Parents father and mother were both middle class

Parents: Father and mother were both middle-class public school teachers
 Education: extensive home tutoring of the most sensitive and creative type. Nigel also
attended his father’s school
 School standing
 Hallmark example of concrete thinking
Example of Abstract Thinking
 Alexander Hamilton
 John Stuart Mill
Temperament and intelligence will correlate over a life time and not really change
Chapter 8: How the Parts Fit Together
Personality Structure Defined
The relatively static, long term divisions of personality into areas according to the relatively
stable and distinct functions, processes, or other qualities of personality
 Personality structure provides an opposition to personality “Dynamics” which concern
the interactions among personality areas or parts
 Many structural models of personality have been offered
o Structural models appeared quite diverse
o This usually is the case with structures of complex systems
o It is possible to divide them in different ways for different purposes
Generalities about structures
 Multiple valid maps are possible for complex systems

 Different maps provide opportunities to emphasize different attributes about the system
 Not all maps may be equally valid…
 What happens if you navigate without maps?
o Gives us a predictable pattern
Criteria for structural divisions:
 Comprehensiveness: divisions should cover everything or nearly so
 Scientific foundation: each division should be scientifically defensible (cf. paranormal
part)
 Distinctiveness: each division should be unique, different from the rest
 Utility: the divisions should help with some scientific project
Big Two: Eysenck’s 2 factor model (neuroticism/stability and extraversion/introversion)  Big
Three (Eysenck’s model added psychoticism/tender mindedness how easy it is to lose reality not
extremes)
Big Five Model
 Purpose: to organize all traits
 The lexical hypothesis: all important traits are to be found in the language
 Factor analysis trait words to discover important traits
 From 30,000 to 100 words
 To Five Factors- OCEAN
Supertraits
Example
 Extroversion
o Sociable trait
o Sensation seeking
o Liveliness trait
The Big Five
 A wonderful model but
o Limited to 30 or so traits
o Traits based on lay perception rather than professional expertise
o Excluded: temperament, verbal intelligence, internal-external locus of control,
emotional intelligence, Machiavellianism, etc.
The No Access Unconscious
 Definition: Mental activities to which consciousness is simply not connected…
 Consider the neurons departing from the retina
 We have no idea how our visual system works (unless we take a course in it)
 Its function is unconscious
i.e. firing of neurons in elementary processing of information
Unnoticed Unconscious
 Ken Bowers’ study on Unconscious influences

 Participants shown pairs of portraits and landscapes, and their customary preference was
assessed (e.g. landscapes or portrait
