Exam 4

• Hippocrates’ contributions to modern trait theory

  Humoral Theory: 4 types of people based on body fluid

  • red (blood) = sanguine
  • black (feces) = melancholic
  • yellow (urine) = competitive & controlling
  • clear (saliva) = aloof

  Buildup/Dominance of certain fluids would lead to emotions and personality
• Sheldon‘s contributions to modern trait theory

  ’Mind/Body’ Theory: three types of people on body type

  • Endomorphic: ”gut“: larger people are jolly & outgoing
  • Mesomorphic: “muscles”: muscular people are more hyper-competitive
  • Ectomorphic: “bones”; frail people are linked to submissive and low self-esteem
• Gordon Allport’s Key Contributions


  • Mainstream views on personality
  • developed trait theory
• Gordon Allport’s background

  Childhood

  • father was a bootlegger
  • conservative mother
  • isolation
  • resented brother Floyd who was praised above him

  Education

  • Harvard U: earned B.S. & Ph. D
  • interested in service: initially followed clinical route, but Freud’s analysis scared him away from psychoanalysis & clinical
  • Freud analyzed him as an obsessive-compulsive
  • Dissertation on trait theory: seeing people as unique individuals
• Allport‘s Deviations from Freud

  • The “need“ for an unconscious (not measurable)
  • the belief in historical determinism (can change)
  • need to study the “normal”
  • emphasis on individual
• According to Allport, personality is…

  • dynamically organized (cortex-driven & ever-changing)
  • determined psychophysically (measurable actions)
  • produce characteristic behavior/thought (patterns that reflect traits)
• Allport’s Sources of Individuality

  Heredity/genetics

  • ‘raw materials’ of our being
  • physical features
  • dispositional features
  • cognitive features
  • show level of variance
  • recombination: genes integrate what is expected
  • Environmental
  • social environment
  • no ‘shared‘ environment
• (Allport) Characteristics of traits

  • real and not labels
  • determine/cause behavior
  • interact w/environment
  • can be studied empirically
  • interrelated to other traits
  • can vary to different situations
• (Allport) Common Traits

  Common: society/cultural; our culture reflects us (greater intensity)
• (Allport) cardinal traits

  One underlying moral philosophy (e.g. helping others)
• (Allport) central traits

  personality tendency we show to support moral code (e.g. caring, empathy)
• (Allport) secondary traits

  personal preference (e.g. favorite music)
• (Allport) Individual traits

  Personal dispositions

  • cardinal
  • central
  • secondary
• Habits vs Attitudes

  • Habits: NO stimulus response or thought needed (locking door before leaving)
  • Attitudes: opinions that can change (feelings towards another person)
• Allport’s view of ‘Functional Autonomy’

  ‘Self-determination’ present over past

  • perservative: seen across animal species
  • propiate (adulthood): a true self over the personality; organizing the energy levels, mastery and competence, propriate patterning
• Allport’s Seven Stages of Development

  1. Bodily self
  2. Self-identity
  3. Self-esteem
  4. Extension of Self
  5. Self-image
  6. Self as a rational coper
  7. Propriate striving
• (Allport) Bodily self stage

  0-1; sense of one’s own body, including bodily sensations, attests to one’s existence and therefore remains a lifelong anchor for self-awareness.
• (Allport) Self-identity stage

  2-3; the second aspect of the proprium is self-identity; most evident when the child, through acquiring language, recognizes himself as a distinct and constant point of reference.
• (Allport) Self-esteem & pride


  (2-5) an individual’s evaluation of himself and the urge to want to do everything for oneself and take all of the credit.
• (Allport) Self-extension stage

  third year of life, which states that even though some things are not inside my physical body they are still very much a part of one’s life.
• (Allport) Self-image stages


  (2-5) how others view “me” is another aspect of selfhood that emerges during childhood.
• (Allport) self as a rational—coper


  (6-12) the child begins to realize fully that he has the rational capacity to find solutions to life’s problems, so that they can cope effectively with reality demands
• (Allport) propriate striving

  (Adolescence) the selection of the occupation or other life goal, the adolescent knows that their future must follow a plan, and in this sense makes them lose their childhood
• (Allport) In the Healthy Adult…

  • extends self to people/activities beyond self
  • relates warmly to others
  • self-acceptance maintains emotional security
  • is realistic and uses skills towards goals
  • has a sense of humor and self-objectification
  • has a unfied life philosophy extended towards future goals
• Allport’s stance on human nature

  • more present than past
  • more uniqueness than universality
  • more growth than equilibrium
  • more optimistic than pessimistic
• Allport’s assessment measures

  • personal document techniques (first and third person)
  • computer correlates
  • Study of values (theoretical, economic, aesthetic, social, political, religious)
• Research behind Allport’s theory

  • Traits in expressed behavior (voice, facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms)
  • wide array of sources
  • universality of emotional expression
  • Facial Ation Coding System (developed for FBI)
• Cattell’s Key Contributions

  • founder of factor analysis (1st to apply it to personality psych)
  • used correlations and scatterplots to predict future behavior
• Cattell’s childhood

  • privileged childhood
  • World War I experiences: saw brevity of life and wanted to make a difference
  • studied under Charles Spearman
• Cattell’s education

  • undergraduate: natural sciences (physics & chem)
  • graduate: psychology under Spearman
  • US exodus: penniless, but went to Harvard
  • long line of influence from Harvard (Allport, Murray, etc.)
• (Cattell) Factor analysis

  Staistical comparisons of measures; correlations among two variables

  • if high = two variables form a factor
  • factors called ‘’traits’
  • forms predictable elements of personality
• (Cattell) Classification of traits


  • individuality (common vs uniqueness)
  • defined behaviors: ability (’cracking under pressure’) , temperament (emotions; ’happy vs sad’) , dynamics (motivations)
  • Stability/permanance: surface (suspectible to change) and source (stable parts of us)
  • origin: constitutional (nature) vs environmental (nurture)
• (Cattell) Stages of Development

  • infancy: (0-6) Freudian concepts
  • childhood: (6-14) beginnings of Independence; not always around parents all the time
  • adolescence (14–23): period of conflict; social adjustment and finding your purpose
  • maturity (23-50): personality becomes more rigid; lots of factors aren’t changing
  • late maturity (50–65): Jungian concepts; introspective and reflection—heavy
  • old age (50-65): acceptance of loss
• (Cattell) Source traits

  common; basic elements of personality (16 total); high and low extremes for each source trait
• (Cattell) dynamics traits

  motivating forces of personality

  • ergs (instinctive drives)
  • sentiments (learned attitudes on object of attention in life; subsidization to ergs; interact to form one’s personality)
• (Cattell) how ergs and sentiments interact w/ each other

  subsidization to ergs; interact to form one’s personality
• (Cattell) Assessment techniques

  Three primary assessment techniques

  • Life records (L-data): Overt behaviors, Naturalistic settings
  • Questionnaires (Q-Data): Self-reports; Limited reliability (difference among subject interpretations)
  • Personality Tests (T-data): “Objective” tests
  • 16 Personality Factors Test
• (Cattell) Three Research approaches

  • Bivariate: simple correlations
  • Clinical: interpretive
  • Multivariate: taking more than two data correlations (meta-analysis)
  • R variate (between groups)
  • P variate (looking att life progression of 1 person)
• (Cattell) Results from his work

  • Heredity effects from 16 PF test
  • Massive group of participants
  • Varying genetic levels
  • Certain factors more inherited
  • Others learned in environment
• Cattell’s stance on human nature

  • more deterministic over free will
  • more optimistic than pessimistic