Early in his career, Allport spoke of two categories of traits: individual and common. As you might suspect, individual traits are unique to the person and define the nature of his or her individual character. Common traits are those shared by a number of people, such as the members of culture.
Common traits are abstractions, in that they reflect social mores and values and result from social to behave in certain Allport did pressure a way. not consider them to be basic traits, belonging to the individual. Rather, they are surface manifestations only. The individual is not deeply committed to the common traits: they do not define specifically one person's personality as opposed to another. Allport noted, as evidence for the ephemeral nature of common traits, the fact that they can and often do change as social standards or mores change.
Because of the possible confusion that can result from calling both of these phenomena traits, Allport later revised his terminology and called common traits simply traits and individual traits personal dispositions. Both are still traits, of course. They are "neuropsychic structures," in Allport's words, and serve to initiate as well as guide behavior. The definitions he provided for traits and personal dispositions are almost identical, except that the phrase peculiar to the individual is added to the definition of personal dispositions.
Once an observer has inferred the existence of a trait, the label he or she attaches to it may be arbitrary, according to Allport, as long as it is not deliberately misleading. To help in the naming of traits, Allport presented a list of some 18,000 trait labels (for those at a loss for words). Some examples of Allport's traits are dominance, submission, neuroticism, authoritarianism. masculinity or femininity, and conformity.
Allport was careful to distinguish what he considered traits from other personal characteristics that also capable of initiating and guiding behav- are ior- specifically, habits and attitudes.