PSY 3520 Module 1 Trait Theories Paper: The Five-Factor Model, Personality Change and What Traits Predict Example

Five Numbers That Describe a Person: Testing the Trait Approach to Personality

Student Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Thomas Edison State University

PSY-3520: Psychology of Personality

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Five Numbers That Describe a Person: Testing the Trait Approach to Personality

Introduction

The hospital where I work in human resources is considering a personality questionnaire to help select nurses' aides, after a year of high turnover. Some managers welcomed the idea; others said a test could never capture who someone really is. As I began this course, I realized that the debate turns on the questions trait theory tries to answer: can personality be described by a few broad dimensions, are those dimensions stable and do they predict anything that matters? This paper examines the trait approach and the evidence for it.

The Trait Approach

In trait theories, personality consists of relatively stable dispositions, tendencies to think, feel and act in characteristic ways across situations. Early trait theorists took different routes. Gordon Allport cataloged thousands of trait words and distinguished central traits from secondary ones. Raymond Cattell used factor analysis to reduce trait terms to 16 source traits. Hans Eysenck proposed three broad dimensions with biological roots: extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. Over time, research converged on five broad factors, often remembered as OCEAN: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience, with neuroticism sometimes named for its opposite pole, emotional stability.

Do the Five Factors Hold Up?

A trait model is only useful if it describes something real rather than a pattern produced by one questionnaire. McCrae and Costa (1987) checked the five-factor model by setting people's self-descriptions beside descriptions written by spouses and peers who knew participants well, using both adjective checklists and questionnaire scales. The same five factors appeared across instruments and across observers, and self-ratings agreed substantially with ratings by others on each factor. The authors argued that this convergence showed that the five factors capture real, observable features of people, not merely how people describe themselves.

Is Personality Fixed?

Trait theory is often taken to mean that personality does not change. Roberts et al. (2006) meta-analyzed 92 longitudinal samples that measured the same people's traits over time. They found that people change in systematic ways across life. On average, people became more socially dominant, more conscientious and more emotionally stable, especially between the ages of 20 and 40, and changes continued into middle and old age. Social vitality and openness rose in adolescence and declined in old age, and agreeableness increased in later life. The authors described this pattern as personality maturity, linked to the adult roles people take on, such as work and family.

What Traits Predict

Do traits matter for real outcomes? Roberts et al. (2007) compared the predictive power of personality traits with that of socioeconomic status and cognitive ability for three important outcomes: mortality, divorce and occupational attainment. Across prospective studies, personality traits predicted these outcomes about as strongly as socioeconomic status and intelligence did. Conscientiousness, in particular, predicted longer life and greater occupational success, and low emotional stability and low agreeableness predicted divorce. The authors argued that personality deserves the same attention in research and policy as economic and intellectual factors.

Applying Trait Research to Hiring

The research suggests that a well-validated five-factor measure could add useful information, especially about conscientiousness, which research in organizational psychology consistently links to job performance. But the findings also argue for caution. Effects are moderate, so a trait score predicts groups better than individuals. People can present themselves favorably on questionnaires used for hiring. And because traits change with experience and roles, a low score on a measure at age 19 does not fix what a person will be like at 30.

Fairness and Legal Concerns

Any test used in hiring must be job-related and must not unfairly screen out protected groups. Personality measures generally show smaller group differences than some ability tests, but employers should check for adverse impact and use tests only as one part of a broader process that includes interviews and references.

The Person-Situation Debate

In the 1960s, critics argued that behavior depends more on situations than on traits, since people often act inconsistently across situations. Later research resolved much of the debate: single behaviors are hard to predict, but traits predict patterns of behavior aggregated across many situations. A conscientious aide may sometimes be late, but over months will be more reliable on average than a less conscientious colleague.

Measuring Traits Well

Trait measures differ in quality. Well-developed inventories report internal consistency, test-retest stability and evidence that scores relate to behavior and to ratings by others. Short measures of only a few items save time but capture less. For hiring, measures designed and validated for selection, with norms for job applicants, are preferable to general measures written for research or self-exploration.

Traits Across Cultures

The five factors have been found in many languages and cultures, though not identically everywhere, which supports the idea that they describe broad human tendencies.

Limits of the Trait Approach

Trait theory describes what people are like more than why. It says less about motives, goals and the stories people tell about their lives, which other theories in this course address. Five broad factors also lose detail captured by narrower traits.

My Recommendation

I recommended that the hospital, if it adopts a personality measure, choose one validated for job selection, use it as one input among several and monitor whether it improves retention and performance without screening out particular groups.

Conclusion

McCrae and Costa showed that the five factors appear across instruments and observers, Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer showed that traits change in predictable ways throughout adulthood and Roberts and colleagues showed that traits predict important life outcomes as well as income and intelligence. Five numbers cannot capture a whole person, but they describe real tendencies that matter, as long as they are used with care and humility.

References

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81-90. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.81

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313-345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00047.x

Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1