New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759

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New Ideas in Psychology

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/newideapsych

What is personality? Two myths and a definition

Raymond M. Bergner 1
Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 61790-4620, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords This article addresses the longstanding problem that the field of personality psychology remains in need of a
Personality consensus formulation of its core subject matter, that of the nature of “personality” itself. Part 1 of the article
Definition of personality presents some reminders about the traditional pre-empirical status of concepts in science. Part 2 introduces and
Personality concept
calls into question two widely accepted but nonetheless questionable propositions about the nature of person­
Trait theory
Big 5
ality: (a) that the term refers to an underlying causal entity within a person, and (b) that the study of personality
is the study of the whole person. Part 3 presents a definition of “personality”, discussion elaborating and clar­
ifying this definition, and an explication of the ways in which it differs from previous definitions. Part 4 discusses
some benefits that accrue both to having a consensus definition in general, and to acceptance of the present
definition in particular.

“Certain things should never be taken for granted, among them …
the
precise meaning of words that are at the heart of your discipline.”
-N. Angier, 2009, p. D1.
“I see the use of clear and consensual definitions as one key to
the further regeneration of our discipline (personality psychology).”
-J.D. Mayer, 2007, p. 1.
For many years, I taught a class in the psychology of personality. In
doing so, I might have (but never did) walked in on the opening day of
class and addressed my students as follows: “Welcome to personality
psychology. In this class, we will be investigating the very important
topic of human personality. Before we begin, however, I must issue a
disclaimer. We’re not sure what personality is. Unfortunately, you see, our
field has so far come to no consensus in the matter of how to define
‘personality’. So, in essence, we cannot state for you precisely and
definitively the nature of our subject matter– cannot tell you basically
what personality is. Procedurally, then, as we study the theories and
research findings of different authorities in this area, we will in each case
just go along with the conception that each of them has proposed, even
though these will differ one from another, and even though the result
may be that, although they all claim to be studying the same thing,
“personality”, they may actually be studying different things. A few
people in our field seem bothered by this problem, but most of us are
not.”
If one turns to virtually any current personality text, the authors, all
leading experts in the field, issue (if less polemically) the disclaimer just
stated: the field of personality psychology has not to date been able to
come to any consensus definition of the term “personality”. Feist, Feist,
and Roberts (2013), for example, maintain that “ … no single definition
is acceptable to all personality theorists” (p. 4). Mischel, Shoda, and
Ayduk (2007) state that “The term ‘personality’ has many definitions,
but no single meaning is accepted universally” (p. 1), while Engler
(2009) asserts that “Each theorist presents us with his or her own un­
derstanding of the term personality” (p. 2; cf. Cervone & Pervin, 2013;
Funder, 2016; Larsen & Buss, 2017). Typically, these authors, after little
further discussion of definitional matters, and without asserting that the
absence of a consensus formulation of their subject matter represents a
significant problem, move on to presentations of different theoretical
approaches to personality.
The proposed conceptualization of personality in this paper repre­
sents an attempt to address this situation. Part 1 of the paper presents
some traditional reminders about the pre-empirical status of concepts in
science. Part 2 introduces and calls into question two widely accepted
but nonetheless questionable propositions about the nature of person­
ality: (a) that the term refers to an underlying causal entity within a
person, and (b) that the study of personality is the study of the whole

E-mail addresses: rmbergn@ilstu.edu, rmbergn@ilstu.edu.

1
Special thanks to Dr. Walter Torres for his very helpful critique of an earlier version of this work.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2019.100759
Received 20 March 2019; Received in revised form 16 October 2019; Accepted 16 October 2019
Available online 31 October 2019
0732-118X/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
R.M. Bergner
person. Part 3 presents a definition of “personality”, some discussion
elaborating and clarifying this definition, and an explication of the ways
in which it differs from all previous definitions. Part 4 discusses the “so
what?” question: what benefits accrue both to having a consensus
definition in general and to acceptance of the proposed definition in
particular? The present analysis was generated within the conceptual
framework of Descriptive Psychology (Ossorio, 2006; see also; Bergner,
2010; Schwartz, 2019; Shideler, 1988), a framework heavily indebted to
the ordinary language philosophy of Wittgenstein (1953). Hopefully,
this formulation, one that coordinates well with current Big 5 and other
trait approaches to personality, and which might serve as a conceptual
underpinning for them, will prove helpful in ameliorating the current
conceptual confusion in personality psychology.
1. Some reminders about concepts
When I have presented definitions (and other conceptual formula­
tions such as parametric analyses) to colleagues, a question that often
arises is that of whether or not the formulation presented has any
empirical support behind it. In responding to this question, some re­
minders from traditional scientific practice are in order. Concepts are
not theories. Unlike theories, they are not comprised of empirical
propositions. While one might be correct or incorrect in defining a
concept, concepts themselves are neither true nor false (Bergner, 2010;
Harr� e & Tissaw, 2005; Ossorio, 1981, 2006; Schwartz, 2019). The con­
cepts “vertebrate”, “force”, and “isotope”, for example, are not true (or
“verifiable”) or false (or “falsifiable”). If the biology lecturer states, “A
‘vertebrate’ is a creature that possesses a backbone or spinal column”, or
the physics professor states, “A ‘force’ is ‘any influence that causes a
body to be accelerated,” we would not ask if there was empirical support
for such claims. One would no more do an experiment to empirically
determine if forces accelerate bodies than one would to empirically
determine whether bachelors have wives.
The place of concepts in science, rather, is that of being indispensable
pre-empirical elements (Bergner, 2010; Harr�e & Tissaw, 2005; Ossorio,
1981, 2006; Schwartz, 2019). Lyons (1980), in commenting on their
indispensability, puts the point well. Objecting to a fellow emotion
researcher who had denied the necessity of defining “emotion”, Lyons
responded that, “One is tempted to say that the resulting situation must
be like that of sallying forth to study rabbits while having no idea of
what is to count as a rabbit” (p. xi). If the physicist, for example, did not
first have the concepts of “force,” “inverse proportionality”, and “point
mass” – all of which have stipulated, not empirically established,
meanings – he or she could not even have formulated, much less tested,
the empirical claim that “a force is inversely proportional to the distance
between two point masses?” If one did not first have an adequate concept
for distinguishing any empirical phenomenon, one would be at great
disadvantage in saying anything rigorously (e.g., formulating a theory or
stating a research hypothesis) about that phenomenon.
Definitions – specifications of the necessary and sufficient conditions
for correct application of a term (Gupta, 2015; Ossorio, 1981, 2006) –
can of course be correct or incorrect, and more or less adequate. His­
torically, in science, the criteria of adequacy to be posed of them, very
different in nature than those for theories, are ones such as the
following. First, and especially with respect to concepts with a long
history of common usage, is the definition intuitively acceptable, or does
it so violate our linguistic intuitions that language seems to be used
anarchically (Ossorio, 1981, 2006)? Examples of the latter might occur
were I to say such things as, “I define ‘love’ as mutual reinforcement”, or
“I define ‘mental disorder’ as disobedience to the governmental au­
thorities in one’s country”. Second, are they useful (Ossorio, 1981,
2006)? Historically, for example, Newton’s novel formulations of the
concepts of “force” and “mass” were indispensable to the creation of his
theory of universal gravitation (Gleick, 2003). Thus, the standards that
the definition of personality proposed in this article, as well as all of its
competitors in the personality literature, are appropriately held to are
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New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759
those regarding their intuitive acceptability and their usefulness.
2. Two myths about personality
2.1. Myth #1: The term “personality” refers to an underlying causal
entity
On many accounts, personality is seen, in whole or in part, as some
entity (e.g., a structure or mechanism) that underlies behavior and is
related to it as cause to effect. For example, in perhaps the most famous
and still widely cited (e.g., Funder, 2016, p. 340) definition, Allport
(1961) stated that personality is “the dynamic organization within the
individual of those psycho-physical systems that determine his charac­
teristic behavior and thought” (p. 28). More recently, Larsen and Buss
(2017) conceptualized personality as “the set of psychological traits and
mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively
enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations
to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments” (p. 4). Finally,
Funder (2016), in a partially causal formulation, contends that person­
ality “refers to a person’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion,
and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms – hidden or
not – behind these patterns” (p. 5).
Problems with this view. The central difficulty with this view
concerns its intuitive acceptability. This concern is captured in the
following hypothetical. Jack, who knows Jill very well, one day de­
scribes her to Susie as “assertive”. Susie asks Jack if in using that per­
sonality term he is referring to an inner something within Jill – for
example, a mechanism or structure or psycho-physical system – that is
causing her to behave in the way that she often does. Jack replies: “No,
I’m not referring to an inner mechanism or structure or system that
might be causing her to behave this way. How would I even know about
such a thing? I mean only that Jill is a person who tends to express and to
pursue strongly her personal rights and desires in her relationships with
others. I have observed her doing this pretty consistently for a long time
and, as far as I can see, she is not play-acting and no one is forcing her,
paying her, or in any other way influencing her to behave this way
against her will, so it seems like it is just her own personal inclination.
That’s what I mean by the term.” Here, Jack is giving what would be
considered a “folk” or an “ordinary language” conception; while my
ultimate formulation will not be identical in every particular with his,
the criterion of intuitive acceptability requires that I not stray too far
from it. (NB: It might be noted that, if Jack were to do a peer rating of
Jill’s personality traits in the context of a research study, this is the
conception he would be employing. If the researcher believed that he or
she was measuring something else such as an inner “psycho-physical
system”, this would be mistaken.)
Consistent with Jack’s analysis, authors within the framework of
Descriptive Psychology (Bergner, 2017; Ossorio, 1978, 2006; Schwartz,
2019) have maintained that the term “personality” designates certain
facts about persons. It does not designate any underlying mechanisms,
structures, or systems that stand in a causal relationship to behavior,
thought, and emotion, and as such are distinct from them. On this
conception, we learn that Jill is assertive (or extraverted or generous or
depressive, etc.) primarily through observation, not inference to an un­
observable inner causal entity. While there would be no problem with
the contention that such characteristics are amenable to further expla­
nation – for example, by reference to Jill’s childhood experiences, her
holding of certain beliefs, or her possession of genetically acquired
predispositions – we do not confuse words like “assertiveness” with
unobservable inner entities such as “mechanisms” or “psycho-physical
systems” that are causing her overt behavior. All of this is in keeping
with the very public Latin etymology of the term “personality”: persona,
meaning “mask”.
Finally, in defining, as opposed to explaining, any given subject matter
X, we are traditionally in the business of identifying what subject matter
X is by stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct usage of
R.M. Bergner
the term “X” (Gupta, 2015; Ossorio, 1981). We are not in the business of
making causal or other explanatory claims. A dictionary is a compen­
dium of word meanings, not of the causes of phenomena referred to by
those words. A bachelor is an unmarried adult male; what might cause
many bachelors to have that status is a separate, non-definitional,
empirical matter.
2.2. Proposition #2: The study of personality is the study of the whole
person
In the psychological literature, there is a widespread tendency to
equate personality with the whole person, and its study correspondingly
with the study of the whole person. For example, McAdams (2009) has
stated that “Personality psychology is the scientific study of the whole
person … psychology is about many things: perception and attention,
cognition and memory, neurons and brain circuitry … We (personality
psychologists) try to understand the individual human being as a com­
plex whole … (and) to construct a scientifically credible account of
human individuality” (p. 2). In a similar vein, Cervone and Pervin
(2013) assert that “ … the notion of personality is comprehensive. It
refers to all aspects of persons” (p. 8); while the Oxford Dictionary of
Psychology maintains that it is “the sum total of the behavioural and
mental characteristics that are distinctive of an individual” (Colman,
2006, p. 564; cf.; APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2007, p. 689). Finally,
Funder (2016) has declared that, “This definition (i.e., of “personality”)
gives personality psychologists their unique mission to study whole
persons ” (p. 5).
As an informal beginning to addressing this position, again primarily
from the point of view of its intuitive acceptability, consider the
following description of a “whole person”. “Sarah” is a 56-year-old
divorced Caucasian woman. She is the devoted mother of two chil­
dren, both currently attending college, and remains very involved in
their lives. She is described by her friends, among other things, as an
assertive, extraverted, caring, adventurous, socially conscious individ­
ual. Sarah has an advanced degree in computer science, works as a
practitioner in that field, is dedicated to her work, and is regarded by her
colleagues as having considerable expertise. She is active in civic affairs
and at times has assumed leadership roles in local civic organizations.
Her interests include cycling (she is in excellent physical condition),
gardening, politics, theatre, and opera. An enthusiastic traveler, she has
a capacity to pick up foreign languages with relative ease. Although not
very active religiously, she nonetheless identifies strongly with her
religious heritage, and this is a very important part of her personal
identity. Two events that weigh heavily on Sarah at the present time are
the death of her mother two years ago and a painful divorce the sub­
sequent year from her husband of 26 years. Lately, she thinks more and
more of retirement and has set some goals for herself regarding how she
would like to spend it; essentially, traveling abroad with two close fe­
male friends.
More could be said about Sarah. But enough has been said to make
the key point: personality characteristics do not comprehend all of the
characteristics of the whole person; they comprise only a subset of such
characteristics. To provide a picture of Sarah as a whole person, many
things needed to be said that go beyond facts about her personality.
Thus, while noting some of her personality traits (extraverted, asser­
tive), further information was presented about many intuitively non-
personality facts such as her statuses (mother, divorced person, advanced
degree holder), core relationships, occupation, competencies, goals,
religious identity, interests, capacities, age, race, health, current sources
of personal unhappiness, and more. Intuitively, virtually no one would
say that “Sarah is a computer programmer” or “a parent of two” or “is
currently unhappy” are statements about her personality. Clearly, as
illustrated by the case of Sarah, any reasonable attempt to describe a
whole person is going to include information that goes well beyond the
recitation of an individual’s personality characteristics. There is much
more to any “whole person” than his or her personality.
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New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759
A parametric analysis of persons. To make this point more
formally and systematically, the following parametric analysis of Person
Characteristics may be helpful. This analysis, originally formulated by
Ossorio (1985; 2006), is an articulation of the various kinds of person
characteristics whose specification enables us to capture the many and
various ways (as opposed to just the personality ways) in which one
person can be the same as, or different from, another person. (Compare:
in color science, hue, saturations, and brilliance provide the conceptual
resources necessary to articulate all of the ways in which one color can
be the same as or different from another color.)
<PC> ¼ <Ds, P, Dr>
where
PC ¼ Person Characteristics
Ds ¼ Dispositions, the various personal inclinations or tendencies of
an individual, ordinarily observable by virtue of an enduring pattern
of frequency in their behavior. These include Traits (dispositions to
engage in a certain kind of behavior [e.g., extraverted, aggressive, or
self-critical behavior]) or to experience certain emotional states [e.
g., depressive or anxious ones]); Styles (dispositions having to do, not
with what a person does, but with how he or she does it [e.g., in a
sophisticated, flamboyant, or gracious fashion]); Attitudes (disposi­
tions to regard and treat different objects [e.g., climate science or
religious belief] or certain classes of object [e.g., women or ethnic
minorities] in certain characteristic ways [e.g., approvingly or
disapprovingly]); and Interests (dispositions to find certain topics [e.
g., politics or fashion] or activities [e.g., playing chess or dancing]
absorbing and captivating).
P ¼ Powers, concepts having to do with what is possible and not
possible for a given person. These include the person’s Abilities (i.e.,
capabilities with reference to some kind of achievement such as
playing the piano, shooting a basketball, or speaking a foreign lan­
guage); Knowledge/beliefs (the set of facts and beliefs the person has
the ability to act on, such as knowledge of the laws governing legal
driving or beliefs about the existence of a deity); and Values (the set
of motivational priorities that the person is routinely able to act on,
such as a value for integrity, for accumulating wealth, or for an
adventurous way of life).
Dr ¼ Derivatives, concepts which, unlike the two previous categories,
do not have a direct connection to behavior but are defined instead
by their reference to Dispositions and Powers. These include States
(states of affairs in which there is a systematic difference in the or­
dinary powers or dispositions of a person, such as being sick or
enraged or drunk); Capacities (the potential to acquire personal
characteristics, such as ones to acquire musical skills or to learn
languages); and Embodiment (the physical characteristics of a person,
such as being six feet tall, weighing 175 pounds, or having a
compromised immune system) (adapted from Ossorio, 2006, pp.
70–71).
In order to fully describe a whole person such as Sarah, this entire
range of person characteristics would be required, not just that impor­
tant subset comprising her personality characteristics. On this analysis,
it may be noted, personality characteristics comprise items falling under
only one of the three general parameters, Dispositions, and under this
category only two of the four sub-parameters, Traits and Styles. (Anec­
dotally, for many years in my personality course, I did an initial exercise
in which I asked students simply to “describe your mother’s personal­
ity”; in response, over 93% of the descriptions generated pertained to the
mother’s Traits and Styles; information pertaining to her Abilities,
Knowledge/Beliefs, Capacities, Interests, and Attitudes was rare.) Even this
listing, however, though far more comprehensive than just identifying
personality characteristics, is still not exhaustive with respect to
capturing the whole person. We might still say of Sarah such things as
R.M. Bergner
that she has always lived with a strong sense of satisfaction that she
overcame a significant physical handicap early in life, felt guilty that she
once failed a friend at a critical time, or never gotten over the time she
suffered a severe public humiliation. The “whole person palette” – the
palette which (unless we are novelists) we use only on those very rare
occasions where there is a need to give extremely comprehensive de­
scriptions of a person – is far more extensive than the delineation of an
individual’s personality characteristics.
3. A definition of personality
In this section, a new definition of “personality” is proposed, fol­
lowed by an analysis of the different elements comprising it. Some of
these elements appear in previous formulations of the concept and will
be familiar, while others are new and thus render the present formula­
tion different overall from its predecessors. The section concludes with a
discussion of these differences.
3.1. The definition
An individual’s personality is the enduring set of Traits and Styles that he
or she exhibits, which characteristics represent (a) dispositions (i.e., natural
tendencies or personal inclinations) of this person, and (b) ways in which this
person differs from the “standard normal person” in his or her society. An
individual’s personality is formulated here as a subset of the set of all the
Person Characteristics specified above in the parametric analysis. It is the
subset comprising two of the ten characteristics listed there, Traits
(dispositions to engage in a certain kind of behavior or to experience
certain emotional states), and Styles (dispositions having to do, not with
what a person does, but with how he or she does it). In the following,
each of the features of this definition is discussed in turn. (NB:
“Behavior” is intended here to include mental acts such as, for example,
privately criticizing oneself, doing a sum “in one’s head”, or mentally
planning one’s daily schedule.)
“Enduring”. This is a recurring feature in most definitions of per­
sonality (e.g., Feist et al., 2013; Larsen & Buss, 2017; Mischel et al.,
2007). Characteristics such as extraversion, aggressiveness, and anxiety
are aptly predicated as personality characteristics only under conditions
where they are observed over a significant period of time. If behaviors or
emotions exhibiting the same qualities occur only once or only over a
brief period of time, we speak of “episodes” or “states” exhibiting the
relevant quality – for example, an episode of intense anxiety or an
anxious state. (NB: This also illustrates the general point that the same
person concept [e.g., “aggressive”, “hostile”, or “shy”] is used in
different contexts to designate different kinds of person characteristics.
The word “hostile”, for example, in various contexts is used to designate
a trait, a state, a style, an attitude, a behavior, or some combination of
the above [e.g., “His characterological hostility shows up in his hostile
interpersonal style.”])
What is a “significant” period of time? There is no generally estab­
lished hard and fast rule to go by here. The concept possesses the
common and much-discussed quality of vagueness (Chaplin, John, &
Goldberg, 1988; Sorenson, 2018). That is, it lacks a clear boundary be­
tween its instances and non-instances. For this reason, any personality
researcher requiring a precise, determinate time boundary for his or her
research purposes would need to decide upon an operational definition
(e.g., “for purposes of this research, by ‘enduring’ we mean three years
or more”).
Disposition. Like enduringness, disposition is a recurring feature in
other definitions of personality (e.g., Allport, 1961; McAdams, 2009).
Indeed, one prominent approach to its study, trait theory, is often
referred to as the “dispositional approach”. However, while the meaning
of this term is amply discussed by philosophers (e.g., Choi & Fara, 2016;
Romero & Craver, 2015), it is discussed hardly at all in the psychological
literature. The word, for example, does not even appear in the Oxford
Dictionary of Psychology (Colman, 2006), while the APA Dictionary of
4
New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759
Psychology (2007) provides little more than what amounts to a synonym
when it states that it is “a recurrent behavioral or affective tendency that
distinguishes an individual from others” (p. 90). Since disposition is a
critical aspect of personality characteristics, this absence leaves the
overall conception of personality within psychology less than fully
developed.
What is a “disposition”? Common terms used to capture this notion
include personal “inclination”, “proclivity”, and “tendency”; to qualify
as dispositional, the pattern of behavior in question (e.g., shy or
aggressive behavior) must be expressive of the individual’s personal
inclinations. However, if we are to take this matter beyond the mere
recitation of synonyms, what does this mean? It means that the pattern
must be grounded in – must be expressive of – other Person Characteristics
that pertain to the ongoing direction of the individual’s behavior such as
his or her Values, Knowledge/Beliefs, Attitudes, and Interests. If the pattern
is seen as (1) inconsistent with these or, (2) though seeming consistent,
actually brought about by influences such as the individual being
pressured, forced, or incentivized to behave in some way, these are
grounds for counting the pattern as not dispositional in nature, and so
not pertaining to his or her personality: “The salesperson is not actually
an agreeable person; the only reason he is behaving agreeably is because
he would be fired if he did not do so.” It is in this sense, i.e., of their close
relationship to – their being expressive of – the individual’s other
enduring Person Characteristics, that we often say of personality char­
acteristics that they are not just about what we do, but about “who we
are”.
Personality terms inherently relativistic. In the currently ubiq­
uitous literature on the “big five” personality traits (extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness), a familiar
kind of relativity is advanced (Digman, 1990; Goldberg, 1990, 1993;
John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). It is one that is both compatible with the
present view and consistent with everyday observation. Specifically, this
literature treats these five traits as being dimensional: persons are more
or less extraverted, high or low on agreeableness, exhibit greater or
lesser degrees of neuroticism, and so forth. They are never, for example,
“just agreeable”, as if this variable had only one value, but always
relatively high or low on this dimension.
However, when it comes to predicating personality concepts, a sec­
ond kind of relativity is in evidence. This is that they are all relativized to
a societal norm, one designated by Ossorio (1983; Schwartz, 2019;
Shideler, 1988) as a “standard normal person” (“SNP”). This is a hypo­
thetical person who always behaves just as the average person in his or
her society does. In his or her behavior, for example, this individual is
neither “introverted” nor “extraverted”, neither “agreeable” nor
“disagreeable”, neither “timid” nor “aggressive”, but more or less dead
center in between. In defense of this contention of relativity to a societal
norm, it may be noted that when a given individual is very central on
some dimension (e.g., introversion-extraversion), our language contains
no specific personality descriptors for him or her with respect to this dimen­
sion. If Jack is neither introverted nor extraverted (e.g., he might be right
in the middle on a big 5-based scale), while we can use a general,
nonspecific expression such as that he is “just average in that regard”, or
say something like, “well, he’s not really shy but he’s not really outgoing
either”, there is no specific personality term that captures just this inter­
mediate level of social engagement.
On this view, then, when we attribute a personality characteristic to
an individual, we are marking off, however implicitly, not only her in­
dividual differences vis-� a-vis other persons, but also how she deviates
from the standard normal person in her society (and possibly even a
subcommunity within her society) (Ossorio, 1983; Schwartz, 2019).
Each of us, by virtue of our socialization, has a conception of what a SNP
in our society looks like. Thus, upon first meeting a person, we carry as it
were a societal template with us that persons in our society will ordi­
narily do such things as observe certain standards of politeness, main­
tain eye contact with us, both speak to us and listen when we speak, not
make unwanted sexual or aggressive advances, and much more. Upon
R.M. Bergner
further experience with this person, then, in a quasi-Bayesian way, we
adjust our impression of them in directions indicated by how their
behavior deviates from the SNP. The individual talks non-stop about
himself or herself and seems utterly uninterested in anything we say, and
we begin to think “narcissistic” or “self-centered”. The individual looks
down, says little, and seems unable to make eye contact, and we begin to
think “shy”. It is on the basis of these observed deviations from the SNP,
then, that we make personality attributions in a direction indicated by
how the behavior observed deviates from the societal norm (Ossorio,
1983; Schwartz, 2019; Shideler, 1988). In those rare cases where actual
persons closely approximate the SNP, we find it very difficult to provide
trait or style terms to characterize their personality. Asked to describe
them, we say things like “Well, for some reason, I find it hard to describe
him; he’s just, well, sort of average.”
In further defense of personality characteristics possessing an
inherent relativity to a societal standard, it may be noted that many of
them impute behavioral or emotional omission. We say, for example, that
John is “irresponsible”, “unreliable” or “unemotional”. What is observ­
able in such cases is not the presence, but the recurrent absence of ex­
pected behaviors or emotions (e.g., John routinely fails to fulfill made
commitments to others). No positive overt behavior or emotion is
observed. Instead, the observer possesses a cultural standard of what is
ordinarily present and marks its recurrent absence with a personality
attribution.
The notion of personality characteristics being relative to a societal
norm and marking off divergences from that norm helps to clarify
something further. This is the fact that the attribution of personality
characteristics is not based on absolute but on relative frequency. There
are no fixed, frequency-based standards to the effect that, “if P engages
in behavior X more than N times per week for over Y months, it may be
counted as personality trait behavior, and otherwise not”. Rather, the
judgment is relative to the SNP norm and indeed the frequency of trait-
attributed behavior may actually be quite low. A person might, for
example, be very reliably loyal to others on a long-term basis, and
justifiably assigned the trait “loyal”, yet he or she might engage in
behavior marked by loyalty no more than once or twice a year. The same
can be said for behavior characterized as “self-sacrificing”, “generous”,
“brave”, and more. A relatively low number of notable instances of such
behavior may cause the person to be perceived as possessing these traits
when this is seen as deviating from the societal norm.
Finally, insofar as SNP templates will vary from culture to culture
(and, while space does not permit its discussion here, subculture to
subculture), it may be noted that this notion carries with it a built-in
cross-cultural relativity. It explains the familiar phenomenon that the
same pattern of behavior in one culture (or subculture) might be
counted as grounds for a personality attribution (e.g., “aggressive”),
while in another culture it would not be so counted.
3.2. Differences from previous definitions
As noted above, the present definition shares some features with
other definitions in the personality literature. For example, it includes
elements such as enduringness and dispositionality that appear in other
formulations of the concept. These overlaps raise the question of what, if
anything, is different about the present formulation. The following
articulation of differences should serve to answer this question.
(1) The present definition differs from all others in its claim that the
concept of personality carries with it an inherent relativity to a
societal template, one designated as a “standard normal person”
(SNP).
(2) The present definition differs from all those in that group of
definitions that regard personality as an underlying entity (e.g., a
mechanism, system, or structure) that is separate from, and
stands in causal relationship to, behavior and emotion.
5
New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759
(3). The present definition differs from all those in the large group of
definitions that maintain that personality refers to the whole
person – that it “refers to all aspects of persons” (Cervone &
Pervin, 2013, p. 8).
(4). The present definition, unlike the many others that include Traits,
also includes Styles; i.e., person characteristics that pertain not to
what a person does, but to how he or she does it (e.g., Susie is
flamboyant, sophisticated, or awkward).
(5) The present definition differs from all others that this author
could discover in providing a critical explication of what it means
for a personality characteristic to be “dispositional”. This artic­
ulation, in turn, with its necessary connection to other person
characteristics such as values beliefs, and attitudes, renders
intelligible the proposition that personality characteristics are not
just about what we do, but about who we are as persons.
The group of definitions most similar to that proposed in this article,
and thus most likely to be confused with it, is exemplified by the
following one from the American Psychological Association: “Person­
ality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of
thinking, feeling and behaving” (https://www.apa.org/topics/person­
ality/). It is this definition, similar to others in the literature (e.g.,
Funder, 2016 [part one]; Johnson, 1997; McCrae & Costa, 1995), that
comes closest to the present one and is thus most likely to create the
impression that the latter is not really different from its predecessors.
While APA’s formulation does have similarities with that presented in
this article, it is different in the following ways:
(a) APA’s definition is ambiguous and, in its ambiguity, open to a
reading of being overinclusive. In contrast to limiting personality
more precisely to an individual’s Traits and Styles, APA’S use of
the widely employed phrase, “characteristic patterns of thinking,
feeling and behaving”, could be taken to include such items as an
individual’s habits (“Kathy has a habit of being late.”), routines
(“Joe leaves the house at 9 each morning and parks in the same
space at work.”), Interests (“Amy is interested in pre-Columbian
art.”), and Attitudes (“Sam has a negative attitude toward any­
thing he deems unscientific.”), personal features that are not
typically, or intuitively, regarded as personality characteristics.
(b) Unlike the definition proposed in this article, the APA definition
lacks the critical features of dispositionality, enduringness, and
inherent relativity to a cultural standard.
(c) On the present definition, personality is the set of Traits and Styles
a person exhibits; it is not, contra APA, “individual differences”.
Claiming the latter is like saying “a cocker spaniel is an individual
difference” rather than “a type of dog”, or “a Catholic is an in­
dividual difference”, rather than “a member of a certain religious
denomination”. If asked to define “cocker spaniel”, virtually no
one would say, “It is an individual difference”. Further, a check of
several dictionaries did not yield a single definition to this effect.
Personality trait and style concepts can be and are used to mark
off the ways in which one person differs from another person.
(For that matter, they are also used to designate the way in which
one person is the same as another person [“Jack and Jill are both
very shy”], what might be termed “individual samenesses”.) But a
trait is not, per se, a “difference”. For someone who does not
already know what personality is (and thus does not require a
definition), defining it for them as a “difference” carries with it a
considerable lack of clarity. What sort of difference in thinking,
feeling, and behaving, such a person might wonder, are we
talking about?” This is not at all clear from APA’s definition.
Overall, APA’s definition is more unlike than like the present one.
Further, it exhibits conceptual qualities that render it considerably less
precise, more ambiguous, and possibly misleading than the current
proposal.
R.M. Bergner
4. Discussion: so what?
“So what?”, a critic might object. “Why should we care about all this?
Of what use is it? Haven’t we gotten along perfectly fine with our long-
term failure to arrive at a consensus in the matter of conceptualizing
personality?” In this section, I will briefly recount the answers given to
these objections thus far in this article, and then introduce two addi­
tional ones.
I believe, and have argued above, that we have not in fact “gotten
along perfectly fine” with our failure to arrive at an adequate consensus
definition. Psychology is a science, and we pride ourselves on its being
such. However, as lamented famously by Sigmund Koch (1959) many
decades ago, we continue to push forward with this science without
being clear on the nature of its core subject matter – without articulating
such central concepts as “behavior”, “person”, “self”, or, in the present
instance, “personality” (Bergner, 2017:; Schwartz, 2019). The situation
is comparable to one in which a chemist would set out to study isotopes
without first determining what was to count as an isotope. The result has
been a myriad of different conceptions. As noted, many see personality
as an underlying causal mechanism, structure, or system (Allport, 1961;
Larsen & Buss, 2017; Mayer, 2007). Others see it as the whole person
(Cervone & Pervin, 2013; Funder, 2016; McAdams, 2009). Others yet,
most notably trait theorists, per the lexical hypothesis, rely on a largely
intuitive, but conceptually unarticulated notion of personality traits
(Goldberg, 1990, 1993; Poropat, 2009). In general, the field suffers from
a myriad of definitions that are intuitively unacceptable, ambiguous,
and/or potentially misleading. The result overall is a rather unhelpful,
confused, and confusing scientific landscape. In addition to the forego­
ing, two additional implications, both benefits of the present view, are
the following.
4.1. Clarifies how trait-based explanations are genuinely explanatory
A number of authors have claimed that personality trait attributions
are nothing more than the merely descriptive noting of regularities in
behavior, and thus that saying that someone is, for example, “shy”
means nothing more than that he or she is recurrently quiet and with­
drawn (Boag, 2011; Holt, 1969; Saucier & Goldberg, 1998). On this
account, explanations based on personality traits are tantamount to
tautologies. Saying that “Amanda was quiet and withdrawn at the party
way because she is shy” would be saying only “she was quiet and with­
drawn because she is recurrently quiet and withdrawn”, and so would
not be explanatory (cf. Moliere’s famous lampoon of the doctor who
“explained” that opium induced sleep “because it has a dormitive virtue”
– meaning nothing more than that ingesting it is regularly followed by
sleep).
However, on the present analysis, providing personality-based ex­
planations is not tantamount to uttering tautologies, and is genuinely
explanatory (although not in the familiar efficient causal sense) (cf.
Nilsson, 2015). We see this clearly in cases where two people who agree
entirely on the overt, performatively described facts of a third person’s
behavior nonetheless disagree in their personality attributions. For
example, noting Amanda’s quiet and withdrawn behavior at the party,
Wil maintains that it is “because she is shy”, while Gil issues a dissenting
“no, it’s because she is aloof”. Their “because she has trait X” explana­
tions are saying that each thinks Amanda’s behavior is expressive of
something different – that it is, one might say, “coming from a different
place” – and it is this that renders their attributions explanatory and not
merely descriptive. On the present analysis, as noted above, this some­
thing different is to be found in Amanda’s other Person Characteristics. In
saying “because Amanda is shy”, they are saying more than that she is
engaging enduringly in some performatively described overt behavior
such as “she is being quiet and withdrawn”. They are saying that she is
doing so because this is the kind of person she is, understood in the sense
that she is acting on inclinations that are grounded in other of her person
characteristics such as her values, beliefs, and attitudes. In Amanda’s
6
New Ideas in Psychology 57 (2020) 100759
case, for example, these might include, among other things, Knowl­
edge/Belief parameter factors having to do with appraised social dangers
attendant upon putting herself forward with others.
In issuing personality characteristic-based explanations such as
“because she is shy”, few people would maintain that they have given
final order explanations; i.e., ones beyond which no further explanation
can be given. If another person were to ask, “but why is she shy?”, most
would readily understand that they have not provided a complete
explanation of Amanda’s behavior, and that further information about
other factors (e.g., her appraisal of her own personal desirability or
ongoing concerns about saying something embarrassing) could provide
a more comprehensive picture. However, they have by implication
indicated that they see her behavior as not just a willy-nilly repetition
and as not arising through coercion, monetary inducement, or any other
influence that is causing her to behave inconsistently who she is; i.e.,
with her own personal dispositions as defined above.
Relating back to our myths discussed above, two things may be
noted. First, in positing the relatedness of personality traits to other
Person Characteristics, we have traded in underlying efficiently causal
mechanisms for non-underlying, non-causal, and non-mysterious char­
acteristics such as an individual’s beliefs, values, attitudes, and interests.
Second, in a way quite different than that expressed in myth #2, we have
brought important elements of the whole person back into the picture as
being related to (but not themselves aspects of) an individual’s
personality.
4.2. Rationalizes scientific observability of personality facts
On the present formulation, personality facts emerge as ones about
individuals that, while not always directly observable, are observable in
principle. As such, particularly in comparison with underlying causal
entity accounts, they lend themselves well to scientific scrutiny. With
respect to John’s traits, we may distinguish various kinds and the
observability of each. In the case of traits having to do with his overt
behavior (e.g., that he is extraverted, assertive, or hostile), these can be
ascertained through direct observation of the relevant behavior. In the
case of traits involving behavioral omission (e.g., John is irresponsible,
lazy, or unreliable), what is observable is the recurrent absence of ex­
pected behaviors (e.g., he routinely fails to fulfill made commitments to
others). In the case of traits having to do with private or mental behavior
(e.g., John is very self-critical or prone to obsessive thinking), these are
observable in principle in the sense that they can be externalized and
thus made public to others (e.g., he reports the nature of his self-
criticisms to a researcher or a therapist). In the case of traits having to
do with emotional states (e.g., John is anxious or depressive), again
others learn about these primarily through observation; e.g., they detect
fear in his speech, see it in his frightened expression, and/or observe it in
his verbal statements. On other occasions, however, they may learn of
these states via inference; e.g., they might infer that John is socially
anxious on the basis of his consistent longstanding avoidance of social
gatherings. Finally, with respect to John’s Styles (e.g., he is flamboyant,
sophisticated or awkward), such characteristics are inherently public
and others ascertain them through straightforward observation.
Observable “in principle” here is intended to mean that all of these
states of affairs are inherently observable ones. It does not mean that they
always are in fact or always must be established by observation. It does
mean that, whether directly observable (e.g., extraversion) or hidden
from view (e.g., self-criticalness), they are phenomena that are, or that
by their nature can be rendered available for the scrutiny of others.
In this regard, the present conception of personality is scientifically
preferable to definitions that render personality something that is itself
unobservable (e.g., underlying causal mechanisms or structures) and
could only be established by inference. Further, on such accounts, the
end point of the inferential deduction would seem to be something
rather mysterious. If I am searching for an underlying mechanism or
structure that causes overt behavior, what exactly am I looking for?
R.M. Bergner
What would such a mechanism look like? How would I know it if I found
it? The answers to these questions are far from clear and to my knowl­
edge have never been answered satisfactorily by those positing such
entities.
5. Conclusion
At the outset of this article, I quoted Natalie Angier’s statement that,
“Certain things should never be taken for granted, among them … the
precise meaning of words that are at the heart of your discipline” (2009,
p. D1). This article has addressed the longstanding situation in person­
ality psychology that the very word at the heart of the discipline,
“personality”, has not to date been explicated in a way that has achieved
anything approaching a consensus. Hopefully, the formulation pre­
sented here, one that coordinates well with current Big 5 and other trait
approaches to personality, and which might serve as a conceptual un­
derpinning for them, will prove helpful in ameliorating this situation.
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