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The trait paradigm, situationism and interactionism

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Title: The trait paradigm, situationism and interactionism


1
The trait paradigm,situationism and
interactionism
  • Dr. Christine Simmonds

2
What are traits or dispositions?
  • Traits and language
  • A trait is
  • an aspect of personality that is reasonably
    characteristic of a person and distinguishes him
    in some way from many other people Morgan and
    King
  • any enduring characteristic of a person that can
    serve an explanatory role in accounting for the
    observed regularities and consistencies in
    behaviour - Reber
  • Types are trait clusters
  • Ancient concept
  • Modern trait approaches
  • Psychometrics
  • Nomothetic rather than idiographic

3
Who are the key players in trait theory?
  • Gordon Allport
  • Raymond Cattell
  • Hans Eysenck
  • The Five Factor Model
  • E.g., Costa and McCrae
  • We will also discuss criticisms of the idea that
    there are consistent and stable traits
  • Situationism
  • Interactionism

4
Gordon Allport
  • Websters New International dictionary
  • Personal dispositions
  • Central dispositions
  • Cardinal dispositions
  • Ones ruling passion
  • Common traits
  • Functional autonomy

5
Factor analysis and personality theory
  • Correlations address the extent to which one
    variable relates to another
  • Factor analysis extracts patterns from a set of
    correlations
  • Factors have loadings onto variables
  • Cattell was a big proponent of factor analysis
  • 3 types of data
  • Q data
  • L data
  • O-T data

6
Cattells original 12 factors
  • A Cyclothymia-schizothymia (sociability)
  • B Intelligence
  • C Emotionally mature stable character (ego
    strength)
  • D Hypersensitive infantile emotionality
    (excitability)
  • E Dominance-submission
  • F Surgency-Desurgency
  • G Positive Character integration (superego
    strength)
  • H Adventureousness (parmia)
  • I Sensitiveness (premsia)
  • J Neurasthenia
  • K Trained cultural mind-boorishness
  • L Surgent cyclothymia-paranoia

7
Cattells 16
  • Outgoing-reserved
  • More/less intelligent
  • Stable-emotional
  • Assertive-humble
  • Happy go lucky- sober
  • Conscientious-expedient
  • Venturesome-shy
  • Tender minded- tough minded
  • Suspicious-trusting
  • Imaginative- practical
  • Shrewd-forthright
  • Apprehensive- placid
  • Experimenting-conservative
  • Self sufficient group tied
  • Controlled- casual
  • Tense-relaxed

Fiskes research (1949) could not reproduce 16
factors found only 5.
8
A hierarchy of factors
  • Factors can be oblique or orthogonal

Exvia-invia
Anxiety
A B C D E F G H I J K L
M N O Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
9
Eysencks P-E-N
  • Extraversion
  • Outgoing, assertive, etc.
  • Neuroticism
  • Emotional instability
  • Psychoticism
  • Tendency toward psychopathology, including
    impulsivity and cruelty

10
Eysencks hierarchical organisation of personality
  • Type level, e.g., extraversion or introversion
  • Trait level, e.g., sociability
  • Habitual response level
  • Specific response level

11
Eysencks concept of extraversion
extraversion
Sensation -seeking
Lively
Sociable
Active
Assertive
carefree
dominant
surgent
venturesome
12
Eysencks biological perspective on E-I
  • Personality is influenced by genetic makeup
  • Drives differences in the autonomic nervous
    system
  • 1. level of ANS activity
  • 2. different balance between excitation and
    inhibition in the cortex ARAS
  • Introverts have cortices that are over aroused
  • Easy to condition
  • Extraverts have cortices that are under aroused
  • Difficult to condition

13
Evidence for extraversion
  • FMRI study
  • E is related to the reward system in the brain
  • Introverts are more sensitive to pain, more
    easily fatigued, etc.
  • Extraverts have a shorter attention span than
    introverts (Rim, 1977)
  • Depressant drugs (alcohol) produce extroverted
    effects
  • Stimulants produce introverted effects (Eysenck,
    1970)
  • Extroverts are more likely to smoke and
    introversts are more likely to drink
  • Extroverts are more sexually active
    (stimulation-seeking)
  • Parapsychology and Eysencks theory
  • Extraverts would perform better at ESP
  • Extraversion is increasing among college students

14
Neuroticism
  • Anxious
  • Depressed
  • Irrational
  • Guilt feelings
  • Shy
  • Moody
  • Low self esteem
  • emotional
  • Tense
  • N also has a biological explanation
  • The level of ANS activity overall
  • Over activity ? emotionally reactive

15
Psychoticism
  • More controversial aspect of Eysencks
    personality construct
  • Related to psychopathology
  • Distribution among normal population
  • Relationship with creativity
  • Unusual thinking and associations, etc.
  • The notion of healthy schizotypy has recently
    been revisited, e.g., Gordon Claridge, 1997

16
Psychometric tests
  • Maudsley Medical Questionnaire
  • Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)
  • Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ)
  • Sensation Seeking Scale (with Zuckerman)

17
The Big 5 or OCEAN
  • Openness to experience
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extroversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism
  • Goldberg, 1990
  • John, 1990
  • McCrae Costa, 1985
  • Norman, 1963

5
18
Evidence for and Applications of the Big 5
  • Good evidence that trait dimensions do exist
  • Applications
  • parenting, career, health, relationships, etc.
  • extrasensory perception
  • Openness to experience, extraversion
  • Are five factors enough to explain personality?

19
Spirituality as the 6th dimension?
  • What is spirituality?
  • Ralph Piedmont (e.g., 1999) argues that
    spirituality is the 6th dimension of personality
  • Cross culturally valid
  • Applied context
  • Spiritual transcendence (ST) facilitates
    emotional adjustment and resilience in people
    with arthritis
  • ST is a predictor of psychosocial outcomes from
    substance abuse, etc

20
Mischels criticism of traits
  • In 1968, Mischel published a criticism of
    traditional personality theory
  • Psychoanalytic theory and trait theory
  • Traits fail to predict behaviour in real life
  • Situations may be more powerful than internal
    traits
  • The person-situation controversy
  • The .30 barrier
  • Inherent problems in measurement that construct
    correlations between different traits

21
To what extent is personality continuous/consisten
t across time?
  • Consistency over time/longitudinal consistency
    stability
  • Good evidence of longitudinal stability (Block
    Conley)
  • Short term reliability, longer term variability
  • Personality changes little after age 30 (Costa
    and MCrae, 1990)
  • Methodological considerations
  • E.g., spouse ratings versus alterations in self
    concept (C M, 1980), peer ratings versus self
    ratings (Haan, 1981)
  • Some people change a lot, others do not change at
    all
  • Patterns from childhood can often predict later
    behaviour
  • What about the influence of the ageing process?

22
To what extent is personality continuous/consisten
t across situations?
  • The power of the situation is sometimes so
    strong that it overrides our inclinations
  • E.g., reactions to traumatic events, e.g, the
    sinking of the titanic
  • culturally accepted and encouraged behaviour
  • Nazi Germany
  • Consistency over situations consistency
  • Inconsistencies across situations
  • Dudycha (1936) punctuality is inconsistent
  • Bouchard et al assertiveness is inconsistent
  • Coie curiosity is inconsistent
  • Paulus and Martin - Flexibility is inconsistent
  • Currand et al Social anxiety is inconsistent
  • Trait theorists defend themselves
  • The notion of aggregation
  • Epsteins (1983) findings with wider ranges of
    behaviour and situations
  • Variability and situational specificity
  • Funder and Colvin, 1991 - People express the same
    trait differently in various situations

23
Dudycha, 1936
24
Interactionism
  • Moderator variables
  • E.g., gender
  • Person x situations
  • Moos (1969)
  • Traits as genotypes
  • Individual structure of a trait (Bem and Allen,
    1974)
  • Person x mode
  • Trait relevance
  • Metatraits
  • Which types of situation minimise or maximise the
    expression of traits?
  • Measuring the personality of situations

25
summary and conclusions about traits and
dispositions
  • Traits are a valuable construct for understanding
    human personality
  • Not clear how many there are
  • 3, 5, 6, 16?
  • Differences in theorists approaches
  • theory driven (deductive) versus data driven
    (inductive)
  • Support for traits from biological perspective
    and applications to real world
  • Criticisms
  • Situationism
  • A nomothetic approach does not capture what it is
    to be a unique person
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