Deck 3: Traits and Trait Taxonomies

Question 1

The approach that uses natural language to identify important traits is the ________ approach.

A)lexical
B)theoretical
C)act frequency
D)statistical

Answer 1

lexical

Question 2

Which of the following is NOT typically a step in the act frequency approach?

A)Recording of act performance
B)Assessing synonym frequency
C)Act nomination
D)Prototypicality judgment

Answer 2

Assessing synonym frequency

Question 3

Which of the following is NOT a fundamental question of people who study traits?

A)How can we identify which traits are most important?
B)How can traits be changed?
C)How can we develop a comprehensive taxonomy of traits?
D)How should "trait" be defined?

Answer 3

How can traits be changed?

Question 4

Roberto is interested in studying the trait of empathy using the act frequency approach. He asks each of the participants in this phase of his study to write down several
Behaviours highly empathetic people might perform. Roberto collects a pool of 251
Empathetic acts. This is called the act procedure of the act frequency approach.

A)nomenclature
B)nomothetic
C)nominalization
D)nomination

Question 5

From the "traits as descriptive summaries" point of view, which of the following would be the most convincing evidence that a person has a given trait?

A)The person says that they have the trait.
B)The person's behaviour is caused by situations.
C)The person behaves in ways consistent with that trait.
D)The person's traits are caused by biology and heredity.

Question 6

The dispositional domain deals with personality problems

A)by examining important similarities and differences between people.
B)by altering reward and punishment contingencies.
C)through psychoanalysis.
D)through cognitive therapy.

Question 7

The identifies how much of a trait a person has by counting relevant behaviours.

A)theoretical approach to scale construction
B)circumplex model
C)rational approach to scale construction
D)act frequency approach

Question 8

Which of the following is NOT a major question addressed by the dispositional domain?

A)How many traits exist?
B)How can we best measure traits?
C)Which traits are unconscious?
D)How do traits interact with situations to produce behaviour?

Question 9

Ellen works into the night studying for chemistry and biology examinations to reach her goal of entering medical school. She studies so hard that she often appears bored and uninterested in class. Which of the following trait formulations best explains Ellen's personality characteristics?

A)Traits as genetic predisposition.
B)Traits as purely descriptive summary.
C)Traits as biological structure.
D)Traits as internal causes.

Question 10

The "frequency" part of the "act frequency approach" represents how often an individual performs a behaviour in a period of time. This element of the act frequency approach is assessed by act ratings.

A)performance
B)nomination
C)occurrence
D)repetition

Question 11

A robin is a more example of a bird than is a penguin.

A)aerodynamic
B)specific
C)elemental
D)prototypical

Question 12

Which of the following is an example of the view that traits are descriptive summaries?

A)Eysenck's theory
B)The sociosexual orientation scale
C)Theoretical scale construction
D)The act frequency approach

Question 13

The dispositional domain focuses on traits that

A)change over time.
B)are similar in all people.
C)are enduring over time.
D)change when situations change.

Question 14

If you collect the central behaviours for a category and assess how frequently people perform those behaviours you would be using the act approach to studying personality.

A)frequency
B)analysis
C)selection
D)manipulation

Question 15

If the act "she made direct eye contact and smiled" is central to the category of flirting, it would be considered a(n)act for that category of behaviour.

A)effective
B)prototypical
C)likely
D)centrifugal

Question 16

What procedure do researchers use to identify the potential hundreds of acts that belong to a trait category?

A)Act nominations
B)Act performance
C)Act likelihood
D)Act effectiveness

Question 17

If the trait of stinginess is viewed as a purely descriptive summary of behaviour, it can be represented best by

A)George not contributing for a gift for a stranger.
B)Beth living with several roommates.
C)Andrew always leaving a very small tip at restaurants.
D)Mary's constant thoughts about spending too much money.

Question 18

Which of the following is NOT one of the criticisms of the act frequency approach to studying personality?

A)The amount of context for the performance of acts is not specified by the act frequency approach.
B)The act frequency approach assesses explicit behavioural phenomenon.
C)The act frequency approach does not assess acts that are covert or directly observable.
D)The act frequency approach may not assess complex traits easily or accurately.

Question 19

are/is used by the act frequency approach to figure out which acts are most central to a trait category.

A)Act nominations
B)Recording of act performance
C)Prototypicality judgments
D)Assessing synonym frequency

Question 20

The "traits as causes" perspective on personality characteristics is useful in all of the following areas EXCEPT

A)ruling out alternative explanations for behaviour.
B)explaining why a person's behaviour seems inconsistent with a trait at times.
C)counting how often a behaviour is performed.
D)viewing traits as internal structures.

Question 21

A problem with factor analysis is that

A)it leads to an unmanageable number of traits.
B)factor loadings are like correlations.
C)it reduces the number of traits being studied.
D)you can only identify traits that you include in your analysis.

Question 22

Psychologists Simpson and Gangestad developed the concept of sociosexuality based on evolutionary theory. Then they developed the sociosexual orientation inventory. They employed the approach to developing a model of personality.

A)statistical
B)act frequency
C)lexical
D)theoretical

Question 23

The lexical approach assumes that

A)the lexicon is an unchanging catalogue of human traits.
B)humans invented words to describe all of the important personality traits.
C)new words in the lexicon are better at describing personality traits than old words.
D)statistical techniques, like factor analysis, are poor ways of discovering important personality traits.

Question 24

Which of the following approaches would utilize the technique of factor analysis?

A)Theoretical approach
B)Statistical approach
C)Lexical approach
D)Act frequency approach

Question 25

Which approach would most likely be used to undertake cross-cultural comparisons of language?

A)Statistical approach
B)Theoretical approach
C)Act frequency approach
D)Lexical approach

Question 26

Fred believes that having a large big toe is related to how extraverted a person may be and having a large small toe is an indicator of how conscientious a person may be. He then starts measuring toe size and personality traits. Fred's research represents the ________ approach to studying personality.

A)lexical
B)theoretical
C)act frequency
D)statistical

Question 27

When Cattell used factor analysis to reduce the number of trait-descriptive adjectives in his pool, he was combining the approaches.

A)lexical and statistical
B)theoretical and act frequency
C)act frequency and statistical
D)theoretical and statistical

Question 28

A Freudian scholar develops personality measures to assess oral, anal, and phallic fixations. The scholar is using the _ individual differences.
_ approach to identifying important

A)psychoanalytic
B)theoretical
C)clinical
D)regressive

Question 29

Factor loadings indicate the between an item and a factor.

A)kurtosis
B)deviation
C)analysis
D)correlation

Question 30

Dr. Larsen is interested in researching the personalities of dweebs. He collects all the terms in the Dweeb Talk Dictionary that can differentiate one dweeb from another dweeb. Dr. Larsen is the using the approach to identifying important traits.

A)maniacal
B)prototypical
C)statistical
D)lexical

Question 31

A researcher who defines a specific set of traits as a part of a model of personality before conducting any empirical investigation of that model of personality is taking the ________ approach to theory development.

A)empirical
B)theoretical
C)statistical
D)lexical

Question 32

is a statistical approach that identifies groups of items that are similar to each other.

A)Orthogonality
B)Rational scale construction
C)Factor analysis
D)The act frequency approach

Question 33

Which of the following is useful in reducing the number of personality traits to a more manageable number?

A)The act frequency approach
B)Cross-cultural universality
C)Factor analysis
D)Synonym frequency

Question 34

The idea that all important individual differences have been encoded within the natural language is known as

A)a personality taxonomy.
B)factor analysis.
C)the projective hypothesis.
D)the lexical hypothesis.

Question 35

If a trait-descriptive word is found in only one or two languages the word

A)is probably known only to personality psychologists.
B)will probably be imported by other languages.
C)will probably be important to a universal personality taxonomy.
D)will probably not be included in a universal personality taxonomy.

Question 36

If a trait is sufficiently important that it appears in the lexicon of most human languages, then that trait demonstrates the concept of universality.

A)trait
B)synonym
C)cross-cultural
D)act

Question 37

The fact that there are trait-descriptive adjectives that few people know is a problem for the approach.

A)statistical
B)lexical
C)theoretical
D)act frequency

Question 38

Factor analysis can be applied to

A)self-ratings on personality relevant statements.
B)adjective ratings.
C)a true/false questionnaire.
D)All of the choices are correct.

Question 39

The idea that Eskimo language has many words for snow is most consistent with the approach.

A)lexical
B)act frequency
C)statistical
D)theoretical

Question 40

Which of the following would be one way that you might determine the importance of a trait using the lexical strategy?

A)Determine if there are words representing each pole (end)of that trait in the language.
B)Determine if that trait is represented in all parts of the lexicon (noun, verb, adjective, etc.).
C)Find the number of synonyms for that characteristic in the lexicon.
D)Examine the lexicon for biological words that represent that trait.

Question 41

According to Eysenck, which of the following traits is related to central nervous system arousal and reactivity?

A)Neuroticism
B)Extraversion
C)Dominance
D)Psychoticism

Question 42

Which of the following is a criticism of the theoretical approach?

A)The approach can only be as good as the theory.
B)It is theoretically based.
C)It has restricted investigations to adjectives.
D)It depends on the lexical hypothesis.

Question 43

Juanita is observed as being somewhat aloof and distant. She tends to lead a predictable and well-organized life. Juanita is demonstrating behaviours related to Eysenck's dimension of

A)psychoticism.
B)conscientiousness.
C)introversion.
D)agency.

Question 44

Which of the following is NOT an attribute of Eysenck's taxonomy?

A)Traits have physiological substrates.
B)Traits are heritable.
C)Hierarchical structure of traits.
D)Traits have many synonyms.

Question 45

Cattell's model of personality has been criticized on the grounds that

A)his model of personality has failed to be replicated by other researchers.
B)his empirical strategies were weak and ill-defined.
C)his views on personality traits were biased and, therefore, were ignored by most researchers.
D)he published over a thousand pages a year during his most productive years.

Question 46

Which of the following psychologists was born in England, moved to America, and used factor analysis to identify major traits?

A)Eysenck
B)Cattell
C)Leary
D)Wiggins

Question 47

Eysenck's taxonomy has been criticized on which one of these issues?

A)Eysenck did not take the physiological substrates of traits into consideration in his model.
B)Eysenck failed to include some important personality traits in his model.
C)There is a dispute about whether or not personality traits are arranged hierarchically.
D)The traits in Eysenck's model are not heritable in the population.

Question 48

Which taxonomy includes a four-level hierarchy of specific acts, habitual acts, traits, and super traits?

A)The PEN model
B)The Leary circumplex
C)Cattell's taxonomy of 16 traits
D)The five-factor model

Question 49

Jerry is a loner who likes to catch flies and pull their wings off. He is also addicted to violent movies. Jerry most likely scores high on the personality trait of

A)introversion.
B)sensation seeking.
C)neuroticism.
D)psychoticism.

Question 50

Whose model of personality includes three main traits?

A)Eysenck
B)Cattell
C)Leary
D)Wiggins

Question 51

Which taxonomy was developed by identifying traits that were thought to be heritable and thought to have biological substrates?

A)PEN model
B)The five-factor model
C)Cattell's taxonomy of 16 traits
D)The Leary circumplex

Question 52

Fu is an excessive worrier, who always seems tense and has trouble sleeping. His friends report that Fu has very low self-esteem and is moody much of the time. Fu is demonstrating behaviours related to Eysenck's dimension of

A)neuroticism.
B)quarrelsomeness.
C)introversion.
D)psychoticism.

Question 53

A worrier would likely score high on the trait of

A)extraversion.
B)psychoticism.
C)neuroticism.
D)quarrelsomeness.

Question 54

Cattell believed that the true factors of personality were

A)based primarily in human biology.
B)found across different sources of data.
C)found only in the natural language.
D)arranged in a circumplex.

Question 55

Cattell's taxonomy included traits.

A)16
B)five
C)two
D)three

Question 56

Eysenck put the most important traits at

A)the top of his hierarchy.
B)the third level of his hierarchy.
C)an intermediate level in his hierarchy.
D)the bottom of his hierarchy.

Question 57

Which of the following researchers was born in Germany and wanted to study physics before studying psychology?

A)Cattell
B)Eysenck
C)Leary
D)Wiggins

Question 58

Who of the following was the first to propose a circumplex model of personality?

A)Cattell
B)Eysenck
C)Wiggins
D)Leary

Question 59

Which personality researcher named his traits with letters (similar to the way vitamins are named)?

A)Cattell
B)Wiggins
C)Leary
D)Eysenck

Question 60

A person who is antisocial and lacks empathy would score high on the trait of

A)psychoticism.
B)extraversion.
C)introversion.
D)neuroticism.

Question 61

The primary dimensions in Wiggins's circumplex model are love and

A)status
B)interpersonal behaviour.
C)hate.
D)neuroticism.

Question 62

Which of the following is NOT a strength of the Wiggins interpersonal circumplex?

A)It specifies the relationships between items in the circumplex.
B)It includes all the traits needed to understand interpersonal behaviour.
C)It explicitly defines what interpersonal behaviour is.
D)It identifies new areas of research by mapping the interpersonal domain.

Question 63

Researchers have found empirical evidence for the five-factor model in all of these ways EXCEPT

A)similar factor structures for men and women.
B)extensively in English-speaking samples.
C)in five robust biological structures.
D)different factor analytic techniques.

Question 64

In Wiggins's model of personality, bipolar traits are

A)uncorrelated with other.
B)on opposite sides of the circle.
C)orthogonal with each other.
D)related to clinical disorders.

Question 65

Circumplex models are composed of primary dimensions of personality.

A)two
B)five
C)eight
D)three

Question 66

Which of the following is NOT a clear advantage of Wiggins's circumplex model of personality?

A)The relationships between traits can be traced to biological-based traits.
B)It alerts researchers to gaps in knowledge about some interpersonal behaviours.
C)The relationship of each and every other trait is specified in the model.
D)There is an explicit definition of the nature of interpersonal behaviour.

Question 67

are traits that describe how people act with other people.

A)Factor loadings
B)Bipolar traits
C)Adjacent traits
D)Interpersonal traits

Question 68

The five-factor model is a combination of ________ and approaches to studying personality taxonomies.

A)lexical; biological
B)theoretical; statistical
C)lexical; statistical
D)statistical; causal

Question 69

Wiggins's circumplex model of personality is limited to traits that

A)pertain to what people do to and with each other.
B)show how people interact with the environment.
C)were found in the LSD experiences of subjects.
D)have a biological basis in the nervous system.

Question 70

Traits that are orthogonal with each other.

A)have a strong positive correlation
B)are not correlated
C)have a negative correlation
D)are causally linked

Question 71

Which one of the following is NOT one of the four categories into which Allport and Odbert divided the 17,953 trait terms?

A)Temporary states
B)Social evaluations
C)Unstable traits
D)Stable traits

Question 72

In Wiggins's circumplex, the traits of dominance and warmth-agreeableness are

A)orthogonal.
B)bipolar.
C)polar opposites.
D)adjacent.

Question 73

More research in the past few decades has focused on this taxonomy than other taxonomies.

A)The Leary circumplex
B)Cattell's taxonomy of 16 traits
C)The five-factor model
D)PEN model

Question 74

Who took the Allport and Odbert list of trait terms and grouped them logically into 171 clusters of terms by grouping them together and eliminating some terms?

A)Christal
B)Cattell
C)Fiske
D)Norman

Question 75

The five-factor model of personality consists of these five traits:

A)surgency, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness-intellect.
B)extraversion, surgency, agreeableness, intellect, and dominance.
C)psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness-intellect.
D)surgency, sensation seeking, conscientious, psychoticism, and openness-intellect.

Question 76

A problem with the five-factor model is that

A)most factors do not replicate across cultures.
B)the structure does not replicate across item formats.
C)researchers disagree about what to call the fifth factor.
D)the five factors are only found in males.

Question 77

The concept of _ positively correlated.
_ holds that items near one another in a circumplex are

A)bipolarity
B)orthogonality
C)factor loadings
D)adjacency

Question 78

Where did Allport and Odbert locate 17,953 trait terms?

A)Peer ratings
B)English dictionary
C)Act nominations
D)Self reports

Question 79

describes the relationship between traits that are perpendicular to one another in a circumplex.

A)"Adjacency"
B)"Orthogonality"
C)"Polarity"
D)"Bipolarity"

Question 80

The first researcher to discover the five-factor model of personality by analyzing the structure of trait-descriptive adjectives was

A)Cattell.
B)Fiske.
C)Allport.
D)Tupes.