Psychology 2035A/B Chapter Notes -Psychodynamics, Collective Unconscious, Classical Conditioning

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2035A/B
• Professor: Doug Hazlewood

Document Summary

Although no one is entirely consistent across his or her behaviour, this quality of consistency across situations lies that the core concept of personality. Distinctiveness is also central to the concept of personality: everyone has traits seen in other people, but each individual has her or his own distinctive set of personality traits. Personality refers to an individual"s unique constellation of consistent behavioural traits. A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations. A small number of fundamental traits determine other, more superficial traits. In factor analysis, correlations among many variables are analyzed to identify closely related clusters of variables. Catell concluded that an individual"s personality can be described completely by measuring just 16 traits. Neuroticism is associated with an elevated prevalence of virtually all of the major mental disorders not to mention a number of physical illnesses, whereas conscientiousness is correlated with the experience of less illness and reduced mortality.