Developmental psychology.pdf

Personality 407
thus offers greater potential for describing an individual's uniqueness. In addition, the
personality type is assumed to endure for the individual's lifetime, whereas a trait is
regarded as long-standing but not necessarily permanent. And most important, a type
sometimes implies a discreet category, such as extraversion or introversion, while a
trait is usually regarded as a continuous dimension within which each individual may
vary in degree, as in aggressiveness, joviality, and independence. For all of these reasons,
the trait approach is a more versatile method for studying personality.
Primary Traits The idea behind the trait approach is relatively straightforward;
individuals differ from one another, yet they behave consistently in a wide variety of
situations. An individual acts in an aggressive manner at home, in school, on the athletic
field, and elsewhere. Another person is jovial in most situations. Consistency is the key
to the trait approach. A trait is a persistent tendency, and an individual's personality
is composed of a unique set of these persistent tendencies.
One goal in trait research has been to find the most basic traits or elements,
presumably common to most individuals. These are called primary traits. The next
problem is to understand the ways in which they are arranged, modified, or augmented
from individual to individual (Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970; Cattell, 1973).
The task of finding primary traits appears impossible at first glance because
of the complexity of personality, but as a preliminary effort one could catalog all of
the pertinent adjectives used in everyday life. Indeed, two investigators following this
procedure found almost 18,000 terms referring to personality, some of which had similar
meanings, such as fearful, apprehensive, troubled, and worried. Thus one term,
anxious, might represent many of them. Analyses along similar lines for thousands of
remaining words suggested that most of them could be represented by relatively few
traits (Allport & Odbert, 1936).
When the statistical procedure known as factor analysis came into wide use,
it seemed that the primary or irreducible traits might be identified. One early investigation
revealed seven basic traits—general activity, masculinity-femininity, impulsiveness,
dominance-submission, emotional stability, sociability, and reflectiveness
(Thurstone, 1950). However, it gradually became evident that we cannot say how many
basic personality traits exist. These investigations give different results and the traits
overlap. Some of those in the list of seven, for example, are now regarded as aspects
or combinations of those appearing in a later list of 16 primary traits (Figure 15.7).
Reserved versus Outgoing
Low intelligence versus High intelligence
Easily upset versus Emotionally stable
Mild versus Assertive
Serious versus Happy-go-lucky
Expedient versus Conscientious
Timid versus Uninhibited
Tough-minded versus Tender-minded
Trusting versus Suspicious
Practical versus Imaginative
Unpretentious versus Polished
Self-assured versus Apprehensive
Conservative versus Liberal
Group-dependent versus Self-sufficient
Undisciplined versus Controlled
Relaxed versus Tense
Figure 15.7
Sixteen Personality Traits. The
adjective pairs represent opposite
ends of continua (Taken from the
Handbook for the 16 PF Copyright
1970 by the Institute for Personality
and Ability Testing, Inc Reproduced
by permission of the copyright
owner.)