TRAIT-NAMES: A PSYCHO-LEXICAL STUDY

By Gordon W. Allport, Ph.D., and Henry S. Odbert '30, Ph.D. Psychological Monograph Vol. XLVIII. Princeton and Albany: Psychological Review, 1936. Pp- viii and 171.

Dartmouth alumni will be interested xn both authors of this monograph. Dr. Gordon W. Allport now of Harvard University taught here some years ago and Dr. Henry S. Odbert is teaching here now. They have collaborated in listing. 17,953 words which are descriptive of personality. This psycholinguistic study classifies these terms into four columns, namely, (1) neutral traits of personality, psychologically useful, (2) temporary states of mind and mood, (3) censorial and characterial evaluations and (4) miscellaneous terms, many of which are metaphorical or analogical.

Brief as the exposition of the study is (37 pages), it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the contribution for the theory of traits. The view that traits are "generalized determining tendencies" of a personalized nature is argued convincingly; thus comes the consistency and uniqueness that literary men grasp so brilliantly in their descriptions of personalities but which too often elude the more microscopic psychologists.