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1. Chapter 7
TRAIT THEORIES:
ALLPORT, EYSENCK, CATTELL

2. QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED
IN THIS CHAPTER
1.What are the main ways in which people differ
from each another in their thoughts, feelings,
and behavior? How many different personality
traits are needed to adequately describe these
individual differences?
2.Does every person have a unique set of
personality traits or is there a universal set of
traits that provides a taxonomy of individual
differences?
3.If people can be described in terms of traits,
how can we explain variability in behavior over
time and across situations?

4. TRAIT THEORY’S VIEW OF THE
PERSON
TRAIT = a consistent pattern of behavior, emotion,
and thought
•2 connotations:
1.Stability (traits describe regularity in behavior)
2.Distinctiveness (traits distinguish among individuals)
•Assumption - people possess psychological
qualities that endure over time and across
situations
•Building a personality theory on traits implies that
people are consistent regardless of experience

5. TRAIT THEORY’S VIEW OF THE
SCIENCE OF PERSONALITY
SCIENTIFIC FUNCTIONS SERVED BY TRAIT
CONSTRUCTS
•Description
•Traits summarize a person’s typical behavior,
emotion, and thought and, thus, what a person is
usually like
•Trait theories provide descriptive facts that must
be explained by other theories of personality
•Most trait theorists try to establish a framework
within which any and all persons can be described
•Trait theorists try to establish a personality
taxonomy = a way of classifying the traits being
studied

6. TRAIT THEORY’S VIEW OF THE
SCIENCE OF PERSONALITY
SCIENTIFIC FUNCTIONS SERVED BY TRAIT
CONSTRUCTS
•Prediction
•With traits, one should be able to predict
everyday behavior and aspects of personal
environments
•With traits, one can make predictions that
have practical value (e.g., predicting which
applicants are most appropriate for a job)

7. TRAIT THEORY’S VIEW OF THE
SCIENCE OF PERSONALITY
SCIENTIFIC FUNCTIONS SERVED BY TRAIT
CONSTRUCTS
•Explanation
•The most important challenge for a scientific theory; differs
from prediction
•One can predict without being able to explain and can
explain without being able to predict
•Some trait theorists use traits to describe and predict
•Others treat traits as if they can explain – inferring
biological factors that underlie traits
•Most trait theorists believe that inherited genetic factors
are the main determinant of individual differences in traits
(40-60%)

8. PERSPECTIVES SHARED BY
TRAIT THEORISTS
•People possess broad predispositions to
respond in certain ways
•People who have a strong tendency to respond
in certain ways are high on certain traits; people
who have less of a tendency to respond in
certain ways are low on certain traits
•There is a correlation between possession of a
certain trait and performance on trait-related
actions
•Traits can be organized hierarchically

9. GORDON W. ALLPORT
OVERVIEW
•A visit with Freud early in his career solidified his
view that psychoanalysis, “for all its merits, may
plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do
well to give full recognition to manifest motives
before probing the unconscious” (Allport, 1967, p.
8).
•Highlighted healthy, organized aspects of human
behavior, which contrasted the psychoanalytic
emphasis on animalistic and neurotic aspects of
behavior
•Traits are basic units of personality grounded in
the nervous system
•Traits are defined by their frequency, intensity,
and range of situations in which they manifest

10. GORDON W. ALLPORT
PERSONALITY STRUCTURE
•Allport & Odbert’s (1936) analysis of personality
–Identified 3 different kinds of traits
•Cardinal traits = express dispositions that are so
pervasive that virtually every act is traceable to
its influence (1)
•Central traits = express dispositions that cover a
more limited range of situations (3-10)
•Secondary dispositions = traits that are the
least conspicuous, generalized, and consistent
(many)

11. GORDON W. ALLPORT
PERSONALITY STRUCTURE
•Allport recognized the importance of the
situation in explaining why a person does
not behave the same way all the time
•He felt that both traits and situations are
necessary to understand behavior
•Traits are needed to explain consistency,
whereas situations are needed to explain
variability

12. GORDON W. ALLPORT
FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
•Although the motives of adults may have
roots in the tension-reducing motives of
children, adults grow out of these early
motives
•Motives become autonomous from earlier
tension-reducing drives and a source of
motivation and pleasure in their own right

13. GORDON W. ALLPORT
IDIOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
•The idiographic approach adopts the in-
depth study of presumably unique
individuals as a way to learn about people
generally
•Contrasts with other trait theorists, who
generally adopt a nomothetic approach
in which large numbers of individuals are
described in terms of a common set of
traits

14. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
OVERVIEW
•Was a professor and director of the Laboratory
of Personality Assessment at the U of I for most
of his career
•Background in chemistry helped CATTELL to
recognize the importance of a taxonomy of
traits, much like the periodic table
•Viewed factor analysis as the tool for
discovering a set of basic “psychological
elements” (traits) that would form the foundation
of personality

15. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
FACTOR ANALSYIS = a statistical tool for
summarizing how a large number of
variables are related
•In a typical factor-analytic study, many
different measures are administered to many
respondents
•Some scores will be positively correlated with
one another; others negatively correlated
•These correlations might reflect the influence
of a more basic, underlying factor

16. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
•Factor analysis is the main way that trait
theorists identify the primary trait
dimensions of personality
•Factor analysis identifies patterns of
covariation in responses, yet does not
explain why these responses covary
•The researcher, using his or her
knowledge of psychology and related
fields, interprets the patterns of
covariation

17. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
STRUCTURE
•Surface traits = response tendencies
that can be observed in various situations
•Source traits = core internal
psychological structures that are the
underlying cause of the observed
intercorrelations among surface traits

18. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
STRUCTURE
•The factors that summarize the correlations
among surface traits are called source traits,
•CATTELL identified 16 source traits which he
grouped into 3 categories:
–Ability traits = traits that facilitate adaptive
functioning
–Temperament traits = traits that influence
emotions
–Dynamic traits = traits that direct motivation

19. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: L-DATA,
Q DATA, AND OT-DATA
•L-data = life-record data
–Measures of behavior in everyday situations
(e.g., school performance)
–May be actual counts of behavior or ratings
based on observations
•Q-data = self-report or questionnaire data

20. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: L-DATA,
Q DATA, AND OT-DATA
•OT-data = objective-test data
–Recording of behavior in situations where
participants are unaware of the relationship
between their responses and a certain trait
(e.g., experiment)
–The trait of assertiveness can be expressed
behaviorally, such as fast tempo in arm-
shoulder movement or fast speed of letter
comparisons

21. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: L-DATA,
Q DATA, AND OT-DATA
•CATTELL’s Sixteen Personality Factor
Questionnaire (16 PF) was derived from
factor analyses of Q-data
•However, CATTELL was concerned with
possible self-deception in questionnaire
responses and the wisdom of psychiatric
patients’ self-ratings
•Later, he relied on OT-data in his factor-
analytic research

23. RAYMOND B. CATTELL
STABILITY AND VARIABILITY
•CATTELL did not view people as static
organisms who respond the same way in all
situations
•He highlighted two other determinants of action:
states and roles
–States = fluctuations in emotion (mood) that are
partly influenced by the immediate situation
–Roles = responses prescribed by interpersonal
relations in discrete sociocultural circumstances
•Traits, states, and roles interact in complex
ways to produce behavior in situations

24. HANS J. EYSENCK
OVERVIEW
•Eysenck’s three-factor theory was influenced by
−Factor analysis
−Psychologists who studied personality types (e.g., Jung)
−Experimental work on classical conditioning by Pavlov
•Eysenck believed that psychoanalysis failed to provide
reliable and valid measures of personality constructs
•Eysenck believed that sound measures of individual
differences were necessary to identify the biological
foundations of traits
•Eysenck recognized that without understanding the
biology of traits, trait explanations could be circular

25. HANS J. EYSENCK
STRUCTURE
•SUPERFACTORS (TYPES)
•Secondary factor analysis = when factors are
themselves correlated, the intercorrelations among
factors can themselves be factor-analyzed
•Secondary factor analysis is used to identify an even
simpler set of superfactors that are independent (i.e.,
not correlated) of each other
•Introversion-Extraversion = organizes lower-level
traits such as activity level, excitability, liveliness, and
sociability
•Neuroticism (emotional stability vs. instability) =
organizes traits such as anxiety, depression,
moodiness, and shyness

28. HANS J. EYSENCK
STRUCTURE
•SUPERFACTORS (TYPES)
•Everyone possesses a greater or lesser
amount of introversion - extraversion and
emotional instability – emotional stability
(neuroticism)
•Any individual can be located within the
two-dimensional space of this model

30. HANS J. EYSENCK
STRUCTURE
•SUPERFACTORS (TYPES)
•Eysenck later added a third superfactor
•Psychoticism = abnormal qualities,
including aggressiveness, antisocial
tendencies, lack of empathy, and
idiosyncratic thinking
•Eysenck’s three factors are: PEN

32. HANS J. EYSENCK
MEASURING SUPERFACTORS
•Eysenck developed self-report items to
measure each factor
•The typical extravert will answer “Yes” to
–“Do other people think of you as very lively?”
–“Would you be unhappy if you could not see
lots of people most of the time?”
•The typical introvert will answer “Yes” to
–“Generally, do you prefer reading to meeting
people?”
–“Are you mostly quiet when you are with
people?”

33. HANS J. EYSENCK
MEASURING SUPERFACTORS
•Eysenck also devised objective indices
based on his belief in the biological basis
for individual differences in personality
–Lemon drop test - lemon juice is placed on a
participant’s tongue
–Introverts and extraverts differ in the amount
of saliva they produce in response to
stimulation

34. HANS J. EYSENCK
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF PERSONALITY
•Individual differences in introversion-
extraversion reflect individual differences
in the neurophysiological functioning of
the cortex of the brain
–Introverts experience more cortical arousal
from events than do extraverts (e.g., intense
social stimuli overarouse introverts, leading
to socially inhibition and withdrawal
–Extraverts experience less cortical arousal
than introverts from the same stimulus (e.g.,
due to underarousal, extroverts seek and
create more lively social environments)

35. HANS J. EYSENCK
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF PERSONALITY
•If traits have a biological basis, then
individual differences in introversion-
extraversion should be at least partly
hereditary
•Comparisons of identical with fraternal
twins show that heredity accounts for
some of the variations between
individuals in introversion-extraversion

36. HANS J. EYSENCK
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF PERSONALITY
•Other evidence consistent with Eysenck’s
biological theorizing
–Individual differences in introversion-extraversion are
stable over time
–Introversion-extraversion is found cross-culturally
–Various indices of biological functioning correlate
with introversion-extraversion scores, including:
•Brain activity
•Heart rate
•Hormone level
•Sweat-gland activity

37. HANS J. EYSENCK
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF PERSONALITY
•Still other evidence consistent with
Eysenck’s biological theorizing indicates
that introverts as compared to extraverts
–Are more sensitive to pain
–Become fatigued more easily
–Experience decrements in performance when
excited
–Tend to be more careful

38. HANS J. EYSENCK
I-E AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
•Campbell & Hawley (1982) investigated the
study habits introverts and extraverts
–More extraverts than introverts chose to
study in library locations where there was
external stimulation
–Extraverts took more study breaks than did
introverts
–Extraverts preferred higher noise levels and
more opportunities to socialize while studying
than did introverts

39. HANS J. EYSENCK
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
•Psychological disorders can be related to
superfactors and to central nervous system
functioning associated with these superfactors
•A person develops neurotic symptoms because
the interaction of biological tendencies and
environmental experiences produce conditioned
emotional reactions to fear-producing stimuli
•A majority of neurotic patients tend to have high
Neuroticism and low Extraversion scores
•Criminals and antisocial people tend to be high
on Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Psychoticism

40. HANS J. EYSENCK
BEHAVIOR CHANGE
•Eysenck was optimistic about the
remediation of psychopathology
•Although people inherit genetic
predispositions, it is possible for them to
–Avoid traumatic situations
–Unlearn fear responses
–Learn adaptive social conduct