1. Eysenck, Cattell, Costa and McCrae: Factor Analytic Trait Theories
47 Slides

2. Generalities of Factor Analytic Trait Theories
Individual’s Differ in their makeup
Individuals differ in their traits.
Traits can be measured through tests.
Personality is a measure of Adaptation and Adjustment
Both neurosis and psychosis can be described as a combination of traits that are influenced by heredity. Where maladaptive biological traits combine.
Cognitive Processes are part of personality
Mental abilities can be measured objectively. Intelligence tests can be free of cultural influences. Self report measures are also considered valid.
Table 2.1 (p. 35)
47 Slides

3. Generalities of Factor Analytic Trait Theories
Societal influence
Differences among groups and nations exist and can be measured. The factors found by testing are universal across all cultures
Biological Influences
Heredity affects personality traits
Development – Environmental influences
Some traits can be influenced by early experience. Environment interacts with biology. Some traits can change in adulthood. Most aspects of personality are extremely stable.
47 Slides

4. Hans Eysenck
47 Slides

5. History Born in Berlin Germany in 1916 Both of his parents were actors
At approximately age 5 he acted in a film with his mother
He liked acting and his father wanted him to pursue it
His mother “the more practical” did not want him to act
His parents were divorced when he was 2
He was raised by his maternal grandmother
He was a wild child
At one point he broke every bone in his right arm
He almost lost his right eye playing with other boys while playing with paper arrows and rubber bands – his eye never fully healed and he was blind in the right eye by the age of 60
47 Slides

6. History He was athletic and good at many sports
He also fought to defend himself
He never started a fight, but also never backed away from one and made sure he won any he was forced into
He was very interested in society and politics
This was Germany between the wars
He had a view of socialism that could be summed up as:
One who is not a socialist in his youth has no heart
One who remains a socialist in middle age has no head
He held no one political party above another
His religious ideals were very similar
His father was Catholic and his mother protestant
He was Christened in a Lutheran church
47 Slides

7. History He left Germany in 1934 at the age of 18
Hitler assumed power in German politics
Hans was a known Jewish sympathizer
He was told he could not attend University unless he entered the SS
His step father was a Jewish film producer
So, his mother and step father moved to France
So, he left for France and studied literature and history
Eventually he made England his new home
He enrolled in the University of London
He believed the arts were for fun not a vocation
He wanted to go into Physics, but it would take an extra year for him to get the requirements
He asked for another science and was told to go into psychology – he didn’t even know what it was!
47 Slides

8. History
The psychology department included well known psychologists like Charles Spearman.
He studied genetics and statistics
His first wife was a mathematician
His second wife was a psychologist
Altogether he had four sons and a daughter
During WWII he tried to enlist in the RAF but he was turned down as an enemy alien
He had trouble getting any job for the same reason
He was an iconoclast
a person who likes to attack the establishment
He was also a reductionist
47 Slides

9. History He finally got a job at an emergency hospital where he studied
Suggestibility in hysterics
Mood disorders
Screening tests for neurotics
Memory tests
Motivation effects on intelligence
He also did a factor analysis on the patients
He found two major personality factors in the analysis
Neuroticism and extraversion
Later he added psychoticism as a third factor
47 Slides

10. History
After the war he ended up working in the best known psychiatric hospital in England
He was later appointed director of the psychological unit at the hospital
The hospital wanted him to set up a training program for clinical psychologists
He traveled to the U.S. to get an idea of how Clinical programs were designed in the U.S. and discovered
Clinical programs were run by psychiatrists
Clinical psychologists tended to use psychiatric principles
Invalid and unreliable projective tests were the main tool
He decided to set up an independent psychology department
Moving away from psychoanalysis and moving toward a scientific orientation
Eysenck died of a brain tumor on September
47 Slides

11. Theory
Eysenck believed that theory should proceed experimentation and that psychology could be broken into two major groups
Those who experimented
Those who ignored the individual differences
Those who studied personality
Those who ignored the requirement for empirical evidence
The result
Psychology has dozens of theories of personality but very little in the way of factual support for them
To fix this we need to
Devise theories of personality
Identify the main dimensions of personality
Devise means of measuring them
Link them with experimental quantitative procedures
47 Slides

12. Theory
Eysenck defined personality as a fairly stable and enduring organization of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique which determines his unique adjustments to the environment.
He emphasizes traits which cluster together to form types. Types lead to habits.
Eysenck believed that our genes were very important to personality and environment had very little to do with it.
We are biosocial beings born with an innate predisposition to respond a certain way, but social demands can alter our responses.
47 Slides

13. Eysenck’s Big Three Traits are derived from three biological systems
Extroversion / Introversion
outgoingness and assertiveness
Neuroticism / Stability
instability and apprehensiveness
Psychoticism / Normality
tendency toward psychopathology
Extraverts are
social and impulsive and like excitement
Extraversion predicts a high level of Social Well Being
Introverts are
quiet, introspective and prefer order
47 Slides

14. Eysenck’s Big Three Neurotics are Psychotics are
Emotionally unstable with unreasonable fears
Some may be obsessive or impulsive or both
Anxious at a level disproportionate to the situation
Unable to assess the consequences of their actions
Asocial and antisocial people
Psychotics are
Insensitive to others, subject to panic attacks
Creative: ability to think in bizarre and unusual ways
Hostile, cruel, and inhumane
Those who have a need to upset others
Psychoticism is linked to the endocrine system.
47 Slides

15. Physiological connections
The three traits are connected to biology
The sympathetic nervous system
Controls emotional responses in emergencies
Some people have over stimulated sympathetic systems
It is a matter of inhibition vs. excitation
Excitation is the brain waking itself up
Inhibition is the brain calming itself
Also shutting off to protect itself for over stimulation
An extravert has a strong ability to inhibit
Includes conversion disorders and dissociative disorders
An introvert does not inhibit well
Includes obsessive compulsives and phobias
47 Slides

16. Inhibition Individual differences are determined by biology
Differences are highly genetic in origin
Determined by cerebral cortex organization and functioning
Extraverts have strong inhibitory and weak excitatory functions in the central nervous system
This gives them a large capacity to tolerate stimulation and gives them a better ability to multitask
Their brains react slowly and weakly to stimuli creating a need for strong sensations
Introverts have weak inhibitory and strong excitatory functions in the central nervous system
This gives them a small capacity to tolerate stimulation
They are already more aroused than extraverts and can not tolerate much more stimulation than their brain produces
47 Slides

17. Inhibition Reactive inhibition Is a concept that neurons fatigue
At some point the fatigue becomes excess and the person can no longer respond
Extraverts are more prone to reactive inhibition
So they get tired of activities faster and have a hard time staying on topic
47 Slides

18. Arousal Arousal is easier to measure in the brain than inhibition
Arousal of the ascending reticular activation system (ARAS) results in increased alertness and cortex arousal
The relationship with the cortex is reciprocal because the cortex responds by changing activity in the ARAS
Much data has confirmed that introverts are more sensitive to stimulation
Introverts do worse on tests in noisy environments
Introverts should reduce stimulation while studying
47 Slides

19. Raymond Cattell
47 Slides

20. History Born in England, 1905 to a middle class family
He enjoyed a rather happy childhood
He was a Science major at the Univ. of London
B.S. in Chemistry at the age of 19
PhD in Psychology at age 24
Was a research assistant for Charles Spearman
After graduation
Cattell became director of a psychology clinic
Went to New York
Research assistant to Thorndike at Columbia University
Held professorships at Clark, Harvard and Duke
He settled down at the Univ. of Illinois in 1945
47 Slides

21. History
He worked as an therapist and accepted many of the ideas of psychoanalysis
He retired from academia in 1973 and moved to Colorado where he started the Institute for Research on Morality and Self Realization
In 1977 he moved to Hawaii and worked with the University of Hawaii
(now there’s a cushy retirement job!)
Throughout his life Cattell condemned the mixing of the races and supported the Eugenics movement which cost him at least one award.
He died in his home in Honolulu in 1998
47 Slides

22. Personality defined Cattell’s definition of personality was
Personality is the thing that permits us to predict what a person will do in a given situation.
Cattell felt suspicious of theories built too much ahead of data.
He felt that data should be collected before the theory was derived. Then new experiments could be performed to test the theory. He called this the inductive-hypothetico-deductive spiral (IHD spiral)
He believed in the Pearson correlational coefficient which shows a link between two variables.
Once the link is known and one variable is measured, we can predict the other variables value
The variables (traits) from which personality stems must be found and any correlations between them established
47 Slides

23. The Correlational Coefficient
A measure of the association between two variables ranging from 1 to -1. Where Zero indicates no association and +1 or -1 indicates either a strong positive or negative association
Positive Correlation
Negative correlation
Low high
Low high
Self reported confidence levels
Extraversion score
Low high
Low high
Anxiety Levels
Number of time a person talks in class
47 Slides

24. Experimental paradigms
Cattell believed that Bivariate experiments would not show real world results
Because not much in the world is based on only two variables
Instead he pushed for Multivariate experiments because they considered the whole person rather than bits and pieces.
Multivariate experiments are too complicated to consider without the use of computers to factor all the variables and find connections
The connections associating the surface traits to each other were termed source traits
Variables that are strongly correlated are determined to be measuring the same source
47 Slides

25. Factor analysis techniques
Cattell preferred the factor analysis technique which is used to assess large populations of people called the R-technique.
However, he did use the P-technique to discover trait structures unique to an individual
Cattell believed that traits are relatively permanent tendencies which are the building blocks of personality
47 Slides

26. Traits defined
Some traits are determined by nature and others by nurture
Constitutional traits are derived from biology
The Ergs are innate biological and dynamic source traits
Examples would be Fear and Anger
Environmental-mold traits are determined by experience
Metaergs refer to the learned dynamic source traits
Examples would be our sentiments which are general and attitudes which are more specific
Sentiments are learned early in life and do not change much in later life. They are enduring! The most important sentiment is the self-sentiment. Cattell called this the master motive.
Attitudes are a more specific expression of the sentiments. Cattell called attitudes an interest in a course of action in a given situation.
47 Slides

27. Traits defined Other types of traits include:
Ability – such as intelligence
The person’s skill at dealing with the complexity of situations
Temperament – such as boldness
Tendencies in behavior and thought
Dynamic – such as sports oriented
Deals with the person’s motivations and interests
Almost all of Cattell's work deals with common traits because most of his work was nomothetic. However, he did dabbled in idiographic unique traits of individuals as well.
47 Slides

28. Personality sphere
To find all the source traits one must first have an idea of all possible surface factors. A list of all the surface factors was known as the personality sphere.
He determined to populate the sphere using language to find all the possible ways we define people.
A fallacy here is that English only has so many ways to describe a person while other languages may do a better or worse job. It is a subjective use of language.
He decided to use the 4500 trait names that Allport reported.
He reduced this to 171 by eliminating synonyms
He then identified 36 clusters of surface traits and added another 10 to account for psychotics and years of testing
47 Slides

29. Primary factors Cattell’s personality sphere contained 46 traits
From the 46 surface traits they discovered correlations for 16 source traits or primary factors
From these 16 sources Cattell put together a test to measure these in the population.
He called his test the Sixteen Personality factor (16pf) questionnaire.
47 Slides

30. Cattell’s 16 Source Traits
Warmth
Reasoning
Emotional Stability
Dominance
Liveliness
Rule-Consciousness
Social Boldness
Sensitivity
Vigilance
Abstractness
Privateness
Apprehension
Openness to change
Self-reliance
Perfectionism
Tension
47 Slides

31. Five Second-Order Factors
If the 16 traits are put through a second factor analysis they are reduced to five factors.
Extraversion
Anxiety
Tough-mindedness
Independence
Self-control
These five second-order traits that Cattell found are very similar to what we use today as the big five traits.
It is heartening to know that all these theorists are coming up with nearly identical answers
But then, math can do that and still be wrong!
[Note that only the first 2 of these are identified in the text, p. 231.]
47 Slides

32. Factors of psychopathology
Cattell later did factor analysis on sick individuals to get surface traits and source traits for the unhealthy.
He discovered another 12 more factors that measure psychopathological individuals.
Hypochondriasis
Zestfulness
Brooding discontent
Anxious depression
Energy euphoria
Quilt and resentment
Bored depression
Paranoia
Psychopathic deviation
Schizophrenia
Psychasthenia
General psychosis
47 Slides

33. Intelligences
From his testing Cattell identified two forms of intelligence (crystallized and fluid)
Crystallized intelligence is what the IQ test measures. It is your accumulated knowledge
Fluid intelligence is how you do in solving problems
Cattell felt that crystallized intelligence came from learning while fluid intelligence was biological.
Since crystallized intelligence is based on learning any test for it would be culturally biased.
Cattell devised a test for fluid intelligence which he believe to be independent of any cultural influences.
Fluid intelligence increases from birth to about 18 years of age and then declines
Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, can increase throughout the lifespan.
47 Slides

34. MAVA Cattell created the MAVA
This Multiple abstract variance analysis is a statistical method for determining the relative biological or environmental basis for certain traits
Studying identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings and people who are not related raised apart and together and calculating their correlational coefficients we should be able to determine which traits are controlled more by genetics.
Heritability is the extent to which a trait is influenced by genetics
The science of the time showed a large genetic effect on intelligence and this concept led to the development of eugenics and later to eugenics “sterilization” laws.
Today we know that most personality traits are only about 50% genetic
47 Slides

35. Wrapping up Cattell
Once a person’s traits are totally evaluated a scientist should be able to create a mathematical formula to predict how that person will be able to perform in different situations. This is called the specification equation.
If you have ever seen the movie “Gattaca” you know how bad that can turn out!
Another word that you should know is Syntality (rhymes with totality)
As Cattell proposed it this describes how different groups have their own personalities and each group is different from another.
47 Slides

36. Costa and McCrae Paul Costa Robert McCrae
B.A., Clark University, in psychology M.A., Univ. of Chicago, in human development Ph.D., Univ. of Chicago, in human development
Robert McCrae
B.A., Michigan State University in philosophy M.A., Boston University, in personality psychology, Ph.D., Boston University, in personality psychology,
47 Slides

37. The Big Five (OCEAN)
Costa and McCrae have done a tremendous amount of research on 5 factors that appear throughout the world
Openness
High scoring individuals
Creative, Imaginative and Prefer variety
Low scoring individuals
Uncreative, Down-to-earth, and Prefers routine
Conscientiousness
Conscientious, Hardworking, Ambitious and Responsible
Negligent, Lazy, Aimless and Irresponsible
47 Slides

38. The Big Five (OCEAN) Extraversion Agreeableness
High scoring individuals
Talkative, Passionate, Active, Dominant and Sociable
Low scoring individuals
Quite, Unfeeling and Passive
Agreeableness
Good natured, Soft Hearted, Trusting
Irritable, Ruthless, Suspicious
47 Slides

39. The Big Five (OCEAN) Neuroticism
High scoring individuals
Worrying, Emotional, Vulnerable and Anxious
Low scoring individuals
Calm, Unemotional, Hardy, Self controlled and have a Sense of well being
New factor analysis seems to indicate that there is a sixth factor found throughout the world but it is not yet accepted by a large number of psychologists. The possible sixth factor is Honesty vs. Humility
47 Slides

40. The five factor’s facets
Each factor has six facets
Extraversion
Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions
Agreeableness
Trust, Straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-mindedness
Neuroticism
Anxiety, hostility, depression, self consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability
Openness
Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, Ideas, Values
Conscientiousness
Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement oriented, self disciplined, deliberation
47 Slides

41. Heritability of the 5 factors
Although many people want to say that our personality is inherited from our parents, research does not support that position. Studies of inheritance of these traits indicate that the Big Five factors have different but specific amounts of heritability less than 50%
.36 extraversion
.28 agreeableness
.31 neuroticism
.28 conscientiousness
.46 openness
47 Slides

42. Traits measured over time
Are traits stable or not? Many people say that our personalities are extremely stable over our lifetime. Some research disputes and others confirm this. It depends on what part of personality you are considering.
From the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol. 84, No. 5,
132,515 subjects tested
47 Slides

43. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol.84, No. 5,
47 Slides

44. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol.84, No. 5,
47 Slides

45. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol.84, No. 5,
47 Slides

46. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol.84, No. 5,
47 Slides

47. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2003, Vol.84, No. 5,
47 Slides