By drawing on ‘Trait Activation Theory’, when would you hypothesise that personality traits will most strongly predict behaviour?

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Question restatement: The prompt asks, based on Trait Activation Theory, when would personality traits be most predictive of behaviour.
Option A: 'A. When there are unclear expectations for behaviour and few incentives for compliance.' In unclear contexts with few incentives, behaviour is less guided by stable traits and more influenced by situational ambiguity, norms, or improvisation, so trait predictiveness would typically be reduced.
Option B: 'B. When there are clear expectations for behaviour and strong incentives for compliance.' Clear rules and strong incentives can encourage compliance regardless of an individual’s trait tendencies, which can dampen the relative influence of personality traits on actual behaviour in that moment.
Option C: 'C. In ‘extreme’ circumstances like Milgram’s Obedience Study.' Extreme or high-pressure situations often evoke situational pressures that can override or mask stable trait differences, leading to weaker trait-behavior correlations in such contexts.
Option D: 'D. When the person is in a ‘trait-relevant’ situation (e.g., an extravert attending a party).' This aligns with Trait Activation Theory, which posits that traits will best predict behavior when the situation reliably cues or activates those traits; a party is a context that likely activates extraversion, making trait-related tendencies more predictive of actions like sociable engagement, talkativeness, or seeking attention.
Discussion of the core idea: Trait Activation Theory argues that the predictive power of personality traits is not uniform across all situations; it increases when the environment presents cues that align with a particular trait. In the extravert-at-a-party scenario, extraversion is directly activated, so your trait scores should correlates more strongly with observed behaviours than in other contexts where the trait isn’t as relevant or activated.
Why the other options are less consistent with the theory: A emphasizes ambiguity and low incentives, which typically reduces trait-consistent responding; B emphasizes compliance to rules regardless of trait, which tends to suppress trait expression; C emphasizes extreme conditions that often amplify situational factors over traits. In contrast, D specifies a situation that directly triggers the trait in question, maximizing the alignment between personality and behaviour.

PSYC20009_2025_SM2 Supplementary or Special Exam: Personality and Social Psychology (PSYC20009_2025_SM2)- Requires Respondus LockDown Browser

By drawing on ‘Trait Activation Theory’, when would you hypothesise that personality traits will most strongly predict behaviour?

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