PSYC 2600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Sociosexual Orientation, Psychoticism, Trait Theory
19 Feb 2014
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Document Summary
Three fundamental questions guide those who study traits. Traits are presumed to be internal in that individuals carry their desires, needs, and wants from one situation to next. Desires and needs are presumed to be causal in that they explain behavior of individuals who possess them. Traits can lie dormant in that capacities are present even when behaviors are not expressed. Scientific usefulness of viewing traits as causes of behavior lies in ruling out other causes. Can"t always observe someone"s traits: ex: bravery. This is inside you, but may only appear in certain situations, so it may never be expressed or may never be seen. Trait-descriptive adjectives: words that describe traits, attributes of a person that are characteristic of a person and perhaps enduring over time. Traits are just descriptions of people- describe what they are like. Starts with lexical hypothesis: all important individual differences have become encoded within the natural language over time.
