Personality: The Psychological Behaviorism Theory 149personologist. Everyone has the ability to behave. It is per-
sonality that is important, for personality determines behav-
ior. Even when exceptional sensorimotor differences are
clearly the focus of attention, as with superb athletes or
virtuoso musicians, we explain the behavior with personality
terms such as “natural athlete” or “talent” or “genius” each of
which explains nothing.
Psychological behaviorism, in contrast, considers sensori-
motor repertoires to constitute learned personality traits in
whole or part. And there are very large individual differences
in such sensorimotor repertoires. Part of being a physically
aggressive person, for example, involves sensorimotor behav-
iors for being physically aggressive. Being a natural athlete,
as another example, involves a complex set of sensorimotor
skills (although different body types can be better suited for
different actions). Being dependent, as another example, may
also involve general deficits in behavior skills. Moreover,
sensorimotor repertoires impact on the other two personality
repertoires. For example, a person recognized for sensorimo-
tor excellence in an important field will display language-
cognitive and emotional-motivational characteristics of
“confidence” that have been gained from that recognition.
A good example of how sensorimotor repertoires are
part of personality occurred in a study by Staats and Burns
(1981). The Mazes and Geometric Design tests of the
Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence
(WPPSI) (Wechsler, 1967) were analyzed into sensorimotor
repertoire elements. That analysis showed that children learn
that repertoire—of complex visual discrimination and other
sensorimotor skills—when exposed to learning to write the let-
ters of the alphabet. The expectation, thus, is that children
trained to write letters will thereby acquire the repertoire by
which to be “intelligent” on the Mazes and Geometric Design
tests, as confirmed in our study. As other examples, on the
Stanford-Binet (Terman & Merrill, 1937) the child has to build
a block tower, complete a line drawing of a man, discriminate
forms, tie a knot, trace a maze, fold and cut a paper a certain
way, string beads a certain way, and so on. These all require
that the child have the necessary sensorimotor basic behavioral
repertoire. This repertoire is also measured on developmental
tests. This commonality shows that tests considered measures
of different aspects of personality actually measure the same
BBR. Such an integrative analysis would be central in concep-
tualizing the field and the field needs many such analyses.
The sensorimotor repertoire also determines the individ-
ual’s experiences in ways that produce various aspects of per-
sonality. For example, the male who acquires the skills of a
ballet dancer, painter, carpenter, center in the NBA, symphony
violinist, auto mechanic, hair dresser, professional boxer,
architect, or opera singer will in the learning and practice of
those skills have experiences that will have a marked affect on
his other personality repertoires. Much emotional-motiva-
tional and language-cognitive learning will take place, and
each occupational grouping will as a result have certain com-
mon characteristics.
As final examples, being physically aggressive is generally
seen as an aspect of personality, a part of some inner psycho-
logical process. However, a person cannot be physically ag-
gressive without the sensorimotor skills for being so. It is true
that more is involved than just those skills. But those sensori-
motor skills are an important part. Likewise, part of a person’s
being caring and nurturing resides in the sensorimotor skills
for being so. A person cannot be a “natural” athlete without
having learned the repertoire of sensorimotor skills that en-
ables him or her to learn new sports easily, rapidly, gracefully,
and very well. One cannot be a mechanical, athletic, artistic,
or surgical genius, or a musical or dance virtuoso, without the
requisite sensorimotor repertoire. Are sensorimotor differ-
ences part of personality? And are those differences learned?
The PB theory answer to both questions is yes.
The PB analyses that show tests measure BBRs provide a
whole new way of viewing psychological tests, with a large
new agenda for research, as will be indicated.Definition of the Personality TraitThe personality trait is thus a particular feature of one or more
of the three basic behavioral repertoires. Traits involve com-
plex repertoires. For example, liking a religious song involves
an isolated emotion. But if the person also has a positive emo-
tional response to many religious stimuli—to the stated be-
liefs, history, rituals, holidays, personages, and tenets of
religion, generally and particularly—this constitutes a person-
ality trait, an important part of the emotional-motivational
BBR (as well as of language-cognitive and sensorimotor
repertoires). That emotional-motivational repertoire will have
general effects on the individual’s behavior, life experiences,
and further learning, both for normal and abnormal traits.
In PB the personality trait, as a complex repertoire of re-
sponses, is considered a universe from which the various sit-
uations of life sample. To illustrate, the individual’s language
repertoire includes many different behaviors. A question like
“How much are two and two?” is a life situation that samples
the language-cognitive repertoire in eliciting the one response
“Four.” Many items on intelligence testssampleindividuals’
language repertoires. That sample is representatives of how
rich that particular universe is. The entire universe is the total
BBR, that is, the personality repertoire.
Personality traits are constituted of particular repertoires
that produce types of experience, learning, and behavior. For