GLOBAL TRAITS: A Neo-AUportian Approach to Personality

This paper outlines a theory of global traits based on the seminal writings of Gordon Allport and 50 years of subsequent empirical research. Personality research needs to refocus on global traits because such traits are an important part of everyday social discourse, because they embody a good deal of folk wisdom and common sense, because understanding and evaluating trait judgments can provide an important route toward the improvement of social judgment, and because global traits offer legitimate, if necessarily incomplete, explanations of behavior. A substantial body of evidence supporting the existence of global traits includes personality correlates of behavior, interjudge agreement in personality ratings, and the longitudinal stability of personality over time. Future research should clarify the origins of global traits, the dynamic mechanisms though which they influence behavior, and the behavioral cues through which they can most accurately be judged. Bui let us not join the camp of skeptics who say an individual's personality is "a mere construct lied together with a name"—that there is nothing outer and objectively structured to be assessed. No scientist. I think, could survive for long if he heeded this siren song of doubt, for it leads to shipwreck. (Allport, 1958, p. 246) One of the most widely used concepts of intuitive psychology is the global personality trait. Almost everyone is accustomed to thinking about and describing the people one knows using terms like "conscient ious." "soc iable ," and "aggressive." Traits like these are global because each refers not just to one or a few specific behaviors, but to patterns of behavior presumed to transcend time and specific situations. Historically, the global trait used to be an important part of formal psychological theory as well. Gordon Allport (1931. 1937) wrote extensively about traits more than a half century ago, and for a time many research programs either developed general trait theories (Cattell, 1946). or investigated in detail specific traits (Witkin et al.. 1954). In recent years, however, theorizing about dispositional constructs such as global traits has been at a relative standstill. As Buss and Craik (1983) pointed out. "the field of personality appears to have set its theoretical gears into neutral" (p. 105). One cause of this inactivity may have been the field's two decades of immersion in a distracting debate over whether signifCorrespondence and reprint requests to David C. Funder, Department of Psychology. University of California, Riverside. CA 92521. bitnet: FUNDER(aUCRVMS icant individual differences in social behavior exist at all (Mischel. 1968). Although, in the end, the existence of important individual regularities was reaffirmed (Kenrick & Funder. 1988). a lingering effect of the controversy seems to be an image of traits—most especially global ones—as old-fashioned, rather quaint ideas not relevant for modern research in personality. Indeed, when global traits do appear in the literature nowadays, it is usually to play the role of straw man. The recent literature has seen a plethora of "reconceptualizations" of personality each of which begins, typically, by announcing its intention to replace global traits. Modern reconceptualizations differ from global traits in at least three ways. First and most obviously, many constructs of the new personality psychology go out of their way not to be global. The range of life contexts to which they are relevant is specified narrowly and specifically, and this narrowness is touted as an important virtue. For instance, the recently promulgated "social intelligence" view of personality "guides one away from generalized assessments . . . towards more particular conclusions about the individual's profile of expertise in the life-task domains of central concern at that point in time" (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987, p. 241). Second, and just as importantly, many modern personality variables are relatively esoteric—they are deliberately nonintuitive or even counterintuitive. For instance, in the place of trait terms found in ordinary language, one prominent investigator has offered person variables such as "self regulatory systems," "encoding strategies." and the like (Mischel, 1973). Third, some modem reconceptualizations go so far as to eschew an explanatory role for personality variables altogether. For instance, the act frequency approach treats personality dispositions as little more than frequency counts of "topographically" (i.e.. superficially) similar acts (Buss & Craik. 1983). The intent of these reconceptualizations is laudable. Each is designed to correct one or more of the problems of overgenerality, vagueness, and even philosophical confusion to which trait psychology has sometimes been prone. The present article, however, is motivated by a belief that the movement away from global traits, however fashionable it may be, entails several dangers that are not usually acknowledged. Briefiy, the dangers are these. Fir^u '-•,!icn AC u ê --Jisposit i o n a l t e r m s t h a t a r c f r a m e d / ( / ; / n n i / v •••'._ . h ^ \ •;,--•., ;'^j<---hni t y o f g e n e r a t i n g s t a t e m e n t s i i H o i . i f i n J i . !,,:., r •}',• •~•.••^ ; ., h a v e r e a l e x p l a n a t o r y p o w c S ' c i i n L v , ; .. , v . n ; , t i o n a l t e r m s t h a t a r e es>>u ra . v>c uisi ', > .•-..'• , ^..>,-•', ,̂ . a s u s e d i n e v e r y d a y s o e i a ' d i s c w ( M ' ^ . • \r.--^ n'•. -: VOL. 2, NO. 1. 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