CHAPTER 8

THE DEVELOPED SELF-PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

Meaning of the term "personality."

In an earlier chapter there was presented a summary inventory of the baby's equipment at birth, in which the whole range of his powers was rapidly surveyed. It will now be necessary to attempt a similar task for the developed individual, in which attention will be directed primarily to the various ways in which men are found to differ from each other. Personality is not a mysterious something over and above the total reactive life of the individual. It of course includes much more than goes on within the narrow field of consciousness, and it is but inadequately represented in a mere catalogue of separate traits, since the complex interfunctioning of traits is also important, but it will not be necessary to look outside of experience for an understanding of what we are. Nor does personality reveal itself in experience as an unmitigated unity, but rather as an aggregate of loosely associated unities and disunities bound together in a single organic structure. Taken largely, a man is all of the things that happen in and to a certain organism.*

Individual differences.

The great fact of individual differences may be concisely summed up in the statement that the members of a species will always be found to vary among themselves with respect to the exact degree in which they possess individual traits, as likewise with respect to the precise manner that these traits are combined with each other to constitute the total individual. The reason for this seems to be that the determiners (environmental or hereditary) of any given trait are always both numerous and small, so that the probability of any particular number of them being present in a given instance is in accord with the laws of chance. Suppose, for example, that a man's height were determined by the *This is true even of the not infrequently reported instances of "multiple personality," in which a certain number of fairly distinct unities are actually noted within a single body, for these "personalities" are dependent on each other in a manner different from the dependence of one organism on another.1

cooperation of twenty elements, each of equal importance, and that the probability of any single element being present were just as great as the probability of it being absent. In that event, it is clear that on the average ten of the elements would be present and ten absent, while the probability of any other assigned number being present in a given instance could be calculated according to precisely the same law as governs the frequency with which a given number of heads will appear when twenty coins are tossed into the air. This apparently is the situation which obtains with respect to height, as well as practically all other traits, except that the number of distinct elements involved is many times twenty, and that the different elements need not necessarily be of exactly the same importance.

The foregoing discussion leads to the conclusion that the following features will characterize practically all instances where individual differences are found to occur:

(1) These differences will nearly always cluster around a type or mode, and large variations from the mode will be less. common than small, becoming rarer and rarer as the size of the variation increases. The largest deviations, whether of excess or of defect of the quality, will therefore be extremely uncommon. Statisticians have devised a number of measures for summarizing the known numerical facts about such distributions. Thus one may report: the total number of cases measured, with the measurement for each; the range, or numerical difference between the lowest record and the highest for the group; the average or central tendency of the group (calculated in several different ways); the degree of scatter or deviation from the average; and sometimes also the skewness, or degree to which the data depart from such a chance distribution as one would obtain by tossing pennies (this distribution being taken as typical or normal).

(2) Variations are usually continuous; that is to say, if all the individuals in a large group were arranged in order with respect to the degree of presence of a given trait, there would seldom if ever be any "missing links" between one person and the next. We might always reasonably ask, for example, whether M should really precede or follow N. From this it follows that any line dividing neighboring groups is somewhat arbitrary, for there will nearly always be borderline cases to dispose of. Thus under any reasonable definition, some persons in the total population are indubitably insane, and other persons are just as clearly sane, but with respect to the others (and there will be others) the matter is not so clear. This really goes further than the mere statement that some persons may be considered insane from one point of view (e.g., they are irresponsible and incapable

of administering their personal property) and sane from another (e.g., they are not dangerous). This is true enough, but in addition, no matter what criterion of insanity we may select, we must finally decide just what degree of that quality shall be called insanity, and that decision will partake of the arbitrary. Statistical analyses are not substitutes for judgment, though they may make the grounds for judgment clearer and more precise. We are all to some degree irresponsible and dangerous, but we are not all called insane.

(3) Two differently selected groups will seldom contain precisely the same distribution of individual measurements, though it will usually happen that the measurements for the two groups will overlap, and the range of measurements within either group will commonly be greater than the difference between the averages of the groups. For example, if a group of Japanese were compared to a group of Americans with respect to height, (a) the two distributions would overlap, for some Japanese would be taller than some Americans, although most Japanese are shorter, and in addition (b) the difference between the shortest Japanese and the tallest (or between the shortest American and the tallest) would be greater than the difference between the average Japanese and the average American. With respect to but very few if any Americans could one say that they were taller than any Japanese, and many Japanese would be as tall as the average American.

Statisticians have devised a measure (called the coefficient of correlation denoted by r) of the degree of resemblance between groups with respect to the occurrence of a given quality. This measure varies in value between +1 and —1; it is +1 when the relationship is complete and positive, so that for every instance in the first group there is a corresponding instance in the second; it is I when for every instance in the first group there is a corresponding opposite instance in the second; and it is o when there is no correspondence whatever between the two groups, so that knowing any value of the first group would be of no help whatever in estimating any value of the second. The coefficient of correlation does not necessarily indicate dynamic causal relations; it is merely a concise numerical summary of presence-and-absence in two groups as regards a given quality (or in one group as respects two qualities). In general there appears to be a positive relationship between most socially desirable traits, so that a person who is heavily endowed with one such trait is likely also to possess at least a fair measure of the others.

Many of the variations between individuals are socially insignificant, but others are of the first importance. Thus if the average intelligence of a group is not high, many of its members may

be unable to understand the problems that come before the group; if, however, among such a people the range of talents is also wide, leaders may be developed whose abilities may go far toward making good the deficiencies of the masses. If most of the large deviations from the central tendency with respect to a desirable trait are in the direction of deficiency, whereas the deviations towards excess though numerous are small, social problems of tremendous magnitude may be perennially generated, and that too among a population by nature little fitted to cope with them. Speaking generally, the individuals who are conspicuous as regards excess or defect of a trait will usually be foci of stress, adaptation, and change in the group.

Training to some extent lessens the average amounts by which people differ from each other, but, since a slight increase in the higher ranges of capacity is often of much greater social significance than even a considerable gain in the more mediocre ranges, training for the better endowed opens up entirely new possibilities, and almost invariably has the effect of separating people socially to an even greater extent than they were before training began. These differences of status are usually fairly permanent, both because they become a part of the social order and because after prolonged habituation powers are rather highly stabilized.

The study of individual differences is still in its earliest stages, and at the present time we are not even in possession of defensible scales by which to measure and interpret most traits. In addition many people, including some statisticians, are of the opinion that the use of statistics in itself is an admission that we have no control over the phenomena we are investigating. For example, the eminent English statistician, G. Udny Yule, writes as follows:

Statistical methods are only necessary in so far as experiment fails to attain its ideal, the ideal of only permitting one causal circumstance to vary at a time. Statistical methods are not only ancillary; they are, to the experimenter, a warning of failure.

2

This modesty is in commendable contrast to the unfortunate overpraising of the statistical method that one sometimes hears, but there does not seem to be any more reason for regretting an application of the statistical method than for deploring the use of the calculus or of test-tubes and Bunsen burners in the course of investigations in natural science. In each instance a natural instrument is employed, and there is nothing inherently unsatisfactory in this. And experiment never, not even in the natural sciences, under any circumstances can be carried to the point where but one causal circumstance is varied at a time.

Descriptive survey of personality traits.

Though enough is not known to permit of a really scientific discussion of personality in all of its phases, recent studies have opened up different parts of the field, and the results already obtained are of considerable importance in the better understanding of what we are like. The various aspects of personality will be discussed under the following headings, which have been somewhat arbitrarily chosen :

Physique.
Motility.

Emotionality.

Intellectual equipment.
Attitudes towards self.
Social attitudes.

Throughout all that follows there must be assumed the impress of style or manner-of those nuances of difference that, when all is said and done, really make the man. Further, it should be remembered that no list of separate traits, however complete, can do more than suggest the manner in which traits actually interfunction in the living individual.3

(1) Physique-bodily structure (peculiarities of skeleton, musculature, fatty deposits, viscera, nervous system, etc.); rate and extent of developmental processes; physiological functioning (metabolism, functioning of lungs, heart, stomach, intestines, sex organs, etc.); personal appearance (skin, features, hair, teeth, build, posture, etc.); etc.

An intelligent physician can learn a great deal about a man's personality through a thorough examination of his physique. Quite apart from any necessarily conscious operations, the structure of our body is effective in determining what manner of person we shall be. Alfred Adler has analyzed the influence of organ inferiority in the life history of the individual, and the great vogue of the "inferiority complex" in recent years should not lead us to ignore the value of his work. Many small men, for example, are acutely aware of their diminutive stature, and attempt to atone for it by extraordinary energy, aggressiveness, a loud voice, flashy dress, or other compensations. In similar fashion other bodily peculiarities often lead to the establishment of quasi-protective adaptations, which by no means need be conscious. Many persons apparently are successful in a given field because natural weaknesses in that direction have spurred them on to unusual efforts in which they have overcome the defects with which they started. (2) Motility, or phases of our active or motor life