Lecture 2 - Personality Traits Personality traits are a "dimension of personality used to categorize people according to the degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic" (Burger, 1997) This definition of traits is based on two assumptions: o Personality characteristics are relatively stable over time o Traits show stability across situations; these may alter on different occasions, but the assumption is based on the idea that there is an internal consistency in the ways in which individuals behave. Mischel (1999) suggests that traits are "conditional probability of a category of behaviors in a category of contexts". Lexical approaches to personality and lexical hypothesis The lexical hypothesis, suggested by Galton (1984), suggests that it is the individual differences between people that are important that become encoded as single terms. Two specific criteria are added to the lexical hypothesis: - Frequency of use is also assumed to correspond with importance " Low frequency "upstanding" vs. higher frequency honest" - The number of words in a language that refer to each trait will be related to how important that trait is in describing human personality. Gordon Allport > he was one of the first to begin to research lexical approaches to personality. He did so by studying and identifying 18000 words, of which 45000 described personality traits (Allport & Odbert, 1936) Allport whenever showing and explaining his study kept on highlighting that there are limitations that come within the trait approach - Allport made the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches to the study of personality; he felt both approaches allow unique insights to the theory, however, he felt that the nomothetic approach allows the identification of common personality traits. (Allport, 1961) o However, to increase the utility of common traits he coined the term personal disposition " This represents the unique characteristics of the individual. o Traits were then further classified into: · Cardinal > these are single traits that may dominate an individual's personality and heavily influence their behavior. · An example can be someone with the cardinal trait of competitiveness which permeates in all of their life's aspects; getting them to thrive for success in everything they do. · Central -> these are the five to ten traits to describe an individual's personality based on Allport's opinion " Secondary -> these are more concerned with an individual's preference and are not a core constituent of their personality. These may only become apparent in particular situations
Raymond Cattell and the factor analytic approach Cattell (1965) defined personality as: being the characteristics of the individual that allow prediction of how they will behave in any given situation. Traits are conceptualized as being stable and long-lasting building blocks of personality. - Cattell makes distinctions between traits, starting from: · Constitutional traits -> these are the genetically determined traits (nature) · Environmental-mold traits -> these are the traits that are environmentally induced (nurture) - These distinctions between the two and especially the way that the influence an individual was highly studies by Cattell;