What Is a Personality Trait? Show What You Consider to Be the Important Features of This Concept and the Problems That Arise in Studying It.

1. What is a personality trait? Show what you consider to be the important features of this concept and the problems that arise in studying it.

The term ‘personality’ can be best described as a person’s stable feelings, behavioural patterns and thoughts. Each and every one of us has a unique personality that differentiates us from others. Understanding a person’s personality helps us to identify how they would feel or act in different situations [1]. The trait approach to personality is a major theoretical area in personality study. In this approach, individual personalities are realized as composed broad dispositions. If I had to describe the personality trait of a close friend, I would say that he is a kind, outgoing and even-tempered person. A trait can be described as a stable and relative characteristic that causes individuals to behave in specific ways. The combination and interaction of different traits creates a personality that befits a particular individual. The trait theory places an emphasis on the measurement and identification of these individual personality characteristics [2].

In the year 1936, a prominent psychologist named Gordon Allport discovered that there are about 4000 words in the English dictionary that describe different personality traits. He segregated them into three levels: Cardinal traits, Central traits and Secondary Traits. We will go through the three levels in detail [3]:

1) Cardinal Traits: These types of traits take up a majority of a person’s whole life to an extent that he is recognised by those traits. Individuals with these personalities become so well-known for these traits that their names become synonymous with all these qualities. Allport felt that cardinal traits are rare and develop much later in life. Some of the descriptive terms like Machiavellian, Don Juan, narcissism, Christ-like, Freudian, etc. originated and derived their actual meaning from cardinal traits [3].

2) Central Traits: These types of traits make up the basic foundations of personality. They are not as dominant as cardinal traits but they are still considered as major traits that could be used to describe an individual. Some common examples for central traits are shyness, intelligence, honesty and anxiousness [3].

3) Secondary Traits: These traits can be related to preferences or attitudes of individuals and can be seen mostly in specific situations or circumstances. Some of the more common examples would be when an individual gets impatient while waiting in a queue or getting anxious when speaking to a group of people [3].

The existence of traits in people is complicated to a level due to various views of the trait perspective. There exist two different views as to whether all traits are prevalent in all people [4]:

1) Nomothetic View:

Several individuals’ unique personalities can be understood