This entry deals with key questions about personality: What is personality? What are its distinctive features? How does it develop and function throughout our lives?

Providing a univocal definition of personality is no easy task, and there are many different definitions given in textbooks and scientific articles. In this entry, personality is defined as a pattern of distinctive features that people show in thinking, feeling, and behaving (individual differences or traits). The focus of this entry is the nature of personality and processes and mechanisms underlying its development and functioning.

Individual Differences in Temperament and Personality Traits

Traits are relatively stable dispositions or tendencies to behave in a similar way in different situations over time. Many scholars agree that temperamental traits are apparent from an early period of ...

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