Relationship between Differentiating Personality Traits of the Self and Others (Term Paper Sample)

Relationship between Differentiating Personality Traits of the Self and Others Author Institutional Affiliation Course Code: Course Title Instructor’s Name Date Relationship between Differentiating Personality Traits of the Self and Others Abstract Individual differences tie back to personality traits and how each person’s traits vary to create unique individuality. This study sought to investigate the correlational effects of the big five personality traits on people. The data collection process involved a quantitative method involving issuing questionnaires to 212 respondents. The samples were grouped into 84 respondents in the “self” category, and 64 respondents in each of the two other categories “close other” and “acquaintance.” The research methods involved generating frequency tables, a psychometric analysis to test reliability, a Pearson’s correlation analysis, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test, and a post hoc test. Findings indicated significant relationships in personality traits differentiation as moderated by extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. Introduction In an attempt to understand individual differences, 20th-century theorists suggested two distinct schools of thought to define individuality. First, correlational approach, or aptly referred to as individual differences, sought to examine key aspects that tell apart an individual from others within a population—this was also called variance between subjects. Contrastingly, the experimental model was coined to tease out the precise characteristics defining a cognitive mechanism—these characterizations were based on average human response to manipulations in their natural environments—called variance within subjects. Later on, a cohesive integration of the two disciplines birthed the view that the complete understanding of human behaviorisms and cognitive functionality consists of physiological frameworks that offer explanations to both interpersonal and intra-individual differences. At present, it is universally agreed that individual differences are the outcome of a blend of personality traits. Therefore, individual differences tie back to personality traits which determine how a person’s behavior varies, relative to other people, to create unique individuality. This study will investigate the correlational effects of personality traits on individuals. The structure of the paper will be as follows: a literature review will explore current literature on the subject of individual differences. Next, an exploration of hypothesis and methods will result in a comprehensive discussion of findings. Literature Review Naturally, an individual will engage an implicit personality theory to generate certain expectable implications within the precept of trait structure. A person will develop a priori mentalities detailing certain trait-based correlations; as such, it becomes possible to use information defining one trait to address certain informational gaps within another trait (Winsper et al., 2020). Further, an individual may exhibit a pre-existential belief regarding a certain trait and how it is related to certain observable physical manifestations, such as facial and bodily attractiveness. The physical attractiveness halo effect, described as the provision of the “beautiful” being “inherently good,” serves as an exemplar to the implicit personality theory which integrates both attractiveness and the halo effect (Beer & Watson, 2008). Jones et al. (2019) further corroborated the interpretations made by Beer and Watson (2008) by arguing that accuracy in judging individuality using implicit personality traits can be extracted from people’s faces. However, this conclusion failed to clarify the exact mechanisms underpinning the judgment process, and the extent to which certain traits may overlap with various judgment processes pertaining to the human face, including identity recognition and emotional expressiveness. A more refined study by Kannan (2021) conducted on young adult Caucasian people asserted that people are able to create highly accurate implicit trait judgements using facial markers for both extraversion and neuroticism. However, this finding did not apply to the agreeableness trait. Kannan (2021) utilized independent cognitive processes in combination with various face-processing abilities with the ageing process acting as a moderating factor for each personality trait. In considering the role of age towards personality-based differentiation, Olaru et al. (2021) investigated the progress of differentiation across the adult lifespan. The paper aptly explored the question “do people become increasingly differentiated or more homogeneous in terms of structures of their personality and relative to other people as age increases?” The concept of differentiation refers to increments, also called dedifferentiation, or reductions (differentiation) in the level of correlation between a person’s cognitive abilities and their age or perceived ability. Structural differentiation can either occur within trait domains, between them, or inter-individually (Olaru et al., 2021). The findings from the study showed varied findings. First, between-trait differentiation decreases the negative correlation mediating neuroticism and extraversion. Second, age-based inter-individual differentiation decreased in agreeableness and extraversion traits, with this trend being attributed to social roles, environmental factors, social networking, physical/cognitive health and, perhaps expectedly, inter-individual differences. Within-domain differentiation incorporates age-based differences facilitated by trait domains; for instance, intelligence is a common within-domain factor loading representing a general ability that could influence individual outcomes at sub-ability levels (Breit et al., 2021). Within domains, as age increases, individual differentiation, expressed through abilities/traits becomes more specialized and derives more strongly from external effectors, such as a person’s environment. This phenomenon leads to an observable detachment between the individual and their overarching trait. Further differentiated as higher-order and lower-order factors, within-domain differentiation across age, affects personality traits by virtue of the composition of each trait domain when considered across the individual’s lifespan. Differentiation between trait domains represents increments and decrements in correlational trait-based domains when considered as structural (instead of measurement) model differences. Empirically, an increment in correlational strength (dedifferentiation) suggests an underlying biological connection which causes an increase in overall correlational strength compared to unique causes characterizing the trait domain (Olaru et al., 2021). Conversely, decreasing between-trait correlations as age increases are indicative of environmental effects governing trait domains independently so that as age increases, relative correlational strength in biological aspects reduces. Inter-individual differentiation refers to variances in traits, termed as a divergence in personality research. Differentiation or dedifferentiation in inter-individual differences points to an increase or reduction in personality-trait-based heterogeneity, and is suggestive of an individual’s adaptation processes that either tend towards or skew away from the population average. Naturally, an individual will employ certain distal cues to generate an externalized framework that defines personality; however, such cues are open to perception-based bias based on external observer perceptions, which converts them to proximal cues (Shao et al., 2021). The concept of personality driven recognition cues has been so successful in the technology world, that several individual personality traits have been externalized into machine‐readable signals of behavior, thus called distal cues. These behavioral signals have been associated with actual behavior, such as through speech, locomotion, gesturing, and facial expression, or the products of individual behavior. The concept of Automatic Personality Recognition has arisen from these capabilities and involves automatic extrapolation of an individual’s self‐reported behavioral traits extracted from certain cues. The correlation between self‐reported individual traits and inherent distal cues is known as ecological validity (Phan & Rauthmann, 2021). Notably, literature has shown that not every individual behavior is an expressive trait. All human experiences and perceived behaviors are the result of contextualization associated with both the individual exhibiting the behavior and the situation warranting it (Rauthmann, 2016). Based on the nature of circumstances governing the individual, similar behaviors can manifest differently in the extent to which they are indicative of individual traits, which automatically leads to differences in ecological validity. Personality traits have also found strong associations to momentary instances of temporary personal connections—these associations provide a framework for understanding individual differences when personality traits are used as the primary determinant. To the extent that humans thrive on social connections, the concept of human love plays into prediction of individualized psychological traits (Oravecz et al., 2020). Specific human characteristics related to individually felt love, situated in terms of baseline-level parameters such as variability and inertia, have been credibly associated with individual indicators of psychological well-being, including personal flourishing in life, emotional welfare, gratitude, and specific personality traits. Further, indicators of psychological wellbeing have a proven average correlation with baseline feelings of everyday love life, with evidence of this phenomenon exten...