Dispositional Factors

11 Key excerpts on "Dispositional Factors"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Essential Personality

  • Donald Pennington(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Psychologists have long been interested in this approach and typically use the questionnaire method (see Chapter 1) to measure dispositions. In this chapter we will look at four different, but not totally unrelated, approaches to dispositions. The early work of Gordon Allport, the highly influential factor analysis approach of Raymond Cattell, Eysenck’s ‘three dimensions of personality’ and what are known as the ‘big five personality traits’, which represent current psychological thinking in this area. 6.1.1 Dispositions and traits In personality psychology the terms dispositions and traits are used interchangeably, but what are dispositions? Dispositions may be regarded as labels we use to explain a person’s behaviour across a range of situations. Dispositions are also relatively enduring aspects of personality that may change over a longer period of time (a number of years), rather than on a day-to-day basis. Put another way, we may define traits as ‘internal dispositions that are relatively stable over time and across situations’ (McAdams 2001: 252). Notice that this definition shows traits to be internal to a person, and stable, which means unlikely to change easily and occurring in many different situations. In more technical language dispositions are said to be cross-situationally consistent. However, we shall see at the end of this chapter that this idea has been strongly challenged. Dispositions are also characterised as bipolar adjectives or in terms of opposites such as very talkative–very quiet, very friendly–very unfriendly, etc. Each bipolar adjective is usually conceived on a continuum ranging from one extreme to another and usually measured on five-or seven-point scales (see Chapter 2). Dispositions are usually regarded as independent but may be clustered together to provide a more general picture of somebody, as with the description of Jennifer at the start of this chapter

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Personality and Individual Differences

  • Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • BPS Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  One way of doing this is to look at the distinction between situational and disposi- tional models in more detail. Traits represent implicit associations between observ- able behaviors and internal dispositions or preferences to act. These associations are indicative of an individual’s consistent patterns of behavior and determine differences between rather than within individuals; that is, why different people feel, think, and behave in different ways. On the other hand, differences within individuals – that is, why the same person may feel, think, and act differently in different situations – have been conceptualized in terms of states or situational approaches. States refer to spo- radic or ephemeral acts or behaviors lasting perhaps no longer than a few hours, or even occasional moods such as joy or anger. PERSONALITY, PART I 35 Some personality theorists, like Raymond Cattell (1957), argued that biological instincts, such as hunger, sex drive, and aggression, should also be considered part of an individual’s personality, because they motivate or cause behavior. Although the study of motivation and mood states has constituted a separate area of research in psychology, these factors are important determinants of individuals’ behavior and are thus discussed in Chapter 9. Furthermore, because individuals do not always behave in the same manner, it is often essential to understand the causes of behavior in terms of states rather than traits. For example: (a) If you had been wandering in the heat of the Sahara desert for three days without water, it would be irrelevant to know whether you are extraverted or introverted to predict whether you would be likely to ask the first stran- ger you encounter if he or she had any water. (b) The happiness you may express after being informed that you have won the lottery may not reflect the fact that you may be a melancholic or neurotic person.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology

  • Philip J. Corr, Gerald Matthews(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  In other words, personality psychology is concerned with those temporally stable tendencies of behaviour in which persons of a similar age differ from one another. Temporally stable tendencies of behaviour are called dispositions in psychol- ogy but also other sciences such as medicine, biology and physics. Dispositions that characterize the personality of an individual are called personality disposi- tions, or personality traits (Allport 1937; Funder 1991). In this chapter I provide an overview of empirical personality research on traits, with a particular focus on the relations between traits and situations. First, I discuss the most simple case of one trait of one individual in one situation. Secondly, I expand this analysis from a variable-centred perspective to inter- individual differences in one trait in one situation. Thirdly, I further expand this perspective to inter-individual differences in one trait across multiple situations, including the important case where the situation is defined by another person. Fourthly, I deal with the tricky question of how one should define a situation in personality research. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of possible mechanisms that relate traits to situations. One individual, one situation Did Einstein spend a lot of time sailing on Berlin’ s lakes? Yes, he did, at least between 1929 and 1932. During this time, Einstein showed a stable tendency to sail. Before then and later in life, he did not exhibit this trait as much. This is a borderline case of a trait because it is ‘narrow’ in terms of behaviour and situations (hence sometimes called a ‘habit’ rather than a ‘trait’) and because the behavioural tendency was stable only for a certain phase of Einstein’ s life. Nevertheless, traits do change over longer time periods (see M. Brent Donnellan and Richard W. Robins, Chapter 12), and the distinction between habits and traits is a fuzzy one. 43

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Mental Testing in Clinical Practice

  The Commonwealth and International Library: Mental Health and Social Medicine Division

  • Moyra Williams, Hugh L. Freeman(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  38 MENTAL TESTING IN CLINICAL PRACTICE person such as "neatness" or "aggressiveness"), habits (the overt, observable behaviour patterns), attitudes (the combination of ideas or internal images and reaction tendencies) and drives. The latter, although they cannot, so to speak, be seen or measured directly are inferred from the changes of behaviour which follow changes in internal condition. A hungry rat which will face a stronger electric shock to obtain food than a satiated one, is presumed to be driven by the need—hunger, although even hunger it must be admitted can only be assessed in terms of the amount of food the animal is known to have eaten. FACTORS DETERMINING AND INFLUENCING PERSONALITY Before we can accurately measure or assess any of the above variables, it is necessary to consider some of the factors which may influence them. Although it would have seemed logical to study the effect of these in well-adjusted or normal people before branching out into the study of the abnormal, this is not the course history has taken. Most of our information about the factors affecting person- ality comes from a study of the abnormalities or exaggerations they produce. We know more about the cause of disorders of personality than we do about the causes of its order. The factors affecting personality, either in its development or its dissolution, can be divided into three groups: Physical, Intellectual and Social. 1. Physical Factors Of all the factors believed to influence personality, physical ones are probably those which can be most easily observed and have been most scientifically studied. But, as is often the case, those variables which are most amenable to scientific assessment are not necessarily the most influential, and despite the vast amount of attention which has been paid to the physical correlates of personality, the extent to which they are responsible for more than the broadest aspects of individuality seems to be doubtful.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 5 Dec |Learn more

  The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology

  A Contextual Approach

  • Alan Carr(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Ingram & Price, 2010 ). These biological and psychological predisposing factors will be considered in turn.

  Genetic factors

  Twin and adoption studies show that genetic factors influence the development of many psychological characteristics such as temperament, major personality traits and intelligence (Maltby et al., 2013 ). These characteristics are about 50% heritable. Genetic factors also play a role in the aetiology of many psychological problems (Rutter, 2006 ). The mechanism of influence for both broad psychological characteristics and specific psychological problems is usually polygenetic. With the exception of some disorders (e.g. Down syndrome), genetic factors determine the development of specific psychological problems through their influence on broader psychological characteristics such as temperament. Current evidence does not support the view that most childhood psychological problems are unalterably genetically determined. Rather genetic factors render children vulnerable to developing psychological problems in certain environmental contexts.

  Pre-natal and peri-natal complications

  Pre-natal intrauterine adversities and peri-natal complications may predispose children to developing psychological difficulties. The intrauterine environment may entail hazards which compromise the healthy development of the foetus (Rutter & Casaer, 1991 ; Zimmerman & Connors, 2011 ). Maternal age, blood-type incompatibility, malnutrition, smoking, alcohol use and drug use are among the factors that may negatively impact on the intrauterine environment. For example, the progeny of women who abuse alcohol while pregnant may develop foetal alcohol syndrome, a condition characterized by microcephaly, intellectual disability and craniofacial anomalies (Memo et al., 2013 ). Infections such as rubella, syphilis and AIDS may be transmitted from the mother to the foetus. Often infants who have developed in a hazardous intrauterine environment have low birth weight (less than 4.5 lbs. or 2,000 grams) or their size in relation to their gestation period is sufficiently below average to be described clinically as small-for-dates

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Personality Theories

  Critical Perspectives

  • Albert Ellis, Mike Abrams, Lidia Abrams(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  If we are asked to describe someone else’s personality, we will most likely come up with a list of traits—there really is no useful alternative. Traits are universally used to describe and explain the behavior of others; they are part of everyone’s implicit or unstated personality theory. We are motivated to see other people as more consistent than they really are because we need to understand others for our own social and economic survival. The notion of traits, then, gives us at least the illusion of understanding others. If we see people behave in a particular way in a given situation and we attribute that behavior to their traits, we will think that we have learned something about them and can predict their behavior in the future. On the other hand, if we attribute people’s behavior to the situation, we have not learned very much about them and will have no clue as to what we can expect from those people in the future. There appears to be a built-in tendency in humans to overestimate the importance of internal dispositions and underestimate the contribution of the specific situation in explaining the behavior of others. Social psychology has a name for this bias—the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). The very name indicates how pervasive this error is. The fundamental attribution error is reversed when it comes to analyzing our own behavior. While we attribute the behavior of others to Dispositional Factors, that is, to traits, when it comes to our own behavior, we attribute it to situational or external causes. This bias also has a name, the actor-observer bias. It can be summarized as “When you fall, it’s because you are clumsy; when I fall, it’s because the floor was slippery.” To take another example, suppose we have a classmate who often misses lectures. If we are asked to explain the absences, we might say that the classmate is irresponsible, does not take things seriously, is undependable and lazy—all of which are trait descriptions

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Individual Differences

  Normal And Abnormal

  • Michael W. Eysenck, University of London College, College, University of London(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  •  One way of working out the structure of personality is by applying factor analysis to self-report or rating data. Prominent factor theories based on this approach are those of Cattell and Eysenck. Cattell has claimed that 16 different personality factors can be identified in self-report questionnaire data, but the evidence indicates that no more than about 8–10 can be obtained consistently. Eysenck has focused on three major independent factors of personality: introversion–extraversion; neuroticism; and psychoticism. There is strong evidence that genetic factors play a role in producing individual differences in each of these factors, but it has proved very difficult to establish the ways in which these genetic factors influence physiological functioning.

  •  Gray has proposed a theoretical approach which resembles that of Eysenck. He argued that there is an anxiety dimension (similar to neuroticism) which corresponds to individual differences in susceptibility to punishment, and an orthogonal impulsivity dimension (similar to extraversion) corresponding to individual differences in susceptibility to reward.

  •  One of the greatest problems with factor theories of personality is that they appear to assume that individuals will display more cross-situational consistency than they actually do. This led Mischel and other theorists to propose situationist theories, in which the emphasis is on the role of the situation rather than personality in determining behaviour. It is true that the situation is an important determinant of behaviour, but the situationist approach is much too narrow.

  •  A superior approach is that of interactionism, in which it is assumed that behaviour is determined jointly by personality and by the situation. One of the main limitations of most interactionist approaches is that the ways in which personality and situation interact are not usually specified in any detail.

  •  The constructivist approach has gone beyond the factor theory approach. It is claimed that personality is in part a construction or creation which evolves as a function of our interactions with others. Our personality depends not only on what we have inherited, but also on the expected and actual behaviour and attitudes of other people towards us.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Psychology

  • Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould, Adrian Furnham(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  If people are generally enthu- siastic, for example, they may show enthusiasm by doing their homework with gusto or singing as they walk down the street. We can describe personality traits at different levels: as a trait/domain (i.e. extraversion) or as a facet (activity, sociability, risk taking) or a habit (going to parties, playing practical jokes). In doing so we can understand the structure of personality and try to get some idea of the mechanisms and processes involved. Many of today’s personality theories are based on the premise that people ’s personalities are made up of collections of traits. There is general agreement now, after many years of debate, about the Big Five dimensions of personality and inter- est in their origins. personality traits ten- dencies to behave in certain ways that remain relatively con- stant across situations. Before You Go On What Do You Know? 5. What is self-actualization? 6. According to Rogers, what happens if children fail to regularly receive unconditional positive regard? 7. What is a key criticism of humanistic theory? What Do You Think? What do you think are the key qualities of a fully self-actualized person? Who would match your characterization? THE TRAIT PERSPECTIVE 443 Human beings are natural trait theorists. It appears, though, that we are likely to explain our own behaviour in situational terms and others’ behaviour in terms of personality traits. (This tendency, called the fundamen- tal attribution error, is discussed further in Chapter 16) For example, you did not finish your paper because you were busy studying for two tests in your other classes. That guy over there did not finish his paper because he was uninterested or disorganized. Thinking about others’ behaviour in terms of traits helps make their behaviour predictable and gives us a sense of how our interactions with them may go.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Introduction to Personality

  Toward an Integrative Science of the Person

  • Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, Ozlem Ayduk(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  In contrast, many social psychologists hailed evidence for the power of the situation and interpreted it as pointing to the relative insignificance of individual differences in personality. The mistaken belief that to the degree that the person was important, the situation was not, and vice versa, led to the unfortunate person versus situation debate. Its resolution is discussed throughout the remainder of this chapter.  INCORPORATING SITUATIONS INTO TRAITS If we accept that people’s behaviors vary widely across situations, how do we reconcile that with our intuitive conviction that each individual is characterized by stable and 76  Chapter 4. The Expressions of Dispositions distinctive qualities? What remains consistent through the changing stream of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? How might one capture what is constant? The finding of large variations in a person’s behaviors across situations challenged the ultimate goal of personality psychology, which is to identify the coherence and stability that underlie individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Within the patterns of variation shown by an individual, however, there may be a distinctive temporal order, a stable pattern over time that is unique to each person. On the surface, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an individual may vary considerably, and this may appear to go against the assumption that personality is relatively invariant or consistent over time and across situations. But when we look beneath the surface, and focus on just how the variation occurs, and on what external and internal situations it depends, there may be a regular pattern that is distinctive for each individual (e.g., Brown & Moskowitz, 1998; Fleeson, 2001; Larsen & Kasimatis, 1990). When Gordon Allport founded the field of personality in 1937, he wanted to make the search for such patterns in the stream of behavior central.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Psychology Around Us

  • Nancy Ogden, Michael Boyes, Evelyn Field, Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  • Cross-cultural research into personality has focused on person- ality development in individualist and collectivist cultures. Some traits observed in these cultures reflect differing cultural values. • The relationship between socio-economic conditions and per- sonality traits has received relatively little attention. However, the investigations that have been conducted suggest that at the very least, living conditions have a direct impact on how and whether certain personality traits translate into behaviours. Personality Disorders LEARNING OBJECTIVE 8 Define personality disorders, and describe some of the key features of these disorders. 530 CHAPTER 12 Personality • A personality disorder is an inflexible pattern of inner experience and outward behaviour that causes distress or difficulty with daily functioning. • The American Psychiatric Association uses a categorical approach to personality disorders such as borderline and antisocial person- alty disorders but is investigating a dimensional approach. Key Terms antisocial personality disorder 526 borderline personality disorder 526 defence mechanisms 492 denial 493 ego 491 five-factor model 508 id 491 interactionism 512 interpersonal circle 505 lexical hypothesis 502 neurosis 492 personality 490 personality disorder 525 personality inventory 508 personality traits 501 personality trait model 502 phrenology 515 positive psychology 499 projective test 510 psychosexual stages 492 repression 493 self-actualization 498 self-concept 500 situationism 512 social role theory 521 socially desirable responding 509 superego 491 superfactor 504 unconditional positive regard 500 Self-Study Questions Multiple Choice 1. In Freud’s view, personality forms as the result of the struggle between a. biological drives and intellectual abilities. b. conscious and unconscious processes. c. primal needs and social or moral restraints. d. the individual and other people.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology

  • Philip J. Corr, Gerald Matthews(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Attempts to explicate the role of personality in educational settings have met with varying degrees of success over the years. These attempts are characterized by short-lived periodic spurts of interest by psychologists and educational researchers. In the first part of this chapter we review the role of broad dimensional constructs, under the rubric of the Five-Factor Model (FFM), in school learning and attain- ment. This is followed by a discussion of the role of con- textualized cognitive-social and motivational traits in school performance (e.g., self-concept and self-regulated learning), as they may more directly impact on learning and achievement and mediate, in part, the effects of broader personality dimensions on academic outcomes. We then discuss the role of emotions and emotion regula- tion in influencing student performance and mental health. STABLE PERSONALITY FACTORS AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES In this section we review the role of broad dimensional constructs – under the rubric of the FFM - in Educational Psychology. We aim to inform researchers and practition- ers in psychology and education about the essential role personality factors can play in student achievement, motivation, emotional competencies and affective out- comes. We begin by briefly sketching the nature of person- ality from a trait perspective. Personality Factors: A Brief Sketch Personality refers to relatively stable individual differences in behavioral and affective dispositions that generalize across a range of environments (Matthews, Deary & Whiteman, 2009; Mõttus, Kandler, Bleidorn, Riemann & McCrae, 2017). What the child makes of the classroom learning environment, including teachers and peers, may depend on the child’s personality. Personality plays out its role in educational settings by shaping students’ goal orientations, self-esteem, wellbeing and cognitive attain- ment.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book