ABSTRACT
In their thought-provoking chapter, Klein and Loftus (Chapter 1, this volume) address the question of how people go about deciding that they do or do not have various personality traits. This type of decision is not a trivial one. People often make important life choices and commitments about entering a particular career or about forming close interpersonal relationships for example, on the basis of conclusions that they draw about their own personality traits. A student who thinks of herself as extraverted might dismiss a career in chemistry because "I need to be surrounded by people, not by test tubes." A different student who thinks of himself as dependent might look for self-assured women as potential spouses. Almost any analysis of human social behavior would be more complete if we understood exactly how people assign trait labels to themselves.
