Self monitoring refers to how much an individual changes their behavior in order to fit their situation better. High self monitors are very different in different situations whereas low self monitors have a more stable personality across situations. 

Self Monitoring

Narcissism has been highly researched using the single trait method. People with high amounts of narcissism have been found to have common behaviors and life outcomes. Extremely high amounts of narcissism have been classified as a personality disorder

Examples:
-  excessive self love
-  charming
-  good at first impressions
-  agressive 
-  manipulative 

Narcissism 

This approach focuses on a single trait and aims to learn as much as possible about behaviors and life outcomes associated with that trait. 

Examples: 
-  Self Monitoring
-  Narcissism 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Trait theorists suggest that individuals have certain characteristics that tend to remain stable over time and appear in many situations. These theorists suggest individual traits to be the unit of analysis. They aim to determine which traits occur together and their specific patterns of organization within individuals.

Trait Theories

Funder, D. C. (2019). The personality puzzle. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &amp; Company.

The Personality Puzzle

Relates to how we use traits to describe others

Traits and Personality/Person Descriptions

Idea that the situation might be a better predictor of how someone will behave rather than just knowing their traits. 

The Situational Critique 

Critique of the Big 5 Model that adds a honesty-humility dimension to the existing extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness dimensions.

HEXACO Model

Single Trait Approach 

This approach focuses on one behavior and investigates how that behavior correlates with many different personality traits in order to explain that behavior. 

Examples:
-  California Q set 
-  Political Beliefs/Behaviors

Many Trait Approach

This approach focuses on narrowing 1000's of traits and terms into shorter, meaningful lists. 

Examples:
-  Theoretical Approach 
-  Big 5 Personality Traits

Essential Trait Approach

This approach focuses on identifying types/groups of individuals based on patterns of traits. Results are often very descriptive as they analyze the entire individual, not just a single trait. 

Example:
-  Myers Briggs Type Indicator

Typological Approach 

Relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior.

Personality Traits

Cattell used a scientific method to narrow down the 4500 words used by Allport to describe traits into 171. Then, he used factor analysis and identified 16 factors or the most influential traits of personality and created a personality assessment based on them. He viewed personality as something that allow people to predict what someone will do in a specific situation. 

Cattell’s Theory of Personality

According to Gordon Allport personality traits are the building blocks of an individual's personality and that personality develops over time and is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. After finding 4,500 words in the English language that could be used to describe individuals, Allport proposed three categorize of traits: cardinal, central, and secondary.

Allport's Theory of Personality

Psychologists Hans and Sybil Eysenck proposed that biology significantly influences personality and identified two key personality dimensions: extroversion/introversion and neuroticism/stability. Extroverts are sociable and outgoing, while introverts prefer solitude. Highly neurotic individuals are anxious with an overactive stress response, whereas emotionally stable individuals require more stimulation to trigger stress. Then, the dimension psychoticism versus superego control was added. 
The theory categorizes people into four quadrants based on these two dimensions, which are often likened to the four Greek temperaments: melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine.

Hans and Sybil Eysenck's Theory of Personality

Proposes that five trait dimensions, demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan, are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals. Most people fall somewhere on the middle for the traits.
The dimensions include:
Conscientiousness, 
Agreeableness, 
Neuroticism, 
Openness, and 
Extraversion.

The Big Five Personality Traits/Five Factor Model

A model of personality with the HEXACO acronym for six traits: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.

The HEXACO Model of Personality

When making causal explanations, people make two separate kinds of attributions:
- Dispositional attribution
- Situational attribution

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