ABSTRACT
Speculations on the structure or personality are ancient pastimes of psychologists. Beginning with modern psychology, there has been a trend to take the achievements in the field of measurement of intelligence as a paradigm for measurement of personality. For various reasons, this has been partly inappropriate or unsuccessful. The import of this chapter is that Piaget's work can be looked at as a reversal of this sequence. One can look at Piaget's early work as being in a cognitive-affective area closely allied to personality as a whole. Only later did he turn to purely cognitive development. Possibly in consequence, Piaget developed models more appropriate for personality than did previous investigators. The current popularity of Piagetian models for at least one group of researchers in the field of personality can be seen as a further consequence. But importation of too strict a version of late-Piagetian stage theory threatens to impoverish the study of personality structure.
