When thinking about my young daughter’s personality, I think of how she loves to joke and laugh with others, socializes with anyone who visits us at home and does not mind sharing her toys with other children. I had seen these qualities in her even when she was barely a year old. According to Gordon Allport’s Theory of Personality, in the above lines I have written of a few of my daughter’s traits, which make her personality unique.
Definition of “Trait”
APA Dictionary of Clinical Psychology (2013) defines trait as an, “enduring personality characteristic that describes or determines an individual’s behavior across a range of situations.” Salgado (2002) on the other hand defines it as, “Dimensions of individual differences in tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors”. Finally, Guilford (1959) puts it as, “any relatively enduring way in which one individual differs from another.”
From these three slightly varying definitions it is clear that all of them share the same overall meaning. All of them describe a “trait” of personality as a relatively pervasive, permanent, stable and consistent characteristics of a person. It is the manner in which a person has the tendency to think, feel and ultimately act or behave, in response to specific situations. These traits vary in exact quality from person to person and hence helps in differentiating each individual from another or makes them unique.
How do traits influence personality?
According to Gordon Allport, traits “provide a pattern and direction to personality” and can be used to reliably analyse, study and understand someone’s personality (Piotrowski, 2005). What this means is that, Allport believed that each individual is unique in their personality and this individuality can be identified in the set of personal characteristics one possesses, which are known as “traits”.
Traits are what we notice in a person and remember someone by. For example if we know someone who has the traits of being sociable, outgoing and friendly in all kinds of social situations, then we will remember him as having a social personality. The concept that is important to understand here is that the person with such traits would behave in the same friendly manner under all social situations. However it can be argued that the same traits may have give rise to those thoughts, understanding, feelings and actions which led to social situations in the first place!
Classifications of traits
Allport classified Traits into three types. Myers (1992) explains Allport’s classification with the example of three dimensions of colours i.e. hue, saturation and brightness. Myers points out that like thousands of colours can be derived from just three basic colours based on the degree of each particular colour’s properties. Similarly, traits are present in people on a continuum and are present in each individual in varying grades. It is the unique combination of these traits which makes each person different and unique. The three types of traits are classified according to degree of pervasiveness. These are as follows:
A) Cardinal Traits: This is the trait which dominate the overall personality. This trait controls most aspects of an individual’s personality and is the most pervasive. This means that such trait will be observable in the individual’s thinking, feelings and behaviours across all situations in life. Not every individual has the same Cardinal Trait and someone may not have a particular cardinal trait at all. For example the late Mr. Abdul Sattar Edhi or Mother Teresa had the Cardinal Traits of charity and selflessness. Therefore, they were seen caring for all the needy, regardless of their race or religion.
B) Central Traits: Compared to Cardinal Traits, these are less pervasive but still important in making the personality of the individual. These are more common than cardinal traits in the general population and a number of them act as ‘atoms’ of personality. For example, a good teacher with the central traits of intelligence, kindness and patience, etc. are like atoms with each central trait acting as a building block towards a personality of the teacher.
C) Secondary Traits: These are the traits that can be seen in only certain situations and are less generalized compared to the other two types. e.g. a relaxed and easy going person might get nervous and anxious in exams or interviews. These also include traits that are related to personal preferences e.g. genre of music, colours, etc.
Group and Individual Traits
Another classification of Traits is according to whether it is present in one individual or a group of individuals in the same culture.
A) Common Traits: These are the traits which will be seen in all the individuals of a belonging to a certain culture which could be central or secondary traits. For example, how women of a culture dress like or how the men of that culture behave.
B) Individual Traits: These are the traits which are unique to an individual e.g. someone having traits of being humble and polite which may be more or less than other people.
Traits are different from values
APA Dictionary of Psychology defines value as, “a moral, social or aesthetic principle accepted by an individual or society as a guide to what is good, desirable or important.” Values refer to a person’s beliefs about what is important in life. It therefore gives the individual a direction to follow in life or a sense regarding the meaning of life. Leduc, et. al (2014) describe values as being a “rather stable, broad life goals, that are important to people in their lives and guide their perception, judgment and behaviour”.
Traits on the other hand are a predisposition to respond in a certain manner to various kind of stimuli and situations. They are “generalised action tendencies” which the individual has in a typical situation. They do not serve as guidance and in many ways are reactions to situations. Traits are relatively stable over time while values can evolve with age and maturity.
Values are “organised in personal hierarchies of importance” (ibid). So, based on what is deemed important, the individual behaves accordingly. This also implies that the same value may be less or more important to others and may vary in the same person over time or in different situations and contexts.
So for example, a student may value honesty and integrity as important constructs but in dire situations where cheating means the difference between passing and failing, this value may become less important. Traits on the other hand are more stable across situations and hence an intrinsically honest student will make sure that he/she works hard to not rely on cheating in the first place. This difference can also be explained as trait being a descriptive variable whereas values are motivational variables (Bilsky & Schwartz, 1994). In simpler terms, it is not essential that the value a person holds will be translated into a behaviour while having a trait means that there is a direct relation with the corresponding behaviour.
Another difference is that traits can have a genetic linkage (Goldberg, 1993) but on the other hand values are formed in the process of person’s education, both in school and at home as well as due to accumulation of life experiences. So values are not something an individual is born with but are incorporated into the personality over time. Traits are more innate while values are more dependent on the person him/herself in deciding what is important in life. Also values is something that the individual might have learnt through the process of operant conditioning in the child hood. Traits are not learnt and are more innate in nature.
Allport (1937) distinguished between traits and values as the former being a temperament and the latter being a character of the individual. So, values is what one understands over time as important in context to what is good or bad, right or wrong, or otherwise important. Traits, do not have such cognitive explanation attached to them. Therefore, values guide our behaviour and traits are the predisposition to behaviour.
Conclusion
Traits are the characteristic ways in which a person thinks, feels and behaves across a variety of similar situations. Traits are what we think about when we are thinking about or explaining someone’s personality. You, dear reader, are special and unique because of your traits! Dr. Seuss said it best: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
References
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3) Piotrowski, N. A. (2005) Psychology basics. California: Salem Press.
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5) Myers D. G & Dewall, C. N. (2016) Exploring psychology in modules (10th edition). New York: Worth
6) Myers, D. G. (1992) Psychology (3rd edition). New York: Worth Publishers.
7) Virtual University, Personality Psychology – PSY405 Handouts. Virtual University, Pakistan.
8) Leduc, L. P., Feldman, G and Bardi, A. (2014) Personality traits and personal values: A meta-analysis.
9) Verywellmind.com: What are Cardinal Traits.
10) Wikepdia.com: Trait Theory.
