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38 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
Type Theory
- Originally dominated personality theory.
- People were placed into personality-type categories, often based on physical appearance.
- William Sheldon
Alfred Adler
William Sheldon
- Type theory of personality
- Devised a system based on SOMATOTYPES (body types)
- Sheldon isolated three physiques and the corresponding personality types:
1) ENDOMORPH - short, plum body = pleasure seeking, social behavior
2) MESOMORPH - muscular, athletic body - energetic, aggressive behavior
3) Ectomorph - skinny, fragile body = inhibited, intellectual behavior
Gordon Allport Intro
- emphasized an IDEOGRAPHIC approach to personality theory
- this approach attempts to capture an individual's uniqe, defining characteristics, as opposed to a NOMTHETIC, which uses large numbers of people to study the commonalities of personality approach
- Allport was concerned only with conscious motives governed by the PROPRIUM or PROPRIATE FUNCTION (his version of ego), and he believed that the proprium acted somewhat consistently based on traits it had developed through experience
- Allport and his students worked to identify all of the possible traits that could go with personality
Gordon Allport's Ideographic Approach to Personality
- Traits are the relatively stable characteristics of behavior that a persona exhibits, such as introversion, stinginess, etc.
- Using a LEXICAL approach (meaning pickign all of the possible traits out of the dictionary) Allport gathered about 5,000 traits.
- Next, Allport hypothesized that people act differently in different situations because they have a trait hierarchy: at the top a CARDINAL trait, then CENTRAL traits, the SECONDARY traits. So, while circumstances may cause a person to show conflicting secondary traits, he will always be consistent with his cardinal trait
(In trait theory be sure to understand the difference between TRAITS and STATES. Traits are relatively enduring characteristics. States are temporary feelings or characteristics).
Raymond Cattell
- used factor analysis in data reduction of Allport's 5,000 traits.
- identified 16 BIPOLAR SOURCE TRAITS, such as relaxed-tense, that seemed to underlie all of the 5,000 (often overlapping) traits. These were Cattell's SIXTEEN PERSONALITY FACTORS tested in his sixteen personality questionnaire.
Big Five
- superfactors, or five dimensions that seem to encompass all of personality
- O (openness to experience, intellectual curiosity)
- C (conscientiousness)
- E (extroversion, enthusiasm)
- A (agreeableness)
- N (neuroticism, nervousness)
Dispositionists
- people who emphasized internal determinants of behavior in personality theory
Situationists
- people who emphasize circumstances in determining behavior/personality
Interactionists
- assert a combination of stable, internal factors and situations in explaining behavior/personality
Seymour Epstein and Walter Mischel
- have asserted that trait and type theories have always had a big problem: both theories assume that a person's behavior is stable across situations and that people fail to take circumstances into account. Studies (and real life) show that people often act differently in different situations.
Nancy Cantor and Walter Mischel
- proposed the COGNITIVE PROTOTYPE APPROACH to personality theory, in which cognitive behavior (such as the formulation of and attention to prototypes), is examined in social situations.
- In short, Mischel thought that consistency of behavior is the result of cognitive processes, rather than the result of personality traits per se
Twin studies and personality
- have indicated that the heritability of personality is about 40-50 percent
- Most notably the "Jim" twins had wives with the same name, dogs with the same name, and the same habits.
Kay Deaux
- found that women's scucesses at stereotypical "male" tasks are often attributed to luck, while men's successes are often attributed to skill. This suggests that gender is a social construct that colors interpretations
- Also, studies have found that women themselves attribute their successes to luck more than men, indicating that women have lower self-esteem
Sandra Bem
- studied androgyny (possessing both male and female qualities) and created the BEM SEX ROLE INVENTORY
- androgenous individuals have been found to have higher self-esteem, lower anxiety, and more adaptability than their highly masculine or feminine counterparts
Matina Horner
- suggested that females shunned masculine-type successes not because of fear of failure or lack of interest, but because they feared success and its negative repercussions, such as resentment and rejection
Alice Eagly
- found an interaction between gender and social status with regard to how easily an individual might be influenced or swayed
Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin
- scrutinized studies of sex differences and found that relatively few existed that could not be explained away by social learning
- the most consistent difference that seems independent of social influence is that females have greater verbal ability and males have greater visual/spatial ability. This has been attributed to internal biological or hormonal differences but is still hotly debated.
Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman
- studied TYPE A PERSONALITY
- is characterized by drive, competitveness, aggressiveness, and tension and is most commonly found in middle-to upper-class men.
Grant Dahlstrom
- linked type A personality to heart disease and other health problems
Hans Eysenck
- used factor analysis to identify the underlying traits of the two personality-type dimensions - introversion-extraversion and the stable-unstable (neuroticism). These two dimensions formed a cross and, therefore, four quadrans: phlegmatic, melancholic, choleric, and sanguine
Learned helplessness
- the brainchild of MARTIN SELIGMAN, demonstrates how experiencecan change people's personalities
- after a series of events in which one may feel helpless or out of control, a negative or pessimistic explanatory style develops. The person basically gives up in general and exhibits a helpless disposition.
- this can be countered with cognitive training that fosters LEARNED OPTIMISM for the person
Multiplicative observation
- is the method of discerning personality from a variety of observations and situations
Authoritarianism
- is the disposition to view the world as full of power relationships
- authoritarian individuals are highly domineering (if they are the top dog of the situation) or highly submissive (if they are in the presence of a more powerful figure).
- these individuals are also likely conventional, agressive, steretyping, and anti-introspective
- this is measured by the F-SCALE (also known as the Fascism scale)
Stimulus-seeking
- these individuals have a great need for arousal
Implicit Theories about Personality
- people often make assumptions about the dispositions of an individual based on the actions of that person
George Kelley
- suggested that PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS (conscious ideas about the self, others, and situations) determine personality and behavior
Self-handicapping
- self-defeating behavior that allows one to dismiss or excuse failure
Seymour Epstein
- was critical of personality trait theory
Self-monitoring
- characterized by scrutiny of one's own behavior, motivation to act appropriately rather than honestly, and ability to mask true feelings
Barnum effect
- the tendency to agree with and accept personality interpretations that are provided
Julian Rotter
- developed:
1) external locus of control - a personality characteristic that causes one to view events as the result of luck or fate
2) internal locus of control - causes a person to view events as the outcomes of his own actions. Too much of this can breed self-blame
Dispositional attribution
- the tendency for others to think that actions are caused more by a person's personality than by the situation. This would mean that a person lies because she is a liar, not because of the pull of the situation
- also FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
Self-awareness vs. Self-consiousness
- self-awareness is a STATE - it is the temporary condition of being aware of how you are thinking, feeling or doing
- self-consiousness is a TRAIT - it refers to how often one generally becomes self-aware
Self-esteem
- is knowing that you are worthwhile and bieng in touch with your actual strengths
- about 50 percent of people perceive themselves accurately and about 35 percent perceive themselves narcissistically
Personality tests
- two fo the best known are the Minnesote Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Personality Inventory (CPI)
Henry Murray
- developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
- consists of ambiguous story cards. Murray asserted that people would project their own "needs" onto these cards, such as the need for achievement.
Costa and McCrae
- found that personality changes very little after 30
Abraham Maslow
- created the hierarchy of needs