Personality, 9e
Jerry M. Burger
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The Trait Approach: Theory,
Application, and Assessment
Chapter 7
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Chapter Outline
 Trait approach
 Important trait theorists
 Factor analysis and the search for the
structure of personality
 Situation versus trait controversy
 Application: The big five in the workplace
 Assessment: Self-report inventories
 Strengths and criticisms of the trait approach
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Trait Approach
 Identifies personality characteristics that can
be represented along a continuum
 Trait: Categorizes people according to
degree to which they manifest a particular
characteristic
 Assumptions - Personality characteristics
are relatively stable over time and across
situations
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Figure 7.1 - Trait Continuum
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Gordon Allport
 Acknowledged the limitations of the trait
concept
 Behavior is influenced by a variety of
environmental factors
 Traits have physical components in the
nervous system
 Promoted the concept of self
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Gordon Allport: Research
Strategies
Nomothetic approach
• People can be described along a single dimension according to their
level of, assertiveness or anxiety
• Common traits - Applies to everyone
Idiographic approach
• Identifies the combination of traits that best accounts for the
personality of a individual
• Central traits - Describe an individual’s personality
• Cardinal trait - Single dominating trait in personality
• Advantage - Person determines what traits to examine
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Henry Murray
 Personology
 Combination of psychoanalytic and trait
concepts
 Needs - Basic elements of personality
 Focused on psychogenic needs
 Readiness to respond in a certain way under
certain given conditions
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Henry Murray
 People can be described in terms of a
personal hierarchy of needs
 Press - Situation that influences the
activation of a need
 Principal contributions to personality
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
 Stimulated extensive research on psychogenic
needs
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Factor Analysis and the Search
for the Structure of Personality
 Factor analysis: Technique employed by
Raymond Cattell to determine the structure
of human personality
 Source traits - Basic traits that make up the
human personality
 Limitation - Procedure is confined by the type
of data chosen for analysis
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Donald Fiske’s Personality
Factors
 Social adaptability
 Emotional control
 Conformity
 Inquiring intellect
 Confident self-expression
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Table 7.1 - The Big Five Personality
Factors
Source: Copyright © 1986 by the American Psychological Association. Reproduced with permission. McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P.
T. (1986). Clinical assessment can benefit from recent advances in personality psychology. American Psychologist, 41, 1001-1003.
doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.1001. No further reproduction or distribution is permitted without written permission from the
American Psychological Association.
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Neuroticism
 Places people according to their emotional
stability and personal adjustment
 People with high scores are more vulnerable
to anxiety and depression
 Individuals with low scores tend to be calm
and well adjusted
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Extraversion
 Places extreme extraverts at one end and
extreme introverts at the other
 Extraverts are very sociable people
 Introverts are reserved and independent
people
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Openness
 Involves active imagination, divergent
thinking, and intellectual curiosity
 People on the high end are unconventional
and independent thinkers
 Individuals on the low end prefer the
familiar rather than the imaginative
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Agreeableness
 People with high scores are helpful,
trusting, and sympathetic
 Individuals with low scores tend to be
antagonistic and skeptical
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Conscientiousness
 People on the high end are organized, plan
oriented, and determined
 Individuals on the low end are careless,
easily distracted from tasks, and
undependable
 Referred as will to achieve or work
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Ongoing Questions Related
to the Big Five Model
 Debate about what the five factors mean
 Disagreement about the structure of the five
factor model
 Researchers have looked into the stability of
the five factors over time
 When to use scores from Big Five measures
versus scores from specific trait scales
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Criticism of Trait Approach
 Trait measures do not predict behavior well
because both the person and the situation
are related to behavior
 Person-by-situation approach: Individual
traits as well as situations determine behavior
 There is little evidence for cross-situational
consistency
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Defense for Trait Approach
Measuring behavior
• Strong links between personality traits and behavior is not established because
researchers don’t measure behavior correctly
Identifying relevant traits
• Single trait can predict a person’s behavior if that trait is important, or central,
for the person
• Inclusion of secondary trait, dilutes the correlation between the trait score and
the behavior
Importance of 10% of the variance
• Considering the complexity of factors that influence behavior, ability to explain
10% of variance should be considered good enough
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Situation Versus Trait
Controversy
 Identifying relevant traits
 Single trait can predict a person’s behavior if
that trait is important, or central, for the
person
 Inclusion of secondary trait, dilutes the
correlation between the trait score and the
behavior
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Application: The Big Five in
the Workplace
 Employers use scores from personality tests
to make hiring and promotion decisions
 Critics complain that employers misinterpret
test scores when making these decisions
 Research provides stronger evidence for the
relationship between personality and job
performance
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Application: The Big Five in
the Workplace
 Research indicates that conscientiousness
may be the best predictor of job
performance
 Highly conscientious people are organized,
hardworking, persistent, and achievement
oriented
 People high in agreeableness are trusting,
cooperative, and helpful
 Work well in team jobs
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Application: The Big Five in
the Workplace
 Extraverts have an edge in the business
world over introverts
 Test scores of applicants on the Big Five
personality dimensions are useful when
making a hiring decision
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Assessment: Self-Report
Inventories
 Self-report inventories - Asks people to
respond to a series of questions about
themselves
 Widely used form of personality assessment
 Have greater face validity
 Used by researchers, personnel managers, and
clinical psychologists
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Assessment: Self-Report
Inventories
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI)
 Prototypic self-report inventory used by clinical
psychologists
 Revised version, MMPI-2, was published in
1989
 Widely used clinical assessment tool
 Psychologists debate the validity of scales0
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Figure 7.2 - Sample MMPI Profile
Source: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Profile Form. Copyright 1943, 1948, (renewed 1970), 1976,
1982 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the University
of Minnesota Press.
© 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use.
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Assessment: Self-Report
Inventories
 Problems with self-report inventories
 Faking
 Test takers intentionally give misleading information
on self-report inventories
 Fake good - Presenting themselves as better than
they really are
 Fake bad - Making themselves look worse than they
really are
 Test makers build safeguards into tests to reduce
faking

MMPI contains scales designed to detect faking
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Assessment: Self-Report
Inventories
 Carelessness and sabotage
 Participants can get bored with long tests and select
responses randomly
 Test takers sometimes report incorrect information
to sabotage a research project
 Instruction explanation, surveillance and stressing
the importance of the test can reduce the problem
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Assessment: Self-Report
Inventories
 Response tendencies
 Social desirability: Extent to which people
present themselves in a favorable light
 Measuring social desirability enables a tester to
adjust the interpretation of other scores accordingly
 Acquiescence response can be a problem on some
scales
 People’s tendency to agree with test items can
distort the meaning of scores
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Strengths and Criticisms of
the Trait Approach
 Strengths
 Usage of objective measures to examine the
constructs
 Reduced level of the bias and subjectivity
 Numerous practical applications
 Educational psychologists and employers use
trait measures in their work
 Generated a large amount of research
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Strengths and Criticisms of
the Trait Approach
 Criticisms
 No explanation on how traits develop or how to
help people who suffer from extreme scores
 No schools of psychotherapy have originated
from the trait approach
 Lack of an agreed-upon framework
© 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use.
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