Traits and Trait Taxonomies Learning Objectives 1 What is a trait What aspects belong to traits that may not present in other variables e g attitudes worldviews a Personality traits refer to individual differences between people in characteristic thoughts feelings and behaviors associated with the social interaction and the socioemotional aspects of life i Rachel smiles and talks to people in a friendly manner in all kinds of situations whereas Maria seems to never smile ii Four primary aspects 1 Internal attributes about an individual that are relatively stable over time and across situations a If Jane has a strong sense of conscientiousness then she must be consistently conscientious over a variety of situations like in her volunteer times and over time as a teen and adult etc 2 Conceived in bipolar terms a Friendliness can be understood as a continuum ranging from extremely friendly to not at all traits are seen in a language of opposites b Friendly versus unfriendly c Most people fall within the middle range of any given trait 3 Additive and independent a Jane is high on agreeableness highly organized relatively non judgmental and low on risk taking the four independent factors that when added together can predict consistency in her behavior and describe her differences from others 4 Broad individual differences in socioemotional functioning a Personality traits can be distinguished from other variables that are more cognitive such as values worldviews and schemas 2 What are the four perspectives on traits How are they different from each other How do contemporary personality psychologists think about traits today a Traits exist as predispositions for behavior i Neurophysiological substrates 1 Traits literally exist in the central nervous system in biological patterns like neurotransmitter pathways that cause behavior to occur and account for its consistencies in socioemotional functioning and over time a Essentially we re biologically designed to have certain personality traits and these traits are consistent because they re in our hardware b Traits have a biological reality ii Behavioral dispositions 1 Traits are tendencies to act think or feel in consistent ways that interact with external influences such as cultural norms and situational variables to influence a persons functioning a A biological disposition of traits are hardwired into us but they re designed to be appropriate for our culture and a given situation b Traits are dispositional by nature b Traits don t case behavior they are categories used to describe behaviors that people show i Act frequencies ii Linguistic categories 1 Act frequency Pg 110 categories containing discrete and representative behavioral acts view of personality dispositions as summary a Acts that have the same functional properties may be grouped together into families with some acts being more prototypical or representative of the general family features than others b Language categories that are used to organize behavioral acts traits are the behaviors i I danced in front of a crowd and I talked to a group of people I didn t know are both traits of extraversion but I danced in front of a crowd representatives the idea of extroversion in a more typical fashion than the later ii Traits connect to functionally similar behaviors 1 Traits are convenient fictions devised by people to categorize and make sense of the diversity of human behavior and experience a Traits don t exist in any objective sense they re fictions people use to make sense of social life 2 Traits do not exist outside the mind of the observer and therefor that can have no casual influence through social interaction and discourse people construct meanings for trait terms a b Jane smiled but her smile has nothing to do with her trait of friendliness her smile was because of something in the environment Jane is friendly but that means nothing outside of my saying it you may not think Jane is friendly you make think Frank is however I think frank is mean i Traits are useful in everyday cognition c Contemporary personality psychologists i View traits as dispositions that have some influence on behaviors though the influences are complex and exist in interaction with situational factors ii Traits are more than just descriptive behavioral categories but do line up with some predictable behaviors iii Traits reflect complex differences in the structure and function of an individuals brain but they are also language categories with socially constructed meaning 3 What are L data Q data and T data Table 4 2 page 115 a Raymond B Cattell distinguished three different sources to obtain information on peoples common traits traits that express individual differences among many different people i L data Pg 115 behaviors such as ratings of the persons behavior made by peers or spouse life data information pertaining to a persons real life 1 Information from observers about an individual in their natural settings leading a more or less normal life 2 Pubic records such as college transcripts personal accounts such as diaries trait ratings of a person made by others a Example teacher evaluations on report cards ii Q data Pg 115 self ratings and scores on self report personality questionnaires questionnaire data self report data on questionnaires such as Information derived from observations and evaluations of ones own self xample trait measures of extraversion neuroticism and 1 2 E openness to experiences iii T data Pg 115 as in the laboratory test data observations of behavior under controlled conditions 1 Information that comes from the records of the controlled condition a Example experiments conducted to study behavior conformity that are done in a variety of controlled conditions 4 What is the purpose of a factor analysis What information does it provide a Factor analysis Pg 115 statistical procedure though which various items as on a self report questionnaire are correlated with each other to determine the empirical clustering of the items i Complex classification scheme for traits ii Allows the researcher to turn a large number of items variables into a set of smaller underlying dimensions called factors 5 What is the difference between surface and source traits a Surface traits Pg 115 found as clustering s of related behaviors Cattell s term for the many readily observable traits that can be i Related elements of behavior that cluster together when empirically measured and intercorrelated
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