【Psychology】Chapter 15— Section Review/Main Points
* All the following abstractions are excerpted from <Psychology>, Peter O. Gray, 5th edition
Chapter 15 — Personality.
Section 1 — Personality as Behavioral Dispositions, or Traits
The trait — a relatively stable behavioral predisposition — is a key concept in personality.
— Trait Theories
Factor analysis provides a mathematical means to identify an efficient, non-redundant set of personality traits based on correlations among larger sets of such traits. Each trait is a continuous dimension: A person can score high, low, or anywhere in between on any given trait.
Cattell pioneered this approach, producing a theory with 16 basic traits.
The most widely accepted trait theory today posits five major traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), each with six subordinate traits called facets.
Questionnaires designed to measure individuals on the Big Five traits or other traits all require honesty and insight from the respondent to yield accurate results.
— Predictive Value of Traits
Studies show that adult personality is relatively stable. Correlation coefficients for repeated tests, even many years apart, range from 0.50 to 0.70.
Personality does change, however. Increased age is typically accompanied by increased conscientiousness and agreeableness and decreased neuroticism and openness to experience.
An individual's personality can change to some extent in any direction at any age in response to life changes.
All of the Big Five traits have been shown to predict behavior at better than change levels, which helps to establish the validity of the personality measures.
— Genetic Basis of Traits
Studies comparing pairs of identical and fraternal twins yield heritability estimates for personality averaging about 0.50.
The personalities of biological relatives raised in the same family are generally no more similar than those of equally related people raised apart.
Researchers are searching for specific gene alleles that contribute to particular traits, but results so far have been inconsistent.
Section 2 — Personality as Adaptation to Life Conditions
Personality differences may represent alternative adaptations to life's variable conditions.
— Advantages of Being Different
Just as diversified investments help protect one's financial future in a world of unpredictable change, diverse personalities, resulting from sexual reproduction, may protect one's genetic investment.
Fish (including pumpkinseeds and perch) can be bold or cautious; each tendency has benefits and risks. Such variation is affected by the environment (including the number of other bold or cautious fish present) as well as by heredity.
Human variations in the Big Five traits can, likewise, be viewed as alternative strategies for survival and reproduction.
— Adapting to the Family Environment
Siblings raised together may experience quite different environments, for reasons that include chance events, their own different choices, and differences in how they interpret the same occurrences.
The tendency to exaggerate differences between siblings (sibling contrast) and the tendency for siblings to identify with different parents (split-parent identification) may reduce sibling rivalry and diversify parental investment.
A historical analysis suggested that firstborns are more conservative and traditional, while later-borns are more open to new ideas and more likely to rebel against established ways. Contemporary studies of birth order have produced less dramatic, less consistent results.
— Adapting to One's Gender
On average, women score slightly to moderately higher than men on agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.
Apparently because of cultural pressures, some personality characteristics that run counter to gender stereotypes correlate with unhappiness. For example, shy young men are generally less happy than shy young women.
Both evolutionary and cultural forces may help to account for gender differences in personality.
Section 3 — Personality as Mental Processes I: Psychodynamic and Humanistic Views
Psychodynamic and humanistic personality theories focus on mental processes.
— The Psychodynamic Perspective
Freud, whose psychoanalytic views originated this perspective, believed that the real causes of behavior lie in the unconscious mind, with sexual and aggressive motives being especially important.
Other psychodynamic theorists emphasized unconscious effects of other drives, Horney and Adler emphasized, respectively, the drives for security and competence.
Defense mechanisms serve to reduce conscious awareness of unacceptable or emotionally threatening thoughts, wishes, and feelings.
— Studies of Defense Mechanisms
Among people who have experienced known trauma, repression of that trauma seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
People classified as repressors routinely repress disturbing emotional feelings. Though they claim to feel little anxiety, their bodies react strongly to stressful situations.
In a longitudinal study of men, Vaillant found that defensive styles that involved less distortion of reality and led to more effective behavior were correlated with greater success in all areas of life.
— The Humanistic Perspective
Humanistic theories emphasize phenomenological reality (the self and world as perceived by the individual).
Rogers proposed that a person must move past social demands and judgments to become his or her real self. Self-determination does correlate with greater life satisfaction.
In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, self-actualization (becoming one's full self, living one's dreams) is addressed only when more basic needs are adequately met.
In the life-story approach to personality, a person's self-told story serves as a personal myth providing meaning and direction.
Section 4 — Personality as Mental Processes II: Social-Cognitive Views
Social-cognitive theorists stress beliefs and habitual thoughts learned in the social context.
— Habitual Was of Thinking as Personality Traits
People have an internal or external locus of control, depending on whether they do or do not believe that rewards are controlled by their own efforts.
People have high or low self-efficacy, depending on whether they do or do not believe they can accomplish the relevant tasks.
People with an internal locus of control and high self-efficacy tend to apply themselves more and to be more successful.
In general, people with optimistic styles of thought cope better than others with life's demands. However, defensive optimism can cause harm, and some people use pessimism adaptively.
— Domain-Specific and Situation-Specific Traits
Locus of control and self-efficacy beliefs can be general, applying to many tasks, or domain-specific, applying to particular types of tasks. Domain-specific measures of these beliefs have the greatest predictive value.
Social-cognitive theorists have also shown that traits such as conscientiousness and aggressiveness can vary across contexts, with the pattern of variation depending on the individual. They contend that situation-specific measures of traits have more predictive value than do global trait measures.
— Cross-Cultural Personality Differences
Because the social environment differs from one culture to another, social-cognitive theorists expect beliefs and habitual ways of thinking to differ cross-culturally.
In collectivist cultures, such as those of East Asia, most people have allocentric personalities, which emphasize personal relationships and the interests of the group. In individualist cultures, most people are ideocentric, concerned more with their own interests and abilities.
In non-Western cultures, the traits that are most useful in characterizing personality may not closely match the five-factor model.