PSY 1101

1) The basic formulation of traits are conceptualized by two different fields like biology and physics. Two basic formulations are internal causal properties and traits are purely descriptive summaries. Internal traits are expressed desires, needs and wants that lead to our behavioral expressions, which is our external trait . On the other hand just because someone has a trait as outgoing does not actually mean that the person is outgoing. They can be perceived as that but that doesn’t describe their entire personality. A descriptive summary does not describe a person’s entire personality, only a piece of it. Although people tend to describe a person’s entire personality based on a descriptive summary, they do not examine the situational cause that leads to the expression of behavior.  

The basic tendencies of the five factor theory is if the person is either stressed out easily, outgoing, willing to do new things or compromise with others and aware of things that occur. In the five factor theory you can not see a person’s personality on the patterns of behavior; instead they can only be inferred from both behavior and experience. Based on the basic tendencies and external influences, the five factor theory shows the characteristics of an individual. Although people from different parts of the world may have different cultures they can still relate to the same personality. The difference is the characteristics adaptations based on the basic tendencies. 

The main difference between the two theories is that the basic formulation theory considers many internal traits, but the basic tendency theory focuses on five major factors: Openness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Extraversion.

6) The person’s situation interaction perspective is that the interaction between personality traits and situational forces is what causes the reaction of the behavior. People may experience  the same situation but have different results because of their personality; this can affect their result of the situation based on their behavior. It’s important to consider the situation when you look at someone’s behavior. However, someone can also have strong consistent personality traits that are consistent in any situation. The person’s situation interaction perspective emerged because Mischel challenged studies done by early traits psychologists. Many studies were focused on if someone always showed the same personality traits all the time, but Mischel wanted to show that certain personality traits appear differently when someone is put in a different situation. 

2)        Trait personality is differential psychology that emphasizes the differences between people. Trait personality determines how people are different and how traits combined and form individual personality. Trait psychology and differential psychology are studies of what makes a human being different from another. In order to identify the prioritized traits two different approaches are used, lexical approach is noticing the words that are utilized to describe people, such as adjectives, and narrowing down the list through identifying synonyms of those words that the researcher gathered. Lexical differences in people are noticed and then language/words are invented to describe people’s differences/personalities. Common words are used to describe the lexical approach such as shy, self-centered. It is also important to consider whether the words have synonym frequencies (friendly, open, nice )  If a trait is a common or important trait then it should have many similar words. The statistical approach uses common traits; sometimes these words are from the lexical approach. You then make a list and have people rate the traits personally.  The goal of the statistical approach is to identify major traits of the personality map.  7)   The trait consistency and the person-situation interaction perspective explain that your personality in situations will affect your behavior in situations. Rank order means that if you arrange people based on how strongly they demonstrate a certain trait they will remain in that order even over time. For example, if you rank people by the level of impulsiveness, in thirty years they should still be ranked in the same order even though each person’s level of impulsivity may decrease. Mean level stability is applied to populations or groups of people  If a  population’s beliefs or traits change over a course of time that is mean level change. If that population’s beliefs or character traits remain the same over time that means mean level stability. Personality Coherence is when you have the same personality traits as when you were a child but you show it out differently when you are an adult. If someone has the same dominant personality in their childhood they are most likely going to have the same personality in their adulthood. For example, a dominant child might have a tantrum but a dominant adult may take control of a business meeting.