PSYC20009 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Sigmund Exner, Pollination Syndrome, Psychopathology
10 May 2018
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Week 10
- Personality definitions: DeYoung & Gray (2009) - regularities in behaviour and
experience (study of behaviour and experience [learning, memory, emotion,
psychopathology], cognitive or affective, regularities: interest in study of anxiety
(study of emotion), studying susceptibility to anxiety/tendency to be anxious often
(regularity in people’s experience, study trait anxiety)); Pervin (1999) - a persons
typical mode of response, the way people respond differently to the same situation, in
response to same stimuli/same events/similar circumstances → people will have
different responses (behavioural and affective), trying to describe what are these
different responses and where do they come from, how do we understand them,
what is their importance; Hogan (2008) - combination of identity and reputation,
identity → how you see/describe yourself, reputation → how others see/describe you;
McAdams & Pals (2006) - (a) an individual’s unique variation on the general
evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of (b)
dispositional traits, (c ) characteristic adaptations, and (d) self-defining life
narratives, complexly and differentially situated (e) in culture and social context
- Level 1: dispositional traits → broad descriptions of patterns of behaviour and
experience, relatively decontextualised, people vary from high to low on different
dimensions of personality, e.g. shy, bold, warm, aloof, disciplined, impulsive
- Level 2: characteristic adaptations → concerns an individuals particular life
circumstances, highly contextualised, e.g. specific goals, social roles, educational
aspirations
- Level 3: life narratives → the story we have constructed about who we are,
highly/completely individualised, personal biography, rich in detail
- Dispositional traits: personality traits are probabilistic descriptions of regularities in
behaviour and experience... arising in response to very broad classes of stimuli and
situations (i.e. relatively decontextualised), what a person tends to do/experience,
more likely to behave a particular way in a particular situation
- Earliest trait catalogue: Characters of Theophrastus (Greek, c.371 - c.287 BC) →
view of everyone being all Greeks, all live in same place, educated in the same way,
curious about why he saw striking differences between people, tried to capture it in
book (30 archetypes of different types of people he would encounter: the flatterer, the
reckless man, the chatty man, the gossip, the surly man, the distrustful man, the
mean man, etc), characteristics of each example
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- Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert (1936): Lexical Hypothesis → important
characteristics will, over human history, be coded in language, a way to
systematically study personality is by studying the words we have developed to
describe what other people are like, if theres isnt a word to describe how individuals
are different from each other → assumption is difference is small/trivial, collected an
exhaustive list of personality descriptors (trait terms) - about 18,000 terns (e.g.
sociable, aggressive), perhaps useful for rating personality, problem: very unwieldy,
more of a laundry list than a system
- Dispositional traits → can they be organised under some umbrella terms or
categories, what is the number and nature of basic trait domains
(categories/umbrella terms that can help organise a large number of specific traits)
required to describe the structure of personality
- Factor analysis: developed in study of cognitive abilities, statistical method that
reduces several correlated variables to much fewer composite variables (factors),
developed by Spearman and Thurstone to explore the structure of mental abilities,
Cattell (1943) → reduced Allport and Odbert’s list through many and varied
techniques, including factor analysis, eventual result was 16 factor solution
- Cattell’s Method: 18,000 descriptors → sorted into 160 clusters of
synonyms/antonyms → discarding near-identical descriptors → final list of 171
descriptors → 100 participants rate 1-2 friends on the 171 descriptors → factor
analysis → 16 Personality Factors
- Cattell’s 16 PFs (traits): Warmth (kind, sociable vs impersonal, detached);
Reasoning (abstract thinker vs concrete thinker); Emotional Stability (calm, non-
reactive vs moody, reactive); Dominance (forceful, bossy vs deferential, submissive);
Liveliness (animated, energetic vs restrained, cautious); Rule-Consciousness
(confirming vs rebellious); Social Boldness(venturesome, uninhibited vs shy, timid);
Sensitivity (refined, aesthetic vs objective, down-to-earth); Vigilance (skeptical,
critical vs trusting, gullible); Abstractedness (creative, imaginative vs grounded,
practical); .Privateness(discrete, political vs forthright, unpretentious); Apprehension
(guilty, worried vs self-assured, confident); Openness to change (liberal, flexible vs
conservative); Self-Reliance (individualistic vs dependent, collectivistic);
Perfectionism (self-disciplined, compulsive vs lax, flexible); Tension (highly strung vs
tranquil, easy-going)
- If personality was deck of cards: Allport & Odbert → there is a 2 of clubs, a 3 of
clubs…; Cattell → there are clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds, which vary in
number…; approaching a personality system or taxonomy (classification) for
describing the structure of personality (number of dimensions needed) and
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Document Summary
Level 1: dispositional traits broad descriptions of patterns of behaviour and experience, relatively decontextualised, people vary from high to low on different dimensions of personality, e. g. shy, bold, warm, aloof, disciplined, impulsive. Level 2: characteristic adaptations concerns an individual(cid:3244)s particular life circumstances, highly contextualised, e. g. specific goals, social roles, educational aspirations. Level 3: life narratives the story we have constructed about who we are, highly/completely individualised, personal biography, rich in detail. Factor analysis: developed in study of cognitive abilities, statistical method that reduces several correlated variables to much fewer composite variables (factors), developed by spearman and thurstone to explore the structure of mental abilities, Cattell (1943) reduced allport and odbert"s list through many and varied techniques, including factor analysis, eventual result was 16 factor solution. Cattell"s method: 18,000 descriptors sorted into 160 clusters of synonyms/antonyms discarding near-identical descriptors final list of 171 descriptors 100 participants rate 1-2 friends on the 171 descriptors factor analysis 16 personality factors.
