PSYC 381 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Psychopathology, Conscientiousness, Church Attendance
26 May 2018
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Chapter 9
1. Describe the five-factor model of personality and summarize the evidence regarding the
stability of traits with age. How does Staudinger reconcile the evidence for stability vs.
change in personality? (pp. 319-322)
• The Five Factor Model is strongly grounded in cross-sectional, longitudinal and
sequential research.
• It consists of five independent dimensions of personality: neuroticism, extraversion,
openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
• Neuroticism: The six facets of neuroticism are anxiety, hostility, self-consciousness,
depression, impulsiveness, and vulnerability.
• People high in neuroticism typically results in violent and negative emotions that
interfere with peoples ability to handle problems or to get along with other people.
• Extraversion: The 6 facets of extraversion can be grouped into three interpersonal traits
(warmth, gregariousness, and assertiveness) and three temperamental traits (activity,
excitement seeking, and positive emotions)
• Openness to Experience: The six facets of openness to experience represent six different
areas. In the area of fantasy: openness means having a vivid imagination/ In aesthetics, →
appreciation of beauty. Openness entails a willingness to try something new, People who
are open to ideas and values are curious and value knowledge for the sake of knowing.
• Agreeableness: The easiest way to understand the agreeableness dimension is to conser
the traits that characterize antagonism. Antagonistic people tend to set themselves against
others; they are skeptical, mistrustful, callous, unsympathetic, stubborn and rude.
• Conscientiousness: Hardworking, ambitious, energetic, scrupulous, and persevering.
What is the evidence for Trait stability or change?
• They suggest that personality traits stop changing by age 30 and appear to be “set in
plaster”
• 114 men who took the Guilford-Zimerman Temperament Survey (GTZS) on three
occasions → they found that there were no significant changes across overall personality
patterns.
• However, some interesting changes did occur in the very old. There was an increase in
suspiciousness and sensitivity.
• They found that personality ratings by spouses showed no systematic changes over a 6
year period. It appears that individuals change very little in self-reported personality
traits over periods of upto 30 years long and over the age range of 20 to 90 years of age.
• They found that extraversion and opened decrease with age, whereas agreeableness
increases with age.
Middle aged adults are the most conscientious. Finally, neuroticism slightly decreases or
is absent with increasing age.
Additional Studies of dispositional traits
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Ursula and Staudinger and colleagues have a perspective that reconciles these differences.
• They suggest that personality takes on two forms: adjustment and growth.
• Adjustment involves developmental changes in terms of their adaptive value and
functionality.
• Personality growth refers to ideal end states such as increased self-trascendence, wisdom,
and integrity.
• Staudinger argues that while growth in terms of ideal end states does not necessarily
occur in everyone, as it is less easily acquired, strategies for adjustment develop across
the latter half of the life span.
• Increasing age is the absence of neuroticism and the presence of agreeableness and
conscienctiousness. These traits are associated with personality adjustment.
• This pattern of trais is related to becoming emotionally less volatile and more attuned to
social demands and social roles.
• Studies also show a decrease in openness to new experiences with increasing age.
• Personality growth does occur in older age, it just takes special circumstances and an
environmental push to occur.
2. Describe the two longitudinal studies of dispositional traits in personality. What are the
criticisms of the five factor model and what can be concluded from the study of
dispositional traits? (pp. 323-325)
2 longitudinal studies:
The Berkeley Studies:
• This was a study on personality development
• Parents of the participants being studied in research on intellectual development were
followed for 30 years
• They categorized men and women → based on lifestyle
• Data suggested that lifestyle during young adulthood is the better predictor of life
satisfaction in old age for women but that personality is the better predictor for men
• The transition to parenthoodin young adulthood and family and work- related transitions
in later adulthood showed much more variability than stability.
• The sociocultural context was imp in determining under what conditions we see change
and when we do not.
• These results also do not support the notion that personality becomes rigid in old age.
Women’s Personality Development during Adulthood:
• Interplay between social context and personality development
• Helson and her colleagues followed the lives women who chose a typically feminine
social clock → get married, have children and examined how they adapted to the roles of
wife and mother.
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• This adaptation process was typically accompanied by a withdrawal from social life, the
suppression of impulse and spontaneity, a negative self image and a decreased feeling of
competence
• 20% were divorced between the ages of 28 and 35
• Those who had careers were less respectful of norms and more rebellious towards what
they had experienced
• These independent women remained so and showed greater confidence, intiative, and
forcefulness than women who did not.
• Women became better adjusted at age 52 than at age 21. They became less impulsive,
more considerate of others more organized.
• Overall Helson and her colleagues show that women’s personality change was systematic
in both early and middle adulthood, yet changes were evident in the context of specific
changes in social roles and transitions in social contexts.
Critiques of the Five Factor Model
• Block has a few concerns with the Costa and McCrae approach:
1) Using lay people to specify personality descriptors →is fraught with risk, due to the
lack of any compelling scientific data to support such as labeling
2) Wide acceptance of the five factor model is premature and that considerably more
research needs to be done.
3) He argues that personality should take into account the the sociocultural context in
which personality development occurs and the variability that occurs across the life
course
• McAdams has raised additional limitations of the five factor model
(1) He points out that any model of dispositional traits says nothing about the core or
essential aspects of human nature
(2) Dispositionaltraits rarely provide enough information about people so that accurate
predictions can be made about how they will behave in a particular situation.
(3) The assessment of dispositional traits generally fails to provide compelling
explanations of why people behave the way they do.
(4) Dispositional traits are seen as independent of the context in which the individual
operates.
(5) The assessment of dispositional traits reduces a person to a set of scores on a series of
linear continua that are assumed to be both meaningful and opposite.
(6) The assessment of dispositional traits through questionnaires assumes that the
respondent is able to take an objective, evaluative stance regarding his or her personal
characteristics
Conclusions about Dispositional traits
• Costa and McCrae strongly support the position that traits require stability and that there
is little evidence of change
• But, Staudinger’s perspective, Berkeley Group, and Helson and Colleagues argue for
both change and stability. They say that at least some traits change, opening the door to
personality development in adulthood.
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Chapter 9: describe the five-factor model of personality and summarize the evidence regarding the stability of traits with age. How does staudinger reconcile the evidence for stability vs. change in personality? (pp. 319-322: the five factor model is strongly grounded in cross-sectional, longitudinal and sequential research. In the area of fantasy: openness means having a vivid imagination/ in aesthetics, appreciation of beauty. Antagonistic people tend to set themselves against others; they are skeptical, mistrustful, callous, unsympathetic, stubborn and rude: conscientiousness: hardworking, ambitious, energetic, scrupulous, and persevering. There was an increase in suspiciousness and sensitivity: they found that personality ratings by spouses showed no systematic changes over a 6 year period. Finally, neuroticism slightly decreases or is absent with increasing age. Increasing age is the absence of neuroticism and the presence of agreeableness and conscienctiousness. What are the criticisms of the five factor model and what can be concluded from the study of dispositional traits? (pp.
