ABSTRACT
Personality is a concept used in everyday life to describe the character of a person. A common sense approach to the study of personality might include the use of everyday language to identify certain characteristics. A number of psychologists have attempted to define the hypothetical construct we call personality. An important difference between various approaches to the study of personality is that while some theorists assume people possess a personality, others have developed the idea that people simply manifest behaviours that are brought about by the situation they find themselves in. Research into personality has tended to be split between two approaches: the idiographic approach and the nomothetic approach. Both the idiographic and nomothetic approaches to the study of personality can be beneficial to our understanding of people. Research into personality has tended to be split between two approaches: the idiographic approach and the nomothetic approach.
