Trait versus state
A trait is how a person tends to be on average across situations; a state is how they are right now. Behaviour varies a lot moment to moment, but the average and range are stable and characteristic.
What drives it
Prevents the most common error in identification: judging character from one moment. Useful because it tells you how much evidence you need before calling something 'who they are' and how much to attribute to circumstance.
How it shows
Work
A normally calm manager snaps during a restructure (state); a manager who snaps every quarter-end for five years (trait). New hires are mostly read in state terms: anxious, eager, performing. Fleeson's work shows each person's behaviour has a wide spread, so an introvert acts extraverted in a quarter of their moments.
Relationships
Early dating shows states (best behaviour, infatuation); the trait appears after the first year and the first real stress. Partners in conflict tend to turn a state into a trait: 'you always' instead of 'you did'.
Self
When you describe yourself, ask whether you are describing your average or your best or worst day. Notice which of your states feel foreign ('I wasn't myself') and which feel like coming home.
What tells it apart
Fundamental attribution error: The attribution error is the bias of treating a single state as a trait in other people; the trait-state distinction is the corrective. If you have one observation and a strong character verdict, you are making the error.
Temperament: Temperament is the early, biologically based core of traits visible in infancy; traits are the adult elaborations. Both are stable, but temperament is the part that was there before learning.
A test
Before naming a trait, collect at least three observations in different contexts; if you only have one, call it a state.
Questions to carry
- How many moments, in how many settings, sit behind the judgement of what this person is like?
- Which person have I summed up from one bad day, and what else do I know about them?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
Raymond Cattell, 1940s to 1960s; Charles Spielberger, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, 1970; Walter Mischel, 1968 (the critique); William Fleeson, 2001 (density distributions)
Sources
- Walter Mischel, Personality and Assessment (1968)