The trait paradigm, situationism and interactionism

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The trait paradigm,situationism and
interactionism

• Dr. Christine Simmonds

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What are traits or dispositions?

• Traits and language
• A trait is
• an aspect of personality that is reasonably
  characteristic of a person and distinguishes him
  in some way from many other people Morgan and
  King
• any enduring characteristic of a person that can
  serve an explanatory role in accounting for the
  observed regularities and consistencies in
  behaviour - Reber
• Types are trait clusters
• Ancient concept
• Modern trait approaches
• Psychometrics
• Nomothetic rather than idiographic

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Who are the key players in trait theory?

• Gordon Allport
• Raymond Cattell
• Hans Eysenck
• The Five Factor Model
• E.g., Costa and McCrae
• We will also discuss criticisms of the idea that
  there are consistent and stable traits
• Situationism
• Interactionism

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Gordon Allport

• Websters New International dictionary
• Personal dispositions
• Central dispositions
• Cardinal dispositions
• Ones ruling passion
• Common traits
• Functional autonomy

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Factor analysis and personality theory

• Correlations address the extent to which one
  variable relates to another
• Factor analysis extracts patterns from a set of
  correlations
• Factors have loadings onto variables
• Cattell was a big proponent of factor analysis
• 3 types of data
• Q data
• L data
• O-T data

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Cattells original 12 factors

• A Cyclothymia-schizothymia (sociability)
• B Intelligence
• C Emotionally mature stable character (ego
  strength)
• D Hypersensitive infantile emotionality
  (excitability)
• E Dominance-submission
• F Surgency-Desurgency
• G Positive Character integration (superego
  strength)
• H Adventureousness (parmia)
• I Sensitiveness (premsia)
• J Neurasthenia
• K Trained cultural mind-boorishness
• L Surgent cyclothymia-paranoia

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Cattells 16

• Outgoing-reserved
• More/less intelligent
• Stable-emotional
• Assertive-humble
• Happy go lucky- sober
• Conscientious-expedient
• Venturesome-shy
• Tender minded- tough minded

• Suspicious-trusting
• Imaginative- practical
• Shrewd-forthright
• Apprehensive- placid
• Experimenting-conservative
• Self sufficient group tied
• Controlled- casual
• Tense-relaxed

Fiskes research (1949) could not reproduce 16
factors found only 5.
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A hierarchy of factors

• Factors can be oblique or orthogonal

Exvia-invia
Anxiety
A B C D E F G H I J K L
M N O Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
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Eysencks P-E-N

• Extraversion
• Outgoing, assertive, etc.
• Neuroticism
• Emotional instability
• Psychoticism
• Tendency toward psychopathology, including
  impulsivity and cruelty

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Eysencks hierarchical organisation of personality

• Type level, e.g., extraversion or introversion
• Trait level, e.g., sociability
• Habitual response level
• Specific response level

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Eysencks concept of extraversion
extraversion
Sensation -seeking
Lively
Sociable
Active
Assertive
carefree
dominant
surgent
venturesome
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Eysencks biological perspective on E-I

• Personality is influenced by genetic makeup
• Drives differences in the autonomic nervous
  system
• 1. level of ANS activity
• 2. different balance between excitation and
  inhibition in the cortex ARAS
• Introverts have cortices that are over aroused
• Easy to condition
• Extraverts have cortices that are under aroused
• Difficult to condition

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Evidence for extraversion

• FMRI study
• E is related to the reward system in the brain
• Introverts are more sensitive to pain, more
  easily fatigued, etc.
• Extraverts have a shorter attention span than
  introverts (Rim, 1977)
• Depressant drugs (alcohol) produce extroverted
  effects
• Stimulants produce introverted effects (Eysenck,
  1970)
• Extroverts are more likely to smoke and
  introversts are more likely to drink
• Extroverts are more sexually active
  (stimulation-seeking)
• Parapsychology and Eysencks theory
• Extraverts would perform better at ESP
• Extraversion is increasing among college students

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Neuroticism

• Anxious
• Depressed
• Irrational
• Guilt feelings
• Shy
• Moody
• Low self esteem
• emotional
• Tense

• N also has a biological explanation
• The level of ANS activity overall
• Over activity ? emotionally reactive

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Psychoticism

• More controversial aspect of Eysencks
  personality construct
• Related to psychopathology
• Distribution among normal population
• Relationship with creativity
• Unusual thinking and associations, etc.
• The notion of healthy schizotypy has recently
  been revisited, e.g., Gordon Claridge, 1997

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Psychometric tests

• Maudsley Medical Questionnaire
• Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)
• Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ)
• Sensation Seeking Scale (with Zuckerman)

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The Big 5 or OCEAN

• Openness to experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

• Goldberg, 1990
• John, 1990
• McCrae Costa, 1985
• Norman, 1963

5
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Evidence for and Applications of the Big 5

• Good evidence that trait dimensions do exist
• Applications
• parenting, career, health, relationships, etc.
• extrasensory perception
• Openness to experience, extraversion
• Are five factors enough to explain personality?

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Spirituality as the 6th dimension?

• What is spirituality?
• Ralph Piedmont (e.g., 1999) argues that
  spirituality is the 6th dimension of personality
• Cross culturally valid
• Applied context
• Spiritual transcendence (ST) facilitates
  emotional adjustment and resilience in people
  with arthritis
• ST is a predictor of psychosocial outcomes from
  substance abuse, etc

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Mischels criticism of traits

• In 1968, Mischel published a criticism of
  traditional personality theory
• Psychoanalytic theory and trait theory
• Traits fail to predict behaviour in real life
• Situations may be more powerful than internal
  traits
• The person-situation controversy
• The .30 barrier
• Inherent problems in measurement that construct
  correlations between different traits

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To what extent is personality continuous/consisten
t across time?

• Consistency over time/longitudinal consistency
  stability
• Good evidence of longitudinal stability (Block
  Conley)
• Short term reliability, longer term variability
• Personality changes little after age 30 (Costa
  and MCrae, 1990)
• Methodological considerations
• E.g., spouse ratings versus alterations in self
  concept (C M, 1980), peer ratings versus self
  ratings (Haan, 1981)
• Some people change a lot, others do not change at
  all
• Patterns from childhood can often predict later
  behaviour
• What about the influence of the ageing process?

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To what extent is personality continuous/consisten
t across situations?

• The power of the situation is sometimes so
  strong that it overrides our inclinations
• E.g., reactions to traumatic events, e.g, the
  sinking of the titanic
• culturally accepted and encouraged behaviour
• Nazi Germany
• Consistency over situations consistency
• Inconsistencies across situations
• Dudycha (1936) punctuality is inconsistent
• Bouchard et al assertiveness is inconsistent
• Coie curiosity is inconsistent
• Paulus and Martin - Flexibility is inconsistent
• Currand et al Social anxiety is inconsistent
• Trait theorists defend themselves
• The notion of aggregation
• Epsteins (1983) findings with wider ranges of
  behaviour and situations
• Variability and situational specificity
• Funder and Colvin, 1991 - People express the same
  trait differently in various situations

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Dudycha, 1936
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Interactionism

• Moderator variables
• E.g., gender
• Person x situations
• Moos (1969)
• Traits as genotypes
• Individual structure of a trait (Bem and Allen,
  1974)
• Person x mode
• Trait relevance
• Metatraits
• Which types of situation minimise or maximise the
  expression of traits?
• Measuring the personality of situations

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summary and conclusions about traits and
dispositions

• Traits are a valuable construct for understanding
  human personality
• Not clear how many there are
• 3, 5, 6, 16?
• Differences in theorists approaches
• theory driven (deductive) versus data driven
  (inductive)
• Support for traits from biological perspective
  and applications to real world
• Criticisms
• Situationism
• A nomothetic approach does not capture what it is
  to be a unique person