Chapter 1 - Personality Psychology
Larsen 4th Edition Study Guide
Trait-Descriptive Adjectives
✔Words that describe traits attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the
individual and perhaps even enduring over time.
Personality
✔The set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and
relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the
environment (including the intrapsychic, physical, and social environment).
Psychological Traits
✔Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different from or similar to
each other. Psychological traits include all sorts of aspects of persons that are psychologically
meaningful and are stable and consistent aspects of personality.
Average Tendencies
✔Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a
high-talkative person will start more conversations than a low-talkative person. This idea
explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality.
Psychological Mechanisms
✔Similar to traits, except that mechanisms refer more to the processes of personality. For
example, most personality mechanisms involve some information-processing activity. A
, Chapter 1 - Personality Psychology
Larsen 4th Edition Study Guide
psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from
the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision
rules), or may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (outputs).
Within the Individual
✔The important sources of personality reside within the individual—that is, people carry the
sources of their personality inside themselves—and hence are stable over time and consistent
over situations.
Organized and Enduring
✔"Organized" means that the psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not
simply a random collection of elements. Rather, personality is coherent because the mechanisms
and traits are linked to one another in an organized fashion. "Enduring" means that the
psychological traits are generally consistent over time, particularly in adulthood, and over
situations.
Influential Forces
✔Personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in people's lives in that they influence
our actions, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others,
how we feel, our selection of environments (particularly our social environment), what goals and
desires we pursue in life, and how we react to our circumstances. Other influential forces include
sociological and economic influences, as well as physical and biological forces.
Larsen 4th Edition Study Guide
Trait-Descriptive Adjectives
✔Words that describe traits attributes of a person that are reasonably characteristic of the
individual and perhaps even enduring over time.
Personality
✔The set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and
relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the
environment (including the intrapsychic, physical, and social environment).
Psychological Traits
✔Characteristics that describe ways in which people are unique or different from or similar to
each other. Psychological traits include all sorts of aspects of persons that are psychologically
meaningful and are stable and consistent aspects of personality.
Average Tendencies
✔Tendency to display a certain psychological trait with regularity. For example, on average, a
high-talkative person will start more conversations than a low-talkative person. This idea
explains why the principle of aggregation works when measuring personality.
Psychological Mechanisms
✔Similar to traits, except that mechanisms refer more to the processes of personality. For
example, most personality mechanisms involve some information-processing activity. A
, Chapter 1 - Personality Psychology
Larsen 4th Edition Study Guide
psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from
the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision
rules), or may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (outputs).
Within the Individual
✔The important sources of personality reside within the individual—that is, people carry the
sources of their personality inside themselves—and hence are stable over time and consistent
over situations.
Organized and Enduring
✔"Organized" means that the psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not
simply a random collection of elements. Rather, personality is coherent because the mechanisms
and traits are linked to one another in an organized fashion. "Enduring" means that the
psychological traits are generally consistent over time, particularly in adulthood, and over
situations.
Influential Forces
✔Personality traits and mechanisms are influential forces in people's lives in that they influence
our actions, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others,
how we feel, our selection of environments (particularly our social environment), what goals and
desires we pursue in life, and how we react to our circumstances. Other influential forces include
sociological and economic influences, as well as physical and biological forces.
