PSYC 332 Chapter Notes -Gordon Allport, Trait Theory, Factor Analysis
9 Dec 2011
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Personality chapter 7: trait approaches to personality: allport, eysenck, and cattell. Personality traits are psychological characteristics that are stable over time and across situations. Factor analysis is a statistical procedure is used to identify the most basic individual differences in personality traits: the trait concept. Personality traits refer to consistent patterns in the way individuals behave, feel and think. Traits may serve three major functions: they may be used to summarize, to predict, and to explain a person"s conduct: basic views shared by trait theorists. The most basic assumption of the trait point of view is that people possess broad predispositions, called traits, to respond in particular ways. It is assumed that personality can be useful characterized in terms of an individual"s consistent likelihood of behaving, feeling or thinking in a particular way. A related assumption is that there is a direct correspondence between the person"s performance of trait-related actions and their possession of the corresponding trait.
