PSYC10004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Agreeableness
3. Challenges and Alternatives to Trait Psychology
Do traits exist, and do they matter?
• Criticism that behaviour not very consistent across situations and over time
• Determined more by situations or context than traits
• Situationism: Mischel concluded that behaviour is influenced only weakly by traits and that
some situational determinants are usually more powerful
o Behaviour is high specific to situations rather than springing from general
dispositions
• Interactionism: peoples traits express themselves in ways that are situation-specific
Are Trait Dimensions Culturally Universal?
• Trait theories such as five-factor model aim to provide a map of human personality
• Relativist critique: claim of universality, arguing that either western trait dimensions are not
appropriate to particular non-western cultures or that trait concept is not applicable
• Some argue that it is not appropriate to apply western trait systems to other countries
• Some use the indigenous language to create a new trait system
• There is no culturally universal concept of personality
• Cultures may seem to differ in their indigenous dimensions simple because of differences in
what they understand personality to be, thereby magnifying apparent differences
• There may be greater cross-cultural consistency in the structure of personality if all cultures
agreed on what characteristics are relevant to personality
• The more different two language communities are, the less likely their trait lexicons will
align with one another in any mutually translatable way
Traits or Types?
• Traits are ways in which people differ from one another, a dimension on which people differ,
traits are differences that are differences of degree/continuous/quantitative
• Not all differences between people are differences of degree, eg. sex, blood type
o Called differences of kind, discontinuous, typological or qualitative
• Observed distribution
• Hidde eeath osered distriutio are latet distriutios that orrespond to distinct
types of people
• When the latent distributions are added, they yield the observed distribution
• Trait pshologs assuptio that persoalit harateristis are est uderstood as
differences of degree is sometimes mistaken:
o Some personality characteristics appear to reflect differences of kind
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