Individual differences- Personality

MPHIL/PHD STUDENT, MSC, BSC IN PSYCHOLOGY.

PABLO PÉREZ-DÍAZ
Definition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUrV6oZ3zsk
• The Word personality comes from the Greek persona, which means mask, also the word
means subject in many languages. The last implies that personality will always refer to the
individual and more broadly to the way a person is and behaves.
Child provides a good summary of how personality can be defined (1968, p. 83):
“more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time
to another and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable
situations.”
• The study of personality has been a field of intense debate. Currently, two main approaches
are used for personality research: The correlation method (Psychometrical) and the
Experimental.
Why is personality worth to be study?
• Because it can help us to predict future behaviour!
• Because it can teach a bunch about ourselves!
• Because it’s useful for counselling/vocational orientation and clinical purposes.
• Because it can help to determine whether a task or role will or will not suit you, and that can
actually relieve us from a lot of distress!
• There is also a great likelihood you select your friends and partners due to their likeliness to
your own personality traits!
Dispositional vs situational approach
• The first method is also mentioned in the literature as the Dispositional approach or The trait
approach.

• The second method, focus on the situation where the behaviour, thought or feeling occurs.

• Having a prediction of personality in a different context is harder to stablish when using the
situational approach. On the other hand, trait measures are often subject to be faked by
respondents, being this the main critic from state researchers.
Trait approximations to Personality
There has been an extensive debate between dispositional versus situational approaches,
although psychometric research has proven to effectively study personality as stable traits
rather than states. Therefore, we will focus on the main trait approaches:
• Eysenck’s Gigantic Three.
• Cattel’s 16 personality factors
• Gray’s personality theory.
• Big Five approaches (OCEAN-NEOAC)
Eysenck’s Gigantic Three
Hans Eysenck in conjunction with her wife Sybil (S.B.G.) conducted several studies in the field of
personality. The first studies allowed them to set apart two main characteristics or traits that
were predominant in the literature and their own datasets:
Neuroticism (N)
Extroversion (E)
Considered as a continuum, people could either score low, average or high on either trait.
Further research conducted in late ‘70, allowed the authors to realize that the inclusion of a trait
that accounted for the variability regarding level of conformity, aggressiveness and feelings for
others was needed. Thus, the trait Psychoticism was born (P). This scale was associated to the
possibility of having a psychotic breakdown or break with reality.
Eysenck’s Gigantic Three
Neuroticism (N)
HIGH: Anxious, moody, depressed, pessimistic, tense, shy, low-self esteem
LOW: Stable, Positive, Calm, Optimistic, Confident, Relaxed.
Extraversion (E)
HIGH: Energetic, sociable, lively, active, assertive, confident, dominant.
LOW: Associable, passive, slow, reflective, introspective, unconfident.
Psychoticism (P)
HIGH: Un-empathetic, creative, sensation seeking, aggressive, cold.
LOW: Altruist, rational, patient, conformist, organized, down-to-earth, emphatic.
Eysenck’s Gigantic Three
Eysenck hypothesized that the biological basis in individual differences lies in cortical arousal.
Introverts tend to have a chronically over-aroused central nervous system (CNS; brain and spinal
cord), whereas extraverts tend to have a chronically under-aroused CNS.
Catell’s 16 personality factors
• Raymond Cattel was one of the most influential psychologist, proposing several continuums
that are still fundamental for modern psychological measurement and research (crystalized vs
fluid intelligence, state vs trait).

• Cattel proposed 16 broad personality factors after systematic analysis of the English language,
The Lexical Hypothesis (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2015).

• The 16 personality factors have never been replicated, not even in the same research
conducted by Cattell et al. after the first study was released.
Catell’s 16 personality factors
Big five approaches
Neuroticism (N)
Extraversion (E) OCEAN
Openness (O)
Agreeableness (A)
Conscientiousness (C)
The approach is statistically rather than theory driven. It has found ample evidence in several
cross-cultural studies, being considered now as the golden standard of personality assessment.
The traits proved to be genetically hereditable (High correlation). Critics have focused on the
overlap between the BFA and Eysenck’s theory. A six trait has also been proposed by other
researchers.
Big five approaches
Neuroticism (N): Tendency to experience negative emotions, anxiety, depression, anger. Self-
consciousness, vulnerability.
Extraversion (E): Positive emotions, impulsiveness, assertiveness, social behaviour. People with
high extraversion tend to be warmth, gregarious, assertive, active and excitement seeking.
Openness (O): Tendency to engage in intellectual activities and experience new sensations and
ideas. People with high openness enjoy fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas and values.
Agreeableness (A): People with high agreeableness behave in a friendly, considerate and
modest form. They tend to be trustworthy, straight-forward, altruist, modest and
compassionate.
Conscientiousness (C): Proactivity, responsibility, self-discipline. People scoring high on this trait
are competent, ordered, goal-achievers and self-reliant.
*(Chamorro-Premuzic, 2015)
How can we link personality to Job
performance?
In many ways!
• So far the trait that shows a great correlation with Job performance is by far
Conscientiousness (showing a correlation up to .31), whereas Neuroticism has negative
correlation to job performance.
• However, if you are looking for leadership, then not only conscientiousness plays an important
rol but Extraversion. A shy leader may be incapable to affect their subrogates. A nurse with high
psychoticism may be inattentive to patients. If you are looking a candidate to be in charge of
dealing with people’s problem, then you are looking probably looking someone who scores high
on Agreeableness and perhaps on Openness too, in order to be successful at their position.
Psychometrics properties
Reliability:
It is related with the possibility of replicating the same results if a new measurement is carried
out under similar circumstances. An instrument is reliable when it measures the same attribute
in a very similar way, regardless of when the application takes place. There are several forms of
assessing this.
Validity:
It is related with the characteristic of a research design, procedure or instrument. An instrument
is valid when it really measures what theoretically tried to measure at the very first place. There
are several forms of assessing this.
It is worth to mention that you can have a valid measure but not reliable and vice versa.
Reliability vs Validity
Not valid or Reliable
reliable but not valid

Valid and
reliable
Reliability assessment
• Basically, you can assess it by either internal consistency or temporal stability.
• Internal consistency means the same data set is found to be consistent within its own
structure/observations.
The most used method for measuring internal consistency is called Cronbach's alpha (α).
• Temporal stability means that the instrument can assess the same population in different
times with a great degree of congruency between both measures.
The most used method for measuring temporal stability is called Pearson’s Coefficient of
stability.
Validity assessment
Factorial validity: The items load (correlate) on some factors that can be either extracted from
the data or theoretical driven from previous studies. Usually called construct validity as well.
Other types of validity assessment
• Content validity: Refers to the language of the items and their logical structure. It requires the
participation of experts (judges) in the subject or area of ​study.
• Criterion validity: It implies the correlation with another test or variable that assess an equal
or similar attribute. If they are related, then the instrument is valid since the questionnaire you
are trying does evaluate the attribute in a very close form as the second that has previously
proven validity.
• Predictive validity: It is a type of criterion validity, the results will predict those of another
variable. e.g., low CI in the WISC test correlates with a higher probability of developing a
personality disorder in adulthood.

All these procedures require the use of Statistics and Psychometrics!

Population norms
It refers to the procedures, instruments, tests or questionnaires that we use, have proven reliability
and validity for the population on which we want to develop our research, thus being able to locate a
subject on their population regarding some known standard characteristics, such as age, sex,
educational level, socio-economic status and so forth.
Examples of standardized instruments:
- WAIS-V
- WISC-V
- Raven test, general and coloured scale
- The EPQ -R (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-revised) scale
- 16 PF scale
- Ten items personality inventory (TIPI)
Population norms 2
Case 1,
Can I compare a 18 years old intellectual quotient with the one of a person aged 90? If so, what
kind of precaution do I have to introduce when doing it?
Case 2,
Can we compare two women aged 40 each, on their health status when we know they come
from very different social background? What would be an alternative to this?
Case 3,
Can we compare personality traits between women and men as they were comparable?
Cultural differences in personality
• As Triandis and Suh (2002, p.137) state:
“Traits exist in all cultures, but account for behaviour less in collectivism than individual cultures.
Situational determinants of behaviour are important universally, but more so in collectivism
than in individual cultures”.

Culture Individual
Sex differences in personality
• There is overwhelming evidence in favour than men differ in their personality traits and their
expression through the natural development in comparison to women.
• Cohn (1991) has found strong evidence in favour of women having a faster ego development in
comparison to men.
• A classical study by Cloninger et al. (1978) has been the reference for years regarding how sex
difference influences antisocial behaviour, alcoholism and criminality. Several studies have
shown that men are more prone to these behaviours than women.
Sex differences in personality
• Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) state after carefully reviewing the studies on empathy and sex
differences that, women have greater empathy and related abilities (affective role taking and
decoding of non verbal cues).
• Furthermore, Schmitt et al. (2008) performed a large cross-cultural study in 55 countries by
using a Big Five measure, finding that women reported higher levels N, E, A and C than men in
most cultures. As previously stated when talking about cultural differences, the most developed
the country the larger the difference in personality between women and men.
• Giudice at al. (2012) studied a large US sample by using the 16PF, finding only a 10% in
personality traits between sexes. The studied used multivariate statistics to reach to their
conclusions, which were even adjusted by excluding the largest common factor (Dominance),
and still remain highly significant (24% of overlap).