big five-trait controversy 2 (1)

8/2/2019 Big Five-Trait Controversy 2 (1)

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Trait Theory and the Big Five

Introduction


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Traits

Gordon Allport wrote the influential book,Personality in 1937. He developed his ideas abouttraits viewing these as the basic structural elementsof personality.

Traits were defined as a predisposition to respond in aparticular way to a broad range of situations. So aneven-tempered person remains calm across a broadrange of situations. The situations or stimuli arerendered functionally equivalent - opportunities to

exercise restraint. Each person has a certainexpressive and adaptive style that they bring to thesituation.


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Allport: More on Traits

According to Allport, traits have an actual physicallocation in the nervous system; we infer its existencebecause of consistency of behavior.

Dissimilar stimuli are capable of arousing the trait. So for

example, a shy person faced with invite a party-avoidsgoing; looking for a hobby-chooses a solitary activity likemodel building; takes a class at collge-doesnt raisehand

Allport also made the distinction as to whether traitscould be used to describe people in general or just asingle individual. Nomothetic traits were trait units thatcould be applied to all people. Idiographic traits werethose unique to the individual.


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Categories of Traits

Cardinal Traits-pervasive

example: stingy w/ money, time,

compliments or person like Marquis de Sade

Central Traits- represent dispositions that aremore limited in range; broadly consistent butperhaps not always

Secondary Dispositions-least conspicuous andgeneralized. Peripheral disposition.

example: likes Coca Cola; prefers Italy to France


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Proprium

Allport has a special name for what wewould normally called the self-calledproprium.

Proprium goes beyond the traits of theperson and includes habits, interests, skillsalong with traits.

Thus, traits are components of self thatinitiate and direct behavior in unique ways.


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Personality Unique?

Allport felt that the personality was unique and that theassessment of personality should take this in to account.

Idiographic Approach was therefore his favored method.

Did not use factor analysis because he felt it emphasized

the average and individual got lost in the process. More important to know about organization of traits w/i

the person rather than to look where they stand oncommon traits relative to others.

Finally, he rejected the idea that human motivation couldbe limited to a few motives (sex and aggression forexample). This couldnt adequately describe the variedfunctioning of people


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Big Five

Taxonomy- a scientific classification system. Involves ordering,naming and systematically distinguishing between things. Shouldhelp you understand how things differ.

Applying this concept to personality, Allport and Odbert (1936) were

early innovators in trying to describe differences in personality usinga so-called lexical approach.

They found that the English dictionary contained roughly 1800descriptors of persons. Allport and Odbert were looking at natural

language. This is the rub. There is no reason to assume that all theimportant ways that people differ exist in the natural language. But itwas a start.


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More on Taxonomies

There are many other potential starting points for taxonomies ofhuman differences other than the dictionary and natural language.

We could start for instance with the insights of psychiatrists andpsychologists about their patients.

Or develop a taxonomy based on body type as William Sheldon did-

psychological types based on body type. Endomorphyis centered on the abdomen, and the wholedigestive system. A soft and round person around middle

Mesomorphy is focused on the muscles and the circulatory system.Individual is muscular.

Ectomorphy is characterized as thin and delicate. Limbs relatively

long with drooping shoulders Each person rated on a seven point scale for each attribute, so a7:1:1 is an extreme endomorph.


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Taxonomies

Or we could examine individual differences in motivesand goals. In fact, Murrays taxonomy (1938) was basedon a classification of twenty motives.

However, each approach has its problems.

The major problem with the original lexical approach wasnot so much one of ultimate truth about personality butrather one of unwieldiness. How to make it moremanageable. There were too many descriptive terms tobe of much value. None-the-less, the lexical system

became the foundation for the Big Five


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The Lexical Approach BecomesMore Manageable

In 1967, Norman attempted to reduce the number of descriptiveterms in the lexical approach (to make it user friendly!).

He did this by making a rational decision to initially eliminatingevaluative words (for example, the word nice), words not typicallyknown to literate speakers of English, and words describing physicalcharacteristics (short-tall).

This left about 8,000 words. He further pruned to including only traits (broad descriptions of

behavioral tendencies with some implied stability) yielding 1600terms.

Eventually, Normans further explorations left us with 1400 words,grouped by him into 75 clusters (based on prior studies andinsights). He then assigned each cluster to one of five dimensions.


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Analyzing the Set of Terms

The terms defined by Normans work could bedimensionalized.

One thing this means we could look at them on acontinuum by creating their negations

not irascible.irascible(quick-tempered, easily provoked)

Introvertedextroverted

Once the terms were dimensionalized, a person could

be rated on each dimension (five or seven point scale forinstance). Then statistical techniques like factoranalysis could be used to explore relationships amongthe ratings.


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Goldbergs Work

Goldberg (1990) did a factor analysis of ratingscores based on Normans work.

Goldberg had college students rate their

personalities on 1400 dimensions. He used Normans classifications to form 75clusters.

Next, he summed scores for dimensions that

belonged to the same cluster. He then used factor analysis to analyze

relationships of the cluster scores.


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Factor Analysis

He also looked at the relationships between all possible pairs ofdimensions to see if they were correlated. Could the 75 factors becollapsed?

In a perfect world, if we might take our 75 clusters and find that 35load on one factor (Factor 1) at a 1.0 correlation and 0.0 on someother factor (Factor 2). The opposite would be true of the other 35

clusters. They would load on Factor 2 at 1.0 and 0.0 on Factor 1. But this isnt a perfect world So for example, in the real world, we could look at the correlation

between introverted-extraverted and quiet-talkative. If the correlationis say .50, we know they are related. We might say that individualswho describe themselves as extraverted also tend to describe

themselves as talkative. So the question answered by factor analysis is , Are sets of

dimensions correlated and ultimately can they be collapsed?


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Factor Analysis

In the end, the result of a factor analysis is the discoveryof a so-called factor.

The factoris an abstract concept. It is whatever theinterrelated measures have in common. We can give thecommonality a name. This can be the subject of debate.

Some dimensions may load (correlation between themeasure and factor) on a particular factor. These arecalled marker variables. Dimensions that load highly onmore than one factor are called blends.

For exampledimension courteous p. 89 loads ontwo factorsagreeableness andconscientiousnessperhaps being courteous is anoffshoot of being careful in an interpersonal sense.


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Big Five Factors

Goldberg found five factors.

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

What does it spell?

Go to page 28 in Brody and Ehrlichman.


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More on Big Five

These factors have been found to be quiterobust across cultures.

However not everyone agrees with five factor

model. Some people talk about more factorsbeing needed; others less (Eysenck -3 factors-extraversion, introversion, psychoticism)

Vagaries of factor analysis means that therecould be more than one acceptable factorsolution for the same set of data.


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NEO-PI-R Five factor Inventory

Questionnaire associated with Big Five Model.Developed by Costa and McCrae.

Designed to provide a general description of normalpersonality.

Authors argue strongly for use of questionnaires toassess personality and are critical of projective testing.

Current version 243 items/approx 45 minutes tocomplete

Five point scale is used and the person self-assesseshow characteristic or uncharacteristic a certain statementis characteristic or representative of them.


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Evolutionary Psychology and theBig Five

Has been used to explain the origin of the Big Five.

Evolutionary psychology-emphasizes importance ofjudging the behavior of others in terms of promotingsurvival.

In this regard, we might look at the Big Five in terms ofspecific issue of partner selection and interpersonalrelations.

Most people might therefore want an agreeable,extraverted, conscientious, energetic, non-neuroticpartner as opposed to the opposite.


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Evolutionary Psychology

This question of selection interweaves with theissue of our survival as individuals and as arace.

Put another way, a certain set of traits in the

other person might mean having a partner whois cooperative. Or the traits in us might make usmore attractive to others and insure that ourgenes survive.

But we are sill left with the important question ofwhy people differ on these traits. How do thosewith less preferable traits survive? And how dothese traits survive? What is the answer?


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Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Example might be two librarians marry, asactually was the case with to of one of myclients who was a librarian. The introverted

stayed with the introverted.

Moral of the story: Perhaps every Bonnieneeds a Clyde!


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Trait-Situation Controversy

We have examined the historical development oftrait theory from Allport to the present.

One important notion embedded in trait theory is

the notion that personality is consistent andstable. This has been an explicit or implicitassumption of trait theorists.

In this sense trait models were similar to

psychodynamic models, especially the Freudianmodel, which also proposed that personality wasstable


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Trait-Situation Controversy

In the trait camp are people like Allport, Eysenckand Catell on up to Costa and McCrae. This is awell-entrenched theoretical point of view.

None-the-less, the question eventually aroseas to whether situations could overridepersonality variables and affect behavior.

This was, in part, due to the ascendance of models likethat of B.F. Skinner. Skinner showed us that

reinforcement contingencies could influence behavior. Infact, Skinner thought personality was essentially theproduct of history of reinforcement


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Cognitive Revolution

And personality theorists were also beinginfluenced by the cognitive revolution

Kelly- idea of constructs which were defined asways of construing, perceiving and interpreting

events. Constructs and construct systemsbecame the basic unit of personality.

Ellis in the 50s, developed Rational Therapywhich later became Rational-EmotiveTtherapy

and now is REBT and theory. This work set the stage for the social-cognitive theoriesof Mischel and Bandura and what became the traitcontroversy.


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Transitioning from Behaviorism to CognitiveApproaches

Dollard and Miller

In the 50s. D and M also wanted to extend Behaviorismto deal with issues like cognition and motivation.

For our purposes, we will look at 3 ideas of

D and M. which might be called transitional ideas moving

toward cognitive theories and the social-cognitivemodels of Mischel and Bandura.

What D and M did

Identified 4 shortcomings of Behaviorism

Developed notion of a habit hierarchy. Discussed Freudian defense mechanisms as cognitive

behaviors.


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Beyond BFS

These ideas (Kelly and Ellis and D and M) were takingus further away from Skinners pure behavioral theory

which was not phenomenological or cognitive in theleast. Behavior was the unit of analysis in Operant

conditioning and the components to be studied were Antecedents

Behaviors

Consequences

Traffic Light Example Traffic Light Example


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Walter Mischels Model Social

Learning Theory

Mischel, first of all, was mentored byKelly so he had a cognitive bent.

In 1968, he came forward with hiscritique of trait theory and over theensuing years to the present, heattempted to develop an alternative

conceptualization of personality.


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Three Key Points

Situational Specificity

Discrimination

Adaptive or self-regulation aspects ofpersonality functioning


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Units ofMischel Cognitive Reconceptualization

of Personality

1. People have personal constructs-encodingstrategies. Emphasis on how people construe data-self, other world.

2. People have subjective values, preferences and

goals (can visualize end points).

3. People have expectancies about probableoutcomes. Ifthen thinking. This means behavior intwo situations may differ-child rewarded in school with

attention for good behavior may behave badly athome.


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Mischel

4. Cognitive and Behavioral competencies- people differ in theirability to use information- related to potential achievement. Actualachievement may vary dependent on other factors.

5. Self-regulatory systems-refers to the individuals ability to

develop and enact long-term plans. This involves dealing withfrustration, selecting plans for achieving goals, etc.

6. More recently a new unit of personality has been added- affects.

7. Finally, Mischel has emphasized the interaction of all of these

units 1-6 Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)

big five-trait controversy 2 (1)

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