Do Personality Traits Predict Behaviour?

Do disposition traits predict deportment? The trait approach to character is foc utilize on differences ming guide with various(prenominal)s. After theatrical role theorists such as Sheldon, who focused on body parts to determine temperament, and lexical researchers such as Galton who provided the first dictionary of words to describe behaviour, the principles underpinning trait conjecture were first outlined by Gordon Allport (1937). He found that mavin English-language dictionary al one(a) contained more than 4,000 words describing different character traits and suggested that it is how the traits come together that produces the uniqueness of all individuals.Rather than relying on intuition or subjective judgement as did Freud and m all other neo-Freudians, trait theorists used objective measurements to examine their constructs. The use of factor analysis was a study breakthrough in the trait approach and Raymond Cattell was the first to take a leak the use of this to red uce the lists of traits to a littler number. This marked the beginning of the search to discover the basis structure of personality.This essay will discuss the issues touch the use of personality measures such as Eysencks personality questionnaire (EPQ) and Costa and Mc Craes Big quintuplet homunculus (NEO-PIR) to predict behaviour. Cattells 16PF hasnt had much of an impact but personality measures that followed such as Eysencks personality questionnaire, who claimed that 3 types/ supertraits, Extraversion, Neuroticism and Psychoticism, make up the basic structure of personality, and Costa and mc Craes Big Five Model measuring Openness, Conscientious, Extraversion, agreeableness and Neuroticism, have received a spicy level of support.The personality factors are found cross-culturally, in children as well as adults and specifically for Eysencks model in identical twins raised apart, evidence which seems to demonstrate that the discover personality differences are changeless acr oss time and have a genetic basis, although the underlying heritability estimate used in studies has been questioned by Plomin.Nevertheless, trait measures have great practical applications they have been embraced by psychologists from almost every perspective and used by professionals working in a wide variety of settings, such as in the oeuvre and the education system etcetera and are used to make important judgements about an individuals behaviour in different situations. Employers have used business relationships from personality tests to make hiring and promotion decisions for many age (Roberts and Hogan, 2000).The methodology used to identify the dimensional structure of personality traits, factor analysis, is often challenged for not having a universally-recognized basis for choosing among solutions with different numbers of factors. More than one interpretation can be made of the comparable data factored the same way, and factor analysis cannot identify causality. Howev er, some of the most common reflections of trait theory centre on the fact that traits are often poor predictors of behaviour. While an individual may score high school on assessments of a specific trait, he or she may not always practise that way in every situation.This was highlighted by Walter Mischel (1968, 1973) who stimulated a huge debate that raged until the early 1980s, concerning whether personality traits predict behaviour. At the heart of this debate was the questioning of the stability of traits across situations, known as the personality paradox. He demonstrated with his CAPs model that there is a complex interaction between situations and lasting individual personality differences, however the effects of many variables still have to be examined.Mischel criticised how personality measures were interpreted and used, demonstrating that on average personality measures statistically account for only around 10% of the variance observed in behaviour, therefore 90% is due to something other than the effect of personality. This reflects the fact that many factors contribute to any one piece of behaviour, such as the characteristics of the specific situation, the persons mood at that time, competing goals, etc. However an argument in trait theories defence is in regard to the . 30, . 40 correlation co-efficient. How high does a correlation have to be before its considered important?Research by Funder and Ozer (1983) looked at loving psychological findings often cited for their important findings and found that they had similar co-efficient of . 36 and . 42. In their defence trait theorists repugn that researchers often fail to provide a strong link between traits and behaviour is because they dont measure behaviour correctly, only measuring one behaviour. As an alternative researchers can aggregate data, one study looked at trait measures of aggression and the number of aggressive acts students preformed, not only on one day but over the course of t wo weeks and found a correlation of . 1 between the aggregated measure and the trait score (Wu and Clarke, 2003). Burger (2008) states that when all the complex influences on our behaviour are interpreted into account we probably should be impressed that personality psychologists can explain even 10%. Mischels criticism has had beneficial effects in work settings, with the use of multiple measures of personality such as, psychometric assessments, interviews, individual and group tasks used together as an assessment package to prevent overreliance on the psychometric tool.Furthermore, Mischels views led researchers to look very critically at their methodologies, admitting that measures were often weak and the selection of which traits to study was sometimes strange (Funder, 1999,2001). Today most psychologists agree that the person and the situation react to determine behaviour ( Maggnusson, 1990) and Swan and Seyle (2005) refrain their review on Mischels work by saying that there are still instances where it is helpful to make distinctions between personal and situational determines of behaviour.