PSYCH101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Big Five Personality Traits, Middle Frontal Gyrus, Superior Temporal Sulcus

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Paul Wehr

Document Summary

Personality: a characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is unique to each individual, and remains relatively consistent over time. Ideographic approach: creating detailed descriptions of a specific person"s unique personality characteristics. Can be applied to the full range of human experience. Nomothetic approach: examine personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure. Understand factors that predict certain behaviors across people in general. Personality trait: a person"s habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Factor analysis: used to group items that people respond to similarly (ie. the terms friendly, warm, and kind. Five factor model: a trait-based theory of personality based on the finding that personality can be described using five major dimensions: openness, greater activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (creativity and intelligence) High openness are dreamers and creative, they tend to be open to new things, ideas, opinions and perspectives. Hold beliefs that would be considered unconventional.