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Personality

The understanding of Personality can have limits. You can’t understand or predict how people will act in social situations. Although the following are not personality traits, stereotypes we have of individuals can make it difficult to predict individual behaviors. Who would you like to have as a leader of your nation?

• A vegetarian

• An alcoholic

• A womanizer

On a related topic, Are pit bulls “bad”? Are they innately aggressive?

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The Trait Perspective The trait approach to personality focuses primarily on individual differences. Traits are relatively stable dispositions to behave in a particular and consistent across situations, people and time.

Psychological Science, Fifth Edition

Copyright © 2015 W. W. Norton & Company

The Five Factor Model (5 dimensions of personality)

• Openness to experience

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism

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The Big Five (Five Factor Model), Table 11.4, p. 426

Openness to experience: The extent to which people are imaginative and open to new experiences as opposed to insensitive and reluctant to have new experiences.

• People often high in openness to experience are creative and often get along with people from cultures different from their own.

Conscientiousness: The extent to which people are neat, self-disciplined, and organized as opposed to sloppy, lacking self-discipline, and disorganized.

• People high in conscientiousness tend to get things done to get things done on time; they do well in fields requiring high levels of neatness and organization.

Extraversion: The extent to which people are outgoing and impulsive as opposed to reserved and cautious.

• People high in this dimension often make friends more easily and tend to be successful in fields requiring lots of contact with strangers (eg. sales).

Agreeableness: The extent to which people are cooperative, trusting and easy to get along with as opposed to uncooperative, suspicious, and difficult.

• People high in agreeableness tend to have few problems getting along with others.

Neuroticism (emotional stability): The extent to which people are calm, composed, and stable as opposed to nervous, anxious and unstable.

• People low in neuroticism are able to cope with high levels of stress better than persons low in neuroticism.

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The Five Factor Model of Personality

Factor Low High down-to-earth imaginative conventional, uncreative original, creative prefers routine prefers variety “conservative” “liberal”

Openness to Experience

uncurious curious lazy hardworking aimless ambitious

Conscientiousness

quitting disorganized late

persevering organized punctual

reserved affectionate loner joiner quiet talkative

Extraversion

unfeeling passionate antagonistic acquiescent Agreeableness

ruthless softhearted suspicious

stingy critical irritable

trusting generous lenient good-natured

calm worrying even tempered, unemotional temperamental, emotional

Neuroticism

hardy vulnerable

Traits: Introversion/Extraversion

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Introversion / Extraversion: The degree to which a person directs their energy outward toward the environment or inward towards the self.

• Introverts tend to be quiet and keep to themselves, socially inhibited, serious, cautious.

• Extroverts tend to be sociable and outgoing, active, willing to take risks. Individual differences in Introversion and extraversion arise from biological differences. Introverts require less cortical stimulation and arousal than extroverts to operate efficiently and perform at optimal levels (also see arousal motivation in Chapter 8: Motivation and Emotion). There appears to be a strong genetic component for extraversion.

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For example, when comparing extraverts with introverts, the average introverted person

• tends to need less barbecue sauce to like a hamburger,

• is more sensitive to lemon juice,

• prefers a lower volume of music to feel comfortable, etc.

• prefers low traffic areas to study (instead of high traffic areas) in the library

• When assigned to a task, extraverts perform at an initial high level and gradually declines. Introverts will perform at a consistently at a moderate level.

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Traits: Neuroticism (stable versus unstable) Stable (emotionally) / Instable (Neurotic): The degree to which a person can become emotionally unstable or stable.

• Neurotic people tend to be moody, restless, tense, depressed, worrisome and anxious, lower self-esteem. They are very reactive and have a “hair-trigger” and are more likely to need clinical attention.

• Stable people tend to be calm, relaxed, even-tempered and emotionally stable, higher self-esteem.

There appears to be a strong genetic component for neuroticism.

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Changes in Traits over the Lifespan

As we grow older, some traits decline, are stable or increase Slight Declines

• Neuroticism Stable Traits:

• Introversion/extraversion

• Openness to Experience Increases

• Agreeableness

• Conscientiousness

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The Big Five Dimensions of Personality The five-factor model of personality tends to be a good description of personality.

• The five-factor model tends to strike the balance between too few traits and too many traits that overlap as revealed by a statistical procedure called a factor analysis.

• A large number of studies using different techniques point to these five factors.

• These five personality factors show up in a wide variety of participants that include children, adults in different cultures (which suggest that these personality factors are universal).

The five-factor model is relatively good at predicting behavior.

• Those who rate high on extraversion tend to choose to spend a lot of time with lots of people and look people in the eye than introverts (page 475, SGW).

• People who rate high in consciousness generally perform well at work and tend to live longer compared to those who rate low (page 475, SGW).

• People low on conscientiousness and low on agreeableness are more likely than average to be juvenile delinquents (page 475, SGW).

The big five personality traits tend to be relatively stable across the lifetime (especially after adolescence).

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Weaknesses of the Trait Perspective

• Traits simply label general predisposition. Trait theories don't really explain personality, or attempt to explain how or why individual differences develop.

• Trait approaches fail to address basic motives that drive people and the role of unconscious thought processes, beliefs about the self or how people develop over the lifespan.

• Traits are poor predictors of behavior in specific situations. However, it tends to predict how the person will behave “on the average”. o Supporters of the trait perspective argue that personality traits have a

stronger influence in situations that are not socially structured, more familiar, informal or private.

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Personality Personality: An individual’s unique and relative consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. A person’s characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors (page 409).

Who we are interacts with our environment

Personality + social environment interact affects our

• Central versus secondary traits are better predictors

• Traits predict “on the average”, not specific instances

• Strong situations (the social environment)

versus weak situations (the social environment),

have a larger influence on

thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Thoughts

Feelings

Behavior

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