Personality Psych Exam 2 (Chapters
3,4,5, & 8) Questions and Answers
100% Pass
trait-descriptive adjectives - ✔✔words that describe traits; attributes of a person that
are reasonably characteristics.
-they imply consistent and stable characteristics: most personality psychologists
hypothesize that traits are reasonably stable over time and somewhat consistent across
situations.
traits as internal causal properties - ✔✔some personality psychologists view these traits
as internal properties of persons that cause their behavior. Example: Diedre has a desire
for material things--> might cause her spend a lot of time shopping at the mall, work
extra hard to earn more money, and acquire many household possessions. *Her internal
desire (for material things) influences her external behavior, causing her to act in certain
ways.
-these traits are presumed to exist, even in the absence of observable behavioral
expressions.
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,-viewing traits as causes of behavior lies in ruling out other causes.
traits as descriptive summaries - ✔✔describe behavior without assuming causality;
these are attributes of people that make no assumptions about internality or causality.
These personality psychologists merely use traits to describe the trend in a person's
behavior. Example: George glares at men who talk to his girlfriend: trait = jealousy:
simply used to describe his behavior (glaring) but w/ no assumptions about causality.
It's possible that there's an internal cause of his jealousy such as being insecure but it's
also possible that his jealousy might be due to the social situation (the men flirting with
his gf).
lexical approach to traits - ✔✔according to this approach, all traits listed and defined in
the dictionary form the basis of describing differences among people.
-starts with the hypothesis that all important differences have become encoded within
the natural language. Over time differences among people are noticed and words such
as "creative", "reliable", etc. are created to talk about those differences.
*The trait terms that people find helpful in describing people become encoded in the
natural language while those that are not useful in describing people don't become
encoded.
*a good starting point for identifying traits, but shouldn't be used exclusively
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,synonym frequency - ✔✔1 criteria for identifying important traits using the lexical
approach; means that if an attribute has many adjectives to describe it, then it's a more
important dimension of individual difference. For example, there are many terms used
to describe dominance (bossy, powerful, forceful, influential, assertive, etc), which
conveys that dominance is an important trait and that different shades of dominance
are important in social communication.
cross-cultural universality - ✔✔another criteria for identifying important traits using
the lexical approach; if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures and its members
have codified terms to describe the trait, then the trait must be universally important in
human affairs. If a trait term exists in only a few cultures or languages, then it may only
be of local relevance and it's unlikely to be a candidate for universal taxonomy of
personality traits
statistical approach to traits - ✔✔this approach starts with a pool of personality items:
can be trait words or questions about behavior, experience, or emotion.
-consists of having people rate themselves or other on items, then the statistical
procedure is used to identify groups or clusters of items.
-The goal of this approach is to identify the major dimensions of the personality map.
factor analysis - ✔✔the most common statistical produced used to identify traits; this
procedure essentially identifies groups of items that covary (go together) but tend not to
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, covary with other groups of items. This provides a means for determining which
personality variables have some common property.
-It can also be useful in reducing the large array of personality traits into a
smaller/more useful set of underlying factors.
*A means for organizing personality traits
-Example: this tells us that hard-working, productive, and determined all covary
sufficiently that they can be considered a single trait, rather than 3 separate.
factor loadings - ✔✔indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by
the factor; indicates the degree to which the item correlates with the underlying factor.
Example: "extraversion" factor having high correlations with humorous, amusing, and
popular.
theoretical approach to traits - ✔✔this approach starts with a theory that determined
which variables are important. Example: sociosexual orientation: because the theory
dictates that the mating strategy one pursues (monogamous vs. promiscuous) is a
critical individual difference, researchers Gangestad and Simpson developed a measure
of sociosexual orientation.
*Ultimately, the strength/weakness of this approach coincides with the
strength/weakness of the theory
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3,4,5, & 8) Questions and Answers
100% Pass
trait-descriptive adjectives - ✔✔words that describe traits; attributes of a person that
are reasonably characteristics.
-they imply consistent and stable characteristics: most personality psychologists
hypothesize that traits are reasonably stable over time and somewhat consistent across
situations.
traits as internal causal properties - ✔✔some personality psychologists view these traits
as internal properties of persons that cause their behavior. Example: Diedre has a desire
for material things--> might cause her spend a lot of time shopping at the mall, work
extra hard to earn more money, and acquire many household possessions. *Her internal
desire (for material things) influences her external behavior, causing her to act in certain
ways.
-these traits are presumed to exist, even in the absence of observable behavioral
expressions.
100% Pass Guarantee Olivia West, All Rights Reserved © 2025 1
,-viewing traits as causes of behavior lies in ruling out other causes.
traits as descriptive summaries - ✔✔describe behavior without assuming causality;
these are attributes of people that make no assumptions about internality or causality.
These personality psychologists merely use traits to describe the trend in a person's
behavior. Example: George glares at men who talk to his girlfriend: trait = jealousy:
simply used to describe his behavior (glaring) but w/ no assumptions about causality.
It's possible that there's an internal cause of his jealousy such as being insecure but it's
also possible that his jealousy might be due to the social situation (the men flirting with
his gf).
lexical approach to traits - ✔✔according to this approach, all traits listed and defined in
the dictionary form the basis of describing differences among people.
-starts with the hypothesis that all important differences have become encoded within
the natural language. Over time differences among people are noticed and words such
as "creative", "reliable", etc. are created to talk about those differences.
*The trait terms that people find helpful in describing people become encoded in the
natural language while those that are not useful in describing people don't become
encoded.
*a good starting point for identifying traits, but shouldn't be used exclusively
100% Pass Guarantee Olivia West, All Rights Reserved © 2025 2
,synonym frequency - ✔✔1 criteria for identifying important traits using the lexical
approach; means that if an attribute has many adjectives to describe it, then it's a more
important dimension of individual difference. For example, there are many terms used
to describe dominance (bossy, powerful, forceful, influential, assertive, etc), which
conveys that dominance is an important trait and that different shades of dominance
are important in social communication.
cross-cultural universality - ✔✔another criteria for identifying important traits using
the lexical approach; if a trait is sufficiently important in all cultures and its members
have codified terms to describe the trait, then the trait must be universally important in
human affairs. If a trait term exists in only a few cultures or languages, then it may only
be of local relevance and it's unlikely to be a candidate for universal taxonomy of
personality traits
statistical approach to traits - ✔✔this approach starts with a pool of personality items:
can be trait words or questions about behavior, experience, or emotion.
-consists of having people rate themselves or other on items, then the statistical
procedure is used to identify groups or clusters of items.
-The goal of this approach is to identify the major dimensions of the personality map.
factor analysis - ✔✔the most common statistical produced used to identify traits; this
procedure essentially identifies groups of items that covary (go together) but tend not to
100% Pass Guarantee Olivia West, All Rights Reserved © 2025 3
, covary with other groups of items. This provides a means for determining which
personality variables have some common property.
-It can also be useful in reducing the large array of personality traits into a
smaller/more useful set of underlying factors.
*A means for organizing personality traits
-Example: this tells us that hard-working, productive, and determined all covary
sufficiently that they can be considered a single trait, rather than 3 separate.
factor loadings - ✔✔indexes of how much of the variation in an item is "explained" by
the factor; indicates the degree to which the item correlates with the underlying factor.
Example: "extraversion" factor having high correlations with humorous, amusing, and
popular.
theoretical approach to traits - ✔✔this approach starts with a theory that determined
which variables are important. Example: sociosexual orientation: because the theory
dictates that the mating strategy one pursues (monogamous vs. promiscuous) is a
critical individual difference, researchers Gangestad and Simpson developed a measure
of sociosexual orientation.
*Ultimately, the strength/weakness of this approach coincides with the
strength/weakness of the theory
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