PSYCH 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Heritability, Mortality Salience, Belongingness
Document Summary
Personality tests have a number of shortcomings and weaknesses, but they remain invaluable measurement instruments for both research and clinical work. Although no one is entirely consistent in behavior, the quality of consistency across situations lies at the core of the concept of personality. Distinctiveness is also central to the concept of personality. Personality is used to explain why people do not act the same way in similar situations. In summary, the concept of personality is used to explain (1) the stability in a person"s behavior over time and across situations (consistency) and (2) the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness). Personality refers to an individual"s unique set of consistent behavioral traits. A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations. In factor analysis, correlations among many variables are analyzed to identify closely related clusters of variables.
