ABSTRACT
Like most common and general terms, personality has many meanings. It can refer to an aesthetic object: a character in a novel or a salient figure in history. When applied to someone we know, it may be that which makes interactions with the other person a source of gratification or frustration; or it may refer to those features of the other person that make it possible for him to be of instrumental value to us in pursuing our long-range goals. Especially in a period some years back, it was used as a label for a global trait referring to a person’s attractiveness or stimulus value. In applied work with people, it may identify the locus for those characteristics of a person that cause distress to himself and others. Personnel workers use it to refer to nonintellective attributes that play roles in job selection, classification, and performance.
