Shweder R A
J Pers. 1975 Sep;43(3):455-84. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1975.tb00716.x.
Doubts are raised as to the extent of "applicability of the conceptualization that "personality" consists "of more or less stable internal factors that make one person's behavior consistent from one time to another, and different from the behavior other people would manifest in comparable situations". This is done by demonstrating the questionable validity of much of the extant empirical support for the "personality" concept. Respondents on interpersonal checklists, personality inventories and questionnaire interviews are shown to unwittingly sub stitute a theory of conceptual likenesses for a description of behavioral co-occurrences. Considerations about similarity are confounded with judgments about probability to such an extent that items alike in concept are inferred to be behaviorally characteristic of the same person even when, as is typically the case, conceptual relationships among items do not correspond to the actual behavioral relationships among items. Examined are extant "personality theories" having to do with children's social behavior, adult behavior in small groups, maternal socialization practices, and psychopathology. These "theories" are shown to be no more than statements about how respondents (and psychologists) classify things as alike in meaning.
对于“人格”由或多或少稳定的内在因素构成这一概念化的适用范围产生了疑问，这些内在因素使一个人的行为在不同时间保持一致，并且与其他人在类似情况下表现出的行为不同。通过证明现有许多对“人格”概念的实证支持的有效性存疑来做到这一点。人际清单、人格量表和问卷调查访谈中的受访者被证明在不知不觉中用概念相似性理论替代了行为共现的描述。对相似性的考量与对概率的判断混淆到了这样的程度，以至于即使通常情况下项目之间的概念关系与项目之间的实际行为关系不对应，概念上相似的项目也被推断为同一个人的行为特征。研究了现有的与儿童社会行为、小群体中的成人行为、母亲的社会化实践以及精神病理学有关的“人格理论”。这些“理论”被证明不过是关于受访者（和心理学家）如何将事物在意义上归为相似的陈述。
