Whole Trait Theory

“The trait approach, as instantiated in the Big 5/HEXACO model (Ashton & Lee, 2009; Costa & McCrae, 2006; DeYoung, Weisberg, Quilty, & Peterson, 2013; Goldberg, 1992; Johnson, 1997, Perugini & Gallucci, 1997; see also Wright et al., 2013), has made remarkable progress in identifying the content of…”

“The social cognitive approach starts with the observation that trait manifestations appear to be inconsistent (Cervone, 2005; Hartshorne & May, 1928; Mischel, 1968).”

“A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript A uthor M anuscript competencies, self-regulatory plans, and goals (Allport, 1937; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Mischel, 1973).”

“Although the trait approach would allow for some variability in behavior, it does not appear to allow the high degree of variable responding required in the social-cognitive approach (Allport, 1937; Fleeson & Noftle, 2009; Mischel, 1973).”

“Traits matter to important outcomes (Duckworth, Weir, Tsukayama, & Kwok, 2012; Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2006; Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007; Turiano, Chapman, Gruenewald, & Mroczek, 2013), and observers agree about Big 5 levels of targets (Vazire, 2010).”

“Furthermore, although traits do a reasonable job of describing behavior and identity, even on that front they fall somewhat short (Kandler, Zimmerman, & McAdams, 2014; McAdams & Pals, 2006).”

“Work from the personality literature suggests that traits seem to associate with momentary manifestations of behavior such that people who have higher momentary levels on a variable also have higher trait levels (Fleeson and Gallagher, 2009; Fleeson and Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“Goal-directed processes have also been proposed to play a more general role in shaping moment-tomoment trait expressions (DeYoung, 2015; DeYoung & Weisberg, 2019; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Jayawickreme et al., 2019).”

“Fluctuating personality expressions do not mean that personality traits are changing from moment to moment, rather that personality expression is flexible around stable trait levels (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“So far, research has mainly investigated either outcomes of or naturally occurring situations as antecedents of personality state change, both in work and non-work settings (e.g., Debusscher et al., 2014, 2016, 2017; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Judge et al., 2014).”

“Research has also shown that personality can fluctuate across shorter timescales than years (Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), with within-person changes in personality potentially occurring over days and representing more than just fluctuations in affect (Wilson, Thompson, & Vazire,…”

“…FTP would be better conceptualized in line with current perspectives on personality traits that emphasize the need to understand both individuals’ dispositional tendencies as well as their within-person state variability (e.g. Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Roberts & Jackson, 2008).”

“To explore how self-distancing and heterogeneity in adversity inform wisdom-related changes over time, we draw on the Whole Trait Theory (Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“…traits more generally, which view personality traits O’Connor et al. 67 largely as density distributions of states (e.g., Whole Trait Theory, Fleeson and Jayawickreme, 2015) or as precursors to states in the context of situational triggers (e.g., Trait Activation Theory, Tett and Burnett,…”

“…accounts that conceptualize personality traits as interindividual differences in within-person state dynamics (Back, 2021; Baumert et al., 2017; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Geukes et al., 2018; Geukes & Back, 2017), narcissism can additionally be captured as interindividual differences in…”

“The Whole-Trait Theory (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015) and the TESSERA framework (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017) proposed that states are manifesting as an interaction of traits with specific situations.”

“This fits with and extends the findings that individuals adapt their personality characteristics to fit situational requirements (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“Although it has been theoretically argued that whole trait theory should also apply to evaluative traits such as virtues or character strengths (Fleeson et al., 2015; Jayawickreme et al., 2014; Jayawickreme & Fleeson, 2017), there is little direct empirical evidence to support this claim so far.”

“” 2 Since Carlson ’ s admonishment, the fi eld has done a better job including the person, particularly with the emergence of narrative identity research (Dunlop et al., 2016), within-person variability (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), and idiographic approaches (Beck & Jackson, 2020).”

“In a very interesting analysis of this type, Gurtman (1999) administered a large variety of self-report measures of social competence and attempted to organize them in terms of locations within the interpersonal circumplex.”

“Going one step further, scholars have begun to address the possible interplay of personality and motivation by suggesting that they may represent two sides of the same coin: a descriptive side and an explanatory side (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“However, recent trait and personality theories argue that individual differences consist of stable and fluctuating parts (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“Whole Trait Theory, the most recent instantiation of this work (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), recognizes that variability represents a meaningful component of personality, above and beyond an individual ’ s typical mode of behaviour.”

“…design is better suited to accurately reflect the relationship between an individual’s experience of daily events and the respective outcomes, representing intraindividual differences over a given time period (Cervone, 2005; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Jayawickreme, Tsukayama, & Kashdan, 2017).”

“These personality states form a density distribution of that state and the location of this distribution can be interpreted as the person mean of the personality state (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“Traits are personal differences that reflect relatively stable temperaments of thought, feeling, or behavior (Fleeson and Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“This is in line with more recent personality theories, which conceptualize traits as density distributions of states (e.g., Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“This view of mindfulness is reflective of the whole trait theory (Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015) which views traits as mean descriptors of underlying density distributions of related states.”

“Building on the framework of the whole trait theory 41 , individual differences (e.g., in stress reactivity) may best be characterized by between-person differences in intraindividual, situation-state contingencies 18,42 .”

“Fleeson and Jayawickreme (2015) have attempted to remedy this limitation with their conception of whole trait theory, which blends social–cognitive features with traits by characterizing traits as “density distributions” of states.”

“In this regard, the present research takes up recent calls in personality psychology to focus on the cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes that characterise individual differences in personality dispositions (Back & Vazire, 2015; Baumert et al., 2017; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“Given such remarkable stability in variability, Fleeson—in his density distribution approach (Fleeson, 2001), and later also in his more elaborate Whole Trait Theory (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015)—suggested that within-person personality variability is as key to the understanding of personality as the average state le…”

“Personality traits refer to people’s characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, or how someone tends to behave, averaged across situations (Allport, 1937; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“…classification; positive psychology interventions Beliefs and assumptions that describe reality–worldviews– are the subject of a growing body of literature that highlights their importance in explaining personality differences (e.g., Dweck, 2017; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; KoltkoRivera, 2004).”

“In other words, the Whole Trait Theory postulates that the descriptive and predictive adequacy of the Big Five are explained by regularities at the level of her intentional mental states.”

“An individual's trait standing can be thought of as an average of their state expressions across time and situations (Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), which show as much variability within-person as between-persons (Fleeson, 2001; Heller, Komar, & Lee, 2007).”

“…manifestations of the trait (Rauthmann, 2015; Rauthmann et al., 2014), explain the social and cognitive mechanisms underlying the trait and state manifestations of the trait (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), and explicitly detail how the trait can be operationalized and measured (Ziegler, 2014).”

“There is merit in adopting a density distribution model of personality states (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015) for understanding high functioning and growth in the aftermath of difficulties and challenges, in which granular moments experienced in days, weeks, and months are collected and synthesized.”

“Averaging hedonic and eudaimonic motives across these repeated measures may yield more reliable measures of individuals’ trait hedonic and eudaimonic motives (Fleeson et al., 2015).”

“Although the association between situation cues and state expression is at the core of the person-situation literature (Baumert et al., 2017; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Jayawickreme et al., 2019; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Rauthmann, 2021; Rauthmann & Sherman, 2020), little is known about how…”

“Fleeson and Jayawickreme’s whole trait theory [31] and other works [32,33]), and finally by investigating how people shape situations [21,34–36].”

“Varying states can at least partly be explained by the different characteristics of situations and expectations associated with them (Fleeson, 2007; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Rauthmann et al., 2014).”

“Whole Trait Theory proposes that this explanatory side of traits consists of Bsocialcognitive^ mechanisms such as goals, plans and rules (Mischel 2004; Snow 2010).”

“T h i s a r ti c l e i s i n t e nd e d s o l e l y f o r t h e p e r s on a l u s e o f t h e i nd i v i du a l u s e r a nd i s no t t o b e d i ss e m i n a t e d b r o a d l y . form the basis of most current personality-related theorizing (e.g., DeYoung, 2015; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015).”

“This distinction is beyond the scope of this paper (but see Fleeson and Jayawickreme (2015) and Read et al. (2017) for discussions of whether stable individuals differences should be viewed as causes of states, outcomes, or both).”

“A similar standpoint was presented by Fleeson and Jayawickreme (2015) who suggested that traits are tools for accomplishing goals.”

“Theoretically, a dynamic systems perspective suggests that personality can be conceptualized as a self-regulating network of components (Danvers, Wundrack, & Mehl, 2020,; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Sosnowska, Kuppens, et al., 2019).”

“…(Wright et al., 2020), we set forth a neo-Aristotelian account of virtue, integrated with whole trait theory from personality psychology (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015), that keeps with some of Aristotle’s claims about virtue, phronesis, and character, sometimes opting for views that we…”

“…and explanations of personality, in one form or another these latter variables are featured in most contemporary models of personality (e.g., DeYoung, 2015; Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015; Mischel & Shoda, 1995), with strong overlap in how the different models conceptualize their interplay.”

“Taking the perspective that cross-role trait consistency is closely tied to role expectations [17] , we believe that it may play a role in the process that job stressors transmit to the family and cause WFC.”

“This theory centres upon the identification, measurement and description of specific traits, subsequently highlighting differences between individuals [2].”