PSYC 2740 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Differential Psychology, Trait Theory, Silent Treatment
14 Aug 2017
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Chapter 4 -theoretical and measurement issues in trait psychology: trait psychologists look at how people are different from each other, also called differential psychology. Study of other forms of individual differences as well as personality. Most mathematically and statistically oriented. (meaningful individual differences: consistency over time: often assumed that people will stay similar in their traits over time, stay stable. Minus "turning points" in people"s lives, broad personality traits stay consistent. (traits can say consistent but the behaviour it manifests in does change over time): criminal tendencies decrease with age. It is difficult to predict how people will act in particular situations: trait psychologists have embraced the idea of person-situation interactions, and the practice of aggregation (or averaging) for better assessing personality traits. When we put these together we get b=f(pxs), a function of interactions between these two ideas. Situational specificity: when a person acts a certain way under a particular circumstance.
