ABSTRACT
Personality is a term used to combine the many trait measures of a given person; another term often used is “temperament”. The most widely used measures of personality are ratings and self-ratings. The personality dimension measures a predisposition, the clinical entity an actual psychological disorder. The personality attributes were deduced from psychoanalytic theory, and have not found much support. The study of personality is divided into descriptive or taxonomic and causal. A taxonomy of behaviours, however provisional, must of course precede any type of causal analysis; traits as popularly conceived clearly cannot as they stand serve as the basis for any kind of scientific study. The most widely used measures of personality are ratings and self-ratings. Large areas of psychology depend on personality theory and an accurate measurement of personality variables, and the scientific study of these fields has separated them most markedly from the former reliance on Freudian speculation and untestable interpretations.
