Personality Traits second edition
The idea of personality traits may be as old as human language itself. Aristotle (384–322 BC), writing the Ethics in the fourth century BC, saw dispositions such as vanity, modesty and cowardice as key determinants of moral and immoral behaviour.He also described individual differences in these dispositions, often referring to excess, defect and intermediate levels of each.Allport and Odbert (1936) identified almost 18,000 English personality-relevant terms;