PSYC 4520 1st Edition Lecture 12Outline of Last Lecture I. Object Relations Theory and Attachment TheoryA. The viewpoints of object relations theoryB. Attachment theory and attachment relationshipsC. Three types of parent-child relationshipsII. Adult Attachment StylesA. Relationship between an individual’s attachment style during childhood and adulthoodB. StudiesIII. Alternate Models and MeasurementA. New scalesB. Four-category model IV. Attachment Style and Romantic RelationshipsA. StudiesB. Relationships with each type of adultC. Effects of attachment styleOutline of Current Lecture I. Types vs. TraitsA. Typologies and traitsThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.II. The Trait ApproachA. Personality as trait dimensionsB. Special features of the trait approach III. Important Trait TheoristsA. Gordon AllportIV. Factor Analysis and the Search for the Structure of PersonalityA. How many basic traits exist?B. Factor analysisC. Sixteen Personality Factor QuestionnaireV. The Big FiveA. The five basic factors of personalityB. NeuroticismC. ExtraversionD. OpennessE. Agreeableness F. ConscientiousnessVI. Criticisms and Limitations of the Big Five ModelA. The first limitationB. The second limitationC. The third limitationD. The fourth limitationVII. Criticisms of the Trait ApproachA. Trait measures and test scores do not predict behavior wellB. Little evidence for cross-situational consistencyVIII. In Defense of Personality TraitsA. Measuring behaviorB. Identifying relevant traitsC. Importance of 10% of the varianceIX. Application: The Big Five in the WorkplaceA. What makes the best employee?Current LectureI. Types vs. TraitsA. Typologies and traitsi. Early attempts to identify/describe personality were typology systems. They worked to discover how many types of people there are and identifyeach person’s type.ii. Ancient Greeks divided people into 4 types: sanguine (happy), choleric (temperamental), melancholic (unhappy), and phlegmatic (apathetic). Another effort identified 3 types based on physique: endomorphic (obese), mesomorphic (muscular), and ectomorphic (fragile). The 3 types were said to differ in both personality and physical appearance.iii. Today, researchers do not use typologies. Firstly, a typology says that we each fit into one personality category. Secondly, it says that that all peoplein a category are alike; the behavior of people in one category is different from the behavior those in other categories. Thirdly, it says that everyone must fit in a category. Now, researchers use the trait approach.II. The Trait ApproachA. Personality as trait dimensionsi. Almost any personality characteristic (optimism, motivation, etc.) can be shown in the trait continuum, which illustrates important characteristics about the trait approach. Firstly, trait psychologists identify characteristicsthat can be represented along a continuum—a person can range from highly optimistic to not very optimistic. Secondly, trait psychologists arguethat we can place any person somewhere along the continuum—we are all more or less optimistic. Thirdly, if we placed the scores of a large groupof people at appropriate points along the continuum, the scores would benormally distributed (bell curve). Few people score extremely high/low; most of us are in the middle.ii. A trait is a dimension of personality used to classify people according to the extent to which they show a particular characteristic. The trait approach is built on 2 assumptions. Firstly, trait psychologists assume thatpersonality characteristics are stable over time: if someone is generally outgoing, we can label them as sociable. Of course, he/she may have dayswhen he/she does not wish to talk to anyone, but generally he/she will still be sociable. Even when personality changes as we age, these changesoccur gradually over a period of many years. Secondly, trait psychologists assume that personality characteristics are stable across situations. Aggressive people should exhibit aggression during both disagreements and when playing football. Again, we all act more aggressively in certain situations than in others, but the trait approach assumes that over different situations, a stable average degree of aggressiveness can be found. B. Special features of the trait approachi. Trait psychologists do not want to predict one person’s behavior in a situation; they want to predict how people who score within a certain segment of the trait continuum typically behave. For example, if a trait psychologist compares people who score high on a social anxiety test with those who score low, he or she may find that people high in social anxiety generally make less eye contact than those low in this trait.ii. Trait psychologists do not want to identify mechanisms underlying behavior. No psychotherapy schools have emerged from this approach.iii. Many characteristics examined by trait researchers (e.g. self-esteem and social anxiety) are relevant to the client’s well-being. But research onthese traits typically provides little information about how to change people who may be too high/too low on a dimension. Trait psychologists are more likely to be researchers than therapists.III. Important Trait TheoristsA. Gordon Allporti. Allport identified 2 strategies to examine personality: the nomothetic approach and the ideographic approach.ii. Nomothetic approach—This method assumes that all people can be described along a single dimension according to their level of, for example, assertiveness or anxiety. Each person is tested to see how his or her score for the trait compares with others’ scores. Allport referred to these traits that presumably apply to everyone as common traits. iii. Ideographic approach—Rather than forcing all people into preselected categories, this approach identifies the unique combination of traits that best accounts for a single individual’s personality. What are 5-10 words that YOU think best describe YOU? Allport called these 5-10 traits that best describe an individual’s personality central traits. Though the number of central traits varies from person to person, Allport said that occasionally, 1 trait will dominate a personality; these rare people can be described with a cardinal trait. To describe cardinal traits, Allport noted figures whose behavior was so dominated by 1 trait that the behavior