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The Individual & Society: The Psychology of the Self as Individual –

Critiquing Contemporary Personality Theory (Tutorial)

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DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3000401

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The Individual & Society: The Psychology of the Self as Individual –

Critiquing Contemporary Personality Theory

Updated Lectures 4 & 5 (SOCI2029/17)Dr. Michelle Cowley

University of Southampton

Overview

▪The self and other: social cognition

▪The self: personality theory

▪ Personality and Social Psychology: A contradiction

▪ The Consistency Debate: Disposition vs Situation

▪ Introduction to Trait Theories of Personality

Personality Theory:

The Analyst in Wonderland

▪Personality theory: Aims to devise a science which can

predict human behaviour

▪Crucial- The theory implies consistency

▪But consider the example of Alice in Wonderland (Lewis

Carroll, 1865)

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar

Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I-I hardly know, sir, just at present

– at least I know who I was when I got up this morning,, but

I think I must have been changed several times since

then…”

The Uniqueness of the Individual▪ Key debate in Ψ: While scientific psychology attempts to predict

human behaviour consistently; human behaviour is not consistent

across situations.

▪ Do personality traits or social contexts predict our behaviour?

▪ The tension between the individual and society is contained within the

following question: Are individuals unique?

“Our experience with other people as well as with ourselves- tells us

that there is a certain regularity, consistency & uniqueness in the

behaviours, thought and feelings of a person which define his or her

personality” (Krahe, 1992)

The Uniqueness of the Individual

▪ Presently, the scientific model of personality views the trait approach as best. We have measurable, definable traits that predict our behaviour…

▪ Surely we are not 100% predictable- inhuman

▪ Delicate balance: “ to be totally at the mercy of one’s surroundings, like a rudderless ship, would seem to pose as many problems as being insensitive to varying environmental demands” (Pheres, 1979).

Personality and Social Psychology: A

Contradiction within Psychology

▪Personality theorists view that individuals can be characterised by enduring qualities which distinguish them from others

▪High intra-individual consistency

▪But! Social Psychologists have emphasised the impact on individuals by social situations

▪High inter-individual consistency

Personality and Social Psychology: A

Contradiction within Psychology

▪The contradiction-

▪Dispositionism vs Situationism

▪Resolving this contradiction: Walter Mischel (1977)

▪Strong situations: channel behaviour into specific channels making individual differences irrelevant (highly closed/stereotyped), e.g., Zimbardo’s prison when most people behave the same

▪Weak situations: allow people to express their personal qualities easily- they ‘leave room’ for individual differences (Open ended) , e.g., dinner party…

The Interactionist Approach

▪Behaviour = Person x situation

▪An individual’s behaviour is highly predictable in similar situations

▪academic (Lecture/conference) vs social (nightclub/Pub)

▪But! Interactionism means different things to different people

▪For example, that personality differences are essential for understanding people’s behaviour in particular situations,

▪but there is a very real sense in which the situation is defined in terms of the individual involved (Jane’s vs Caren’s dinner parties)

Trait Approaches

▪Eysenck (1960s) 3 factors-Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychotism…

▪ Dispositions that characterise an individual from one situation to the next

▪Value:▪ Long-term consistency (e.g., Epstein, 1979)▪ Nomothetic (e.g., Ross & Nisbett, 1991)▪ Stability across like social contexts

Despite its troubled history, the trait concept is still in good shape in contemporary psychology.

Five Personality Factors

▪A small but comprehensive number of basic trait dimensions have been finalised to account for the structure of personality and individual difference

▪The ‘Big Five’▪ Neuroticism

▪ Extraversion

▪ Openness

▪ Agreeableness

▪ Conscientiousness

See Pervin & John (2003)

Personality Factor Methods

▪ Rest on statistical factor analysis assumptions

▪ But! The meaning of the factors has been contested

▪ For example cultural interpretations of ‘Openness’…

▪ Tomorrow:

▪ the history and development of the trait approach

▪ Detailed discussion and critical appreciation of the disposition vs situation debate.

SOCI2029

Trait Theories of the Self: The Five

Factor Model of Personality

Trait Theories Continued: The FFM

Dr. Michelle Cowley

Overview

▪The Five Factor Model and Consistency

▪Rejuvenation of Trait Theory

▪Five Factor Theory Personality System

▪Assumptions of Trait Theory

▪Critique: Personality Theory as Science

▪Next week: ▪ Evidence for and against the Five Factor Model

▪ Evaluation of the Five Factor Model

The Five Factor Model and

Consistency

▪ The Five Factor Model (FFM) “is the Christmas tree on which findings of stability, heritability, consensual validation, cross-cultural invariance, and predictive utility are hung like ornaments” (Costa & McCrae, 1993, p.302)

▪ After decades of floundering, personality theory has begun to accumulate a store of replicable findings about the ▪ origins,

▪ development

▪ and functioning of personality traits (McCrae & Costa, 1999)

The Five Factor Model and

Consistency

▪The consistency controversy (Walter Mischel, 1968) undermined the concept of personality trait

▪But, if there were only situational factors which influenced behaviour, then personality theory would be obsolete.

▪Traits: point to more-or-less consistent and recurrent patterns of acting and reacting that differentiate one individual from another, for example, Cattell’s 16pf and Eysenck’s 3 Factors (EPN).

▪Allow empirical discovery to improve prediction of human behaviour (McCrae & Costa, 1999)

The Five Factor Model and

Consistency

Seek to evaluate:

“Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there

are individuals who recognise him and carry an image of him

in their mind…” (William James, 1890)

Rejuvenation of Trait Theory

▪ The domain of personality descriptors is almost completely accounted for by 5 robust factors

▪ FFM (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness, Agreeableness) amounts to a reinvigoration of trait psychology.

Diverse Evidence

▪ Evidence from diverse populations (McCrae, Costa, Del Pilar, Rolland & Parker, 1998)

▪ Consistent across decades of the lifespan (Costa and McCrae, 1992c)

▪ Multiple methods of assessment (Finder et al., 1995): peer rating scales, self-reports on trait descriptive adjectives; expert ratings, personality disorder symptom clusters…

▪ Even case studies (Costa & McCrae, 1998)

Why is FFT attractive?

▪Different parts of the FFM agenda appeals to different psychologists.

▪Factor analysts are concerned with identifying the facet traits and interpreting the resulting factors (e.g., Hofstee et al., 1997)

▪Psycho-biologists emphasise the identification of underlying biological mechanisms (e.g., Eysenck, 1967; Buss, 1999)

▪Clinicians tend to be concerned with problematic characteristic adaptations, which they may aim to modify (Harkness & Lilienfeld, 1997)

Assumptions of Trait Theory

• Trait theory makes assumptions about itself (Hjelle & Siegler, 1976)

– Knowability: that personality is a proper object of scientific study

– Rationality: despite biases people are capable of understanding themselves and others… How sociable, how competitive is he or she?

– Variability: people differ from each other in psychologically significant ways

– Proactivity: locus of causation is to be sought within the person… personality actively shapes human lives

FFT Personality System▪Personality is the dynamic psychological organisation that coordinates experience and action.

Basic tendencies:

The Five FactorsCharacteristic

Adaptations

Self Concept

Objective

biographyExternal

influences

Traits are deep psychological entities that can only be inferred from behaviour.

Traits are separate from more observable components of personality such as habits

and skills, or roles.. They are enduring core adaptations to external influences…

Critique:

Personality Theory as Science

“…without the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science”

(Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics)

▪ That said, it is doubtless true that each of us is in some respects unique, FFT has little to say about this aspect of the person.

▪ Generalisations reduce individuals to automatons, and abstracts agency from the individual (Bandura, 1999)

▪ Contradiction 1: Personality traits are insulated from the environment, so how is change over time explained?

Critique:

Personality Theory as Science

▪ Contradiction 2: It assumes that traits are internal and immune from the environment yet pays little attention to the biology of the personality

▪ Contradiction 3: FFT is more of a Model than a theory in the strictest sense

▪ Contradiction 4: If all science is nomothetic and science psychology should be concerned with the study of individuals, how can psychology be considered a science?

What does FFT contribute to

treatment of psych-disorders?

▪ It doesn’t!▪ 2 major disadvantages:

▪ Example: the anxious neurotic, introverted, reserved person ‘stands condemned as a lesser human being’. Should any liberal society tolerate this way of classifying people?

▪ The consistency debate has focussed exclusively on ‘normal’ behaviour, but the inconsistencies are most striking in the breakdown of normal functioning.

Seminar: Beginning the Evaluation

of FFT

▪FFM does “not provide a definition of the system, a specification of its components, a model of their organisation & interaction, and an account of the system’s development” (Mayer, 1998)- static description

▪Should trait theory see the locus of personality not within the individual, or in patterns of interpersonal relationships? (Wiggins & Trapnell, 1996).

▪Characteristic adaptations vary across cultures, families, and portions of the life-span, but personality traits do not.

▪Deterministic? Passive? (Next week we will evaluate this approach).

References▪ Hypothesis falsification in the 2-4-6 numbers test: Introducing

imaginary counterparts. SSRN e-Library Political Behaviour: Cognition,

Psychology, & Political Behaviour eJournal, vol. 9, Issue 66: December

03, 2015.

▪ Cowley, M., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2005). When falsification is the only

path to truth. In B. G. Bara. L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.).

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the

Cognitive Science Society, 512-517. Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum. Stresa,

Italy.

▪ Cowley, M., & Colyer, J. B. (2010). Asymmetries in prior conviction

reasoning: Truth suppression effects in child protection contexts,

Psychology, Crime and Law, 16(3), 211-231.

References▪ Cowley, M. (2017). Hypothesis Testing: How We Foresee Falsification

in Competitive Games. Saarbrucken, Germany: Lambert Academic

Publishing

▪ Cowley, M. (2017). ‘The Innocent v The Fickle Few’: How Jurors

Understand Random-Match-Probabilities and Judges’ Directions when

Reasoning about DNA and Refuting Evidence. Journal of Forensic

Science & Criminal Investigation, 5(3): 2017

▪ Cowley, M. (2014). M-Level Quantitative Methods in Socio-Legal

Studies: A Methodology Clinic Workbook – CSLS, University of Oxford.

Law Educator: Courses, Materials, & Teaching SSRN eJournal

Catalogue.

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