Implicit Quantification of Personality Traits

Abstract

The common usage of personality trait terms in the language includes an implicit quantification that is part of the accepted meaning of the term. This aspect of a trait's meaning is here called its scope. Traits with high scope, such as honest, require a high relative frequency of behavioral manifestation before they are attributed. In contrast, low-scope traits such as dishonest can be attributed on the basis of very few behavioral instances. A number of hypotheses are considered concerning the scope of trait terms within a language and between languages. Speakers of a given language (English or Hebrew) exhibit agreement in their ratings of scope; English and Hebrew speakers also agree with each other on the scope of trait terms even when they disagree about the behavioral manifestations of those traits. These findings are interpreted in terms of an informational view of personality traits: The scope of a trait is set at a level that makes it communicatively useful.