PSYC10004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: 16Pf Questionnaire, Raymond Cattell, Big Five Personality Traits
Trait Psychology
• Trait: the primary unit of personality description; a characteristic form of behaving, thinking
or feeling
o eg. friedliess, rigidit, or aiousess
o must be relatively enduring characteristic of a person, distinct from transient state
o may change over time but not rapidly or chaotically
o tend to be stable attributes of a person
o a pattern of behaviour, thinking or feeling relatively consistent over a variety of
different situations
o a way in which people differ so that different individuals will manifest different
levels of the trait
o dispositions; a probabilistic tendency that a person has to act in a certain way when
placed in a certain kind of situation
o a trait may remain unexpressed and unobserved if a person encounters few
situations in which it might be expressed
o vary in generality; some only relevant to narrow domains of life, others relevant to
large proportio of persos everda ativities
Defining the Trait Universe: Part 1
• Allport and Odbert lexical method
• Too many words and so grouped the ito urella traits, creating a hierarchy
A Statistical Digression
• How many basic traits? What are they? How do we find them?
• How: statistics
• Correlation coefficient/correlation: represents the degree of association between two
variables
• Measured on a scale from -1 to +1
• Association refers to the degree to which one variable is related to or predictable on the
basis of another
• Positive association: higher on one variable means higher other variable tends to be
• Negative association: the higher the quantity of one variable, the lower it tends to be on
another
• No association: correlation of 0 and do not enable any prediction of one another at all
• 0.9, each variable allows confident prediction of other; almost perfect
• 0.1 two variables will yield prediction of one another that is barely above chance
• 0.1 small, 0.3 moderate, 0.5 large, >0.6 quite rare
Defining the Trait Universe: Part 2
• relied heavily on factor analysis, and thus on correlation coefficients
• Raymond Cattell derived 12 factors from factor analysis
• Left with 16 personality factors
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Document Summary
Defining the trait universe: part 1: allport and odbert lexical method, too many words and so grouped the(cid:373) i(cid:374)to (cid:858)u(cid:373)(cid:271)rella(cid:859) traits, creating a hierarchy. Defining the trait universe: part 2 relied heavily on factor analysis, and thus on correlation coefficients: raymond cattell derived 12 factors from factor analysis. Extraversion: exemplified by traits involving sociability, encompassing traits that involve energy and activity levels, sensation-seeking, interpersonal dominance, tendency to experience positive emotional states. Agreeableness: has to do with interpersonal qualities, cooperativeness, altruism, warm, compliant and trusting towards others. Conscientiousness: self-control, planfulness, being organised, efficient and deliberate. Neuroticism: to do with emotional stability, neurotic people more prone to experience negative emotions, psychologically maladjusted and vulnerable, low self-esteem. Items might refer to behaviours, feelings, attitudes or beliefs characteristics that have no corresponding single trait term: allows items to assess traits in particular contexts. How do models of basic traits advance the field: both three and five factor models recognise extraversion and neuroticism are fundamental.
