PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER 2

Transcription

1 PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER 2 o Certainly people decorate their rooms to impress others or to create certain images and there was a lot of that going around our first year but at the heart of it all, to what extent does an individual s personality manifest itself in the design and content of a dorm room? Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli, and Morris (2002) asked this very question in a systematic way. They reasoned that when people live in an environment they leave behavioral residue behind. Such physical traces left behind by everyday actions are hints or cues to the personality of the occupant (Gosling et al., 2002). For example, specific items may be left behind either carelessly, like a snowboard that wasn t put away properly, or on purpose to convey a certain image (e.g., Hey, I m cool, I m edgy, I m a snowboarder! ). Items have personal meaning to them or reinforce their own self-views (e.g., I m a nature lover ). ways we express personalities and leave, perhaps inadvertently, cues for observers In this study, anywhere from 1 to 6 observers, ordinary folk with no particular training, visited actual rooms of 83 college student volunteers. EXPERIMENT: The researchers covered names and any photos in the rooms so that observers would not know for sure the race or gender of the occupant. The observers then glanced around the rooms and made ratings on a 7-point scale of the extent to which they thought each of 44 descriptions applied to the occupant of the room. Some of the descriptions included: (Anxious, easily upset, etc.) RESULT: a great amount of consensus. That is, observers readily agreed on what they thought an occupant was like. Even more amazing, observers were often very accurate in guessing the personality of the occupants. (neatness=conscientious, books=open, creative) Gosling repeated the same study on office spaces and got pretty much the same results, but rooms were more accurate because you can creatively express yourself In your room there are many ways of describing human personality: charming, sociable, flirty, outgoing, conservative, daring, conventional, uncreative, disorganized, careless, extraverted, enthusiastic, critical, quarrelsome, anxious, easily upset, and some 17,937 others (Allport & Odbert, 1936)! Such descriptors of personality are called traits. Ten item personality inventory (TIPI)- you have to look at behavioural characteristics and determine if the characteristics describe you or NOT (agree/disagree) What is a personality trait? Traits describe a person s typical style of thinking, feeling, and acting in different kinds of situations and at different times Traits describe a person s typical style of thinking, feeling, and acting in different kinds of situations and at different times (McCrae & Costa, 1997b). Although we might act differently in specific situations (e.g., a job interview compared to hanging out with a close friend), or at different times (e.g., think of what you were like in high school compared to now),

2 some commonalities and consistencies in your reactions (Allport, 1927). generally persistent ways of acting and reacting are captured by the concept of traits temporary states (such as emotions), attitudes (liberal, conservative), and physical attributes (short, muscular) are not considered personality traits. Traits are characterized from (LOW TO HIGH) This means that people who score high on a particular trait, say talkativeness, are more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger than a person who is low on talkativeness Because traits cannot be directly measured in the same way that, say, height and weight can, psychologists think of traits as hypothetical concepts. Assume traits exist even though we can t see them. purely descriptive summaries of behavior without thinking about where they came from or why a person acts that way traits occur due to internal, causal properties ( Well, of course Mario is getting along with everybody; he s a sociable person ) and view a trait as a capacity that is present even when the trait is not being directly expressed. TWO APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY TRAITS idiographic approach, the goal is to understand the personality of a single individual with all of his or her quirks or idiosyncrasies and characteristics that make them unique. What a single individual thinks is important to know about him or her and seeks to answer the question, What unique combination of traits best describes this person? By using techniques of good science such as striving for objectivity and minimizing biases, psychologists are able to use case studies and other idiographic methods to study individual personalities (for example, see the Swann, Pelham, & Krull, 1989, and Pelham, 1993 experiments on self-concept). In the nomothetic approach, the goal is to discover universals concepts that can apply to everyone by identifying traits that can describe all people or that can be applied to any person. The Great Nomothetic Search for Human UniversalsThe right number of trait terms is a source of some debate, as we will soon see. Just as the practice of medicine is essentially idiographic doctors must diagnose and treat their individual patients their methods of diagnosis and standards for treatment are based on solid nomothetic sciences of biochemistry, bacteriology, and so on. That is, the idiographic and nomothetic overlap and both contribute to a complete understanding of human personality Allport - individuality cannot be studied by science Hans Eysenck took up Allport s challenge and found a way that one could study both the general (nomothetic) and the specific (idiographic) within a single person and develop a theory of personality from there (Eysenck, 1998). Human personality is organized into a hierarchy, which we can think of as a pyramid (see Figure 2.2). This pyramid categorizes human personality from the most general level at the top to the most specific level at the bottom. General means a trait is universal or applicable to other people, whereas specific means a trait is more unique to a single individual. bottom level of the pyramid are specific behaviors including responses, acts, cognitions, or reactions to everyday life Because these reactions are observed only once, they may or may not be related to one s personality.

3 However, if the same reaction occurs many times then we might say that the response has become a habit or a typical way of responding. If certain habits occur over time and across situations, then we might say the person is exhibiting a personality trait. Further, if we notice that certain traits tend to occur together in people then we can say that we ve identified a personality type, a syndrome (Cattell, 1946), a superfactor, or an observed constellation of traits to use Eysenck s words (Eysenck, 1998, p. 36). lower we go on the pyramid the more idiosyncratic our reactions are. Similarly, the higher we go on the pyramid, the more similar we become to people who may be of a similar personality type. Lakeisha spent Thursday night with her hall-mates watching TV in the lounge. Does this make Lakeisha an extrovert? Lakeisha regularly says Hi! to people she passes on campus and often meets up with friends for lunch. We might judge that she has the habit of being friendly toward others or seeking the company of others. If she exhibited these habits over time and across different situations (e.g., at home, school, a summer internship), then we might say that Lakeisha shows the trait of sociability. This example started by studying a single individual Lakeisha and ended by drawing conclusions about groups of people, Eysenck cautions that our conclusions must be based experimentally to build a valid scientific theory. STUDYING INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITIES: The Idiographic Approach What kind of person are you? List the traits that best describe yourself. Such a description, where the psychologist focuses on understanding a specific person and where that person chooses which traits are important to him or her, is an example of the idiographic approach to personality. Using this approach, Allport identified three different kinds of traits: central traits, secondary traits, and cardinal traits (Allport, 1937). Central traits are traits that are of major importance in understanding the person. They are the 5 or 10 traits that people who know you might mention in your letter of recommendation or to someone who doesn t know you when describing you. Secondary traits are traits of lesser importance, less consistently displayed or seldom displayed or only slightly revealed so that only a very close friend might notice them (e.g., shy with new people, leader like at times ). Finally, an unusual person may have one and only one trait that describes him or her. Such single traits that completely dominate a personality are called cardinal traits-. are extremely influential that practically every aspect of a person s life is touched by this ruling passion or master sentiment

4 o Just think of Don Juan, Don Quixote, Oscar the Grouch, or any of Snow White s seven little friends! Mother Teresa, Hitler, etc. IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH APPLIED : The CASE OF JENNY Around 1946 Allport had the unique opportunity to apply the idiographic approach to a real person: Jenny (Allport, 1965; Anonymous, 1946). Jenny Gove Masterson was a pseudonym for a woman who wrote a detailed correspondence to two friends over a period of 10 years. Allport edited and published these letters with psychological commentary (Allport, 1965). Jenny was born in Ireland in 1868 and as a young woman moved to the United States with her husband. Soon, they had a baby and, tragically, her husband passed away leaving Jenny a single mother to fend for herself and baby Ross far away from her native country. To say that Ross became the center of his mother s life was an understatement, and this led to tension between mother and son when Ross was an adult. Jenny wrote to Ross s college roommate, Glenn, and his wife, Isabel, some 10 years after Ross s college years, about the time when their relationship was the most strained. Jenny s personality came out naturally in the letters she wrote. By analyzing her letters, might we be able to identify the traits that made Jenny a unique person? After editing, Allport enlisted the aid of 36 people who read the letters and described Jenny s traits. They used 198 trait terms, which Allport then arranged in clusters of related words: quarrelsome-suspicious, self-centered, independent-autonomous, dramatic-intense, aestheticartistic, aggressive, cynical-morbid, sentimental, and some 13 that remained unclassified FINDING UNIVERSALS: THE NOMOTHETIC APPROACH psychologists who follow the nomothetic approach seek to identify the basic traits that make up the human personality Some people might organize their individual tracks into playlists by artist, album, genre (e.g., rock, blues, classical), purpose (e.g., working out, driving, studying, relaxing, partying), mood (e.g., angry, melancholy, happy), or even a combination of these. The best way to keep your collection organized depends on your purpose. The same logic applies to traits Researchers typically use a combination of the theoretical approach, the lexical approach, and the measurement approach then use techniques such as factor analysis, to verify and validate that they have indeed found important traits THEORETICAL APPROACH start with a theory or even common wisdom about human personality theoretical approach Niccolò Machiavelli-Two researchers were so taken by his book of advice to the prince of Florence, The Prince (Machiavelli, 1532/1940), that they devised a personality scale to measure Machiavellianism, or manipulativeness Other times, psychologists start with a theory. Carl Jung hypothesized that people differ in how they evaluate information: either rationally, what he called the thinking function, or through emotions. Jung (1921) spoke of at least two types of personality, feeling types and thinking types.

5 Sigmund Freud (1915/2000) had a theory that if a child had problems with weaning or toilet training this would affect later adult personality. oral personality who is overly dependent or anal personality who is incredibly organized and uptight. These are examples of how psychologists use theory to identify meaningful traits. LEXICAL APPROACH The lexical approach to personality traits explores a particular language and identifies the number of synonyms that describe personality, also looks for commonalities across languages if a concept is important to speakers of a language, then that concept will be encoded in their language in multiple ways. Presumably describing what your loved ones and neighbors are like is very relevant and useful, so crucial individual differences have become encoded in language (Allport, 1937). personality trait is found across many different languages, such a trait may qualify as a human universal. MEASUREMENT APPROACH personality psychologists have been working separately on discovering important aspects of personality and trying to measure personality (Hogan, 1996), called the measurement approach. For a while it seemed that each researcher devised an original questionnaire to measure what he or she deemed were the most important personality traits (John et al., 2008). The field almost seemed to care more about how accurate their measurements were than about what they were actually measuring (Hogan, 1996)! YOU NEED SOME systematic method of identifying and classifying trait terms that unified them into a coherent body USE factor analysis to see if the various trait terms cluster together in some way. o For example, Raymond Cattell started with the 4,504 trait terms identified by Allport and Odbert (1936). He reduced these terms to 160 by eliminating similarities in the list. Then he added all traits that had been identified by other psychologists in previous research. Finally, he used an early and crude form of factor analysis and discovered 16 factors (Cattell, 1946) that formed the basis of his questionnaire: The 16 Personality Factors (16PF; Cattell didn t realize that the 5 factors that are so widely accepted today were staring him right in the face in his own data (Digman, 1996). Factor analysis is a statistical technique that mathematically identifies a meaningful underlying structure among a set of variables. Suppose some questions are related to each other but not to other questions; then we can say that we have identified a unique factor in participants responses to these questions. Depending on what we re studying say personality or intelligence it s possible to identify a number of factors that underlie participants responses. How do we know that some questions go together? We look at the correlations among all of the questions in our data. Recall that correlations (symbolized by r) represent the strength of a relationship between two variables, with larger numbers indicating that the two variables are

6 highly related. The sign of the r tells us that the two variables are either directly related (positive) or inversely related (negative). The pattern of correlations will tell us which variables go together or correlate with each other and which variables don t seem to fit. The result of all this combining and weighting of participants responses is the formation of factors Each factor can explain a certain amount of variation, called variance, in answers between participants. This is called the eigenvalue of the factor. From eigenvalues, we calculate factor loadings, which is an estimate of how strongly each question fits into a given factor. We can interpret factor loadings much like correlations, with higher numbers indicating a stronger correlation between the item and the factor and the positive or negative sign indicating the direction of the relationship. factor is defined by the questions with the highest factor loadings. Researchers look at the questions and try to identify what underlying concept the questions are all getting at. When we do a factor analysis, the first factor that emerges generally accounts for the greatest amount of variation in the data. But because this is mathematically derived rather than inspired by our actual questions, there is no guarantee that the factor makes any sense. At this stage a researcher might move around the factors to find which questions go together the best. This is called rotating the factors and allows us to understand the factors better (kind of like rotating a map to match the direction you are facing to better see where you re going). This doesn t change the number of factors, nor does it change the relationship among the factors, but it does change which questions cluster together. By rotating the factors and there are a number of mathematical ways of doing this the combining and weighting of questions that make up that factor shift slightly so that the researcher is better able to see what the underlying factor is. How do we know how many factors best explain the data? Researchers may stop when a new factor doesn t add much, often determined mathematically (e.g., by accepting all eigenvalues greater than 1) or graphically. researchers take a pragmatic approach and keep only the few factors that are actually interpretable. Later factors may capture only measurement error or response bias instead of a meaningful underlying concept. Once the right numbers have been identified, the researcher must then name the factors. The way to do this is to look at the items that fall together on each factor and see what concept they all appear to be getting at. Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) designed the Short Test of Musical Preferences, called the STOMP, in which participants rated how much they liked each of 14 musical genres. The researchers then used factor analysis to see if there was some underlying construct that could explain similarities and differences in participants musical tastes. Can you think of an adequate name for each of the factors?

7 - factor analysis is a useful, but limited statistical method and is only as good as the researcher behind it. - From choosing which questions to ask (and submit to factor analysis), to determining the right number of factors, to interpreting the factors, factor analysis has its shortcomings (Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum, & Strahan, 1999). THE GREAT NOMOTHETIC SEARCH FOR UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF PERSONALITY - Allport and Odbert conducted a lexical analysis and uncovered 4,504 trait terms. From this list of trait terms, Cattell, using factor analysis, identified 16 factors not realizing the import of only 5 of his factors (Cattell, 1946; Cattell et al., 1970). - Others, building on Cattell s statistical work, identified a solution of 5 remarkably similar factors- BIG FIVE o Each of the Big Five factors describes personality at a high level of abstraction - All personality tests were using the five factors, and the five factor personality traits were rooted in BIOLOGY THREE SUPERFACTORS- EYESNECK - Psychologist Hans Eysenck spent his lifetime conducting experiments to identify and describe - key differences between people. So convinced was he that there were fundamental constitutional - differences between people that he first described these personality types in terms of physiological or biological differences between people (Eysenck, 1998). - More recent research has proved that Eysenck had the general principle right: His early twin studies support his claim for genetic differences in the three factors, even as the exact physiological mechanisms were unknown to scientists at the time (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985) - He identified three broad dimensions of personality: Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. (PEN MODEL of personality)- three superfactors - Eysenck also identified more specific, what he called narrow traits, associated with each of these factors (see Table 2.4). Together, - Psychoticism, describes how tough-minded or antisocial people are. Impulsivity or disinhibition versus constraint or as undercontrolled versus overcontrolled

8 - People who are high in Psychoticism tend to be selfish and antisocial The narrow traits associated with Psychoticism are aggressive, cold, egocentric, impersonal, impulsive, antisocial, lacking empathy, creative, and tough-minded, low agreeableness and low conscientiousness - The second factor is Extraversion - describes how outgoing people are, both to the social and the physical environments. The narrow traits associated with extraversion are sociable, lively, active, assertive, sensation-seeking, carefree, dominant, surgent, and venturesome - In contrast to introverts, extraverts tend to be outgoing and experience many positive feelings such as happiness and joy - Neuroticism, refers to negative emotionality and emotional reactivity. The narrow traits associated with Neuroticism are anxious, depressed, guilt feelings, low self-esteem, - tense, irrational, shy, moody, and emotional - People high in Neuroticism tend to be easily upset and vulnerable to negative emotions. In contrast, those low in this trait are even-tempered, calm, relaxed, carefree, unworried, somewhat unemotional, and recover quickly after an upsetting experience. - prominence of his theory has been eclipsed by the explosion of research on the five-factor model (John et al., 2008). One problem with Eysenck s theory is that many personality psychologists feel that important traits are missing. The big five and the five factor model - The five factors that appear to be our best candidates for universal traits are Neuroticism, - Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness - Oliver John and his colleagues (John, 1990, p. 96; John et al., 2008, p. 139) suggested that we think of the five factors using multiple words: o N: Neuroticism, Negative Affectivity, Nervousness (Factor IV) o E: Extraversion, Energy, Enthusiasm (Factor I)

9 o O: Openness, Originality, Open-mindedness (Factor V) o A: Agreeableness, Altruism, Affection (Factor II) o C: Conscientiousness, Control, Constraint (Factor III) - Neuroticism, in contrast to Emotional Stability, refers to how well a person adjusts to the - slings and arrows of daily life. It refers to emotionality, psychological distress, and reactivity. - For example, does George worry a lot about what people think of him? Does Ally fall apart under stress? George and Ally would be considered high in Neuroticism. Does Yang stay calm, - cool, and collected under pressure? Does James keep his feelings under control? Yang and James are low in Neuroticism, and would be considered high in Emotional Stability. - People low in Neuroticism are even-tempered, calm, relaxed, and unruffled (McCrae & John, 1992). - According to the NEO-PI-R, each of the five factors are made up of six subscales called facets. If we think of Neuroticism as the superfactor, then the facets or narrow traits that - make up Neuroticism are anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness (immoderation), and vulnerability to stress - People who are high in Neuroticism show poorer coping skills in stressful situations, poorer health, and are likely to experience burnout and job changes (John et al., 2008). - prone to negative emotions such as fear, sadness, embarrassment, anger, guilt, and disgust - Emotionally stable people show more commitment to work and great satisfaction with their personal relationships (John et al., 2008). - high on impulsivity an important facet of Neuroticism spent more time on the phone, made more cell phone calls in a day, and reported being more dependent on their cell phones than people who were low in impulsiveness - Extraversion, is contrasted with Introversion and describes how one surges or energetically engages with the social world. - Extraverted people just like other people. They are assertive, active, talkative, and cheerful, enjoy large groups and gatherings, and enjoy excitement - The factor of Extraversion is made up of the facets of warmth (friendliness), gregarious- - ness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, and positive emotions - Extraversion also refers to energetically seeking out and interacting with others - Extraversion is agreement with the item I am a cheerful, high spirited person - Keep in mind that an energetic, optimistic person who shows enthusiasm and cheerfulness - is not necessarily low in anxiety or depression. Anxiety and depression are related to Neuroti- - cism (McCrae & John, 1992). - Extraverts are likely to hold leadership positions in groups, have many friends and a greater number of sexual partners, and are more likely to be selected as foreperson of a jury than are Introverts. - Introverts are more likely to experience poorer relationships with parents and peers (John et al., 2008). - OPENNESS - includes the facets of fantasy (imagination), aesthetics (artistic interests), feelings (emotionality), actions (adventurousness), ideas (intellect), and values (psychological liberalism; - Does Jim have a very active imagination? Does Ellen get completely absorbed in music she is listening to? Jim and Ellen are high in openness. Is Rick pretty well set in his ways? Is Catherine against controversial campus speakers?

10 - People high in Openness tend to be imaginative and creative, whereas people low in openness tend to be more conventional, practical, and down-to-earth. - People high in Openness tend to go further with their education, to succeed in creative jobs, and to create distinctive work and home environments (John et al., 2008). - Openness INDICATOR: is the experience of chills or goosebumps in response to an aesthetic experience (McCrae, 2007). In sum, a person high in Openness is seen as - Openness refers to an appreciation of the life of the mind in such things as ideas, thoughts, fantasies, art, and beauty, and is not the same as intelligence. - Openness includes an appreciation of a wide range of feelings in contrast to touchiness or defensiveness, which is part of Neuroticism (McCrae, 1990). Openness refers to an openness to ideas and new things (NOT PEOPLE = extroversion) - Agreeableness refers to the quality of interpersonal relations that is, how much a person - feels for and gets along with others; whether he or she seeks out such enjoyment, as would an extravert, or does not, as would an introvert. - prosocial or communal orientation to others and is contrasted with antagonism or competitiveness ( - low in Agreeableness show hostility, self-centeredness, spitefulness, indifference, and even jealousy toward others - includes the facets of trust (of others), straightforwardness (honesty or morality as opposed to manipulativeness), altruism, compliance (cooperation), modesty, and tender-mindedness - Does Ramiro believe that most people are basically well intentioned? Does Betty have great empathy for people in need? Ramiro and Betty would be high in Agreeableness, showing trust in and sympathy for other people, a concern for social harmony, and getting along with others. - people low in Agreeableness distrust the motives of others and are on the lookout for others who might be trying to take advantage of them. - For example, does Jasmine bully or flatter people into getting them to do what she wants? Does Darnell believe that most people will take advantage of you if you let them? Jasmine and Darnell are low in Agreeableness. - Some measure of Disagreeableness might be useful in situations requiring tough judgments - Generally, people high in Agreeableness show better performance in work groups than do those low in Agreeableness - low in Agreeableness are often at risk for cardiovascular disease, juvenile delinquency, and interpersonal problems - Conscientiousness refers to an individual s degree of organization, both physical organization, such as the organization of one s office, or mental organization, as in planning ahead and having goals to be achieved. - Conscientiousness also includes how we regulate our own impulses such as thinking before acting, delaying gratification, or following norms and rules - For example, does Brittany have separate files for each of her classes? Does Dimitri put away his video games after he plays with them? If so, Brittany and Dimitri are displaying aspects of Conscientiousness. - Charlie who is not dependable and who even cheats at solitaire! Or Lonette, who often does things on the - spur of the moment without thinking of the consequences. - Both of these people are low in Conscientiousness and might be expected to place short-term pleasures ahead of long-term accomplishments.

11 - Conscientiousness includes the facets of competence (self-efficacy), order, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline, and deliberation (cautiousness; see Table people high in Conscientiousness are rated by their peers and even their spouses as well organized, neat, thorough, and diligent - They also have higher grade point averages and better on-the-job performance - People low in Conscientiousness are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol and other drugs, show attention - deficit disorder, have a poor diet, and not exercise enough - people high in Conscientiousness are more likely to adhere to doctor s orders, and when compared to those low in Conscientiousness live longer (John et al., 2008)! - high in Conscientiousness; high levels of this trait may also lead to annoying habits such as fastidiousness, compulsive neatness, or workaholic behavior - Openness, look slightly different depending on the method used to identify them. When - researchers start with the lexical approach, they get the Big Five of Surgency (Extraversion), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Culture - Generally, the phrase the Big Five refers to this lexical solution. The Big Five factors are identified by Roman numerals that signify the frequency of the factor words in the lexicon. - numbers are less memorable than mnemonics and so the OCEAN labeling has caught on more, especially among students of personality psychology - Costa and McCrae (1976), using factor analysis, discovered three factors: Anxiety-Adjustment (now called Neuroticism), Introversion-Extraversion, and Openness to experience.--> created the five factor model - Today, the five factors of the five-factor model Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness are measured using the revised version of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992). This ordering of the factors, incidentally, reflects the amount of variance, from largest to smallest, accounted for by each of the five factors - One difference is the name of the individual factors. What the Big Five calls Emotional Stability the FFM calls Neuroticism. Both terms refer to the same dimension; the only difference is in direction, or which end of the pole researchers wish to emphasize. - Second, the Big Five Culture factor is a narrower view of the FFM factor Openness, which refers to openness to aesthetic or cultural tastes, a wide range of emotions, and a need for variety, and is not limited to creativity and intellectual interests. both the Big Five and FFM solutions agree that creativity, imagination, and originality are aspects of this factor - the Big Five describes personality without attempting to explain where these attributes come from (i.e., they are in our language so they must be important). - FFM theorizes, much in the tradition of Eysenck, that the five factors are biological traits - Big Five is grounded in adjectives, it has been replicated cross-culturally in many different languages. The NEO-PI-R, because it uses sentences, may be more dependent on language and culture and may lose something in the translation - Big Five (using adjectival measures) and the FFM (using the NEO-PI-R questionnaire) yield similar results ONE FACTOR SOLUTION

12 - general personality factor or GPF -The GPF is hypothesized to explain all of human personality in much the same way that g represents a general factor of intelligence underlying all mental abilities GPF lies at the very top of a hierarchy of personality traits (see Figure 2.3). - What exactly is the GPF? According to Musek (2007) this factor includes all the positive aspects of the five factors: Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Intellect. Further, the GPF encompasses the two factors of Alpha (the emotional stability to get along with others) and Beta (the flexibility to deal with change, challenges, and demands) (Musek, 2007). - People who are high in GPF are altruistic, sociable, able to handle stress, relaxed, open to experience, dependable, and task-focused (Rushton & Irwing, 2008). - Rushton and his colleagues argued that these aspects of personality have been evolutionarily hard-wired as they are necessary for survival - Although this GPF sounds an awful lot like a general social desirability factor or a conformity factor, Musek (2007) argued that the pattern of results how this GPF correlates with other personality measures rules out both of these alternative explanations - HEXACO (or six-factor) o The six factors are Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. o Five of the factors are very similar to their five-factor counterparts; the major difference is the addition of Honesty-Humility as a separate factor (Ashton & Lee, 2005). - HONESTY-HUMILITY->might be best thought of as a genuineness or trustworthiness factor in - English, includes the facets of sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty as contrasted with arrogance and egotism - Sounds similar to Agreeableness, the difference has to do with manipulation and power. For example, a person high in Agreeableness is willing to help another person even when it might be against his or her own self-interest (i.e., altruism). - Someone high in Honesty-Humility would not take advantage of another person, especially if that person is disadvantaged in some way (Lee & Ashton, 2004).

13 - sixth factor is just a variation of Agreeableness tapping more introverted aspects of Agreeableness, whereas the standard facets of Agreeableness (trust, straightforwardness, altruism, cooperation, modesty, sympathy) tap the more extroverted aspects of getting along with others. They believed that the six-factor model is redundant with the five-factor model and not an improvement on it. - seven-factor solution o very similar to the Big Five, with the two additional factors of Negative Valence and Positive Valence. These additional evaluative dimensions are especially useful for understanding pathology THEN AND NOW: FOUR TEMPERAMENTS AND THE FIVE FACTORS - Empedocles proposed that all of nature is made up of the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. Hippocrates, building on this early work, further proposed that humans contained elements of the cosmos, therefore we have within our bodies the corresponding humors that affected our temperament or personality. - A predominance of blood and one was cheerful and happy; too much yellow bile and one was quick to anger. - Galen, around AD 150, who linked these temperaments to diseases and is credited with being the first to recognize a relationship between physiology and personality (see Table 2.11). - Because our personality is expressed in our facial expressions, body movements, and gestures, Gordon Allport showed illustrations of these four personality types to participants and found that most people were able to correctly guess which temperament went with each picture - Allport noted that the four temperaments fit easily into two-factor theories of personality, whether the two factors be speed and intensity of emotional arousal or activity level and a tendency to approach or withdraw from situations - Eysenck noticed that the four temperaments matched the dimensions of emotional/nonemotional and changeable/unchangeable, two important personality factors identified by the founder of modern experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt in the 19th century o these dimensions correspond to Neuroticism and Extraversion of both Eysenck and the current five-factor taxonomy (see Figure 2.5). - Today, while researchers have pretty much decided that the five factors Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness are the major dimensions of human personality; others have suggested that these five are aspects of a two-factor solution, alpha and beta - Factor alpha consists of Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness whereas - Extraversion and Openness to Experience make up beta - two factors represent the major tasks of personality development: socialization and actualization (although he didn t use these labels). - socialization he meant developing according to society s blueprint (p. 1250), including learning how to regulate one s own emotions and impulses, living up to expectations, and not being too defensive when interacting with others. By actualization he meant personality growth, or going out into the world being open to new experiences

14 - all humans, regardless of culture, may seek to categorize people as benign versus - harmful (socialized) and stimulating versus boring (actualized). - They have found evidence for this two-factor solution in Greek samples using Greek trait terms These two aspects of personality socialization and actualization are common themes in many theories of personality. - In fact, Wiggins (1968, p. 309) called Extraversion and Anxiety the Big Two because they appear in numerous observations, theories, tests, and experimental results of personality psychologists. - The two factors alpha and beta are very similar to the dimensions of emotional/nonemotional - and changeable/unchangeable first identified as part of the four temperaments of personality over - two millennia ago. Chapter SUMMARY In this chapter we defined traits as a person s typical style of thinking, feeling, and acting. Traits can be organized into a hierarchy, moving up from specific responses to habitual responses to traits to a psychological type. Psychologists have studied traits through the idiographic approach, describing a single individual with all of his or her idiosyncrasies, or through the nomothetic approach, describing any personality using a set number of key traits. Within the idiographic approach, individuals may have central and secondary traits or, rarely, a cardinal trait. Allport s analysis of Jenny illustrates the idiographic approach.within the nomothetic approach, psychologists might start with a theory to which traits are most useful for describing personality or conduct an analysis of the lexicon to see which descriptions of personality have been coded into language, by statistical and mathematical techniques, or by a combination of any of these approaches. Factor analysis, where numerous traits are reduced to a few meaningful factors, is often used to identify the underlying structure among a set of traits. Psychologists have debated the right number of factors claiming that 1 to 7 or 16 factors best account for personality. For example, Eysenck identified the three factors of Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. Others have claimed that a single general personality factor explains all of personality, whereas still others identify just two factors of socialization (alpha) and actualization (beta). Today there is tremendous consensus that the five factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (OCEAN) best account for human personality. Some overlap occurs between the theories of Eysenck and the five factors, which, amazingly enough, is similar to ancient conceptualizations of the four temperaments (air, earth, fire, and water).