Trait Psychology

Abstract

This chapter turns to the fundamental question of how individual differences in personality should be described. The concept of personality ‘trait’ – the primary unit of personality description – is introduced and defined, and the hierarchical nature of traits is explained. The long-standing efforts to uncover the structure or organization of personality traits, by reducing the bewildering variety of possible traits into a few basic personality dimensions, are then explored. Along the way, the statistical methods used to conduct this reduction are presented. One prominent outcome of this work, the five-factor model of personality, is presented, and contrasted with a rival model that proposes three rather than five basic dimensions along which people vary. We discuss the value of dimensional systems such as these, and demonstrate the many phenomena that one illustrative dimension helps to illuminate. Finally, we see that, in addition to such broad personality dimensions, a variety of more specific traits also offer valuable ways of capturing meaningful differences between people.