PSYC 002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Gordon Allport, Trait Theory, Canoe.Com
30 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Trait theories of personality focus on identifying, describing, and measuring individual differences to predict behavior. Personality traits: relatively stable cognitive, emotional and behavioral characteristics. Looked through dictionary to see that there are thousands of words to describe what we are like (4,000 to 18,000) Lexical approach: proposing traits on the basis of words from our everyday language. Factor analysis: a statistical tool used to identify clusters of behaviors that are highly correlated with one another, but not with behaviors in other clusters. Brain: extraverts tend to have low levels of brain activity, making it hard to suppress impulses, and leading them to seek stimulation. Body: the trait of shyness appears to be related to high autonomic system reactivity, an easily triggered alarm system. Genes: selective breeding of animals seems to create lifelong differences in traits such as aggression, sociability, or calmness, suggesting genetic roots for these traits. Personality can be understood in terms of two basic dimensions:
