From Psychology to evolutionary biology: An integrated approach to the concept of personality

Abstract

The concept of personality is a complex and not entirely consensual. However, when we overcome the details of many operational definitions, we find the remaining constant – that personality characterises na individual’s particular mode of interaction with the surrounding world, conferring to one’s actions a given degree of predictability. Conceiving personality as an attribute of non-human species was almost a taboo until the 80’s, when ethologists studying the species phylogenetically closer to humans began to refer to the clearly differentiated chacater of each one of their study subjects – the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes spp.) – (e-g- De Wall, 1982; Goodall, 1986) and Stevenson-Hinde (1983a; 1983b) and collaborators (Stevenson-Hinde et al., 1980) published the results of a long-term study of rhesus macaques (Macaca Mulatta). (...)