1. The Trait Perspective

2. Trait Theories
Personality traits—permanent personality characteristics
Examples:
Shy
Aggressive
Confident
Dominant
Serious
Organized
Funny

3. Trait Theories
Trait theorists usually agree on, what is a personality trait?
Differ on what traits are most important
Trait theories describe
What personality is
Rather than Where personality comes from

4. Trait
A characteristic of behavior or a disposition to feel and act as assessed by self-reported inventories or peer reports.

5. Factor Analysis
A statistical procedure used to identify different components of your intelligence or personality (depending on the test).
FA takes the answers you give on tests and compiles them into general traits.

6. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

7. The Big Five C A N O E O C E A N

8. The Big Five
Conscientiousness (organized/disorganized, careful/careless, disciplined/impulsive).
Agreeableness (soft-hearted/ruthless, trusting/suspicious, helpful/uncooperative).
Neuroticism—Emotional Stability/instability (calm/anxious, secure/insecure, self-satisfied/self-pitying).

9. The Big Five (Continued)
Openness (imaginative/practical, preference for variety/routine, independent/conforming) Extraversion (sociable/retiring, fun-loving/sober, affectionate/reserved)

10. The Big Five
Once you take a test that measures your personality according to the Big Five Scale….
1) Your traits will be stable over time.
2) They can be attributed to your genetics
3) They apply across different cultures
4) They predict other attributes.

11. Assessing Our Traits
Personality Inventories: a questionnaire where people respond to items attempting to gauge different aspects of their personality

12. MMPI Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory:
The most widely used personality test.
Originally used to identify emotional disorders.
Now used for screening purposes.

13. The Person-Situation Controversy Are traits really stable? Kind Of….
Critics of trait perspective
Although people’s general traits may persist over time, their specific behavior varies as inner disposition interacts w/environment
Trait theorists maintain
Despite these variations, a person’s average behavior across many different situations tends to be fairly consistent.