Transcript Trait Theory and the Big Five Introduction Traits • Gordon Allport wrote the influential book, “Personality” in 1937.

Trait Theory and the Big Five
Introduction
Traits
• Gordon Allport wrote the influential book,
“Personality” in 1937. He developed his ideas about
“traits” viewing these as the basic structural elements
of personality.
• Traits were defined as a predisposition to respond in a
particular way to a broad range of situations. So an
even-tempered person remains calm across a broad
range of situations. The situations or stimuli are
rendered “functionally equivalent” - opportunities to
exercise restraint. Each person has a certain
expressive and adaptive style that they bring to the
situation.
Allport: More on Traits
• According to Allport, traits have an actual physical
location in the nervous system; we infer its existence
because of consistency of behavior.
• Dissimilar stimuli are capable of arousing the trait. So for
example, a shy person faced with invite a party-avoids
going; looking for a hobby-chooses a solitary activity like
model building; takes a class at collge-doesn’t raise
hand
• Allport also made the distinction as to whether traits
could be used to describe people in general or just a
single individual. Nomothetic traits were trait units that
could be applied to all people. Idiographic traits were
those unique to the individual.
Categories of Traits
 Cardinal Traits-pervasive
example: stingy w/ money, time,
compliments or person like Marquis de Sade
 Central Traits- represent dispositions that are
more limited in range; broadly consistent but
perhaps not always
Secondary Dispositions-least conspicuous and
generalized. Peripheral disposition.
example: likes Coca Cola; prefers Italy to France
Proprium
• Allport has a special name for what we
would normally called the self-called
proprium.
• Proprium goes beyond the traits of the
person and includes habits, interests, skills
along with traits.
• Thus, traits are components of self that
initiate and direct behavior in unique ways.
Personality Unique?
• Allport felt that the personality was unique and that the
assessment of personality should take this in to account.
• Idiographic Approach was therefore his favored method.
• Did not use factor analysis because he felt it emphasized
the average and individual got lost in the process.
• More important to know about organization of traits w/i
the person rather than to look where they stand on
common traits relative to others.
• Finally, he rejected the idea that human motivation could
be limited to a few motives (sex and aggression for
example). This couldn’t adequately describe the varied
functioning of people
Big Five
• Taxonomy- a scientific classification system. Involves ordering,
naming and systematically distinguishing between things. Should
help you understand how things differ.
• Applying this concept to personality, Allport and Odbert (1936) were
early innovators in trying to describe differences in personality using
a so-called lexical approach.
• They found that the English dictionary contained roughly 1800
descriptors of persons. Allport and Odbert were looking at “natural
language.” This is the rub. There is no reason to assume that all the
important ways that people differ exist in the natural language. But it
was a start.
More on Taxonomies
• There are many other potential starting points for taxonomies of
human differences other than the dictionary and natural language.
• We could start for instance with the insights of psychiatrists and
psychologists about their patients.
• Or develop a taxonomy based on body type as William Sheldon didpsychological types based on body type.
• Endomorphy is centered on the abdomen, and the whole
digestive system. A soft and round person around middle
• Mesomorphy is focused on the muscles and the circulatory system.
Individual is muscular.
• Ectomorphy is characterized as thin and delicate. Limbs relatively
long with drooping shoulders
• Each person rated on a seven point scale for each attribute, so a
7:1:1 is an extreme endomorph.
Taxonomies
• Or we could examine individual differences in motives
and goals. In fact, Murray’s taxonomy (1938) was based
on a classification of twenty motives.
• However, each approach has its problems.
• The major problem with the original lexical approach was
not so much one of ultimate truth about personality but
rather one of “unwieldiness.” How to make it more
manageable. There were too many descriptive terms to
be of much value. None-the-less, the lexical system
became the foundation for the Big Five
The Lexical Approach Becomes
More Manageable
• In 1967, Norman attempted to reduce the number of descriptive
terms in the lexical approach (to make it user friendly!).
• He did this by making a rational decision to initially eliminating
evaluative words (for example, the word nice), words not typically
known to literate speakers of English, and words describing physical
characteristics (short-tall).
• This left about 8,000 words.
• He further pruned to including only traits (broad descriptions of
behavioral tendencies with some implied stability) yielding 1600
terms.
• Eventually, Norman’s further explorations left us with 1400 words,
grouped by him into 75 clusters (based on prior studies and
insights). He then assigned each cluster to one of five dimensions.
Analyzing the Set of Terms
• The terms defined by Norman’s work could be
“dimensionalized.”
• One thing this means we could look at them on a
continuum by creating their negations…
not irascible……………………….irascible
(quick-tempered, easily provoked)
Introverted………………………extroverted
• Once the terms were dimensionalized, a person could
be rated on each dimension (five or seven point scale for
instance). Then statistical techniques like factor
analysis could be used to explore relationships among
the ratings.
Goldberg’s Work
• Goldberg (1990) did a factor analysis of rating
scores based on Norman’s work.
• Goldberg had college students rate their
personalities on 1400 dimensions.
• He used Norman’s classifications to form 75
clusters.
• Next, he summed scores for dimensions that
belonged to the same cluster.
• He then used factor analysis to analyze
relationships of the cluster scores.
Factor Analysis
• He also looked at the relationships between all possible pairs of
dimensions to see if they were correlated. Could the 75 factors be
collapsed?
• In a perfect world, if we might take our 75 clusters and find that 35
load on one factor (Factor 1) at a 1.0 correlation and 0.0 on some
other factor (Factor 2). The opposite would be true of the other 35
clusters. They would load on Factor 2 at 1.0 and 0.0 on Factor 1.
• But this isn’t a perfect world…
• So for example, in the real world, we could look at the correlation
between introverted-extraverted and quiet-talkative. If the correlation
is say .50, we know they are related. We might say that individuals
who describe themselves as extraverted also tend to describe
themselves as talkative.
• So the question answered by factor analysis is , “ Are sets of
dimensions correlated” and ultimately can they be collapsed?
Factor Analysis
• In the end, the result of a factor analysis is the discovery
of a so-called factor.
• The factor is an abstract concept. It is whatever the
interrelated measures have in common. We can give the
commonality a name. This can be the subject of debate.
• Some dimensions may load (correlation between the
measure and factor) on a particular factor. These are
called marker variables. Dimensions that load highly on
more than one factor are called blends.
• For example…dimension courteous p. 89 loads on
two factors…agreeableness and
conscientiousness…perhaps being courteous is an
offshoot of being careful in an interpersonal sense.
Big Five Factors
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Goldberg found five factors.
Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
What does it spell?
Go to page 28 in Brody and Ehrlichman.
More on Big Five
• These factors have been found to be quite
robust across cultures.
• However not everyone agrees with five factor
model. Some people talk about more factors
being needed; others less (Eysenck -3 factorsextraversion, introversion, psychoticism)
• Vagaries of factor analysis means that there
could be more than one acceptable factor
solution for the same set of data.
NEO-PI-R Five factor Inventory
• Questionnaire associated with Big Five Model.
Developed by Costa and McCrae.
• Designed to provide a general description of normal
personality.
• Authors argue strongly for use of questionnaires to
assess personality and are critical of projective testing.
• Current version 243 items/approx 45 minutes to
complete
• Five point scale is used and the person self-assesses
how characteristic or uncharacteristic a certain statement
is characteristic or representative of them.
Evolutionary Psychology and the
Big Five
• Has been used to explain the origin of the Big Five.
• Evolutionary psychology-emphasizes importance of
judging the behavior of others in terms of promoting
survival.
• In this regard, we might look at the Big Five in terms of
specific issue of partner selection and interpersonal
relations.
• Most people might therefore want an agreeable,
extraverted, conscientious, energetic, non-neurotic
partner as opposed to the opposite.
Evolutionary Psychology
• This question of selection interweaves with the
issue of our survival as individuals and as a
race.
• Put another way, a certain set of traits in the
other person might mean having a partner who
is cooperative. Or the traits in us might make us
more attractive to others and insure that our
genes survive.
• But we are sill left with the important question of
why people differ on these traits. How do those
with less preferable traits survive? And how do
these traits survive? What is the answer?
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
• Example might be two librarians marry, as
actually was the case with to of one of my
clients who was a librarian. The introverted
stayed with the introverted.
• Moral of the story: Perhaps every Bonnie
needs a Clyde!
Trait-Situation Controversy
• We have examined the historical development of
trait theory from Allport to the present.
• One important notion embedded in trait theory is
the notion that personality is consistent and
stable. This has been an explicit or implicit
assumption of trait theorists.
• In this sense trait models were similar to
psychodynamic models, especially the Freudian
model, which also proposed that personality was
stable
Trait-Situation Controversy
• In the trait camp are people like Allport, Eysenck
and Catell on up to Costa and McCrae. This is a
well-entrenched theoretical point of view.
• None-the-less, the question eventually arose
as to whether situations could override
personality variables and affect behavior.
• This was, in part, due to the ascendance of models like
that of B.F. Skinner. Skinner showed us that
reinforcement contingencies could influence behavior. In
fact, Skinner thought personality was essentially the
product of history of reinforcement
Cognitive Revolution
• And personality theorists were also being
influenced by the cognitive revolution…
• Kelly- idea of constructs which were defined as
ways of construing, perceiving and interpreting
events. Constructs and construct systems
became the basic unit of personality.
• Ellis in the 50’s, developed Rational Therapy
which later became Rational-EmotiveTtherapy
and now is REBT and theory.
• This work set the stage for the social-cognitive theories
of Mischel and Bandura and what became the trait
controversy.
Transitioning from Behaviorism to Cognitive
Approaches
Dollard and Miller
• In the 50’s. D and M also wanted to extend Behaviorism
to deal with issues like cognition and motivation.
For our purposes, we will look at 3 ideas of
D and M. which might be called transitional ideas moving
toward cognitive theories and the social-cognitive
models of Mischel and Bandura.
What D and M did…
 Identified 4 shortcomings of Behaviorism
 Developed notion of a “habit hierarchy.”
 Discussed Freudian defense mechanisms as “cognitive
behaviors.”
Beyond BFS
• These ideas (Kelly and Ellis and D and M) were taking
us further away from Skinner’s pure behavioral theory
which was not phenomenological or cognitive in the
least. Behavior was the unit of analysis in Operant
conditioning and the components to be studied were
 Antecedents
 Behaviors
 Consequences
Traffic Light Example
Traffic Light Example
Walter Mischel’s Model Social
Learning Theory
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Mischel, first of all, was mentored by
Kelly so he had a cognitive bent.
In 1968, he came forward with his
critique of trait theory and over the
ensuing years to the present, he
attempted to develop an alternative
conceptualization of personality.
Three Key Points
• Situational Specificity
• Discrimination
• Adaptive or self-regulation aspects of
personality functioning
Units of
Mischel’ Cognitive Reconceptualization
of Personality
1.
2.
3.
People have personal constructs-encoding
strategies. Emphasis on how people construe dataself, other world.
People have subjective values, preferences and
goals (can visualize end points).
People have expectancies about probable
outcomes. If…then thinking. This means behavior in
two situations may differ-child rewarded in school with
attention for good behavior may behave badly at
home.
Mischel
4.
Cognitive and Behavioral competencies- people differ in their
ability to use information- related to potential achievement. Actual
achievement may vary dependent on other factors.
5.
Self-regulatory systems- refers to the individual’s ability to
develop and enact long-term plans. This involves dealing with
frustration, selecting plans for achieving goals, etc.
6.
More recently a new unit of personality has been added- affects.
7.
Finally, Mischel has emphasized the interaction of all of these
units 1-6 Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)