The trait model did not focus on identifying the following Personal characteristic

2) Summarizes large data sets with a few dimensions.

3) Dimensions are called factors & represent intercorrelations among multiple personality traits.

Cattell's data sources:

2) life records (observations of behavior in every day situations),

3) objective tests (experimental situations elicit behavior that would allow prediction to other situations).

Factor analysis in action

THE IDENTIFICATION OF "SOURCE TRAITS:" FIVE-FACTOR THEORY

PREMISE:

**The 5 factors:

1) Extraversion

2) Agreeableness

3) Conscientiousness

4) Emotional stability/Neuroticism

5) Openness to Experience/Intellect

factors? (Hint: see Table 7:3).

**WHY FIVE?

**STEP 1: CORRELATIONAL ANALYSIS**

For example, do people who score high on one measure also score high on another?

A strong association (high correlation) means:

1) that people with one trait are likely to have the second trait (or its opposite),

2) that the measures may overlap. That is, they may, in part or wholly, be measuring the same trait or set of traits.

Replication is important

Why? Helps to interpret measure overlap.

Common sources of high correlations between measures:

1) Common method variance

2) Common items

3) Common "source traits"

**STEP 2: FACTOR ANALYSIS**

*Examines associations between scores and "underlying" dimensions.

*Can identify uncorrelated or correlated dimensions.

SO WHY 5?

Repeated studies, using different measures, keep identifying the same 5 dimensions.

WHY DO SOME RESEARCHERS NOT ACCEPT THE "BIG 5"?

**There is debate about what the five factors mean

    *They may reflect quirks of the English language as much as the structure of personality.

    *They may reflect limitations in our thinking (i.e., the complexity of information people can understand) rather than limitations in the complexity of personality.

**Not all studies yield the same number of factors.

**Scores do not always correlate with the same factors.

**Researchers do not always give factors the same label. Related perhaps? No strong theory explains the existence of this particular five.

**Researchers decide whether factors will be correlated (by how they conduct their factor analysis).

GENERAL CRITICISMS OF TRAIT THEORY AND PERSONALITY TESTS

What are some ways tests can be misused?

2. Tests do not predict behavior very well.

What is "situationism?"

What does it mean that person & situation interact to produce behavior?

3. There is not much evidence for cross-situational consistency.

Burger suggests that personality psychologists could do a better job identifying consistency across situations than they now do.

How would they do that?

They could also do a better job of identifying the appropriate traits to study.

How would they do that?

PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH TO PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT

**innovations in measurement

**innovations in hypothesis testing

CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONALITY TESTS

1) Traits must be "scalable."

2) People can be "scored" on traits.

3) Scores are most meaningful when compared with norms.

4) People can describe themselves accurately.

5) Personality tests should be objective.

Objectivity is achieved through standardization.

Things are standardized because they can affect test results.

MEASURES OF PERSONALITY

Scales on MMPI initially devised to identify particular types of psychiatric patients.

550 true-false items

Items chosen to differentiate groups from one another. Only items that significantly differentiate are retained.

10 scales:

1) Hypochodriasis

2) Depression

3) Hysteria

4) Psychopathic Deviance

5) Masculinity-femininity

6) Paranoia

7) Psychasthenia

8) Schizophrenia

9) Hypomania

10) Social introversion

These scales, however, do not diagnose people with these illnesses!! Scales are interpreted in relationship to each other. That is, psychologist interprets a profile, and, in combination with other data about the person, predicts what his/her concerns, weaknesses, and strengths will be.

MMPI was the first personality test to include CONTROL SCALES. These scales attempt to correct for test-taking styles that bias results in self-report inventories.

SELF-REPORT INVENTORIES

Characteristics:

Paper-and-pencil

Easily administered to groups

Require little training to administer or interpret

Often have good face validity

Problems:

Easy to "fake" or give misleading information

Do not stand alone: do best in concert with other information (e.g., interview)

Boring, subject to carelessness or sabotage

Vulnerable to response sets

The MMPI corrected for some of the problems of self-report inventories:

1) Lie Scale (L): A group of items, if all answered in a particular way, suggest examinee wanted to present him/herself in a favorable/socially desirable manner. Unlikely all would be true.

2) Validity Scale (F): A group of items all infrequently answered in the scored direction. Each might reflect symptoms of a different disorder, and unusual that anyone would endorse all. If someone does, then they may not be understanding the items, or may be answering randomly.

3) Correction Score (K): A different set of items that perhaps captures a more subtle attitude on the part of the examinee. A high score may indicate "defensiveness," i.,e., an unwillingness to acknowledge problems or concerns. A low score may indicate "faking bad."

Collections of profiles have been gathered, with accompanying discussions, in scoring compendia for clinicians. However, as with the Rorschach, being able to formulate judgements based on combinations of scale scores requires that one use the scale frequently with many different kinds of clients so that one begins to make associations between particular types of profiles and behavior. There is some research to support the validity of interpreting specific profiles in certain ways.

MORE TYPICAL PERSONALITY TESTS MEASURE ONE TRAIT

Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale measures a generalized tendency to experience anxiety in the face of stress, or, one's tendency to feel somewhat anxious all the time.

Like many other inventories, it borrowed items from the MMPI to start, then selected only those that were selected as relevant by clinicians, and that then intercorrelated sufficiently when administered to test populations.

For example: Internal-external locus of control

Rotter's I-E Scale. Measures people's tendencies to attribute their good/bad fortune to luck, ability, hard work, or external circumstances. People who attribute their outcomes to ability and hard work make INTERNAL attributions while those who attribute their outcomes to luck or external circumstances make EXTERNAL attributions.

Early work indicated that people who attributed personal outcomes to INTERNAL causes seemed better adjusted. further work, however, as Mischel pointed out, indicated that when attributions were made about social systems, sometimes a combination of internal and external attributions was a better predictor of adjustment, especially for groups (African-Americans) who had traditionally not benefitted, or been harmed, by social systems.