Feature It is a scientific concept that summarizes the behaviors that people perform in different situations and occasions. Traits are constructs that allow individual differences to be described. According to Eysenck, they are dispositions that allow people to be described and their behavior to be predicted. They are not observable, but are inferred from observing certain facts.
Thus, a trait is a behavioral disposition expressed in consistent patterns of functioning in a wide range of situations. It constitutes a dimension or continuous along which people are placed.
Consistency of behavior
Consistency can be understood as the maintenance of behavior in different situations. A priori, since traits are dispositions that the individual has, one would expect quite a bit of consistency in behavior. Currently, trait theorists recognize that the situation has an influence on behavior, and therefore they consider that said behavior will be similar in functionally similar situations. Furthermore, it would also not be adaptive for people to always behave in the same way regardless of the demands of the situation.
Trait psychologists explain the obvious fact that two people behave differently in the same situation by their different position in the dimension that constitutes the trait, and by the different configuration of the traits that characterizes them. The variables of the situation affect behaviorbut not to the point of changing the position of the subjects on the dimension or trait.
Causal nature of traits
In order not to fall into an explanatory circularity (the trait is induced from behavior, and we use this trait to explain the same behavior from which we induced it), it is necessary to specify the mechanisms from which the response tendencies, which imply a trait, they become behavior. With some exceptions, such as Eysenck or Gray, trait psychologists, in general, have not focused on explaining how traits produce behavior, limiting themselves to developing descriptive taxonomies based on the observation of recurrent behaviors. This is one of the most important criticisms made from other perspectives of personality psychology.
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