Psych Notes: Trait Perspective of Personality

Traits: an individual's unique collection of durable dispositions and consistent ways of behaving (traits) constitutes his or her personality. Ex: honest, dependable, moody, impulsive. If you've ever played Sims 3, you might be familiar with traits and how they affect personality and behavior.

Each personality is uniquely made up of multiple traits. Allport and Odbert (1936) identified almost 18,000 words representing traits. One way to condense the immense list of personality traits is through factor analysis.


Factor Analysis
- a statistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits.
Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-emotional instability.
Personality dimensions are influenced by genes. Brain-imaging procedures show that extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is relatively low. Genes also influence our temperament and behavioral style. Differences in children's shyness and inhibition may be attributed to autonomic neurons' system reactivity.

Assessing Traits
Personality inventories- questionnaires (often with true-or-false or agree-disagree items) designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once.
MMPI- The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory; most widely used of all personality tests. It was sidely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. It was originally developed to identify emotional disorders.
The Big Five Factors
Today's traits researchers believe that earlier trait dimensions, such as the Eysencks' personality dimensions, fail to tell the whole story. They expanded the range into five factors of traits to do a better assessment.

1. These traits are quite stable in adulthood. They change over development. 
2. 50% of these traits are heritable.
3. These traits are common across all cultures.

Criticisms

The Person-Situation Controversy: Walter Mischel points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior. However, trait theorists argue that behaviors from a situation may be different, but average behavior remains the same, and therefore, traits do matter. They also argue that traits are socially significant and influence our health, thinking, and performance.

Expressive style in speaking and gestures demonstrate trait consistency. Observers are able to judge people's behavior and feelings in as little as 30 seconds and, in one particular case, as little as 2 seconds.