Difference between revisions of "Personality Traits in terms of Social-Role Probabilities; an innovative theoretical essay on the possibility of overcoming the chaotic diversity in personality theories"
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These three categories primarily differ in stability over time and in the ease with which the personality characteristics in question can be influenced from the environment. In most research groups or university departments the research efforts are focussed exclusively on one of the major broad categories. That is to say, all dimensions under investigation are often either interpreted as traits of temperament, or as social-role aspects, or as skills and abilities, depending solely on the perspective from which the research group in question operates. When scrutinized more closely however, it is often rather difficult - especially in the case of orthogonal personality dimensions - to determine unambiguously for each dimension under investigation, whether it is indeed primarily to be considered a "trait of temperament", a "social role dimension", a "skill", merely a dimension of "judgment", unrelated to actual behaviour, or as a combination of these. | These three categories primarily differ in stability over time and in the ease with which the personality characteristics in question can be influenced from the environment. In most research groups or university departments the research efforts are focussed exclusively on one of the major broad categories. That is to say, all dimensions under investigation are often either interpreted as traits of temperament, or as social-role aspects, or as skills and abilities, depending solely on the perspective from which the research group in question operates. When scrutinized more closely however, it is often rather difficult - especially in the case of orthogonal personality dimensions - to determine unambiguously for each dimension under investigation, whether it is indeed primarily to be considered a "trait of temperament", a "social role dimension", a "skill", merely a dimension of "judgment", unrelated to actual behaviour, or as a combination of these. | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | == Interpretation of Personality Factors; Ambiguity and Confusion == | ||
| + | One of the reasons for the apparent ambiguity of the classificatory status of many personality factors can be found in the fact that the various main sources of personality differences are strongly inter(cor)related. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Suppose for instance that certain innate properties account for an important part of personality-variance (e.g., genetical factors influencing physical strength). Then these genetic factors for strength will also influence: | ||
| + | |||
| + | a) the individual's chances of taking up certain social roles, | ||
| + | |||
| + | b) the likelihood of profiting by learning versus suffering irrepairably from certain environmental influences, | ||
| + | |||
| + | c) the probability of evoking certain judgments from other people, etc.,etc. | ||
| + | |||
| + | When a strong resourceful individual is competing with weak individuals for a dominating position, chances of success are clearly unequal. And after a social | ||
| + | role distribution has been established and consolidated, a dominant position will | ||
| + | in itself determine part of the individual's behaviour and thus also the | ||
| + | experiences and skills to be acquired later on. Apart from social role positions, | ||
| + | strong and resourceful individuals will be more able to learn from harsh | ||
| + | environmental influences, to avoid the suffering of irreparable damage, and | ||
| + | thus to better their chances of becoming more skillful. This in turn influences | ||
| + | the individual's behaviour and its chances for success. In this way correlations | ||
| + | between genetical factors and other sources of personality-differences will | ||
| + | prevail. And the same is mutatis mutandis likely to hold for other combinations | ||
| + | of personality sources. | ||
| + | |||
| + | All this means that it will be essentially impossible to find purely | ||
| + | genetical personality factors, purely developmental personality factors, purely | ||
| + | social role factors, etc., which are all mutually orthogonal to one another. | ||
| + | The various main sources of personality differences being basically inter- | ||
| + | (cor)related, we may still - staying within one realm, say, within the realm of | ||
| + | trait-differences or the realm of social-role differences - choose to work with | ||
| + | orthogonal factors within that area. But even then - limiting ourselves to one | ||
| + | of the main realms of personality and also limiting ourselves to orthogonal | ||
| + | factors another problem arises. Having decided that a particular n-dimensional euclidian space is the most proper representation of the data under | ||
| + | consideration, there is still the problem of determining which position of | ||
| + | personality factors is most convenient. Guilford & Hoepfner (1969) remark: | ||
| + | |||
| + | "It should be agreed that the aim of those who apply factor analysis for the purpose of discovering scientific constructs in psychology should be to achieve psychologically significant factors, which can be replicated, which fit into systematic psychological theory, and which can be investigated meaningfully by other methods. Only in this way can there be general agreement upon factorially discovered constructs and thus the unambiguous communicability that science requires." | ||
| + | |||
| + | When dealing with a general and rather exhaustive trait space, generally | ||
| + | agreed upon external criteria to determine where to put our labels of reference | ||
| + | are generally not available. Therefore, internal criteria are used such as e.g., a | ||
| + | varimax rotation of principal components. But, as Guilford (1975) states: | ||
| + | |||
| + | "It is probably commonly known that the most disturbing deficiency of factor analysis is its indeterminacy - the lack of any completely dependable criterion with regard to where to place the reference axes. And when mathematical specifications for simple structure are written in the form of analytical rotation models (e.g., varimax or promax), the model may not fit psychological reality." | ||
| + | |||
| + | Were generally agreed upon external criteria available, a criterium rotation might render factors (and labels) to span the resulting multi-dimensional personality space in a way, more convenient for experimentation and manipula¬tion (Guilford et al., 1969; Elshout et ah, 1975). | ||
| + | |||
| + | Below we will attempt to deal with this general problem of searching for hard and generally acceptable external rotation criteria. But first let us rehearse the methodical problems encountered up to this point. | ||
Revision as of 13:14, 17 June 2012
PERSONALITY TRAITS IN TERMS OF SOCIAL-ROLE PROBABILITIES (An innovative theoretical essay on the possibility of overcoming the chaotic diversity in personality theories)
by
Popko P. van der Molen
presented at the Third European Conference of Personality Gdansk, Poland, Sept. 23-26, 1986.
(Registered as Heymans Bulletin HB-86-815-EX, State University of Groningen (RUG), Jan. 1987)
Deze front-pagina nog van betere lay out voorzien ****************
Keywords :
abilities and skills adaption vs. innovation anchoring dimensions dominance (styles) energy level
genetic vs. environmental factors
personality traits
person- vs. thing-orientedness
reactivity
rotations (oblique + orthogonal) self-will vs. compliance stability vs. over-sensitivity social roles subordinacy (styles of)
ABSTRACT
Social Psychology and Personality Psychology have developed into separate disciplines. Personality psychologists seldom ask questions about the way social roles are distributed and come into existence and social psychologists rarely explore the influence of temperamental differences and other basic personality traits on the way social roles develop.
Focussing on the interface between these two research traditions, we can find anchoring points for factor rotations which can bring order to the unmanageable multiformity of classification systems, categorizations and theoretical approaches in personality- and social psychology. To that end some personality dimensions are defined on the level of congenital predispositions as well as in terms of social role distribution. They are, in fact, biologically based personality traits, defined in terms of the probability of obtaining specific social roles (-scores).
The use of such doubly defined personality dimensions as reference points can produce considerable conceptual and theoretical advantages for both the social-role and the trait domain. It can help us to integrate both disciplines without leading to desultory complexities.
PERSONALITY: A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE ISSUE
Social Psychology and Personality Psychology have developed into separate disciplines. Personality psychologists seldom ask questions about the way social roles come into existence and are distributed and social psychologists rarely explore the influence of temperamental differences and other basic personality traits on the way social roles develop. However, since these disciplines proper are strongly interrelated, both dealing with individual differences, there is a considerable overlap in the dimensions, studied in each domain. As a result, there is, in the field of personality theories, an almost unmanageable multifor¬mity of classification systems, categorizations, and theoretical approaches. Some of them supplement each other, or may be considered as partly overlap¬ping and redundant. Others seem to compete, or even to be mutually exclusive.
For the present disquisition we need to distinguish aspects of social interactive behaviour as far as they are primarily dependent on time- and place-specific role distributions, from behavioural aspects with strong conge¬nital roots and from behavioural aspects which primarily depend on processes of learning and development. To that end we shall utilize a preliminary classification of personality dimensions in the following categories:
1. ) Social-role dimensions, refering to differences in the way people interact socially; personality dimensions stemming from social psychological research can mostly be considered as belonging to this category; differences between individuals with regard to these dimensions are often found to be strongly situation-dependent. Reviews of this category of personality research can for instance be found in Leary (1957),. Foa (1961), Wiggins (1979,1982) and Kiesler (1982,1983).
2. ) Traits of temperament, refering to the most stable differences between persons, often shown to have strong congenital roots. Personality-trait psychologists traditionally used to be interested in these aspects of personality in particular. This area of research is represented by a considerable number of "schools" and traditions. Other than in the realm of social interactive beha¬viour, there is little consensus here with regard to which axes of reference are to be considered most important. Moreover, most of the traditions in this realm cherish at least some personality dimensions which are evidently a mix of the presently applied three conceptual categories of personality differences. In the research traditions of Cattell, Eysenck, Strelau, Buss and Plomin, to mention a few, a major part of the personality dimensions under investigation is representative for the category "traits of temperament".
3.) Skills and abilities, sensitive to learning, training and education. Dimensions in this category emerge from research on learning and education as well as from research on personality differences in general. They are the most changeable and malleable category of personality differences.
These three categories primarily differ in stability over time and in the ease with which the personality characteristics in question can be influenced from the environment. In most research groups or university departments the research efforts are focussed exclusively on one of the major broad categories. That is to say, all dimensions under investigation are often either interpreted as traits of temperament, or as social-role aspects, or as skills and abilities, depending solely on the perspective from which the research group in question operates. When scrutinized more closely however, it is often rather difficult - especially in the case of orthogonal personality dimensions - to determine unambiguously for each dimension under investigation, whether it is indeed primarily to be considered a "trait of temperament", a "social role dimension", a "skill", merely a dimension of "judgment", unrelated to actual behaviour, or as a combination of these.
Interpretation of Personality Factors; Ambiguity and Confusion
One of the reasons for the apparent ambiguity of the classificatory status of many personality factors can be found in the fact that the various main sources of personality differences are strongly inter(cor)related.
Suppose for instance that certain innate properties account for an important part of personality-variance (e.g., genetical factors influencing physical strength). Then these genetic factors for strength will also influence:
a) the individual's chances of taking up certain social roles,
b) the likelihood of profiting by learning versus suffering irrepairably from certain environmental influences,
c) the probability of evoking certain judgments from other people, etc.,etc.
When a strong resourceful individual is competing with weak individuals for a dominating position, chances of success are clearly unequal. And after a social role distribution has been established and consolidated, a dominant position will in itself determine part of the individual's behaviour and thus also the experiences and skills to be acquired later on. Apart from social role positions, strong and resourceful individuals will be more able to learn from harsh environmental influences, to avoid the suffering of irreparable damage, and thus to better their chances of becoming more skillful. This in turn influences the individual's behaviour and its chances for success. In this way correlations between genetical factors and other sources of personality-differences will prevail. And the same is mutatis mutandis likely to hold for other combinations of personality sources.
All this means that it will be essentially impossible to find purely genetical personality factors, purely developmental personality factors, purely social role factors, etc., which are all mutually orthogonal to one another. The various main sources of personality differences being basically inter- (cor)related, we may still - staying within one realm, say, within the realm of trait-differences or the realm of social-role differences - choose to work with orthogonal factors within that area. But even then - limiting ourselves to one of the main realms of personality and also limiting ourselves to orthogonal factors another problem arises. Having decided that a particular n-dimensional euclidian space is the most proper representation of the data under consideration, there is still the problem of determining which position of personality factors is most convenient. Guilford & Hoepfner (1969) remark:
"It should be agreed that the aim of those who apply factor analysis for the purpose of discovering scientific constructs in psychology should be to achieve psychologically significant factors, which can be replicated, which fit into systematic psychological theory, and which can be investigated meaningfully by other methods. Only in this way can there be general agreement upon factorially discovered constructs and thus the unambiguous communicability that science requires."
When dealing with a general and rather exhaustive trait space, generally agreed upon external criteria to determine where to put our labels of reference are generally not available. Therefore, internal criteria are used such as e.g., a varimax rotation of principal components. But, as Guilford (1975) states:
"It is probably commonly known that the most disturbing deficiency of factor analysis is its indeterminacy - the lack of any completely dependable criterion with regard to where to place the reference axes. And when mathematical specifications for simple structure are written in the form of analytical rotation models (e.g., varimax or promax), the model may not fit psychological reality."
Were generally agreed upon external criteria available, a criterium rotation might render factors (and labels) to span the resulting multi-dimensional personality space in a way, more convenient for experimentation and manipula¬tion (Guilford et al., 1969; Elshout et ah, 1975).
Below we will attempt to deal with this general problem of searching for hard and generally acceptable external rotation criteria. But first let us rehearse the methodical problems encountered up to this point.
