Personality Traits: A View From the Animal Kingdom.

Alexander Weiss

doi:10.1111/jopy.12310

Abstract

Given their backgrounds in classical ethology and in comparative psychology, researchers who study animal personality in biology and psychology, respectively, differ in how they measure personality, what questions they see as important, and how they address these questions. Despite these differences, both comparative psychologists and biologists embrace personality traits. By doing so, they have solved empirical and conceptual problems in animal behavior. Studies of animal personality have provided answers to questions about the evolution of human personality and have presented conceptual and empirical anomalies for sociocognitive theories. Animal personality research does not break from trait theories of personality. Instead, it enriches trait theories by conceiving of traits as not belonging to a species, but as expressed, with some modifications, across species. Broadening trait theory in this way has the potential to further enhance its ability to answer questions related to animal and human personality.

Highlights

Given their backgrounds in classical ethology and in comparative psychology, researchers who study animal personality in biology and psychology, respectively, differ in how they measure personality, what questions they see as important, and how they address these questions
The article discusses how this research tradition has been less successful in solving problems about the evolution of human personality, possibly because researchers in the area developed hypotheses without attending to the animal literature, and shows how problems related to the evolution of human personality can be addressed by studies of animal personality
The article concludes by discussing the ability of trait theory and sociocognitive theories of personality to solve conceptual problems and suggests ways in which trait theories from psychology can accommodate animal personality research

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that trait theory excels in solving problems related to personality evolution in animals. This article shows how biologists have incorporated trait theory into a research tradition used to understand the evolutionary and mechanistic bases of behavioral variation in nonhuman animals.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion