Trait Perspective on Personality (Notes)

Personality Traits

Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion.(2)

When we observe people around us, one of the first things that strikes us is how different people are from one another. Some people are very talkative while others are very quiet. Some are active whereas others are couch potatoes. Some worry a lot, others almost never seem anxious. Each time we use one of these words, words like “talkative,” “quiet,” “active,” or “anxious,” to describe those around us, we are talking about a person’s personality—the characteristic ways that people differ from one another. Personality psychologists try to describe and understand these differences.(1)
Personality traits reflect basic dimensions on which people differ . According to trait psychologists, there are a limited number of these dimensions (dimensions like Extraversion, Conscientiousness, or Agreeableness), and each individual falls somewhere on each dimension, meaning that they could be low, medium, or high on any specific trait.(1)

An important feature of personality traits is that they reflect continuous distributions rather than distinct personality types. This means that when personality psychologists talk about Introverts and Extraverts, they are not really talking about two distinct types of people who are completely and qualitatively different from one another. Instead, they are talking about people who score relatively low or relatively high along a continuous distribution. In fact, when personality psychologists measure traits like Extraversion, they typically find that most people score somewhere in the middle, with smaller numbers showing more extreme levels.(1)

There are three assumptions that characterize personality traits: 1) consistency, 2) stability, and 3) individual differences.

1.To have a personality trait, individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behaviors related to the trait. For example, if they are talkative at home, they tend also to be talkative at work.

2. Individuals with a trait are also somewhat stable over time in behaviors related to the trait. If they are talkative, for example, at age 30, they will also tend to be talkative at age 40.

3. People differ from one another on behaviors related to the trait. Using speech is not a personality trait and neither is walking on two feet—virtually all individuals do these activities, and there are almost no individual differences. But people differ on how frequently they talk and how active they are, and thus personality traits such as Talkativeness and Activity Level do exist.(1)

History

In 1936, psychologists Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert extracted approximately 4,500 terms from Webster’s New International Dictionary which described types of behavior or personality traits.(3)

In the 1940s, Raymond Cattell reduced Allport and Odbert's list of traits to 171 words by eliminating synonyms. From there he applied a statistical procedure known as factor analysis to "analyze the correlations among traits and to identify the most important ones. On the basis of his research, he identified what he called “source” (more important) and “surface” (less important) traits, and he developed a measure that assesses 16 dimensions of traits based on personality adjectives taken from everyday language."(4)

"Investigation into the five factor model started in 1949 when D.W. Fiske was unable to find support for Cattell’s expansive 16 factors of personality, but instead found support for only five factors. Research increased in the 1980s and 1990s, offering increasing support for the five factor model. The five factor personality traits show consistency in interviews, self-descriptions, and observations, as well as across a wide range of participants of different ages and from different cultures. It is the most widely accepted structure among trait theorists and in personality psychology today, and the most accurate approximation of the basic trait dimensions."(5)

"Because this model was developed independently by different theorists, the names of each of the five factors—and what each factor measures—differ according to which theorist is referencing it."(5) "At least four sets of researchers have worked independently for decades on this problem and have identified generally the same five factors: Tupes and Christal were first, followed by Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute, Cattell at the University of Illinois, and Costa and McCrae at the National Institutes of Health."(6)

Lexical Approach

One of the approaches trait theorist employ is referred to as a lexical approach to personality, which assumes that traits can be described using single adjectives or descriptive phrases. If enough people regularly exhibit a form of behavior and no term exists in a given language to describe it, then according to the lexical hypothesis, a term will be created so that the trait may be considered and discussed with others.(3)

Criticism of Trait Perspective

Situational Influences on Personality
The person–situation debate in personality psychology refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that people have consistent personalities that guide their behaviors across situations. Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits.(7)

In his 1968 book Personality and Assessment, Walter Mischel asserted that personality instruments could not predict behavior with a correlation of more than 0.3. Social psychologists like Mischel argued that attitudes and behavior were not stable, but varied with the situation.(6)

In the years after the publication of Mischel’s (1968) book, debates raged about whether personality truly exists, and if so, how it should be studied. And, as is often the case, it turns out that a more moderate middle ground than what the situationists proposed could be reached. It is certainly true, as Mischel pointed out, that a person’s behavior in one specific situation is not a good guide to how that person will behave in a very different specific situation. Someone who is extremely talkative at one specific party may sometimes be reticent to speak up during class and may even act like a wallflower at a different party. But this does not mean that personality does not exist, nor does it mean that people’s behavior is completely determined by situational factors. Indeed, research conducted after the person-situation debate shows that on average, the effect of the “situation” is about as large as that of personality traits. However, it is also true that if psychologists assess a broad range of behaviors across many different situations, there are general tendencies that emerge. Personality traits give an indication about how people will act on average, but frequently they are not so good at predicting how a person will act in a specific situation at a certain moment in time.(1)



(1) Personality Traits: NOBA
(2)Wikipedia: Trait Theory
(3) Five-Factor Model of Personality: Psychologist World
(4) Introduction to Psychology (Open + Free)
(5) Lumen: Trait Perspective on Personality
(6) Big Five Personality Traits: Wikipedia
(7) Person-situation debate: Wikipedia