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vi Preface
in Personality Theory. The intellectual activity that is personality theory did not cease at the
close of the millennium. Investigators continue to pursue the challenges that motived the Grand
Theorists of the 20th century. Four such developments are found in within coverage of the four
theoretical perspectives that receive multi-chapter coverage in the text: psychodynamic theory,
phenomenological theory, trait theory, and social-cognitive theory. The four 21st-century theories
that are included were selected not only “on their own merits” but also because each addresses
limitations in 20th-century theorizing in a particularly direct manner. The Contemporary Devel-
opments in Personality Theory material thus is another opportunity for students to think critically.
Readers are encouraged to consider limitations in prior theorizing as a prelude to the coverage
of new developments.
In addition, Chapter 2 (The Scientific Study of People) contains a section on Contemporary
Developments in Personality Research. Readers learn about computerized text analysis methods
through which researchers infer personality characteristics by analyzing spontaneous language
use in social media.
Finally, material that previously appeared in print in Chapter 15, Assessing Personality Theory
and Research, has been moved to the online Instructor Companion Site at www.wiley.com/go/
cervone/personality14e. Because that material is a reflection on prior chapters and the state of
the professional field, it is not absolutely necessary for understanding the personality theory and
research covered in Chapters 1–14. Nonetheless, highly engaged students may wish to revisit
topics, contemplate the field, and consider ways in which they themselves can advance it by
reading C hapter 15 online.
Professor Pervin and I always hoped that Personality: Theory and Research will enable stu-
dents to appreciate the scientific and practical value of systematic theorizing about the individual,
to understand how evidence from case studies and empirical research informs the development of
personality theories, and to discover a particular theory of personality that makes personal sense
to them and is useful in their own lives.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the Psychology staff at John Wiley & Sons not only for their continued support but also
for their suggestions that have strengthened the text. I am also grateful to many students and
instructors who have sent me questions and suggestions for future coverage; feel free to keep
sending them to dcervone@uic.edu.
I also thank Dr. Walter D. Scott, of Washington State University, for giving permission to
include the case study that appears in Chapter 14. Dr. Scott was the therapist for the case, whose
assessment tools and case report were prepared collaboratively by Dr. Scott and the author.
I am particularly grateful to Professor Tracy L. Caldwell of Dominican University. Dr. Caldwell
prepared the extensive set of supplementary material available at the book’s Instructor Companion
Site at www.wiley.com/go/cervone/personality14e, suggested the “toolkit” metaphor that appears
in Chapter 1, and has provided invaluable input on both science and pedagogy that has strengthened
this text across multiple editions.
Daniel Cervone
Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Contents
Prefaceiv
1 Personality Theory: From Everyday Observations

to Systematic Theories 1
Questions to be Addressed in this Chapter, 2
Defining Personality, 3
Why Study Personality?, 4
Three Goals for the Personality Theorist, 5
Answering Questions about Persons Scientifically: Understanding Structures,
Processes, Development, and Therapeutic Change, 8
Important Issues in Personality Theory, 15
Evaluating Personality Theories, 21
The Personality Theories: An Introduction, 22
Major Concepts, 25
Review, 25
2 The Scientific Study of People 27

The Data of Personality Psychology, 29
Contemporary Developments in Personality Research: Social Media
and Language-Based Assessments 30
Goals of Research: Reliability, Validity, Ethical Behavior, 37
Three General Strategies of Research, 39
Personality Theory and Personality Research, 50
Personality Assessment and the Case of Jim, 51
Major Concepts, 52
Review, 52
3 A Psychodynamic Theory: Freud’s Psychoanalytic

Theory of Personality 53
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): A View of the Theorist, 54
Freud’s View of the Person, 56
Freud’s View of the Science of Personality, 60
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality, 60
Major Concepts, 84
Review, 84
vii
viii Contents
4 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Applications,

Related Theoretical Conceptions, and Contemporary
Research 85
Psychodynamic Personality Assessment: Projective Tests, 86
Psychopathology, 91
Psychological Change, 95
The Case of Jim, 100
Related Theoretical Conceptions, 102
Contemporary Developments in Personality
Theory: Neuropsychoanalysis, 116
Critical Evaluation, 121
Major Concepts, 125
Review, 125
5 A Phenomenological Theory: The Personality Theory

of Rogers 127
Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987): A View of the Theorist, 128
Rogers’s View of the Person, 130
Rogers’s View of the Science of Personality, 132
The Personality Theory of Carl Rogers, 133
Major Concepts, 146
Review, 146
6 Rogers’s Phenomenological Theory: Applications,

Related Theoretical Conceptions, and Contemporary
Research 147
Clinical Applications, 148
Related Conceptions: Human Potential, Positive Psychology,
and Existentialism, 156
Developments in Research: The Self and Authenticity, 163
Contemporary Developments in Personality Theory: Personality Systems
Interaction Theory and the Integrated Self, 170
Personality Systems Interaction Theory, 171
Illustrative Research, 174
Implications for Rogers’s Self Theory of Personality, 174
Major Concepts, 179
Review, 179
Contents ix
7 Trait Theories of Personality: Allport, Eysenck,

and Cattell 180
A View of the Trait Theorists, 182
Trait Theory’s View of the Person, 182
Trait Theory’s View of the Science of Personality, 183
Trait Theories of Personality: Basic Perspectives Shared
by Trait Theorists, 185
The Trait Theory of Gordon W. Allport (1897–1967), 186
Identifying Primary Trait Dimensions: Factor Analysis, 189
The Factor-Analytic Trait Theory of Raymond B. Cattell (1905–1998), 191
The Three-factor Theory of Hans J. Eysenck (1916–1997), 195
Major Concepts, 204
Review, 204
8 Trait Theory: The Five-Factor Model and Contemporary

Developments 205
On Taxonomies of Personality, 206
The Five-Factor Model of Personality: Research Evidence, 207
Five-Factor Theory, 218
Maybe We Missed One? The Six-Factor Model, 220
Cross-cultural Research: Are the Big Five Dimensions Universal?, 221
Contemporary Developments in Trait Theory: Reinforcement Sensitivity
Theory, 224
The Case of Jim—Factor-Analytic Trait-Based Assessment, 230
The Person-Situation Controversy, 233
Major Concepts, 240
Review, 240
9 Biological Foundations of Personality 241

Temperament, 243
Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, and Personality, 248
Genes and Personality, 255
Mood, Emotion, and the Brain, 266
Plasticity: Biology as Both Cause and Effect, 270
Neuroscientific Investigations of “Higher-Level” Psychological Functions, 271
Summary, 272
Major Concepts, 272
Review, 272
x Contents
10 Behaviorism and The Learning Approaches

To Personality 273
Behaviorism’s View of the Person, 274
Behaviorism’s View of the Science of Personality, 275
Watson, Pavlov, and Classical Conditioning, 278
Skinner’s Theory of Operant Conditioning, 288
Major Concepts, 300
Review, 300
11 A Cognitive Theory: George A. Kelly’s Personal

Construct Theory of Personality 301
George A. Kelly (1905–1966): A View of the Theorist, 303
Kelly’s View of the Science of Personality, 304
Kelly’s View of the Person, 306
The Personality Theory of George A. Kelly, 307
Related Points of View and Recent Developments, 324
Major Concepts, 328
Review, 329
12 Social-Cognitive Theory: Bandura and Mischel 330

Relating Social-Cognitive Theory to the Previous Theories, 331
A View of the Theorists, 332
Social-Cognitive Theory’s View of the Person, 335
Social-Cognitive Theory’s View of the Science of Personality, 335
Social-Cognitive Theory of Personality: Structure, 335
Social-Cognitive Theory of Personality: Process, 344
Social-Cognitive Theory of Growth and Development, 349
Major Concepts, 360
Review, 360
13 Social-Cognitive Theory: Applications, Related Theoretical

Conceptions, and Contemporary Developments 362
Cognitive Components of Personality: Beliefs, Goals, and Evaluative
Standards, 363
Contents xi
Contemporary Developments in Personality Theory: The KAPA Model, 373

Stress, Coping, and Cognitive Therapy, 384
Major Concepts, 393
Review, 393
14 Personality In Context: Interpersonal Relations,

Culture, and Development Across The Course of Life 394
Interpersonal Relationships, 396
Meeting Academic and Social Challenges: Optimistic Strategies and Defensive
Pessimism, 401
Personality Development in Socioeconomic Context, 402
Personality Functioning Across the Life Span, 403
Persons in Cultures, 406
Putting Personality in Context into Practice, 411
Summary, 416
Major Concepts, 416
Review, 416
Glossary417
References429
Author Index 470
Subject Index 477
1
Personality Theory: From Everyday
Observations to Systematic Theories
Questions to be Addressed in this Chapter

Defining Personality
Why Study Personality?
Three Goals for the Personality Theorist
Answering Questions about Persons Scientifically: Understanding
Structures, Processes, Development, and Therapeutic Change
Important Issues in Personality Theory
Evaluating Personality Theories
The Personality Theories: An Introduction
Major Concepts
Review
C h a p t e r Fo c us
I can be selfish, but I believe it is because I try to be perfect. Perfect in the sense
I want to be an “A” student, a good mother, a loving wife, an excellent employee,
a nourishing friend. My significant other thinks I try too hard to be “Mother Teresa”
at times—not that that is a bad thing. But I can drive myself insane at times. I have
led a hard childhood and adulthood life; therefore I believe I am trying to make up
for all the bad times. I want to be productive, good—make a difference in my world.
I’m a real jackass. I’m intelligent enough to do well in school and study genetics but
have no idea when to shut up. I often am very offensive and use quite abrasive lan-
guage, although I’m shy most of the time and talk to few people. I’m sarcastic, cruel,
and pompous at times. Yet I’ve been told that I’m kind and sweet; this may be true,
but only to those I deem worthy of speaking to with some frequency. I’m very fond of
arguing and pretty much argue for fun.
I have always been described by others as cynical and/or as having integrity. I would
describe myself as inquisitive, philosophical and justice-oriented. I craze organization,
1
2 Personality Theory: From Everyday Observations to Systematic Theories
but my room is the messiest one I have seen thus far … like the room of a toddler. I am
introspective but I don’t reach many conclusions about myself. I seem very passive and
mellow – but I am just too tired to get fired up.
This person is shy at times. They tend to open up to some people. You never know
when they’re happy or sad. They never show their real feelings, and when they do it’s
so hard for them. They did have a trauma experience that closed them up—where
they seem to be afraid to let their real self show. They are funny and do have a lot of
fun and are fun to be around, but at times it’s hard to know if they’re really having a
good time. The person is loved by a lot of people and is an extremely giving person
but doesn’t like “seriousness.”
These sketches were written by people just like you: students beginning a course
on the psychology of personality. When I teach the class, on Day 1, I ask people to
describe their personality and that of a friend. Two things happen. First, students can
answer the question; when asked to “describe your personality,” they rarely say “I
don’t know how to do that; it’s only the first day of personality class.” Second, as you
see here, their answers are often detailed, nuanced, and insightful—so much so that
one is tempted to ask: Is the class filled with personality theorists?
In a sense, it is. We’re all personality theorists. We ask about ourselves and others:
“Why am I so shy?” “Why are my parents so weird?” “Am I so shy because my parents
are so weird?” Even before taking a personality class, we devise answers that are sophis-
ticated and often accurate. You already hold ideas about personality and put them to
work to understand the events of your day, to anticipate the events of your next day, and
to help yourself and your friends handle the stresses, bumps, and bruises of life.
“But”—you may be asking yourself—“if I already know so much about personality,
what will I learn in this class? In other words, “What is the professional personality psy-
chologist doing that I’m not doing already?” This chapter addresses this question by
introducing the scientific goals and methods of psychologists who study personality.
But first, we will define our key term and comment on the status of this scientific field.
Questions to be Addressed in this Chapter

1. How do scientific theories of personality differ from the ideas about persons that you
develop in your daily life?
2. Why is there more than one personality theory and in what general ways do the theories
differ?
3. What are personality psychologists trying to accomplish; in other words, what aspects of
persons and individual differences are they trying to understand and what factors are so
important that they must be addressed in any personality theory?
Defining Personality 3
Defining Personality
Personality psychology is concerned with the dynamics of intra-individual functioning and the coher-
ence and thematic unity of particular lives.
Block (1992, p. xiii)
You already have an intuitive understanding of “personality.” Is a formal definition even neces-
sary? It is because—as so often happens with words—different people use the word “personal-
ity” in different ways. The differences can create confusion in both an introductory course and
the professional field (Cervone, 2005). Let us therefore examine some ways in which the word
“personality” is used. We then will provide a formal definition of the term.
In one common usage, people say, for example, that “Ellen DeGeneres has a lot of personal-
ity” or “My psych professor has no personality.” Personality here means “charisma”. This is
not the way that personality psychologists use the word; this book is most definitely not about
“Charisma: Theory and Research”.
Professional psychologists use the word “personality” in two ways. Specifically, they propose
two types of personality variables, that is, two types of concepts for understanding people and
how they differ.
1. Dispositions. One type of variable is personality dispositions. In general, in the sciences,
dispositions are descriptions; dispositional terms describe what a person or thing tends to
do. A glass vase tends to break if you bump into it. “Fragile” is a dispositional term that
describes this tendency. Some types of turtles tend to live very long lives. “Longevity”
describes this tendency (turtles are “high in longevity” compared to many other species). In
the study of personality, psychologists try to identify the personality dispositions that best
describe individuals and the major ways that people differ from one another.
People have a lot of tendencies: sleeping when tired, eating when hungry, bored when
reading a textbook. Which count as personality dispositions? You can figure this out for
yourself. Think about how you use the word “personality,” and you will quickly realize that
you employ the word to describe psychological characteristics with two qualities: “person-
ality” tendencies are (a) enduring and (b) distinctive.
• By “enduring,” we mean that personality characteristics are at least somewhat consist-
ent across time and place. If one day you find yourself acting a little strange—maybe
because you are stressed about something—you likely would not say that your “person-
ality has changed” on that day. You use the word “personality” to describe characteristics
that endure for long periods of time: months and years and perhaps your entire life.
• By “distinctive,” we mean that personality characteristics differentiate people from one
another. If asked to describe your personality, you would not say, “I tend to feel sad when
bad things happen but happy when good things happen.” Everybody feels sad/happy
when bad/good things happen. These tendencies are not distinctive. But if, like one of
our opening sketches, someone is “shy most of the time … sarcastic, cruel, and pomp-
ous at times … yet kind and sweet to those deemed worthy of speaking to,” then that is a
distinctive—and is therefore a (rather complex) personality disposition.
2. Inner Mental Life. A second set of concepts refers to inner mental life. Personality psy-
chologists study the beliefs, emotions, and motivations that comprise the mental life of
the individual. Conflicts between alternative desires; memories that spring to mind and fill
you with emotion; emotions that interfere with your ability to think; long-term goals that
make otherwise mundane tasks meaningful; self-doubts that undermine efforts to achieve
these goals—these and more are the features of mental life targeted by the personality
psychologist.
A technical term—used in the quote above, from the personality psychologist Jack
Block—for this scientific target is “intraindividual functioning”. Personality psychology is
not only concerned with differences between people or interindividual differences. Person-
ality psychologists are fundamentally concerned with the interplay of thoughts and emo-
tions within the mind or intraindividual mental functioning.
Many branches of psychology study mental life. What’s unique about personality psychol-
ogy? One distinctive feature is the field’s concern with how multiple aspects of mental life
are connected to one another or “cohere” (Block, 1992; Cervone & Shoda, 1999). Compare
this interest to the primary interests in other branches of psychology. A cognitive psycholo-
gist may study memory. A social psychologist may study self-concept. An educational psy-
chologist might address perfectionistic tendencies at school. But the personality psychologist
is concerned with how these distinct systems cohere in the life of an individual. You just saw
such personality coherence in the opening quote above; the person’s memory (of a hard life)
was connected to her self-concept (being a productive person who makes a difference to the
world), which, in turn, explained her perfectionism (“striving to be perfect”).
A useful concept to describe these connections is “system”. A system is any connected
set of interacting parts that comprise whole. Personality can be thought of as a system.
Distinct psychological qualities—beliefs, values, emotions, goals, skills, memories—influ-
ence one another and comprise the person as a whole (Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Nowak,
Vallacher, & Zochowski, 2005)
We now are in a position to define personality. In psychology, personality refers to psycho-
logical systems that contribute to an individual’s enduring and distinctive patterns of experience
and behavior. As you can see, the definition combines the two meanings above. Ideally, the per-
sonality psychologist will be able to identify psychological systems (aspects of inner mental life)
that help to explain people’s distinctive experiences and actions (their dispositions).
Why Study Personality?

Why take a course in personality? One way to answer this question is to compare the material in
this course with other courses in psychology. Consider intro psych—the typical Psych 101. Stu-
dents are sometimes disappointed with its content. The course does not seem to be about whole,
intact people. Instead, one learns about parts of people (e.g., the visual system, the autonomic
nervous system, long-term memory, etc.) and some of the things people do (learning, problem-
solving, decision-making, etc.). “Where in psychology,” one reasonably might ask, “does one
learn about the whole, intact person?” The answer is here, in personality psychology. Personality
theorists address the total person, trying to understand how different aspects of an individual’s
psychological life are related to each other and relate also to the society and culture in which the
person lives (Magnusson, 2012). One reason for studying personality psychology, then, is that
it addresses psychology’s most complex and interesting topic: the whole, integrated, coherent,
unique individual.
Another reason is the impact of personality psychology on the wider intellectual world. Per-
sonality theories have been influential not only within scientific psychology. They also have
influenced society at large. In fact, they have been so influential that they probably have affected
your thinking even before you enrolled in this course. Have you ever said that someone has
a big “ego”? Or called a friend an “introvert”? Or asked whether a slip-of-the-tongue reveals
Three Goals for the Personality Theorist 5
something about the hidden beliefs of the speaker? If so, you were already using terms and ideas
that come from personality psychology.
Here are three indications of the influence of personality psychology:
• At the end of the 20th century, scholars (Haggbloom et al., 2002) identified the most influen-
tial scientific psychologists of the 20th century. Who made the list? In the top 25, the majority
were investigators who contributed to the psychology of personality.
• The end of the century was also the end of the millennium. A television network polled his-
torians and others to determine the 100 most influential people—of any sort—of the past
1000 years. The only psychologist to make the list—and easily, at #12—was a personality
theorist: the psychodynamic theorist, Sigmund Freud (A & E’s Biography: 100 Most Influ-
ential People of the Millennium https://wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus150/biography100.html).
• In 2007, a statistical analysis identified the highest-impact book authors in the humanities or
social sciences (fields including not only psychology, but also political science, philosophy,
linguistics, literary criticism, sociology, and cultural studies). The singularly most-cited liv-
ing author was a personality theorist: the social cognitive theorist Albert Bandura (https://
www.timeshighereducation.com/news/most-cited-authors-of-books-in-the-humanities-
2007/405956.article).
Here, in personality theory and research, you will find the most influential ideas in the history
of the psychological sciences.
Three Goals for the Personality Theorist

Now let’s return to an earlier question: What is the professional personality psychologist doing
that you, the reader, are not?
Consider what you do. You interact—in person and electronically—with friends and family.
You observe people not only in person, but also in movies and videos, and (through writing) in
books, magazines, and blogs. You think about yourself: your strengths and weaknesses, hopes
and plans, and responsibilities to others. And you learn how others do these same things, when
they tell you about themselves, their friends and families, and their hopes and dreams. Somehow,
from this everyday observations, you develop thoughts about human nature and the main ways
that people differ from one another.
For most people, that is plenty of thinking about personality. But personality psychologists are
not “most people.” Psychologists who study personality pursue three goals that distinguish their
activities from the nonprofessional who is interested in persons.
1. Scientific Observation
Personality psychologists do not observe people casually. Instead, they pursue scientific obser-
vation. The features that make observations “scientific” vary from one science to another. In
personality psychology, three stand out:
1. Study diverse groups of people. Psychologists cannot base personality theories merely
on observations of people they happen to run into in daily life. They must observe diverse
groups of individuals, to ensure that conclusions about personality represent the lives the
world’s citizens. This need is particularly critical because people from different nations and
cultures may differ in ways that become apparent only once they are studied within their
specific life contexts (Cheng, Wang, & Golden, 2011). Not only nations and cultures, but
also subcultures—associated with ethnicity, spiritual beliefs, or economic circumstances—

may display distinctive psychological characteristics (Oyserman, 2017).
In today’s personality science, researchers often succeed admirably in reaching such
diverse participants group. For example, one research team summarized self-descriptions of
personality from participants in 56 nations (Schmitt et al., 2007). Another studied personal-
ity tendencies across regions of the globe and found that more mild climates foster more
outgoing (sociable, open-minded) personality styles. The ability to study global popula-
tions is made easier by a technological advance. By analyzing “big data”—large bodies of
information acquired by recording computer users’ preferences and statements on social
media and other internet sites (Bleidorn, Hopwood, & Wright, 2017)—researchers can get
information about people throughout the world.
These trends, however, are recent. Before the 21st century, the majority of participants
in psychological research were from Europe and North America—which contain less than
20% of the world’s population, combined. This is significant in that all of the major theories
of personality developed prior to the present century.
2. Ensure that observations of people are objective. A second requirement is “objectiv-
ity”. Information that is not influenced by the subjective personal opinions and desires of
the person getting the information is called “objective”. If you step on a scale and it tells
you your weight, the scale is “objective”: It is not influenced by your own subjective desires
for a different weight. Psychologists strive for scientific methods that provide information
about personality that is objective.
Objective methods promote a key goal of science: replicability. Whenever one scientist
reports a finding, others should be able to replicate it; in other words, they should be able
to repeat the procedures and get the same result. Using an example above, if one team of
researchers found that mild climates predict outgoing personality styles, you should be able
to repeat their procedures and find the same thing.
It turns out that replicability is difficult to achieve—so much so that psychology recently
has experienced a “replication crisis” (Shrout & Rodgers, 2017). Researchers have sometimes
found it hard to replicate well-known findings. Although these difficulties primarily have
occurred in branches of the field other than personality psychology, the overall question of rep-
licability is significant in our field—particularly so because one valuable source of evidence
in personality psychology cannot, even in principle, be replicated: case studies. Case studies
are in-depth examinations of a particular individual (see Chapter 2). For example, a therapist
might report a case study of a client in therapy. As a general rule, case studies cannot be rep-
licated; if you read a clinical case study, you cannot contact the client and repeat the study.
3. Use specialized tools to study thinking, emotion, and neurobiological systems.
Psychologists observe people, just as you do. But they also make observations using spe-
cialized tools. These tools often are designed to overcome specific obstacles to obtaining
scientific information. Here are two examples. Suppose that you want to learn about the
personality characteristics of large numbers of people. An obstacle is the sheer cost and
difficulty of contacting people and having them complete personality tests. A specialized
tool researchers use to overcome this obstacle is computer software that assesses personality
characteristics by analyzing the language use in social media (Park et al., 2014). A second
example is that, if you try to study people’s feelings—their moods and emotions—by asking
them how they feel, some people are reluctant to discuss their feelings openly. Researchers
have developed tools to assess moods and emotions without ever explicitly asking people to
talk about themselves (Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009). For example, if research participants
are asked to describe the emotion expressed in an abstract image, their descriptions reveal
their own emotional state (Bartoszek & Cervone, 2017).
Three Goals for the Personality Theorist 7
2. Scientific Theory
The fundamental goal of science is to explain events (Salmon, 1989). Scientists develop explana-
tory frameworks—that is, theories—to explain their scientific observations.
What exactly is a scientific theory? The word “theory” can be used in different ways. For
example, you might say that you “have a theory that my friend Liliana is anxious because she’s
really attracted to some guy and hasn’t told him.” Even if you are right, your idea about Liliana is
not, in and of itself, a scientific theory of Liliana’s personality. Scientific theories of personality
have three distinctive qualities; they are systematic, testable, and comprehensive.
1. Systematic. As we have noted, you already have developed lots of different ideas about
different people. But you probably have not gone to the trouble of relating all of them to
one another. Suppose that on one you say “Liliana is anxious because she’s really attracted
to some guy and hasn’t told him” and on another you say “My mother gets anxious all the
time; she must have inherited it.” If so, you usually do not have to relate the statements
to each other; people don’t force you to explain why one case had an interpersonal cause
(relationship breakup) and another had a biological cause (inherited tendencies). But per-
sonality psychologists must relate all their ideas to one another, to create a systematically
organized theory.
2. Testable. If you tell a friend “My parents are weird,” your friend is not likely to say
“Prove it!” But the scientific community says “Prove it!” any time a scientist says anything.
The personality psychologist must develop theoretical ideas that can be tested by objective
scientific evidence. This is true of any science, of course. But in personality psychology,
attaining the goal of a testable theory can be particularly difficult. This is because the field’s
subject matter includes features of mental life—goals, dreams, wishes, impulses, conflicts,
emotions, unconscious mental defenses—that are enormously complex and inherently dif-
ficult to study scientifically.
3. Comprehensive. Suppose that you have just rented an apartment and are considering
inviting in a roommate to share rent costs. When deciding who to invite, you might ask
yourself questions about their personalities: Are they fun loving? Conscientious? Open-
minded? And so forth. Yet there also are a lot of other questions that you do not have to
ask: If they are fun loving, is it primarily because they inherited this quality or learned it?
If they are conscientious now, are they likely to be more or less conscientious 20 years
from now? When thinking about persons, you can be selective, asking some questions
and ignoring others. But a personality theory must be comprehensive, addressing all sig-
nificant questions about personality functioning, development, and individual differences.
This is what distinguishes personality theory from theorizing in most other branches of
psychology. The personality theorist cannot be satisfied with studying “parts” of persons.
The personality theorist is charged with comprehensively understanding the person as
a whole.
3. Applications: From Observation and Theory to Practice

As the quotes from students that open this chapter make clear, people formulate insightful ideas
about personality prior to studying personality psychology. Yet, in everyday life, people rarely
convert their personal insights into systematic applications. You may recognize that one friend’s
problem is a lack of self-confidence and that another’s is an inability to open up emotionally.
Yet, after realizing this, you probably don’t design therapies to boost people’s confidence in
themselves or enable them to open up. Personality psychologists, however, do this. They aim not
only to develop testable, systematic theory but also to convert their theoretical ideas into benefi-
cial applications.
In fact, many of the personality theorists you will learn about in this book did not start out in
personality psychology. Instead, they often first worked as counselors, clinical psychologists, or
physicians. Their personality theories were efforts to understand why their clients were experi-
encing psychological distress and how that distress could be reduced.
In summary, personality psychologists aim to (1) to observe people scientifically, (2) develop
theories that are systematic, testable, and comprehensive, and (3) to turn their research findings
and theoretical conceptions into practical applications. It is these goals that distinguish the work
of the personality psychologist from that of the poet, the playwright, the pop psychologist—or
the student writing personality sketches on the first day of class. Lots of people develop insight-
ful ideas about the human condition. But the personality psychologist is uniquely charged with
organizing theoretical ideas into comprehensive, testable, and practical theories.
Throughout this book, we evaluate the personality theories by judging how well they achieve
these goals. This book’s final chapter, a commentary on the current state of the field that can be
found on the text’s companion website www.wiley.com/college/cervone, judges how successful
the field of personality psychology as a whole has been in achieving these five aims.
Answering Questions about Persons Scientifically:

Understanding Structures, Processes, Development,
and Therapeutic Change
Personality psychologist addresses four distinct topics; in other words, there are four issues
that every personality theory must address. We can introduce them with a simple “mental
experiment”.
Think of someone you know well, for example, a good friend or family member. Two things
you know for sure are:
1. Whatever the individual’s personality is like today, it likely was similar last month and last
year, and likely will be similar next month and next year. You might say that personality is
“stable” over time.
2. Despite this stability in personality, the individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions also
change. Sometimes they are happy and other times sad. Sometimes they are in control of
their emotions and sometimes they “fly off the handle.”
Two things you do not know absolutely for sure, but that probably think are correct, are:
3. If you saw the person when they were a toddler or a grade schooler, their personality
would not be the same as it is now. Their personality likely has changed, or “developed,”
over time.
4. If the person suddenly experiences a period of psychological distress—for example, a period
of depression or anxiety—they probably could “bounce back” from this. In fact, there might
be something you could do to improve the person’s psychological well-being.
These four points correspond directly to the topics addressed by personality psychologists.
The psychologist introduces formal scientific terms to describe the topics, but the topics them-
selves are fundamentally the same. They are: (1) personality structure—the enduring “build-
ing blocks” of personality; (2) personality process—dynamic changes in thinking, emotion, and
Answering Questions about Persons Scientifically 9
motivation that can occur from one moment to the next; (3) growth and development—how we
develop into the unique person each of us is, and (4) psychopathology and behavior change—
how people change and why they sometimes resist change or are unable to change. We introduce
these topics now. You will see them again, over and over, in later chapters.
Structure
People possess psychological qualities that endure from day to day and from year to year. The
enduring qualities that distinguish individuals from one another are referred to as personality
structures.
Structural concepts in personality psychology are similar to structural concepts you are famil-
iar with from other fields. For example, from study of human biology, you already know that
there are enduring biological structures including individual organs (the heart, the lungs) and
organ systems (the circulatory system, the digestive system). Analogously, personality theorists
hope to identify enduring psychological structures. These structures may involve emotion (e.g.,
a biological structure that contributes to good or bad mood), motivation (e.g., a desire to achieve
succeed or to be accepted by others), cognition (e.g., a negative belief about oneself that con-
tributes to states of depression, Beck, 1991), or skills (e.g., a high or low level of “social intel-
ligence,” Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987).
You will see throughout this textbook that the different personality theories provide differ-
ent conceptions of personality structure. A more technical way of saying this is that the theories
adopt different units of analysis when analyzing personality structure (Little, Lecci, & Watkin-
son, 1992). The “units of analysis” idea is important, so we will illustrate it.
As you read this textbook, you may be sitting in a chair. If we ask you to describe it, the chair,
you may say that it “weighs about 15 pounds,” or that it “is made of wood,” or that it “is unattrac-
tive”. Weight, physical substance (the wood), and attractiveness are different units of analysis for
describing the chair. Although the units may be related in some way (e.g., wood chairs may be
heavier than plastic ones), they plainly are distinct.
The general idea is that virtually anything can be described in more than one way—that is,
through more than one unit of analysis. Personality is no exception. The different theories of
personality you will learn about in this book use different units of analysis to analyze personality
structure. The resulting analyses may each be correct, in their own way. Yet each may provide
different types of information about personality.
We will illustrate this point with an example: a difference between “trait” and “type” units of
analysis.
One popular unit of analysis is that of a personality trait. The word trait generally refers to a
consistent style of emotion or behavior that a person displays across a variety of situations. Some-
one who consistently acts in a way that we call “conscientious” might be said to have the trait of
“conscientiousness”. A term that is essentially synonymous with trait is disposition; traits describe
what a person tends to do or is predisposed to do. You probably already use trait terms to describe
people. If you say that a friend is “outgoing,” “honest,” or “disagreeable,” you are using trait terms.
There is something implicit—something that “goes without saying”—when you use these terms.
If you say that a friend is, for example, “outgoing,” the term implies two things: (1) the person
tends to be outgoing on average in his/her own daily behavior (even if, on occasion, he/she does
not act this way), and (2) the person tends to be outgoing compared to others. If you use trait terms
this way, then you are using them in the same way as most personality psychologists do.
Traits usually are thought of as continuous dimensions. Like the biological traits of height
and weight, people have more or less of a given trait, with most people being in the middle of
the dimension.
A different unit of analysis is type. A personality “type” is a clustering of many different traits.
For example, some researchers have explored combinations of personality traits and suggested
that there are three types of persons: (1) people who respond in an adaptive, resilient manner to
psychological stress; (2) people who respond in a manner that is socially inhibited or emotion-
ally overcontrolled; and (3) people who respond in an uninhibited or undercontrolled manner
(Asendorpf, Caspi, & Hofstee, 2002).
Types, unlike traits, may be thought of as distinct categories. In other words, people of one
versus another type do not simply have more or less of a given characteristic but have categori-
cally different characteristics.
© The New Yorker Collection 2007 Mick Stevens from cartoonbank.com.

Process All Rights Reserved.
Just as theories can be compared in terms of how they treat personality structure, one can com-
pare their treatment of personality processes. In any scientific field, a “process” is something
that changes over time; as the philosopher Wittgenstein put it, we use the word “process” to
refer to psychological phenomena that “have duration and a course” (Wittgenstein, 1980, §836).
A personality process thus is a psychological activity (involving thoughts, feelings, or actions)
that may change over relatively brief periods of time.
Even though you are the same person from one day to the next, you experience rapidly chang-
ing personality processes all the time. One moment you are studying. The next, you are distracted
by thoughts of a friend. Next, you’re hungry and getting a snack. Then you’re feeling guilty about
not studying. Next, you’re feeling guilty about overeating. This rapidly changing flow of moti-
vation, emotion, and action is what personality psychologists attempt to explain when studying
personality processes.
Personality processes are often referred to by a more technical name: personality “dynam-
ics”. When using this term, psychologists are borrowing a word from a different field of
study: physics. In physics, “dynamics” refers to the ways in which physical objects move across
some period of time (e.g., how an object moves toward Earth if you drop it). In personality,
“dynamics” refer to psychological processes (involving thinking, emotion, or motivation) that
change over time (Cervone & Little, 2017).
Study of personality processes, or dynamics, is where the contemporary science of personality
started. European psychologists of the late 19th century became interested in how different parts
of mental life—for example, memory of past events and conscious experiences in the present—
become connected to one another in the self-concept of an individual person (Lombardo &
Foschi, 2003). Throughout the first two-thirds of the 20th century, dynamic processes remained
a centerpiece of personality theory. In the late 20th century, personality psychology’s focus of
attention shifted somewhat, with more researchers studying the stable differences between peo-
ple rather than the personality dynamics of the individual. But in the current field, the study of
personality dynamics is, in a sense, “making a comeback” (Rauthmann, in press). Researchers
increasingly explore dynamic changes in personality dynamics that occur across the diverse cir-
cumstances of an individual’s life.
Just as in the study of personality structure, one finds that, in the study of personality pro-
cesses, different theorists employ different units of analysis. The differences commonly involve
different approaches to the study of motivation. Personality theorists emphasize different moti-
vational processes. Some highlight basic biological drives. Other theorists argue that people’s
anticipations of future events are more important to human motivation than are biological drive
states experienced in the present. Some theorists emphasize the role of conscious thinking pro-
cesses in motivation. Others believe that most important motivational processes are unconscious.
To some, the motivation to enhance and improve oneself is most central to human motivation.
To others, such an emphasis on “self-processes” underestimates the degree to which, in some
cultures of the world, self-enhancement is less important to motivation than is a desire to enhance
one’s family, community, and wider world. In their explorations of motivational processes, the
personality theorists you will read about in this book are attempting to bring contemporary sci-
entific evidence to bear on classic questions about human nature that have been discussed and
debated in the world’s intellectual traditions for more than two millennia.
Growth and Development

Personality theorists try to understand not only what individuals are like in the here and now,
but how they got this way. They strive, in other words, to understand personality development
(Mroczek & Little, 2006; Specht, 2017).
The overall study of personality development encompasses two challenges that are relatively
distinct. One is to characterize patterns of development that are experienced by most, if not
all, persons. A theorist might, for example, posit that all individuals develop through a distinct
series of stages, or that certain motives or emotional experiences are more common at one versus
another age for most persons. A second challenge is to understand developmental factors that
contribute to individual differences. What factors cause individuals to develop one versus another
personality style?
In the study of individual differences, a classic division of possible causes separates “nature”
from “nurture”. We may be who we are because of our biological nature, that is, because of bio-
logical features that we inherited. Alternatively, our personality may reflect our nurturing, that is,
our experiences in our family and in society. In a joking manner, we might say, “If you don’t like
your personality, who should you blame: Your parents, because of the way they nurtured you?
Or your parents, because of the genes they passed on to you that shaped your biological nature?”
At different points in its history, psychological research has tended to highlight either nature
or nurture as causal factor. In the middle parts of the 20th century, theorists focused heavily on
environmental causes of behavior and devoted relatively little attention to genetic influences.
Starting in the 1970s, investigators began systematic studies of similarity in the personalities
of twins. These studies provided unambiguous evidence that inherited factors contribute to
personality.
In recent years, there has been a third trend. Researchers have identified interactions between
genetic and environmental factors. A critical finding is that environmental experiences activate
genetic mechanisms, essentially “switching” genes on and off (Champagne, 2018). Since genes
code for proteins that become the structural material of the body, this means that certain types of
experiences can alter the biology of the organism (Gottlieb, 1998; Rutter, 2012). This finding, in
turn, implies that the traditional notion of nature versus nurture hardly makes sense. Nature and
nurture—experience and biology—are not competing forces; instead, they work together, shap-
ing the organism across its life span (Lewontin, 2000; Meaney, 2010).
You might already be asking yourself: What aspects of personality are affected by what types
of biological and environmental influences? This is a big question whose answers are considered
throughout this textbook. For now, though, we will provide a quick preview of some of the factors
highlighted by contemporary findings in personality psychology.
Genetic Determinants
Genetic factors contribute strongly to personality and individual differences (Kim, 2009). Con-
temporary advances enable the personality psychologist to pinpoint specific paths through
which genes affect personality. One main path is through temperament, a term that refers
to biologically based emotional and behavioral tendencies that are evident in early childhood
(Strelau, 1998).
Temperament characteristics that have been studied in depth are fear reactions and inhibited
behavior (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols, & Ghera, 2005). People differ considerably in the
degree to which they respond fearfully, especially when encountering unfamiliar, novel situa-
tions (e.g., a social setting with many strangers). Genes contribute to individual differences in
brain systems that are involved in this fear response. These biological differences, in turn, pro-
duce psychological differences in behavior and emotion (Fox & Reeb-Sutherland, 2010). Since
genetic factors contribute to the development of the brain, in this work, the psychologist can
identify a precise link from genes to biological systems to temperament, as expressed in emotion
and behavior. An interesting feature of this work is that it points to the impact not only of genes,
but also of the environment. Some evidence indicates that temperamentally shy children change,
becoming less shy, when they experience day care in which they encounter large numbers of
other children every day (Schmidt & Fox, 2002), though data on this point are somewhat mixed
(Kagan, 2011).
Genetic bases of personality also are explored by evolutionary psychologists, that is, psychol-
ogists who study the evolutionary basis of psychological characteristics (Buss & Hawley, 2011).
Evolutionary psychologists propose that contemporary humans possess psychological tendencies
that are a product of our evolutionary past. People are predisposed to engage in certain types
of behavior because those behaviors contributed to survival and reproductive success over the
course of human evolution. An evolutionary analysis of genetic influences differs fundamentally
from the analyses reviewed in the two preceding paragraphs. In an evolutionary analysis, inves-
tigators are not interested in genetic bases of individual differences. Instead, they are searching
for the genetic basis of human universals, that is, psychological features that all people have in
common. Most of our genes are shared. Even so-called racial differences involve merely super-
ficial differences in features such as skin tone; the basic structure of the human brain is universal
(Cavalli-Sforza & Cavalli-Sforza, 1995). The evolutionary psychologist suggests, then, that we
all inherit psychological mechanisms that predispose us to respond to the environment in ways
that proved successful over the course of evolution. For example, some scientists who study emo-
tion suggest that a number of basic emotions (e.g., anger, sadness, joy, disgust, fear) are products
of evolution (Ekman, 1993, 1994; Izard, 1994; Panksepp, 2011).
Environmental Determinants
Even the most biologically oriented of psychologists recognizes that personality is shaped, to a
significant degree, by the environment. If we did not grow up in a society with other people, we
would not even be persons in the way in which that term commonly is understood. Our concept
of self, our goals in life, and the values that guide us develop in a social world. Some environ-
mental determinants make people similar to one another, whereas others contribute to individual
differences and individual uniqueness. The environmental determinants that have proven to be
important in the study of personality development include culture, social class, family, and peers.
Culture Significant among the environmental determinants of personality are experiences indi-
viduals have as a result of membership in a particular culture: “Culture is a key determinant of
what it means to be a person” (Benet-Martinez & Oishi, 2008, p. 543). Each culture has its own
institutionalized and sanctioned patterns of learned behaviors, rituals, and beliefs. These cultural
practices, which in turn often reflect long-standing religious and philosophical beliefs, provide
people with answers to significant questions about the nature of the self, one’s role in one’s com-
munity, and the values and principles that are most important in life. As a result, members of a
culture may share personality characteristics.
Interestingly, people often may be unaware of shared cultural tendencies because they take
them for granted. For example, if you live in North America or western Europe, you may under-
estimate the extent to which your conception of yourself and your goals in life are shaped by
a culture that strongly values individual rights, in which individuals compete in an economic
marketplace, and in which the society as a whole is marked by high levels of financial inequality
(Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). Since everyone in these regions of the world experiences
these cultural features, we take them for granted and may assume that they are universal. Yet
much evidence indicates that people in other regions of the world experience different cultural
features. Asian cultures appear to place a greater value on a person’s contribution to his or her
community rather than on individualism and personal gain (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan,
2001). In fact, even within the Western world, cultural beliefs about the individual’s role in soci-
ety have changed from one historical period to another. The idea that individuals compete against
one another in an economic marketplace in order to improve their position in life is a feature of
contemporary Western societies, but it was not evident in these same societies in the Middle Ages
(Heilbroner, 1986).
Culture, then, may exert an influence on personality that is subtle yet pervasive. The culture
we live in defines our needs and our means of satisfying them, our experiences of different emo-
tions and how we express what we are feeling, our relationships with others and with ourselves,
what we think is funny or sad, how we cope with life and death, and what we view as healthy or
sick (Markus & Kitayama, 2011).
Social Class Although certain patterns of behavior develop as a result of membership in a cul-
ture, others may develop as a result of membership in a particular social class within a given cul-
ture. Many aspects of an individual’s personality can only be understood by reference to the group
to which that person belongs. One’s social group—whether lower class or upper class, working
class or professional—is of particular importance. Research indicates that socioeconomic status
influences the cognitive and emotional development of the individual (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002).
Social class factors affect not only educational opportunities, job prospects, and access to social
resources. They may also indirectly affect social experiences, such as the experience of small or
large networks of friends and family, and psychological qualities such as the tendency to focus, or
not, on one’s long-term future (Markus & Stevens, 2017).
Family Another environmental factor of profound importance is the influence of the family
(Park, 2004; Pomerantz & Thompson, 2008). Parents may be warm and loving or hostile and
rejecting, overprotective and possessive, or aware of their children’s need for freedom and auton-
omy. Each pattern of parental behavior affects the personality development of the child. Parents
influence their children’s behavior in at least three important ways:
1. Through their own behavior, parents present situations that elicit certain behavior in chil-
dren (e.g., frustration leads to aggression).
2. Parents serve as role models for identification.
3. Parents selectively reward behaviors.
Experiences in a family can create both similarities and differences among family members.David Hanover / Getty Images
At first, we may think of family practices as an influence that makes family members similar
to one another. Yet family practices also can create within-family differences. Consider differ-
ences between male and female family members. Historically, in many societies, male children
have received family privileges and opportunities that were unavailable to female children. These
differences in how families have treated boys and girls surely did not make boys and girls simi-
lar to one another; rather, they contributed to differences in male and female development. In
addition to gender, other family practices that may produce differences between family mem-
bers involve birth order. Parents sometimes express subtle preferences toward firstborn children
(Keller & Zach, 2002), who tend to be more achievement-oriented and conscientious than later-
born siblings (Paulhus, Trapnell, & Chen, 1999).
Important Issues in Personality Theory 15
Peers What environmental features outside of family life are important to personality develop-
ment? The child’s experiences with members of his or her peer group are one feature. Personality
development is influenced by peer groups as a whole—who socialize the individual into rules and
norms for behavior—and by one-on-one relationships within peer groups, which can shape peo-
ple’s perceptions of themselves (Reitz, Zimmermann, Hutteman, Specht, & Neyer, 2014). Some
psychologists view peer influences as more important to personality development than family
experiences (Harris, 1995). Perhaps “the answer to the question ‘Why are children from the same
family so different from one another?’ (Plomin & Daniels, 1987) is, because they have differ-
ent experiences outside the home and because their experiences inside the home do not make
them more alike” (Harris, 1995, p. 481). Peer groups. These experiences may affect personal-
ity in an enduring manner. For example, children who experience low-quality friendships that
involve a lot of arguing and conflict tend to develop disagreeable, antagonistic styles of behavior
(Berndt, 2002).
Psychopathology and Behavior Change

Constructing a personality theory may strike you as an ivory tower activity, that is, an abstract
intellectual exercise that fails to relate to the important concerns of everyday life. Yet personality
theories are potentially of great practical importance. People often face complicated psycho-
logical problems: They are depressed and lonely, a close friend is addicted to drugs, they are
anxious about sexual relations, frequent arguments threaten the stability of a romantic relation-
ship. To solve such problems, one requires some sort of conceptual framework that specifies
causes of the problem and factors that might bring about change. In other words, one needs a
personality theory.
Historically, the practical problems that have been most important to the development of per-
sonality theories have involved psychopathology. Many of the theorists discussed in this book
were also therapists. They began their careers by trying to solve practical problems they faced
when trying to help their clients. Their theories were, in part, an attempt to systematize the les-
sons about human nature that they learned by working on practical problems in therapy.
Although not all personality theories had clinical origins, for any theory, a crucial bottom
line for evaluating the theoretical approach is to ask whether its ideas are of practical benefit to
individuals and to society at large.
Important Issues in Personality Theory

We have just reviewed four topic areas in the study of personality: (1) personality structure,
(2) personality processes, (3) personality development, and (4) psychopathology and behavior
change. Next, we will consider a series of conceptual issues that are central to the field. By “con-
ceptual issues,” we mean a set of questions about personality that are so fundamental that they
may arise no matter what topic one is addressing and that one must address regardless of one’s
theoretical perspective.
Philosophical View of the Person

No theory can be adequately understood without some knowledge of the cultural and personal soil
from which it springs.
Rogers (1959, p. 185)
Personality theorists do not confine themselves to narrow questions about human behavior.
Instead, they boldly tackle the big, broad question: What is the basic nature of human nature?
Personality theorists, in other words, provide philosophical views about the basic nature of
human beings. One critical consideration when evaluating a theory, then, is the overall view of
the person that it provides.
Personality theories embrace strikingly different views of the essential qualities of human
nature. Some view people as rational actors—beings who reason about the world, weigh the costs
and benefits of alternative courses of action, and behave based on these rational calculations. To
others, human nature is animalistic, with people primarily driven by irrational forces.
Where did the difference among theories come from? Philosophical views arise in socio-
historical contexts. In other words, the historical circumstances of the psychologist influence
the theory that he or she develops. In the late 19th century, scientists explored the physics of
energy—and Sigmund Freud proposed an energy-based model of mind (Chapter 3). The cri-
sis of World War II prompted a broad intellectual movement that confronted issues of personal
responsibility and freedom of choice, and this movement, in turn, informed the humanistic and
phenomenological personality theories (Chapters 5 and 6) that developed in the 1950s (Fulton,
1999). At around the same time, mathematicians and engineers developed machines that seemed
to think – computers—and psychologists adopted the metaphor that the mind is like a computer.
In our current era, scientists in multiple fields explore the nature of complex systems (Holland,
2014; a complex system is one that contains large numbers of highly interacting parts)—and
personality theorists adopt “systems” perspectives on personality structure and dynamics (Kuhl,
Quirin, & Koole, 2015; Mayer, 2015; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). If Freud had been born in 1956
instead of 1856, he would not have developed the theory that he did.
Internal and External Determinants of Behavior

Is human behavior and experience determined by processes inside the person or causes external
to the person? If you are a hardworking student, is it because of your confidence and personal
goals (an internal cause) or your parents and schooling (an external cause). If you are disap-
pointed in yourself, is it because of your perfectionistic thinking (an internal cause) or because
social forces provided less support and fewer opportunities to people of your nationality, ethnic
group, or gender (an external cause)?
All theories of personality recognize that both external and internal factors are influential.
Nonetheless, they differ considerably in the emphasis they give to one or the other. Consider the
differences between the most influential psychologists of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud and
B. F. Skinner. According to Freud, we are controlled by internal forces: unconscious impulses
and emotions that are buried deep in our unconscious minds. According to Skinner, we are
controlled by external forces: environmental rewards and punishments that govern our actions.
“A person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him,” Skinner writes (1971, p. 211).
Freud’s and Skinner’s views are extreme in the light of contemporary scientific knowledge.
Virtually all personality psychologists today acknowledge both external and internal determinants
of human action. Nonetheless, contemporary theories continue to differ markedly in the degree
to which they emphasize one versus the other factor. These differences become apparent when
one examines the basic variables—or, as we called them earlier, the basic units of analysis—of
a given theory. Consider two perspectives you will read about in later chapters. In trait theo-
ries of personality, the basic units of analysis refer to structures in the person that purportedly
are inherited and produce highly generalized patterns of behavior (McCrae & Costa, 2008). In
social cognitive theories of personality, the basic units of analysis are knowledge structures and
thinking processes that are acquired through interaction with the social and cultural environment
(Bandura, 1999; Mischel & Shoda, 2008). As you can infer from their basic units, these theories
differentially emphasize internal and external determinants of personality.
Consistency Across Situations and Over Time

How consistent is personality from situation to situation? To what extent are you “the same per-
son” when with friends as you are with your parents? Or when you are at a party versus present
during a classroom discussion? And how consistent is personality across time? How similar is
your personality now to what it was when you were a child? And how similar will it be 20 years
from now?
Answering these questions is more difficult than it may appear. In part, this is because one has
to decide on what counts as an example of personality consistency versus inconsistency. Consider
a simple example. Suppose that you have two supervisors at a job, one male and one female, and
that you tend to act in an agreeable manner toward one supervisor and disagreeably toward the
other. Are you being inconsistent in your personality? If one thinks that a basic feature of per-
sonality is agreeableness, then the answer is yes. But suppose this situation were analyzed by a
psychologist who adheres to psychoanalytic theory, which suggests that (1) people you encounter
in your adult life may symbolically represent parental figures and (2) a basic personality dynamic
involves attraction toward one’s opposite-sex parent and rivalry toward the same-sex parent—
something called an “Oedipal complex”. From this view, you may be acting in a very consistent
manner. The different job supervisors may symbolically represent different parental figures, and
you may be consistently reenacting Oedipal motives that cause you to act in a different manner
toward one versus the other person.
Even if people agree on what counts as consistency, they may disagree about the factors that
cause personality to be consistent. Consider consistency over time. It unquestionably is the case
that individual differences are stable, to a significant degree, over long periods of time (Fraley,
2002; Roberts & Del Vecchio, 2000). If you are more extraverted than your friends today, you
are quite likely to be more extraverted than these same people 20 years from now. But why? One
possibility is that the core structures of personality are inherited and that they change little across
the course of life. Another possibility, however, is that the environment plays a critical role in
fostering consistency. Exposure to the same family members, friends, educational systems, and
social circumstances over long periods of time may contribute to personality consistency over
time (Lewis, 2002).
No personality theorist thinks that you will fall asleep an introvert and wake up the next morn-
ing an extravert. Yet the field’s theoretical frameworks do provide different views on the nature
of personality consistency and change and on people’s capacity to vary their personality function-
ing across time and place. To some theorists, variation in behavior is a sign of inconsistency in
personality. To others, it may reflect a consistent personal capacity to adapt one’s behavior to the
different requirements of different social situations (Mischel, 2004).
The Unity of Experience and Action and the Concept of Self

Our psychological experiences generally have an integrated, or coherent, quality to them (Cervone
& Shoda, 1999b). Our actions are patterned and organized, rather than random and chaotic. As
we move from place to place, we retain a stable sense of ourselves, our past, and our goals for the
future. There is a unity to our experiences and action.
Although we take it for granted that our experiences are unified, in some sense this fact is quite
surprising. The brain contains a large number of information-processing systems, many of which
function at the same time, in partial isolation from one another (Pinker, 1997). If we examine the
contents of our own conscious experiences, we will find that most of our thoughts are fleeting. It
is hard to keep any one idea in mind for long periods. Seemingly random ideas pop into our
heads. Nonetheless, we rarely experience the world as chaotic or our lives as disjointed. Why?
Lighthousebay / Getty Images

A major challenge for personality science is to understand how people developed a
consist, unified sense of self.
There are two types of answers to this question. One is that the multiple components of the mind
function as a complex system. The parts are interconnected, and the patterns of interconnection
enable the multipart system to function in a smooth, coherent manner. Computer simulations of
personality functioning (Nowak, Vallacher, & Zochowski, 2002), as well as neuroscientific investi-
gations of the reciprocal links among brain regions (Sporns, 2010; Tononi & Edelman, 1998), are
beginning to shed light on how the mind manages to produce coherence in experience and action.
The second type of answer involves the concept of the self. Although we may experience
a potentially bewildering diversity of life events, we do experience them from a consistent
perspective, that of ourselves (Harré, 1998). People construct coherent autobiographical
memories, which contribute to coherence in our understanding of who we are (Conway &
Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). The concept of the self, then, has proven valuable in accounting for
the unity of experience (Baumeister, 1999; Robins, Norem, & Cheek, 1999; Robins, Tracy, &
Trzesniewski, 2008).
Varying States of Awareness and the Concept

of the Unconscious
Are we aware of the contents of our mental life? Or do most mental activities occur outside of
awareness or unconsciously?
On the one hand, much of the brain’s activities unquestionably occur outside of awareness.
Consider what is happening as you read this book. Your brain is engaging in large numbers of
functions ranging from the monitoring of your internal physiological state to the deciphering of
the marks of ink that constitute the words on this page. All this occurs without your conscious
attention. You do not consciously have to think to yourself “I wonder if these squiggles of ink
form words” or “Maybe I should check to see if sufficient amounts of oxygen are getting to my
bodily organs.” These functions are executed automatically. But these functions are not the ones
of main interest to the personality psychologist.
Personality scientists ask whether significant aspects of personality functioning—motivation,
emotions—occur outside of awareness. If there is evidence that they do, the personality scientist
tries to conceptualize the mental systems that give rise to conscious and unconscious processes
(Kihlstrom, 2008; Pervin, 2003). The fact that some brain functions occur outside of awareness
does not imply that the most significant personality processes occur without our awareness. Peo-
ple engage in much self-reflection. They are particularly likely to reflect on themselves when they
face life circumstances of great importance, where the decisions that are made (e.g., whether and
where to attend college, whether to marry a certain person, whether to have children, what pro-
fession to pursue) have major long-term consequences. In these critical circumstances, conscious
processes are influential. Thus, many personality psychologists study conscious self-reflection,
even while recognizing that numerous aspects of mental life occur outside of awareness.
The Influence of the Past, Present, and Future on Behavior

Are we prisoners of our past? Or is our personality shaped by present events and personal aspira-
tions for the future? Theorists agree that behavior can be influenced only by factors operating
in the present; a basic principle of causality is that presently active processes are the causes of
events. In this sense, only the present is important in understanding behavior. But the present
can be influenced by experiences in the remote past or in the recent past. Similarly, what one
is thinking about in the present can be influenced by thoughts about the immediate future or
the distant future. People vary in the extent to which they worry about the past and the future.
And personality theorists differ in their concern with the past and the future as determinants of
behavior in the present. As you will see in the chapters ahead, some theorists suggest that we
are primarily prisoners of our past. Psychoanalytic theory posits that personality structures are
formed through experiences in childhood and that the personality dynamics established then
persist throughout the life course. Others are harshly critical of this psychoanalytic conclusion.
Personality construct theory (Chapter 11) and social-cognitive theory (Chapters 12–13) suggest
that people have the capacity to change their own personal capabilities and tendencies and to
explore the social and psychological systems that give people this lifelong capacity for personal
agency (Bandura, 2006).
Meaning and Reasons for Action

If you observe some people and want to describe what they are doing, how would you do it? It
sounds simple at first: Just count their behaviors. You might count the number of times a person
talks, or smiles, or frowns, or checks social media. But is this sufficient? Are any two people who
have the same “counts”—for example, 6 talks, 5 smiles, 2 frowns, and 29 social media checks in
an hour—the same, in a psychologically significant way?
The problem with “just counting” is that the counts overlook people’s reasons for action. One
person might be smiling because she’s happy. Another might smile as a way of putting other peo-
ple in a good mood. Yet others might smile to make a good impression or as a strategy to control
their anxiety. The existence of different reasons means that people who are doing the same thing
behaviorally are not the same psychologically. Reasons for action may vary widely from one per-
son to the next. When one research team asked people why they had sex, participants identified
more than a dozen different reasons: stress reduction, attaining social status, expressing love and
commitment to someone, sheer physical pleasure, feelings of obligation, and more (Meston &
Buss, 2007).
The implication is that, in personality theory and research, one often must pay attention to
subjective meaning rather than merely to observable behavior. People do not respond merely to
physical stimuli in the environment. They respond to social circumstances that have personal
meaning to them.
Although this point is obvious once stated, you will see that personality theories differ in the
degree to which they pay attention to subjective meaning and people’s reasons for action. Some
theorists do count behaviors (Chapter 8) or study the influence of physical stimuli (Chapter 10)
without deeply exploring people’s reasons for action. However, most of the personality theorists
are centrally concerned with the way in which people make sense of—or “assign meaning to”—
the situations, events, and relationships that make up their lives.
Can We have a Science of Personality? What kind of a Science

can it be?
A final issue of importance concerns the type of theory of personality that one reasonably can
pursue. We have taken it for granted thus far that one can craft a science of personality, in other
words, that the methods of science can inform the nature of persons. This assumption seems
to be a safe one. People are objects in a physical universe. They consist of biological systems
comprised of physical and chemical parts. Science thus should be able to tell us something
about them.
Nonetheless, one can reasonably question the forms of scientific analysis that can be applied
to the understanding of persons. Much of the progress of science has involved analyses that are
reductionistic. A system is understood by reducing a complex whole to its simpler parts and
showing how the parts give rise to the functioning of the whole.
lubilub / Getty Images
One challenge is building a theory of personality is cultural variation; the nature of personality and
individual differences may vary from one culture to another. For example, in India, people recognize
three main personality traits, the trigunas, which are characteristics first identified centuries ago
in Hindu philosophy (Singh, Misra, & De Raad, 2013). These traits generally are not found in studies
conducted in Western cultures, such as the United States.
Evaluating Personality Theories 21
Such analyses work wonderfully when applied to physical systems. A biological system, for
example, can be understood in terms of the biochemistry of its parts. The chemistry, in turn, can
be understood in terms of the underlying physics of the chemical components. But personality is
not merely a physical system. As just noted, people respond to meaning. There is no guarantee
that the traditional scientific procedures of breaking a system into constituent parts will be suf-
ficient to understand processes of meaning construction. Numerous scholars have suggested that
importing the methods of the physical sciences into the study of human meaning systems is a
mistake (e.g., Geertz, 2000). To such commentators, the idea that people have “parts” is “at best
a metaphor” (Harré, 1998, p. 15). The risk of adopting this metaphor is that, to use a cliche, “the
whole may be greater than the sum of the parts.”
By analogy, consider an analysis of a great work of art. In principle, one could analyze its
parts: There’s paint of one color over here, paint of some other color there, and so on. But this sort
of analysis will not enable one to understand the greatness of the painting. This requires viewing
the work as a whole and understanding the historical context in which it was made. By analogy,
a listing of the psychological parts of an actual person may, in principle, fail to portray the whole
individual and the developmental processes that contributed to his or her uniqueness. A question
to ask yourself when reading this textbook, then, is whether the personality theorists are as suc-
cessful as was da Vinci at providing holistic psychological portraits of complex individuals.
Evaluating Personality Theories

As we have noted, a unique feature of the scientific field of personality psychology is that it
contains more than one guiding theory. Multiple theories of personality inform us about human
nature and individual differences. A natural question, then, is how to evaluate the theories, one
versus the other. How can one judge the strengths and limitations of the various theories? What
criteria should be used to evaluate them?
To evaluate something, one generally asks what it is supposed to do. One then can judge how
well it is doing it. A more formal way to say this is that one asks about the functions that the
entity is supposed to serve. One then can evaluate the degree to which it is carrying out those
functions. Like all scientific theories, theories of personality can serve three key functions: They
can (1) organize existing information, (2) generate new knowledge about important issues, and
(3) identify entirely new issues that are deserving of study.
The first of these functions is obvious. Research provides an array of facts about personality,
personality development, and individual differences. Rather than merely listing these facts in
an unordered manner, it would be useful to organize them systematically. A logical, systematic
ordering of facts would enable one to keep track of what scientists know about personality. This
can make it easier to put that knowledge to use.
The second function is somewhat less obvious. In any field of study, there are issues—involv-
ing both basic science questions and applications of scientific knowledge—that everyone in the
field recognizes as important. A good theory fosters new knowledge about these issues. It is
generative. The theory helps people to generate new knowledge about the topics they recognize
as important to their field. In biology, Darwin’s theory of natural selection was useful not only
because it organized known facts about the world’s flora and fauna. Its additional value is that
it opened new pathways of knowledge about biology. In personality psychology, some theories
have proven to be highly generative. They have prompted researchers who are familiar with the
theory to use its ideas to generate new knowledge about personality.
The third function is of particular interest to both the personality scientist and the public at
large. A personality theory may identity entirely new areas of study—areas that people might
never have known about were it not for the theory. Psychodynamic theory opened the door to
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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(eBook PDF) Personality: Theory and

Research, 14th Edition

1 Personality Theory: From Everyday Observations

2 The Scientific Study of People 27

3 A Psychodynamic Theory: Freud’s Psychoanalytic

4 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Applications,

5 A Phenomenological Theory: The Personality Theory

6 Rogers’s Phenomenological Theory: Applications,

7 Trait Theories of Personality: Allport, Eysenck,

8 Trait Theory: The Five-Factor Model and Contemporary

9 Biological Foundations of Personality 241

10 Behaviorism and The Learning Approaches

11 A Cognitive Theory: George A. Kelly’s Personal

12 Social-Cognitive Theory: Bandura and Mischel 330

13 Social-Cognitive Theory: Applications, Related Theoretical

Contemporary Developments in Personality Theory: The KAPA Model, 373

14 Personality In Context: Interpersonal Relations,

Questions to be Addressed in this Chapter

Questions to be Addressed in this Chapter

Why Study Personality?

Three Goals for the Personality Theorist

also subcultures—associated with ethnicity, spiritual beliefs, or economic circumstances—

3. Applications: From Observation and Theory to Practice

Answering Questions about Persons Scientifically:

© The New Yorker Collection 2007 Mick Stevens from cartoonbank.com.

Growth and Development

Psychopathology and Behavior Change

Important Issues in Personality Theory

Philosophical View of the Person

Internal and External Determinants of Behavior

Consistency Across Situations and Over Time

The Unity of Experience and Action and the Concept of Self

Lighthousebay / Getty Images

Varying States of Awareness and the Concept

The Influence of the Past, Present, and Future on Behavior

Meaning and Reasons for Action

Can We have a Science of Personality? What kind of a Science

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Evaluating Personality Theories

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

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