Personality
September 29, 2008
Costa & McCrae

The “Big Five”
Extraversion
 Neuroticism
 Conscientiousness
 Agreeableness
 Openness to experience
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Is this all there is to personality? Is this all
we should be studying?
McAdams and Pals want an “integrative
framework for understanding the whole
person”
 Kluckhohn and Murray (1953): every person
is like all other persons, like some other
persons, and like no other person

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What does this mean? What areas of
personality does this suggest should be studied
further?

Problems with personality texts?
Either theory-by-theory texts
 Or collection of research topics with no
overarching links/conclusions drawn

 Why

is this a problem?
Personality is divided up into autonomous spheres that
appear to not integrate with each other; study each
seperately

McAdams and Pals constructed their own
“five big principles” for studying personality in
an integrative fashion

Includes the “Big Five” expanded to a broader
framework
First Some Definitions/Clarification
The Five Principles for an
Integrative Science of Personality
Principle 1
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Begin with human nature and how every person is like every
other person
What 20th century theories attempted to address human
nature? How do the authors argue they were flawed?

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Freud, Rogers/Maslow, Skinner/Bandura
All require a “leap of faith;” can’t test them
What do McAdams/Pals propose instead?
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Human evolution
Explain…

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Natural selection for behaviors that allow survival and reproduction;
everyone has this general design – core set of dispositional traits
What do you think? Are we all fundamentally the same at
our core?
Principle 2

Variations on dispositional traits (Costa and
McCrae’s Big Five)


How did some psychologists try to do away with
“traits” in the 1970s? (What is the person-situation
debate?)


Personality traits provide “a rough outline of human
individuality”
Proposed human behavior is more situationally specific
(contingent) than cross-situationally consistent (trait-like)
What was the outcome of the person-situation
debate?
Principle 2


Traits research stemming from person-situation
debate (Traits are here to stay)
Traits
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Often predict behavioral trends across situations and
time
Show long-term stability in individual differences (for
personality traits)
Appear heritable (~50% for twins)
Are linked to functioning of the brain in new research (ex.
extraversion and the behavioral approach system – BAS)
Are summarized well by the Big Five model both in
repeated English studies and studies in other countries
Can you conceptualize personality without traits?
Principle 3
Humans vary on motivational, socialcognitive, and developmental adaptations
(situational variables) – these may effect
personality
 How do you reconcile the debate for roots of
human individuality: motivation/cognition or
traits?


Costa and McCrae’s characteristic adaptation –
behavior influenced by both traits and situational
variables
Principle 3

McAdams/Pals disagree
Characteristic adaptations aren’t just byproducts
of an interaction between traits and environment
 Characteristic adaptations function differently
than traits

 Traits
address: What kind of person is this?
 C.A.s address: Who is the person? (more existential)
Principle 4
Individuals differ by their life narratives –
integrative stories that give meaning and
identity in the world
 Our lives as ongoing stories – our narrative
identity

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Clinical applications???
Brief Recap

Dispositional traits -> outline of personality

Characteristic adaptations -> fill in some details
of individuality
 Narrative
identities -> give lives unique, culturally
anchored meanings

Every person’s like every other person

Every person is like some other persons
 Every
person is different from all other persons
Principle 4

Narrative identity shows how every person is
different from every other person. How?
Unique life stories
 Individual differences in narrative identity can’t
be reduced to differences in dispositional traits or
characteristic adaptations

Principle 5
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Culture’s effects on different levels of
personality

What are its effects on:
 Traits
 Characteristic
adaptations
 Individual narratives

Let’s examine each
Principle 5 – Culture/Traits

McAdams/Pals state that environment subtly
influences traits. What two supporting
evidences do they provide?
Even if ~50% of traits are accounted for by
genetic heritability, there’s still an interplay
between environment and genetics that shapes
trait expression throughout development
 Cultural forces likely shape phenotypic
expression of traits

 An
example from the article, or another that you can
think of???
Principle 5 – Culture/C.A.s

How do McAdams/Pals explain culture’s
effect on characteristic adaptation?

C.A.s are situated in social, cultural, and
developmental contexts; C.A.s are shaped by
social class, ethnicity, gender, historical events
 Goals
based on life trajectories society makes
available to the individual
 Values based on ideals passed down through families
 Other examples???
Principle 5 – Culture/Narritive
Identity

How do McAdams/Pals explain culture’s
effect on narrative identity?
Culture provides themes/images/plots for
psychosocial construction of narrative identity
 Life stories are at the center of culture

Who Wants to Explain this Figure?
Why Personality in a
Psychopathology Class?

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What do you think?
Clinical applications
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Framework proposed by McAdams/Pals may be used to
identify aspects of personality for change in treatment
Therapy exerts changes in personality – if you’re gonna
mess with it, you need to know the mechanics of what’s
“under the hood”
Narrative therapy approaches to treatment
Conceptualize psychopathology in respect to different
levels of personality

Ex. Depression

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Trait-like expressions of depression
Characteristic adaptation: thoughts/motivation pertaining to certain
social roles and/or developmental periods
Depressed life story, perhaps themes of loss