PSYC 2740 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Trait Theory, Inter-Rater Reliability, Convergent Validity
Document Summary
Features of personality make people different from one another and usually take on the form of adjectives to describe people -> trait-descriptive adjectives there are nearly 20,000 of these adjectives in the english language. Adjectives refer to many different aspects of people such as inner qualities, social effects, qualities of the mind, qualities of the body, relations to others, and inner goals. Personality: set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the intrapsychic, physical and social environments. The core of psychological research are based on these 4 questions: What are the correlations and consequences of traits. Personality traits are useful for at least 3 reasons. They help describe people and help understand the dimensions of difference between people. They help explain behaviour -> why someone is acting a particular way.
