Overview:

In this exercise, you will perform a non-mathematical factor analysis of people’s personality traits. This is a simulation of what scientists do (with computers, numbers, and math) to come up with a bunch of traits that do not correlate with one another. Factor analysis is how psychologists came up with the “big five” of traits.

The traits should be “enduring characteristics that describe” that person and while a person does not need to always display that trait, the trait applies to him/her most of the time. For example, you may have the trait of extraversion, but don’t act like an extrovert all of the time.

Instructions:

For this assignment, you will:

Download and use the form entitled “trait worksheet” for this exercise.

Choose seven people you know and write five traits that describe their personalities.

Cut out the traits into little cards.

You will have a total of 35 cards.

Some traits will be duplicated so you will have about 10-15 different cards.

Combine the cards into categories.

For example, “friendly” and “outgoing” are similar, can be grouped together, and if you had 15 different traits in the first part, you now have 14 traits.

Continue this exercise until you can’t combine the traits anymore.

How many piles of traits do you have? Come up with a name for each pile.

For example, if you had a pile with “friendly” “outgoing” and “gregarious” you might call this pile “friendly” or “social.” There is no one correct name; however, it should describe all traits in the pile.

Write a few paragraphs describing the traits.

Compare the traits you had at the beginning and how they changed by grouping them into categories.

Explain the piles you created and how you named them.

Give an opinion about how accurate this method is at coming up with a list of traits you chose. What do you think might make it more accurate?