Читать реферат по английскому: "Five Factor Model Of Personality Essay Research" Страница 2

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

as to factor titles” (John, 1990: 96). Many writers have adopted the names used by Norman (1963,

cited in Goldberg, 1990) which are; extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional

stability and culture. For simplicity, this is the version of the five factor model that shall be adopted

for this essay.

The best known limitations of the five factor model of personality relate to the problems of

trait theory in general. Trait approaches are directed primarily at specifying the variables of

personality. There is little dealing with the dynamic processes of personality functioning. Traits are

static entities and more complete theories of personality, such as those of Eyesenck, come from a

combination of trait theory with another psychological theory. For example, Eyesenck adopted a

learning theory to combine with trait theory. As such, trait theory, and therefore the five factor model,

do not deal with a large aspect of personality: change.

Mischel (1968, cited in Atkinson et al. 1993) is perhaps the best known critic of the trait

theorists. Basically Mischel states that the underlying assumption of the approach may be untrue:

people may have such dynamic personalities that they do not possess trait-like characteristics. Mischel

also claims that there should be a high correlation between scores on a trait measure for a subject and

performance in a situation where that trait is evoked. However, according to Mischel, the correlation

is extremely low. Mischel further argues that knowing a persons’ “traits” does not help predict their

behaviour and measures of the same trait do not correlate highly with one another. Although this

criticism seems almost perfect, there is still a large number of trait theorists. Their responses to

Mischel’s criticism shall be evaluated.

The main defence of the trait approach comes in two forms. Firstly a conceptual form in

which Mischel’s understanding of what makes up a trait is questioned. The second form of defence

comes from a methodological perspective, where the measurement of “trait” behaviour is examined.

To be able to appropriately comment on trait theory, it is important to understand exactly what a trait

is. McCrae and Costa (1995) suggest that not every person has every trait. Therefore it is possible to

confuse descriptors of behaviour with traits. There needs to be consistencies of behaviour to evidence

a trait. Also traits can be of either a conjunctive or disjunctive type. It has been suggested that the

evidence suggested by Mischel is invalid because aggression was seen as conjunctive when it is

actually disjunctive. Correcting this mistake could significantly increase the correlation between

different measures of the same trait. As such, one criticism of Mischel may be answered.

The second defence of trait theory examines the research method used by Mischel. It is

proposed that it is necessary to have many more than one observation of behaviour, before comparing

behaviour to trait scores. The reasoning behind this argument is that each trait test has at least 20 to

40 items. As such, there should be at least half as many observations. A single question test would be

unacceptable and therefore a single observation of behaviour should also be unacceptable. Another

possible experimental error may have occurred due to moderator variables. Moderator variables such

as sex of subject may change the correlation between behaviour and trait scores. If these variables are

controlled for, the correlation may significantly increase and Mischels’ criticism may need to be re-

evaluated.

Cattell’s 16pf, the predecessor of the five factor model, also had a significant limitation. The

16 pf had a low predictive power of performance of a subject on a given test, when used alone.

However, the personality profiles which can be created using the 16pf are reasonably effective in an

applied situation in predicting adjustment of an individual entering a particular group. Also, the

performance predicting power of the 16 pf can be improved by giving the 16pf and correlating it to

some measure of the person’s performance. Multiple regression can then be used to weight each of

the 16pf factors so that correlation between the 16pf score and performance is at maximum. This

gives a more satisfactory prediction of performance using the 16pf, yet it’s predictive power is still

quite low. The 16pf is still used in many applied situations because no other psychological tool is

available with better predictive power. Since the five factor model is based on the 16pf, this limitation

is also applicable to the five factor model.

It is possible to suggest that the limitations pertaining to the trait approach and 16pf are

insignificant or not applicable to the big five model of personality. However, there are limitations that

specifically relate to this model. Jack Block (1995) and Dan McAdams (1992) are the main theorists

to evaluate the five factor model specifically and examine it’s limitations. Block’s criticisms are

answered by theorists such as McCrae and Costa (1995) and Goldberg and Saucier (1995).

The basis of Block’s argument is that it is uncertain that all important trait-descriptive terms

are representatively distributed in language. For instance, collectively suppressed traits might be

unrepresented. Another major point is that the Big Five are very broad and might not differentiate

accurately enough for practical

Похожие работы