Allport, Aristotle and Aquinas: An interdisciplinary definition of personality

Abstract

Countless definitions of personality have been proposed throughout history. As a consequence, contemporary psychology lacks a definition that elicits broad consensus and avoids ambiguity. To overcome this difficulty it seems beneficial to draw on the field of philosophical anthropology, as an epistemologically prior and more general discipline. Understanding that a single manuscript cannot achieve consensus, an interdisciplinary contribution is proposed through a dialogue between two definitions of personality. On the one hand, that elaborated by the father of personality psychology, Gordon Allport, which is the best known and most cited of all. On the other hand, the one developed by Martín Echavarría, inspired by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. From this interdisciplinary dialogue, a variant of Echavarría's definition and a brief definition of personality are proposed. It is expected that this contribution would not only help to the study of personality, but also to the interdisciplinary development of the discipline of psychology.