PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12.1: Gordon Allport, Hexaco Model Of Personality Structure, Nomothetic
14 Dec 2016
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PSYC 12.1
Contemporary Approaches to Personality
• Personality: a characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is unique to each individual, and
remains relatively consistent over time and situations
• Two broad approaches to personality measurement: idiographic and nomothetic
o Idiographic: creating detailed descriptions of a specific person’s unique personality characteristics
▪ “trying to figure yourself out”
▪ Understanding yourself and your social world
▪ Can be applied to the full range of human experience (from most disturbed to the
healthiest to the most highly functioning individuals)
o Nomothetic: examine personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making
generalizations about personality structure
▪ Understanding factors that predict behaviours in general
▪ Lets psychologists examine what types of people are more or less likely to engage in
certain behaviours
▪ Key: to identify important personality traits
The Trait Perspective
• Personality trait: a person’s habitual patterns of thinking, feelings, and behaving
o How a person is “most of the time”
o Useful as short-cuts to understanding people
o Predict how person will behave across a range of diff. situations
• First systematic attempt made to identify all possible traits
o 1930s by Gordon Allport
o 18,000 words that could be used to describe people
o Developed a theory of personality structure by organizing these words into traits
• The Barnum effect
o Believing a personality quiz describes a person when it really doesn’t
• Factor analysis: a trait-based theory of personality based on the finding tat personality can be described
using 5 major dimensions
o Openness: high: creative, artistic, curious, open to new things; low: conventional, down-to-earth
o Conscientiousness: high: ambitious, organized, reliable, tend to achieve more; low: unreliable,
lazy, casual, spontaneous
o Extraversion: high: social, enjoy high levels of stimulation; low: reserved, enjoy low levels of
simulation
o Agreeableness: high: good-natured, trusting, supportive, kind; low: rude, uncooperative, irritable,
hostile, competitive, “put themselves first”
o Neuroticism: high: worried, insecure, anxiety-prone; low: tranquil, secure, emotionally stable
Beyond the Big Five: The Personality of Evil
• Honesty-Humility: HEXACO Model of Personality
o 6-factor theory that generally replicates the five factors of the FFM and adds one additional factor
▪ High HH: sincere, honest, faithful, modest, perform altruistic, pro-social behaviours
▪ Low HH: deceitful, greedy, pompous, harbour more selfish, antisocial, and violent
tendencies, more likely to be materialistic
• The Dark Triad
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Document Summary
Contemporary approaches to personality: personality: a characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is unique to each individual, and remains relatively consistent over time and situations, two broad approaches to personality measurement: idiographic and nomothetic. Idiographic: creating detailed descriptions of a specific person"s unique personality characteristics. Personality traits over the life span: our personalities start before we are born, children are hard-wired to be a certain way. Infants pose different temperaments from birth: some are generally active and happy, others are tranquil and easily upset. Infant temperament predicts adult personality traits: three main temperaments, well-adjusted: capable of self-control, confident, under-controlled: impulsive, restless, distractible; children: more likely to engage in externalizing behaviours. Inhabited: socially uncomfortable, fearful, easily upset by strangers; children: strong internalization behaviours. Behaviourist and social-cognitive perspectives: trait approach reinforces the assumption that we carry our personality characteristics arounds inside us; traits are things that we have .
