PSYC 2740 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Lexical Analysis, Lexical Hypothesis, Big5

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2740
• Professor: Stephen Lewis

Document Summary

A characteristic describing how people differ (or are similar) Example y- a shy person will remain shy over life. Traits are influenced from external factors but they come from within. Traits can remain formant in some situations. Traits are des(cid:272)ripti(cid:448)e su(cid:373)(cid:373)aries of o(cid:374)e"s attri(cid:271)utes without assu(cid:373)i(cid:374)g i(cid:374)ter(cid:374)alit(cid:455)/(cid:272)ausalit(cid:455) Focus is on behaviour that correspond to trait. Traits = categories of acts: act nomination nominate behaviours that correspond with trait, prototypicality judgment some behaviours are more relevant to a trait, recording of act performance record frequency of behaviour. Identifies behavioural regularities: helps study the meaning of hard to study traits (i. e. creativity) 3 main approaches: lexical, statistical, theoretical. Lexical hypothesis all key individual differences are encoded within our language over time. Traits important in communication (i. e. in job interview) Pros: helps initially to identify key differences, considers culture. Cons: some traits are ambiguous (i. e. cross-culturally calling somebod(cid:455) a (cid:862)tool(cid:863) does(cid:374)"t always mean the same thing, may not capture various types of speech.