PSYC 2130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Anxiety Disorder, Heredity, Social Intelligence
6 Nov 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Allport did not believe that traits are physical entities, but they are psychological traits that explain behavior. For example, theorists believe that a person who behaves aggressively is because they have an aggressive trait. Dispositional psychologists have use three broad approaches in identifying the most basic or important traits: the lexical approach: the more important a disposition is, the more often it will be referred to in ordinary language. Ex. aggressiveness: the theoretical approach: looks to theory to suggest which dispositions are most central or important, the statistical approach: analyzes very large collections of data and identify the basic factors that underlie the data set. Believed that traits are the basic units of personality. Ex. a person who has an assertive trait but acts in a passive way does not mean he is not assertive, rather his trait is not expressed in that situation. Cardinal dispositions are the most pervasive traits that dominate the individual (cannot be hidden)
