What are the characteristics of traits as summarized by Allport?

What will be an ideal response?


ANS: Allport summarized the characteristics of traits as follows:
1. Personality traits are real and exist within each of us. They are not theoretical constructs or labels made up to account for behavior.
2. Traits determine or cause behavior. They do not arise only in response to certain stimuli. They motivate us to seek appropriate stimuli, and they interact with the environment to produce behavior.
3. Traits can be demonstrated empirically. By observing behavior over time, we can infer the existence of traits in the consistency of a person's responses to the same or similar stimuli.
4. Traits are interrelated; they may overlap, even though they represent different characteristics. For example, aggressiveness and hostility are distinct but related traits and are frequently observed to occur together in a person’s behavior.
5. Traits vary with the situation. For example, a person may display the trait of neatness in one situation and the trait of disorderliness in another situation.

Psychology

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If Anne makes the fundamental attribution error, she will explain her favorite politician's loss in the election by saying:

a. "He just didn't have the campaign skills necessary to get his ideas across.". b. "His opponent ran a dirty campaign that turned the voters away from the real issues.". c. "He didn't have big money behind him, so he couldn't buy the advertising time he needed to win.". d. "The voters were determined to get rid of all the incumbents, no matter how good they were.".

Psychology

Dr. VanLeeuwen wants to study peer groups. When she places together several children who are unfamiliar with one another, they form an infrastructure based on power relationships called

a. pecking orders. c. peer groups. b. social hierarchies. d. dominance hierarchies.

Psychology

If we decide not to reject the idea that a sample represents a particular population, because the sample mean does not lie within the rejection region,

a. although the probability is low, our decision may be wrong. b. the probability is high that our decision is wrong. c. we cannot know the probability of our decision being right or wrong. d. the probability of our decision being correct is 0.05.

Psychology