10/4/2009. Continuation of lecture on Culture. Four childrearing patterns

Transcription

1 Continuation of lecture on Culture Four childrearing patterns Authoritative (hi demands, hi responsibility Authoritarian (hi demands, lo responsibility) Indulgent (lo demands, lo responsibility) Neglecting (lo demands, overall indifference Need to consider child s in-born temperament Social Class MACROCONTEXTS Lower class socialized for obedience to authority for security purposes Middle class socialized for self-direction, taking the initiative, independence Macrocontexts and IQ differences Prenatal care Health care in general Inadequate nutrition Family turmoil Less social support More reliance on peers More TV Less access to books and computers Less frequently read to Parents less involved in schools Neighborhoods more polluted and more dangerous Few municipal services Homes crowded and noisy Underlying racism is a racist society 1

2 Gordon Allport and the birth of Trait Psychology Take a moment and write down what you consider to be your major characteristics Now describe a good friend of yours. Next, describe someone you don t like very well. 2

3 Galen s theory of body fluids Blood: Sanguine, bold, confident Black Bile: melancholic, sad, brooding Yellow: choleric, restless, irritable Phlegm: aloof, cold, sluggish Gordon Allport Founder of American trait psychology Allport s encounter with Freud Was that little boy you? asked Freud. Absolutely NOT! replies Allport, and the story begins. vs 3

4 Allport s conclusion: In everyday life, no one, not even a psychologist, doubts that underlying the conduct of a mature person are characteristic dispositions and traits. The notion of FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY of traits and motives On a mission now, Allport created a list of 18,000+ traits Common traits Personal dispositions Cardinal Dispositions Central Dispositions (bipolarity of traits) Allport defined personality as the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought. 4

5 Allport introduced two terms to refer to two different sorts of investigations Idiographic Study of individual lives Later used Morphogenic procedures. Morphogenic and Ideographic are used interchangeably. Nomothetic study of group differences Allport reduced the list to 4,500 trait terms Raymond Cattell then picked up the ball by narrowing the list to 171 trait terms. Cattell conducted numerous factor analyses of these data and pronounced that the 171 traits fell into 35 clusters which, in turn, could be reduced to 16 clusters (or factors). That led to the creation of the 16 PF (PF = Personality Factor). These 16 factors are referred to as source traits. They underlie a variety of other traits called surface traits 5

6 Examples of source traits: outgoing/reserved assertive/humble suspicious/trusting tense/relaxed We now welcome Hans Eysenck Two factor theory 1. Extraversion 2. Neuroticism Subsequently added a third factor 3. Psychoticism Walter Mischel blows the whistle in 1968 in book titled Personality and Assessment. Argued that situations do a better job than traits in accounting for behavior. 6

7 The Fundamental Attribution Error The tendency to explain other people s behaviors in terms of their traits and our own behavior in terms of situations Traits make a comeback in the 1980 s and now the trait business is big business in personality psychology. This academic industry goes under two names: THE BIG FIVE THE FIVE FACTOR MODEL Big Five movers and shakers Lewis Goldberg Lexical Hypothesis (the 5 dimensions are embedded in all languages) The Adjective Checklist method 7

8 Paul Costa and Robert McCrae NEO-PI-R (A self-report measure with items rated on Likert Scales) e.g. worry about things Very inaccurate, Moderately inaccurate, Neither accurate or inaccuarate, Moderately accurate, Very accurate The Five Factor Dimensions N (Neuroticism, sometimes called social adjustment ) E (Extraversion) O (Openness to Experience) C (Conscientiousness) A (Agreeableness) These dimensions are considered to be independent 8