Psychology 2035A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Raymond Cattell, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2035A/B
• Professor: Doug Hazlewood

Document Summary

Personality is used to explain the stability in a person"s behaviour over time and across situations (consistency) The behavioural differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness) Personality- an individual"s unique constellation of consistent behavioural traits: individual differences in traits and behaviour that are stable overtime and consistent across situations. Origins of personality: behavioural perspectives: pavlov, skinner, bandura, humanistic perspectives: rogers, maslow, biological perspectives, psychodynamic perspective. Personality trait- durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of: specific assets called traits, ex: honest, dependable, moody, friendly are dispositions representing. Allport went to a dictionary, counted 4500 traits. Cattell r personality: interested in searching for elementary traits: basic building blocks of, removed synonyms and got 171 surface traits, can this be further reduced? (see last point) Most theories assume some traits are more basic than others: small number of fundamental traits determine other traits, ex: impulsive, restless, irritable, boisterous, impatient come from basic.