Select a public person, or character from TV, movies, etc, and write a psychological analysis using the “Big Five” personality traits, using evidence from the show to substantiate your claims, and demonstrate your understanding of this theory. The assignment should be at least 8 pages with at least 5 citations. Cha 6: Traits and Types: Objectives
• Discuss why it is important to measure or judge
traits.
• Discuss the four research methods used to connect
traits and behavior.
What Traits Are and Are Not
• Not total determinants of behavior
• Characterizes average behavior across time and
situations
• Can be used to predict behavior and important life
outcomes
• E.g. occupational success, relationships, health
Density Distributions of Behaviors and States
Four Ways to Study Personality
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Single-trait approach
Many-trait approach
Essential-trait approach
Typological approach
The Single-Trait Approach
• What do people with a certain personality trait do?
• Examine correlations between one trait and many
behaviors
The Single-Trait Approach: Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring
• It’s not necessarily better to be high or low.
• High self-monitors: look for cues in situations that signal how to
act and adjust behavior; more difficult to judge accurately; more
likely to be described as skilled in social techniques of imaginative
play, pretending, and humor; talkative, self-dramatizing
• Low self-monitors: are more consistent across situations, more
guided by inner personality; easier to judge more accurately; more
likely to be described as distrustful, perfectionist, touchy, and
irritable
• Actors scored high, and mental patients scored low.
• Correlates with several behaviors
Self-Monitoring Assessment and Discussion
a. Complete the Try For Yourself 6.1 activity on page 188, which is a self-monitoring scale.
Scores of 11 or higher indicate high self-monitoring; scores of 10 or lower indicate low
self-monitoring.
b. Then go on Canvas -> Discussions -> Self-Monitoring Assessment and Discussion
c. There, “reply” to my post with a brief discussion answering the following questions:
– Are you happy with the score you received? Why or why not? (Most people like the
way they score, whether it is high or low.)
– Do you usually think about how the situation you are in influences your behavior?
Give an example of a time when you were aware of this.
– Do you usually behave consistently across situations, possibly even when behaving
differently would be easier or more appropriate? Give an example of a time when you
were aware of this.
d. Share examples to the extent you feel comfortable.
The Single-Trait Approach: Narcissism
Narcissism
• Charming, make good first impression
• Manipulative, overbearing, entitled, vain, arrogant,
exhibitionistic
• May not feel good about themselves
• Many negative behaviors and attributes
• Why do they act like this?
• Is narcissism on the upswing?
• Not all of narcissism is bad.
• Try For Yourself 6.2 on pp. 193–195, NPI
Narcissism: An Illustration
What struck you about the client’s behavior? What
were some features of narcissism present?
How would you feel sitting across from this individual?
The Many-Trait Approach
• Who does that important behavior?
• Examine correlations between one behavior and
many traits
• Seek to explain the pattern of correlations
The Many-Trait Approach: California Q-Set
California Q-set
• 100 personality descriptions
• Sort into a forced choice, symmetrical, and normal
distribution
• Compare characteristics within an individual
Uncharacteristic
1
2
Neutral
3
4
5
Characteristic
6
7
8
9
The Many-Trait Approach: Talking
Talking
• Certainty words: related to being perceived as
intelligent, verbally fluent, turned to for advice,
ambitious, generous
The Many-Trait Approach: Political Beliefs (1)
Political beliefs
• Conservative: feeling guilty, anxious, and unable to
handle stress well as children; favor values of ingroup loyalty, authority and respect, and purity
• Liberal: resourceful, independent, self-reliant, and
confident as children
The Many-Trait Approach: Political Beliefs (2)
Political beliefs
• Authoritarian: uncooperative and inflexible, likely to
obey commands to harm others, fewer positive
emotions, crave strong leaders; attitudes may be
from attempts to lessen fear; likely to have had
parents high on authoritarianism
• Children who were anxious, misbehaved, and
hyperactive became adults who were discontented
with the economic and political system.
• Ideology is related to values.
The Essential-Trait Approach (1)
Which traits are the most important? Which traits
really matter?
Theoretical approaches to reducing the many to a few
• Murray: 20 needs
• Block: ego-control and ego-resiliency
The Essential-Trait Approach (2)
Factor analytic approaches to reducing the many to a
few
• Cattell: 16 essential traits
• Eysenck: extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism
• Tellegen: positive emotionality, negative
emotionality, constraint
The Essential-Trait Approach: The Big Five and Beyond (1)
Discovery of the Big Five
• Lexical hypothesis
• Look for traits that have the most words and are the
most universal
• Factor analysis
• Other personality tests tend to fit the Big Five
groups.
The Essential-Trait Approach: The Big Five and Beyond (2)
Implications of the Big Five
• Traits are orthogonal, or unrelated.
• Can bring order to many research findings
• More complex than they seem at first
o Not entirely orthogonal
o Higher-order factors: stability and plasticity
o General Factor of Personality and emotional
intelligence
o Lower-order factors or facets
o Labels are oversimplified.
The Essential-Trait Approach: Extraversion (1)
Eysenck’s view of extraversion
• React less to sensory stimuli (the lemon juice test)
• First you, tie a piece of thread around the middle of the Q-Tip.
Then, put one end of the Q-tip on your tongue for 20 seconds.
• Drop five drops of lemon juice on your tongue and swallow them.
• Put the other end of the Q-tip of your tongue for 20 seconds
• Hold up the thread. If the Q-tip hangs horizontally, the test
suggests that you are extroverted, because both Q-tip ends had
equal amounts of saliva. If the Q-tip hangs on a slant with the
lemon-side lower, the difference between the ends’ weights
means are introverted.
• (This isn’t actually a good measure of extraversion)
• Crave extreme levels of stimulation
The Essential-Trait Approach: Extraversion (2)
The Big Five view of extraversion
• Active, outspoken, dominant, forceful, adventurous,
spunky
• Cheerful, upbeat, optimistic
• Ambitious, hard-working, achievement-oriented
• Powerful influence on behavior
• Sensitive to rewards
• Experience positive emotions more
• Disadvantage: mate poaching, argumentative, need
to be in control, poor time management, at risk for
becoming overweight
The Essential-Trait Approach: Neuroticism
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AKA negative emotionality
Ineffective problem solving; strong negative reactions to
stress
Sensitive to social threats
Emotional instability, negative emotionality
Negatively correlated with happiness, well-being, and
physical health
Positively correlated with self-reports of unhappiness,
anxiety, and physical illness
General tendency toward psychopathology and
vulnerability
Associated with undesirable life outcomes
Neuroticism: Quick Example
What features of neuroticism were present in the clip?
Do you ever find yourself having similar self-doubts in
dating or relationships?
What do you think it would be link to sit across from
this person as a therapist?
The Essential-Trait Approach: Conscientiousness
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Dutiful, careful, rule-abiding, ambitious
Valuable employees
Careful and considerate drivers
Avoid risk and seek to protect themselves
Live longer
Downsides
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prone to feel guilty when they don’t live up to
expectations, satisfaction with life has a huge
decrease with unemployment, not popular or
creative
The Essential-Trait Approach: Agreeableness (1)
• Conformity, friendly compliance, likeability, warmth,
love
• Facets: compassion, morality, trust, affability,
modesty
• Cooperative and easy to get along with
• Rate others more positively, say nice things more
than mean things
• Smoke less
• Women tend to be more agreeable than men
The Essential-Trait Approach: Agreeableness (2)
• Life outcomes: involved in religious activities, good
sense of humor, psychologically well adjusted,
healthy heart, recover quickly from accidents or
illness, more peer acceptance and dating
satisfaction, large number of social interests,
unlikely to engage in criminal behavior
• Among children, related to less vulnerability of
being bullied
The Essential-Trait Approach: Openness to Experience/
Culture/Intellect (1)
• Most controversial trait
• Viewed by others as creative, imaginative, openminded, and clever
• Politically liberal
• More likely to use drugs and play a musical
instrument
• Appreciate nature, active in environmental causes
The Essential-Trait Approach: Openness to Experience/
Culture/Intellect (2)
• Ways to view this trait
o Approach to intellectual matters or basic intelligence
o Value of cultural matters
o Creativity and perceptiveness
• Less replicable across samples and cultures
• Belief in UFOs, astrology, and ghosts
• Described as imaginative, intelligent, original, curious, artistic,
inventive, and witty; and as not simple or shallow
• Prone to overclaim and overactive imaginations
• More frequent drug abuse
The Essential-Trait Approach: Beyond the Big Five
• There is more to personality.
o HEXACO adds honesty/humility
• Are the Big Five sufficient for really understanding
people?
• The Big Five is a structure of traits, not people.
Let’s try it! Take the Big Five
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Take the Big Five Inventory (BFI) at
http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
You can also rate another person. This is optional: You can compare your
personality to someone you know well.
Then go to Canvas -> Discussions -> Let’s try it! Take the Big Five;
Reply to my post and address the following questions:
• Were you surprised about any of your scores?
• Do the results of this test make you want to change anything about
your personality?
• How could these results be used by others to make decisions about
you? For example, would an employer be likely to hire you for a job
based on your scores?
• If you rated another person: How similar were your scores to the
other person you rated? Do you agree with any differences?
Typological Approaches to Personality
• The structure of traits across individuals is not the
same thing as the structure of personality within a
person.
• Important differences between people may be
qualitative.
Typological Approach: Evaluating Typologies (1)
Evaluating typologies
• “Carve nature at its joints”
• Three replicable types: well adjusted, maladjusted
overcontrolling, maladjusted undercontrolling
• Types do not predict behavior or life outcomes
beyond what can be predicted with the trait that
define the typology
Typological Approach: Evaluating Typologies (2)
Evaluating typologies
• Categorization into types is often based on cut-off
scores, but most traits are normally distributed.
• So, people who are similar to each other can be put
into different types if they are near the average.
Typological Approach: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (1)
• Used in workplaces, schools, counseling centers,
management workshops, etc.
• A big business
• Items are choices between two options
• Four opposing tendencies:
oExtroversion (E) vs. Introversion (I)
oSensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)
oThinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)
oJudgment (J) vs. Perception (P)
• 16 possible personality types
Typological Approach: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (2)
Reasons for popularity
• Offers seemingly rich and intriguing descriptions of
each personality type
• Looks especially insightful
• All types are explained positively.
• People think learning their type is enjoyable.
Typological Approach: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (3)
Criticisms
• Not useful for selection or predicting life outcomes
• Based on normally distributed scores
• Measurement is not reliable
• No evidence that different types follow, persist in, or
succeed in different lines of work
Typological Approach: Uses of Personality Types
Uses of personality types
• Types are summaries of how people stand on a
large number of traits
• Summary of standing on several traits
• Education, marketing
• But, not much is added to prediction with
conventional trait measurements
From Assessment to Understanding
• Usefulness goes beyond the ability to predict
behavior, performance, and life outcomes.
• Learn about why people do what they do, or
mechanisms that explain behavior
• Increases understanding, which it the most
important goal of science
Question 1
A researcher who is interested in the construct of
cooperativeness and wants to discover what this trait
is able to predict should use the
a) single-trait approach.
b) many-trait approach.
c) essential-trait approach.
d) typological approach.
Question 1: Answer
A researcher who is interested in the construct of
cooperativeness and wants to discover what this trait
is able to predict should use the
a) single-trait approach. (correct answer)
b) many-trait approach.
c) essential-trait approach.
d) typological approach.
Question 2
Which of the Big Five traits is the best predictor of
relationship problems, criminal behavior, and mental
illness?
a) extraversion
b) agreeableness
c) conscientiousness
d) neuroticism
e) openness to experience
Question 2: Answer
Which of the Big Five traits is the best predictor of
relationship problems, criminal behavior, and mental
illness?
a) extraversion
b) agreeableness
c) conscientiousness
d) neuroticism (correct answer)
e) openness to experience
Question 3
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is
a) useful for deciding who to hire for a job.
b) an example of the many-trait approach.
c) frequently used by businesses and schools even
though it is not a reliable way to assess personality.
d) mostly used by psychologists for research
purposes.
Question 3: Answer
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is
a) useful for deciding who to hire for a job.
b) an example of the many-trait approach.
c) frequently used by businesses and schools even
though it is not a reliable way to assess
personality. (correct answer)
d) mostly used by psychologists for research
purposes.
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