WRAPPING IT UP

The Single-Trait Approach

• The single-trait approach zeros in on one particular trait and its consequences for behavior; this approach has been used to study self-monitoring and narcissism, among many others.

The Many-Trait Approach

• The many-trait approach looks at the relationship between a particular behavior and as many different traits as possible. One test used in this approach, the California Q-Set, assesses 100 different personality characteristics at once. The Q-sort has been used to explore the bases of word use and political ideology, among other topics.

The Essential-Trait Approach

• The essential-trait approach attempts to identify the few traits, out of the thousands of possibilities, that are truly central to understanding all of the others. The most widely accepted essential trait list is the Big Five, which identifies extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness as broad traits that can organize the understanding of personality.
• Some researchers argue that a sixth basic trait, called honesty/humility, should be added to the Big Five.
• While the Big Five traits are useful for organizing the many findings of personality research, they are probably still not sufficient to describe all the ways in which people are psychologically different from each other.

Typological Approaches to Personality

• The typological approach attempts to capture the ways people might differ in kind, not just in degree. Research has identified three basic types of personality: well adjusted, maladjusted overcontrolled, and maladjusted undercontrolled. However, these types add little, if any, predictive validity to what can be achieved using trait measures.
• A particular problem with personality typologies is that when people are sorted into types based on cutoff scores, a common practice, people classified together as the same type are often more different from each other than people classified as being different types.
• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is very popular and widely used but has serious shortcomings of reliability and validity and should probably be used only for entertainment.

From Assessment to Understanding

• Personality assessment is not an end in itself but should be a tool for psychological understanding.

Online

Big Five Personality Test

If you are curious about your own scores on the Big Five personality traits, you can take one widely used test here for free:

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive

Myers-Briggs Website

And, for balance, here is the website of the MBTI publishers:

http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/the-16-mbti-types.htm?bhcp=1

Summary of Myers-Briggs Critiques

The chapter is pretty critical of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. For a summary of even more criticisms, see:

http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/myers-briggs-criticisms.html

Print

Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

The classic and perhaps still best presentation of how trait psychologists think about personality.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances, private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. Freeman.

A summary, by the test’s originator, of the research stimulated by the self-monitoring scale. The book goes beyond test-relevant issues and has much to say about basic topics in social psychology, notably self-presentation.

Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before. Free Press.

A readable and interesting summary of the argument that narcissism is on the upswing in the United States and discussion of the implications of this trend. Be aware, however, that the conclusions reached in this book are controversial among psychologists.