The Act Frequency Approach to Personality

The act frequency approach to personality is advanced in this article. Dispositions are viewed as summaries of act frequencies that, in themselves, possess no explanatory status. As sociocultural emergents, dispositions function as natural cognitive categories with acts as members. Category boundaries are fuzzy, and acts within each category differ in their prototypicality of membership. A series of studies focusing on indices of act trends and on a comparative analysis of the internal structure of dispositions illustrates this basic formulation. The act frequency approach is then placed within a taxonomic framework of the relations among act categories (horizontal dimension) and hierarchic classification (vertical dimension). Theoretical implications of the act frequency approach are examined. Dispositional consistency is distinguished from behavioral consistency and several act frequency indices (e.g., dispositional versatility, situational scope) are defined. Situational analysis and personality coherence are then viewed from the act frequency perspective. Discussion focuses on the possible origins and development of dispositional categories and implications of alternative middle-level constructs for act categorization and personality theory.