However he especially focuses on personality traits. Furthermore the term trait theory is usually applied to the trait-focused part of Allport’s larger theory.  He distinguished between personal traits, which he believed to offer insight into the unique personality of each individual, and common traits, which offered an insight into a widespread of different personalities across individuals.  Allport (1928) came up with the Ascendance-submission scale. It was used to measure individual differences in common traits of ascendance(more accurately known as dominances).  The scale had 41 items for men and 49 items for women and all the questions had a 7 point Likert scale. Evaluation  Face validity: The ascendance-submission scale looks to have good face validity. - The scale seems suitable in testing the measurements it intends to measure . The 7 point Likert scale allows individuals to have a range of option to assess how much they may feel that the points relate to them. - There is also a middle ground which means that participants are not forced into either ends of the scale. - The questionnaire had the word ‘’tend’’ which demonstrates that these traits are not the sole thing the individual is. That people are not like this all the time. Making it reflect more realistically on everyday life and allowing people to give more realistic answers. - On his scale he switched the scoring so that some items highs scores reflect dominance and in others low scores reflect dominance. This means that participant had to focus when doing the questionnaire and items where probably answered more honestly. Giving the survey more validity  Construct validity : However, he did not make an attempt to evaluate the construct validity of his scale. Although this may be due to evaluation of scale validity was in its early stages. Thus not allowing him to do it properly.  Internal consistency: Furthermore he also didn’t report any reliability analysis on his scale. We don’t know his Cronbach alpha coefficient. Although this could also be due to technology not being as advance as it is and a sophisticated way of measuring reliability had not been made yet. Despite this Allport still cited significant item correlation, in the right direction as evidence of reliability. Which may have been sufficient at the time.

Cattell’s Sixteen personality Factors Questionnaire Outline 

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Raymond Cattell’s (1950) version of factor-analytic trait theory was derived from Gordon Allport’s (1937) trait theory, especially regarding Allport and Odbert’s 18,000 list of trait terms. He used factor analysis to make the sample more manageable. He did this by taking the large inventory of trait terms and extracted common themes and corelating them among a larger number of items. He was mainly interested in seeing the smallest number of common traits that we need to account for in individual differences among large samples of people. He ended up coming up with 16 traits which he believed could be used to assess individual differences adequately. With this he came up with the sixteen personality factor (16FP) Questionnaire. The 16PF questionnaire had187 items. All the questions had 3 categories , with it going from A= yes, B= in between, C= No

Evaluation 

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Face validity: The 16PF questionnaire seems to looks to have inadequate face validity. - Cattell doesn’t give a wide range of points for the individuals to choose from, which means the survey may not be accurately representing what the individual is actual like . - He also has 187 items which could lead to the individual getting bored while taking the survey. This means that maybe in some of the ending question just because they want to finish the survey they may rush. Which may lead to them giving inaccurate answers. Which means we can assume that the answers are not actually representing them. Thus making the survey not fulfilling its purpose it intend to. - Also due to his flawed scoring system you can’t do psychometric on his questionnaire. Construct validity: Cattell used obliques factor analysis which means his measured variables, , correlated with each other. this means most his factor where interlinked making hard to distinguish if his questionnaire was measuring what it supposed to measure. This also meant that it was hard for other researcher to replicate 16 personality trait factors that he found. Internal consistency: Also due the scoring system for the 16PF (Cattell, 1950), in which total scores are calculated without entry of item scores, it is impossible for researchers to evaluate the internal consistency of the survey (at least as far as Cronbach’s alpha is concerned).

Conclusion: In conclusion both scales have their strength with Allport’s having a good scale and Cattell being able to influence generations of personality

psychologists in their search for the optimal number of traits that are sufficient to adequately represent individual differences within and across human populations. However based on the scales alone we discussed in this essay Allport’s could be seen as better, as it did seem to measure what it was supposed to and has a great Likert scale. It also influenced a lot of individual with their scales including Cattell. Also the reason he couldn’t do psychometrics may not be his fault as technology was not as advance at the time. However if Cattell had a normal Likert scale his would probably be better....