Personality Traits and Assessment

Study Notes

Personality traits are enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
The person-situation debate examines the relative contributions of personality traits and situational factors to behavior.
The five-factor model (FFM) describes five broad dimensions of personality: agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience.
The HEXACO model adds honesty-humility as a sixth factor.
The lexical hypothesis suggests that important personality traits are encoded in language.
Personality facets are narrower aspects of broader personality traits.
Factor analysis identifies underlying dimensions of personality in data.
Continuous distributions of personality traits show a range of variability.

Objective tests use self-report measures and informant ratings, aiming for comprehensiveness and breadth.
Examples include inventories that measure various personality traits.
Projective tests, like the Rorschach, rely on ambiguous stimuli.
Implicit tests measure unconscious or automatic associations.
Reliability and validity are crucial for assessing the accuracy of personality scores.
High-stakes testing, reference-group effects, and self-enhancement biases can influence assessment.
Letter of recommendation is an example of implicit ratings.

Personality continuity and change are researched areas.
Person-environment transactions influence personality development, including proactive, reactive and evocative encounters between individuals and their surroundings.
The maturity principle suggests personality change often involves increasing conscientiousness and emotional stability.

Personality disorders involve enduring patterns of inner experience and behavior that deviate markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture.
Specific disorders include borderline personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder.
Different factors contribute to the etiology or cause of mental disorders and disorders in the DSM-5.

Psychological disorders are characterized by clinically significant disturbances in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) provides criteria for diagnosing psychological disorders.
Comorbidity refers to the simultaneous occurrence of multiple disorders in a single individual.
Safety behaviors are maladaptive coping mechanisms potentially linked to psychological disorders.

Psychodynamic therapy explores unconscious conflicts.
Person-centered therapy promotes self-actualization.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on thoughts and behaviors.
Exposure therapy involves direct exposure to feared stimuli.
Mindfulness-based therapy focuses on present moment awareness.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) encourages acceptance of difficult thoughts and feelings.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) combines CBT techniques with mindfulness and acceptance.
Cognitive bias modification aims to modify maladaptive thinking patterns.
Eclectic psychotherapy integrates various therapeutic approaches.