TRAITS versus TYPES: "Unlike traits," Allport wrote, "types always have a biosocial reference. A man can be said to have a trait; but he cannot be said to have a type. Rather he fits a type....types exist not in people or in nature, but rather in the eye of the observer. Type includes more than is in the individual. Traits, on the contrary, are considered wholly within the compass of the individual. The crux of the distinction is that in a "type" the reference point is always some attribute, or cluster of corresponding attributes abstracted from various personalities...Many kinds of typology flourish. There are literary types, energy types, pathological types, constitutional types, eidetic types, statistical types, and ideal types. Whatever the kind, a typology is always a device for exalting its author's special interest at the expense of the individuality of the life which he ruthlessly dismembers...All typologies place boundaries where boundaries do not belong. They are artificial categories...Each theorist slices nature in any way he chooses, and finds only his own cuttings worthy of admiration."(pp. 295-296)

llport first attacks the discussion of traits by drawing a distinction between INDIVIDUAL and COMMON TRAITS. In the strictest sense, he points out, all traits are individual an no trait can be observed in more than a single individual, i.e., they are all unique. But if individuals could not be compared with each other, he noted, than the whole nomothetic science of personality would be impossible. To rectify the dilemma Allport allows that "For all their ultimate differences, normal persons within a given culture-area, tend to develop a limited number of roughly comparable modes of adjustment. The original endowment of most human beings," he continued, "their stages of growth, and the demands of their particular society, are sufficiently standard and comparable to lead to some basic modes of adjustment that from individual to individual are approximately the same."(p. 298) In short, people in different cultures or social sub-groups within society may exhibit behaviors that could be justifiably labeled and nomothetically measured under the heading of COMMON TRAITS. In general practice, he felt, "...individual and common trait [concepts] are complementary in the study of personality. What is unique and what is universal both need to be explored.(p.299) Paper and pencil scales designed to measure traits, according to Allport, and which were often in his time referred to as "trait scales" should, he added, be more properly designated as "common trait scales." "Common traits, [he ultimately concludes,] are those aspects of personality in respect to which most mature people within a given culture can be compared. He warns the personality psychologist to develop means of measuring common traits as efficiently as possible while bearing in mind that even the most carefully created instrument may fall short in its analysis of any given individual.(p.300)
lthough Allport was aware of the shortcomings of the trait approach to personality, he nevertheless attacked it head on and in the process adds three other terms to the stew, viz., CARDINAL, CENTRAL, & SECONDARY TRAITS. A few words about each is given below.

"Occasionally some trait is so pervasive and so outstanding in a life that it deserves to be called the cardinal trait. It is so dominant that there are few activities that cannot be traced directly or indirectly to its influence...No such trait can for long remain hidden; an individual is known by it, and may even become famous for it.² Such a master quality has sometimes been called the eminent trait, the ruling passion, the master-sentiment, or the radix of a life...It is an unusual personality that possesses one and only one eminent trait. Ordinarily it seems," he wrote, "that the foci of personality(though not wholly separate from one another) lie in a handful of distinguishable central traits. Central traits are those usually mentioned in careful letters of recommendation, in rating scales where the rater stars the outstanding characteristics of the individual, or in brief verbal descriptions of a person." (p.338) As an example of the latter Allport cites Perry's characterization of William James' "benign traits" as being those of sensibility, vivacity, humanity, and sociability. Another example would be the types of traits that a university student might list as desirable in a roommate and those she might use to describe herself. Finally, there are the secondary traits, "...on a still less important level [since they are] less conspicuous, less generalized, less consistent, and less often called into play than central traits. They are aroused by a narrower range of equivalent stimuli and they issue into a narrower range of equivalent responses. Being so circumscribed they may escape the notice of all but the closest acquaintances."(p.338)

²In his discussion of the cardinal trait Allport pointed out that some of the best examples come from history in the form of persons famous for some known trait that pervaded their life completely. The trait, moreover, was absolutely critical to an accurate understanding of who these people were. Examples include Beau Brummell famous for his fastidious exhibitionism, "...Uriah Heep for his sycophancy[obsequious flattery], Rose Dartle for her peculiar insinuations, Oblomov for his procrastination, Mrs. Jellyby for her presbyoptic philanthropy, Micawber for his empty optimism, Chesterfield for his self-conscious good breeding, [& ] the Marquis de Sade for his sexual cruelty...A partial list of trait-designations derived from the names of historical or fictional characters [includes]..." Boswellian, Byronic, Calvinistic, chauvinistic, Christ-like, Don Juan, Emersonian, Falstaffian, Faustian, Lesbian, Machiavellian, narcissistic, Napoleon, Oblovovism, Pollyanna, quixotic, & Shylock.
Note: At the time Allport conducted his original research, the late 1930s, he made the determination that there were no fewer than 17,953 English language words--trait designations--that could be used to distinguish the behavior of one human being from that of another, or 4.5% of our language as presented in the 1925 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary.

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