Differenze individuali nel temperamento e personalità (primo esonero) + 2 domande aperte

Midterm personality part 1 big five

1) Trait theories and the big five

Introduction to personality psychology

• Traits = dispositions that characterize the personality of an individual are called personality dispositions or personality traits (Allport) (example: funny, extroverted).
• Determinants o deterministic view?!
• Dynamics = is about the organization of interacting elements within a person and the ways those elements change over the time, such changes can be determined by what is inside individuals, and not just by what is inside.
• Potentialities = individuals are not passive to react in a certain way.

Traditional focus of psychology

• Interindividual differences = typical dispositions or behavior traits that refer to a specific person and that contribute to differentiate one person from another one.
• Intraindividual coherence = the dynamics of the characteristic of that particular profile of that particular person.
• Interaction between biological and cultural factors (Marsella (2000) proposed that cultural factors influence patterns in which such traits are displayed, situations in which they tend to be elicited, their value in behavioural description, interpersonal responses to them, and meanings attributed to them. The interaction between nature and nurture in personality. There are theories along the years that try to correlate personality to biological basis, from Eysenck that began to find a link between 3 factors and nervous system structures and functioning, then the link to the limbic system, arousal.
• Interpersonal relationships - personality = Personality influences interpersonal relationships across the lifespan. (2) The influence of personality and social relations is bidirectional; that is, not only does personality influence social relations, but social relations also influence personality development. (3) The larger cultural context can influence the association between personality and social relations. Certain personality traits may be more valued in some cultures. Thus, culture may influence the display of certain personality traits and how they contribute to social relationships.

A perspective issue

A perspective issue = in the presentation the topic is between persons or within person? and in an article what prospective the authors are choose to follow?

1. Individual = I put myself in the shoes of others (participants).
2. Observer = how this person appears to me? Use date sources to think about personalities of persons observed. (there is a personality behavior that can be observed that is link to abusive parenthood?)
3. Scientist = personality is the psychological system that emerge from the interactions between individuals and the environments. (gene that can be related to extroversion, is there a gene connected with introvert or extrovert?)

Fundamental hypotheses about personality functioning

• Fundamental hypotheses about personality functioning = The concept of personality functioning or organization includes a comprehensive model composed of different dimensions, such as identity, the quality of interpersonal relationships, and additional aspects, such as the maturity of defence mechanisms and coping strategies.
• Correlational and experimental studies = The major difference between correlational research and experimental research is methodology. In correlational research, the researcher looks for a statistical pattern linking 2 naturally-occurring variables while in experimental research, the researcher introduces a catalyst and monitors its effects on the variables.
• To study individuals and situations = To what extent situations present a problem for personality research very much depends on the specificity of the traits in terms of behaviour and situations. Everything else being equal, the more narrowly a trait is defined, the more likely are person-situation interactions and a low cross-situational consistency of the inter-individual differences in the trait-descriptive behaviours. Many of the resulting problems can be resolved by aggregating across more and more heterogeneous behaviours and situations. This leads, however, to the new problem that we will increasingly lose our hold of what the aggregate means.
• Phenotypes and genotypes = A genotype refers to the genetic characteristics of an organism. A phenotype refers to the physical characteristics. For example, having blue eyes.
• Gene X environment interaction = Gene–environment interaction (or genotype–environment interaction or GxE or G×E) is when two different genotypes respond to environmental variation in different ways. In active and evocative gene-environment correlation, individuals select and evoke different environments on the basis of their genetically influenced preferences, motivations, and traits. These experiences may in turn affect psychological development. Genetic probabilism rather than genetic determinism. Genes in fact do not work in isolation and influence the extent to which organisms are responsive to particular environments. Thus, one may guess that genes account for a certain sensitivity towards conservative or liberal ideologies, but environmental affordances are crucial to turn sensitivities into stable preferences and behavioural tendencies.
• Top-down and bottom-up strategies = ‘top-down’ approach can identify the minimum number of sources of variation (i.e., the ‘extraction problem’ in factor analysis), but he argued that such statistical approaches can never resolve the correct orientation of these observed dimensions (i.e., the ‘rotation problem’ in factor analysis). Gray’s alternative ‘bottom-up’ approach to identifying major systems of causal influence rested on other forms of evidence, including the effects of brain lesions, experimental brain research (e.g., intracranial self-stimulation studies), and, of most importance, the effects on behaviour of classes of drugs known to be effective in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
• Idiographic = the person is at the centre of the study. This approach requires considerable investigation of one person and so is suitable to psychohistorical investigation and to clinical applications. Idiographic traits that resided within individuals were the ‘real’ causes within personality. Idiographic approaches produce understanding and offer intervention insights for particular individuals, whether through psychotherapy or behaviour modification. They are particularly useful for studying personality dynamics.
• Nomothetic = the population is at the centre of the study (ex how discipline is correlated with aggressive behavior); seek generalizations and make comparisons based on the study of many people. Nomothetic approaches, such as the Five-Factor Model, provide evidence for generality of concepts across the populations studied and are suited for studying individual differences, that is, identifying how one person compares with others. Nomothetic research is more often quantitative, expressed in mathematical measures, but some idiographic research goes beyond qualitative descriptions to include quantitative counts of behaviour. The two approaches complement one another, and the study of personality needs both.

The history of personality psychology

• Galton / the lexical hypothesis = related with Galton, the most important individual differences in human transactions will come to be encoded as single terms in some or all of the word’s languages. Concerning the relations among personality terms has been mirrored in efforts by later investigations to discover the nature of those relations, so as construct a structural representation of personality descriptions. The lexical hypothesis points that most of the socially relevant and salient personality characteristics have become encoded in the natural language. Thus, the personality vocabulary contained in the dictionaries of natural language provide an extensive and finite set of attributes that people speaking that language have found important and useful in their daily interactions. Argues that traits are so important in human affairs that common words will have been invented to name them all; an unabridged dictionary ought to provide an exhaustive listing of traits, which could be sorted out into a basic structure. The great majority of personality psychologists did not adopt the lexical hypothesis. They were sceptical that the lay vocabulary could be a proper basis for a scientific account of traits, and they tended to offer and defend their own, competing systems.
• Definition of personality traits and character = Allport suggested that the latter term, defined as the personality evaluated according to prevailing standards of conduct was not an appropriate topic for psychological studies, so he continues to use personality in preference to character this soon became standard practice. While character and personality are both used to describe someone's behaviours, the two examine different aspects of that individual. One's personality is more visible, while one's character is revealed over time, through varying situations.
• “Psychometric analysis approach” = Psychometric theories are based on a model that portrays intelligence as a composite of abilities measured by mental tests. to identify the underlying sources of these performance differences, Spearman devised factor analysis, a statistical technique that examines patterns of individual differences in test scores.
• Allport (inspiration from Gestalt theory) / Taxonomy = “ I learned that chasm exists between the common variety of differential psychology and a truly personalistic psychology that focuses upon the organisation not the mere profiling of individual traits” He was particularly impressed with Stern’s view of personality as sum of total of traits in favour of repudiation of his earlier an emphasis on the total personality. lexical study With a seminal of personality-relevant terms in an unabridged English dictionary they distinguish all the terms that could be used to distinguish the behavior of one human being from that of another. Allport and Odbert thought that organizing these attributes into a satisfactory taxonomy would keep psychologist at work for a life time.
• Murray / search for variables of personalities (Periodic table) = his background in biochemistry permitted his work, in the explicit analogy between his classification of the variables of personality and the periodic table of chemistry.
• Cattell (Spearman’s student) / Factorial Analysis / 16PF Questionnaire = use the stable traits’ list from Allport and Odbert as a starting point to build 171 scales most of which were bipolar. He develops a set of 35 bipolar clusters. He uses correlation and factorial analysis, and other multivariate techniques into the field of personality. “the ideal of science of personality description is to build its traits upon a foundation of objective test measurement.” He adopted trait as the fundamental conceptual unit of personality (like Allport). He distinguishes dynamic traits from the temperament traits and the ability (like Murray) the traits. In his view each kind of trait had its own pattern of correlation relationship among its component variables and the external situation. Thus dynamic trait variables change most in response to change of incentives and showed a complex higher-order correlations, while temperament trait variables change least in response to any change in the field. His major contribution to personality was his analysis of temperament traits via mathematical and statistical techniques. He identified 12 personality factors which become part of his 16 personality factors questionnaire.
• Eysenck / 3 psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism factor model: = Extroversion and Neuroticism appear in one form or another in most personality inventories. They are called “the big two”. There are few signals of convergence, for example Eysenck observed that “where we have literally hundreds of inventories incorporating thousands of traits largely overlapping but also containing specific variance each empirical finding is strictly speaking only relevant to a specific trait, this is no the way to build a unifies scientific discipline. Eysenck’s (1967) three-factor model consisting of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism; J. A. Gray’s (1970) model of behavioural activation and behavioural inhibition; and others. Two reoccurring dimensions across diverse models are extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability (neuroticism). Biological investigations and recent cross-cultural investigations generally support that these are largely universal, biologically based dimensions of individual differences.
• McCrae and Costa / NEO personality inventory 1980s = 1980, they develop the NEO Personality Inventory to measure 3 broad personality dimensions: Neuroticism, Extraversion and openness to experience (the starting point was Cattell’s work) it has 114-item questionnaire developed thought factor analysis to fit three-dimensional model of personality, 8 item scales are used for each of six facets or specific traits; in 1992 they publish the 240-item NEO Personality Inventory Revisited (NERO PI-R) in which there are six specific facets per factor.
• Goldberg 1990s (look down).
• Two models of Big Five: Assimilators (Costa and McCrae / Wiggins) VS Lexical hypothesis =. Nowadays we can say that there are two five-factors models.

1. NEO PI One develop by McCrae and Costa and operationalized in the lexical hypothesis.
2. Associated with studies based on the and operationalized in sets of factors markers provided by Norman, Goldberg and others.

Similarities between these two models: the number of dimensions is identical (5); the content of Factor IV is essentially the same, although it is oriented in the opposite direction (emotional stability vs neuroticism) and there is similarity in the content of Factor III (Conscientiousness).

The differences between these two models: the location of factor I and II are systematically rotated and Factor V is conceived as openness to experience in NEO PI and as Intellect/Imagination in the lexical model.

• Caprara 1990s (BIG FIVE MODEL)

2 Big 5 and the related measurement issues

Big 5 – Ocean

Five traits of personality: Energy/extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotion stability (neuroticism), openness.

1) Energy / extraversion

Energy / extraversion = confident and enthusiastic orientation towards the various circumstances of life, most of which are interpersonal. The opposite pole is introversion. Personality characteristics: social security, loquacity, dominance, dynamism, assertively.

It is divided in:

• Dynamism (level of activity, ease of speech, enthusiasm, sociability).
• Dominance (ability to impose, ability to excel, ability to influence others, assertiveness).

2) Agreeableness

Agreeableness = at a pole, characteristics like altruism, caring, emotional support, it does not predict social status, and at the opposite pole characteristics such as hostility, indifference towards other, selfishness.

Characteristics of personality: altruism, cooperativity, cordiality, taking care.

• Cooperativeness = know how to understand and meet the needs of others, know how to cooperate effectively with other.
• Cordiality = affability, kindness, courtesy, confidence.

3) Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness = features such as accuracy, reliability, responsibility, willingness to succeed and perseverance.

Characteristics of personality: ability of self-regulation, precision, scrupulosity, perseverance.

• Scrupulosity = reliability, attention to details, love of order, precision.
• Perseverance = persistence and tenacity in carrying out the tasks and in not failing the commitments, hard work.

4) Emotional stability / neuroticism

Emotional stability / Neuroticism = features related to anxiety and presence of emotional problems such as depression, mood instability, irritability. In general the central aspects are negative effects and the thoughts and behaviours associated with emotional difficulties.

Characteristic of personality: capacity to control emotion reactions, mood stability, absence of negative affections.

• Control of emotions = mood stability, absence of depression, control of anxiety.
• Control of impulses = absence of impulsivity, irrational control, absence of excitability.

5) Openness

Openness = openness to new ideas, to values of others and to one’s own feelings. On the other hand, central aspects are originality, creativity, nonconformity, on the other side intelligence, culture, analytics and reflection.

Characteristics of personality: opening of news, large cultural interests, originality, creativity.

• Openness to culture = interest to keep informed, interest in reading, interest in acquiring knowledge.
• Openness to experience = favourable disposition towards the news, originality and creativity, favourable disposition towards values, styles, ways of life and cultures different from their own.

Measures developed in the Italian context

Measures developed in the in Italian context = Big Five questionnaire (BFQ) Big Five Questionnaire-Children (BFQ-C) Big Five Observer (BFO) Big Five Adjectives (BFA).

Big five questionnaire (BFQ)

• Has found a wide positive address in the organization contexts where has been employed.
• 132 items.
• It is easy and quick compilation.
• Provides a personality profile.
• It has been a group of over 15.000 subjects, of which over 6.000 in evaluation condition.
• It is important to compare the scores to the normal population.

Reduced version

The (BFQ-R) is only use to research purpose, it has lower number of assertions (60 items not 132), and there is the absence of lie scale.

Lie scale

The lie scale is designed to assess the subject’s tendency to provide answers that are probably distorted of falsely positive (providing a very positive image of themselves) or negative (providing a very negative image of self).

Social desirability is considered, which is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by others.

T score

T score-we have f