These comments were made by college students after they had all watched the same video recording of an unemployed teenager. The great majority, more than nine out of 10, used words like ‘dull’, ‘pleasant’, ‘weak-willed’ to describe him, often qualified by ‘fairly’, ‘rather’, ‘not very’, etc. A few restricted themselves to superficial comments like ‘untidy’, ‘good looking’, ‘interested in fishing’, while a few tried to draw together different aspects: ‘A lost person, with no ambition, because he has never been directed’ or ‘fairly cheerful, but hides an underlying nervousness’.

Personality Traits

Words that attribute dispositions to people are trait names, and have been used to describe personality for thousands of years. Some derive from classical Greek – athletic, barbarous – or Latin – cautious, devious. Some refer to heavenly bodies supposed to direct behaviour – saturnine, jovial, or lunatic. Some traits immortalise individuals whose behaviour was particularly striking – napoleonic, sadistic, or chauvinist. Some traits’ meanings have changed over time. For example, effete originally meant having just borne young, then worn out by bearing young, and now means simply lacking in vigour and energy.