How people behave in one situation often tells us how they will act in others. A shy introvert in one place, for example, isn't likely to be the gregarious life of the party in another.
Social Sciences
Sep 16, 2019
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328
A team of researchers affiliated with institutions in the U.S., the U.K. and Tanzania has found evidence that suggests personality traits in chimpanzees are relatively stable over long periods of time. In their paper published ...
A small team of researchers with members from the University of California and the University of Michigan has found that some personality traits unique to a queen wasp are passed down to her offspring, the worker wasps. In ...
A new study, published today in the journal PNAS, compares the ability of computers and people to make accurate judgments about our personalities. People's judgments were based on their familiarity with the judged individual, ...
Computer Sciences
Jan 12, 2015
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1050
(Phys.org) —Researchers studying the Stegodyphus sarasinorum spider in India have found that individual specimens have different personality traits from one another. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal ...
(Phys.org)—Researchers from Scotland suggest that stereotypes form and evolve over time through social transmission of information, similar to the way in which languages evolve.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence of human evolution and rapid genetic changes suggesting that, contrary to modern claims, technological and cultural ...
Do personal traits predict success in school? If so, which dimension of one's outward appearance can tell the most about academic achievement? The answers to these questions are found in a new study by researchers from the ...
Social Sciences
Apr 22, 2009
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0
A study by researchers from the University of Gothenburg shows that sea anemones that react more slowly to change can survive a heat wave better than individuals that change their behavior quickly.
Plants & Animals
Apr 4, 2024
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0
Researchers at the Family Dog Project of Eötvös Loránd University have designed a tool to investigate the social dynamics of cohabiting family dogs. Their results are published in Animal Cognition.
Plants & Animals
Mar 7, 2024
0
60
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over time, differ among individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing whereas others are shy), and influence behavior.
Gordon Allport was an early pioneer in the study of traits, which he sometimes referred to as dispositions. In his approach, central traits are basic to an individual's personality, whereas secondary traits are more peripheral. Common traits are those recognized within a culture and may vary between cultures. Cardinal traits are those by which an individual may be strongly recognized. Since Allport's time, trait theorists have focused more on group statistics than on single individuals. Allport called these two emphases "nomothetic" and "idiographic," respectively.
There is a nearly unlimited number of potential traits that could be used to describe personality. The statistical technique of factor analysis, however, has demonstrated that particular clusters of traits reliably correlate together. Hans Eysenck has suggested that personality is reducible to three major traits. Other researchers argue that more factors are needed to adequately describe human personality. Many psychologists currently believe that five factors are sufficient.
Virtually all trait models, and even ancient Greek philosophy, include extraversion vs. introversion as a central dimension of human personality. Another prominent trait that is found in nearly all models is Neuroticism, or emotional instability.
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