Question No 48: What is a trait in the context of personality theory?
Answer: A trait is a stable and relatively permanent characteristic that distinguishes one individual's behavior from another in various situations.
Question No 49: According to Gordon Allport, how did he define a trait?
Answer: Gordon Allport defined a trait as the basic unit of personality.
Question No 50: Why are traits important in understanding personality?
Answer: Traits help us understand and predict how individuals consistently behave over time, providing insight into their personality characteristics.
Question No 51: Who was Gordon Allport, and what was his contribution to personality psychology?
Answer: Gordon Allport was a prominent trait theorist who developed a hierarchy of personality traits, including cardinal, central, and secondary traits.
Question No 52: How did Allport and Henry Odbert identify and categorize personality traits?
Answer: They extracted around 18,000 personality-describing words from dictionaries and reduced them to approximately 4,500 observable and relatively permanent personality traits.
Question No 53: Describe cardinal traits according to Allport's hierarchy.
Answer: Cardinal traits are dominant and shape an individual's behavior, representing their ruling passions, but few people have personalities dominated by a single cardinal trait.
