Like most words, “personality” can mean different things. The statements below illustrate three uses of the word:

In Statement #1, “personality” essentially means “charisma.” If your professor merely reads lecture notes in a quiet monotone, she lacks charisma; you say she has “no personality.” If she darts about the lecture hall, mixing incisive scholarship with irreverent humor, you say she’s got “a lot of personality.”

Before moving to Statements #2 and #3, note that, in psychological science, personality does not mean charisma. This chapter is not about “the psychology of charisma.” The next two meanings of the word identify our topic.

In Statement #2, personality refers to a person’s typical, observable behavior. If someone describes herself as adventurous, wild, spontaneous, and easygoing, she essentially is saying that, if you observe her long enough, you will see her behave in this way—not all the time (nobody is adventurous and wild 24 hours a day), but relatively frequently. Personality, then, can refer to how people typically think, feel, and behave.

Statement #3 differs from #1 and #2. It does not refer to observable behavior, but to inner mental life—in this case, a hidden mental conflict. If you were to observe this person casually, you might not see the conflict; her outer behavior might mask her inner turmoil. In this third instance, personality thus refers to the inner structure and workings of mental life: a person’s characteristic thoughts, emotions, and desires.

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Personality psychologists are interested in both observable behavior and inner mental life. Their definition of personality thus combines Statements #2 and #3: Personality refers to relatively consistent, observable patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving and to the inner psychological systems that explain these patterns.

Because the definition of personality combines two features, psychologists who study personality pursue two scientific goals (Cervone, 1991):

We’ll conclude this discussion of “what is personality” by noting two additional ideas. Because you already know, intuitively, what personality means, both ideas will be familiar to you. One is distinctiveness; personality is what makes you distinctive, that is, what sets you apart from others. When you described your personality in our opening exercise, you probably didn’t say something like “I get angry when people intentionally insult me.” Everybody gets angry when that happens; it isn’t distinctive. Your personality qualities are what make you unlike everybody else. Personality psychologists recognize this and aim to describe scientifically the primary ways in which people differ.

The second idea is consistency. Personality refers to qualities that people have across time and place (Allport, 1937). If a friend appears anxious consistently—day after day, in different situations, with different people—you would say that “anxiety” is part of her personality. By contrast, if she appears anxious inconsistently (e.g., only right before final exam week), you likely would not say this. A major task for personality psychologists is to explain patterns of consistency in people’s experiences and behavior (Cervone, 2004).

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