Personality

• Personality.traits are the characteristics ways that people differ from one another.
• Criteria for characterizing personality traits

  • Consistency
  • Stability
  • Individual Differences
• Consistency - individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behavior related to the trait
• Stability - individuals with a trait are also somewhat stable over time in behaviors related to the trait.
• Individual Differences - people differ from one another on behaviors related to the trait.
• The "Big Five" or "Five-Factor Model" system is a personality theory that proposes that personality is composed of five traits:

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness.
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism
• Openness is the tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors.
• Conscientiousness is the tendency to be careful on time for appointments, to follow rules, and to be hardworking.
• Extraversion is the tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others, the tendency to have a dominant style.
• Agreeableness is the tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to assert one's own opinions and choices.
• Neuroticism is the tendency to frequently experience negative emotions such as anger, worry, and sadness as well as being interpersonally sensitive.
• Eysenck’s Theory by Hans Eysenck

  Extraversion and Neuroticism are most important. Combining people’s standing on these two traits, many of the observed differences can be accounted for.
• Hexaco Model of Traits

  Similar to the five factor model, except it adds a sixth trait: honesty-humility.
• People high in honesty-humility are sincere, fair, and modest. People with low in this trait are manipulative, narcissistic, and self-centered.
• “Traits-Reflect.Personality” by Walter.Mischel 

  Looking closely at one’s behavior across many different situations reveals that consistency is not really that impressive.
• Objective.Tests represent the most familiar and widely used approach to assessing personality.
• Responses to these items then are scored in a standardized, predetermined way.
• Objective refers to the method that is used to score a person’s responses, rather than to the responses themselves.
• Basic Types of Objective Tests

  • Self-report.Measure
  • Informant.Ratings
• Informant.Ratings are asking someone who knows a person well to describe his or her personality characteristics.
• Self-report Measures is a test that involves individuals describing themselves.
• The items included in self-report measures may consist of single words, short phrases, or complete sentences
• Self-report personality tests show impressive validity in relation to a wide range of important outcomes.
• High-stakes.Testing is situations in which test scores are used to make important decisions about individuals.
• Self-enhancement Bias; in other words, people are motivated to ignore some of their less desirable characteristics and to focus instead on their more positive attributes.
• Projective.Test a personality test in which subjects are shown ambiguous images and asked to interpret and originally were based on the projective hypothesis.
• Two examples of projective tests

  • Rorschach Inkblot Test
  • Thematic Apperception Test(TAT)
• Rorschach Inkblot Test - test that involves individuals describing themselves
• Thematic.Apperception.Test (TAT) - “picture interpretation technique” test that involves describing ambiguous scenes to learn more about a person’s emotions, motivations, and personality.
• Implicit Test, a test designed to measure “implicit attitudes".
• Behavioral.measures offer several advantages over other approaches to assessing personality.
• Performance.measure is the process used to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of projects, programs and initiatives.