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This study from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory is published as a monograph for the American Psychological Association. It is in three parts, the first discussing the problem of trait-names (by which is meant terms descriptive of behavior or of aspects of the personality), the second dealing with methods of classification, and the third comprising a list of terms in the English language characterizing personal behavior and personality.
The first part reviews the fundamental philosophical problems underlying the subject, discusses the nature of traits, and the relation between traits themselves and trait-names. The practicing psychoanalyst, if he is not philosophically trained, may wonder what all the pother is about, but all of us are likely to be trapped at times into taking the name for the fact, and of mistaking a symbol for an entity. The task of discovering just what the symbol may mean upon occasion to another personality is an arduous one, and much of the criticism that has been directed against psychoanalysis grows out of this fact. It is easier to fall back upon universals, and to stretch the observed behavior to fit the procrustean bed of theory, than it is to pursue painfully the ramifications of the “magic word” in the recesses of the individual soul.
The “trait-hypothesis” regards traits as “personal dispositions, overlapping one another in structure and in function, but none the less possessed of focal characteristics.” No two people possess precisely the same traits; the latter are “strictly personal and unique forms of adjustment.” Organized into patterns, they play a determining rôle in conduct, and give to personality its unique and individual significance. A few traits seem common enough to justify comparison among individuals, but even though it is feasible to rate an individual as having more or less of these particular traits, we have to remember that other factors in his personality may force the traits measured to operate in an entirely di