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Personality is not behavior. I think we are just conflating those somewhat.

• rusk 8y ago
  Interesting ... personality strongly mediates behaviour. How else would you "measure" personality? A strict behaviorist (in the line of Watson or Skinner) would say personality doesn't matter or even exist. It's like the life of a subatomic particle - you only know of its effect but what actually goes on in there is forever a mystery. Unless you want to go psychodynamic on things but you'll have to start making excuses for Freud then!
  • bitexploder 8y ago
    I guess what I am proposing is not really testable. If behavior is the evidence of personality, maybe personality is always just a back-filled hand wavy explanation to describe the behavioral trends. I guess the reason I think that: there is evidence of that subatomic particle (personality) but it is very elusive.
    • rusk 8y ago
      > personality is always just a back-filled hand wavy explanation This is what Watson would have said (in a roundabout way) [0]. Perhaps it's not related but he's not considered to have been a very nice guy. [1] [2] Skinner was a lot more fun. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Behaviorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Behaviorism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#"Little_Albert"_experiment_(1920) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#"Little_Albert"... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Advertising
      • bitexploder 8y ago
        Thanks for sharing — I am not very well read on psychology so I probably operate in ignorance a lot. Never enough time to read and learn everything I wish I could.
        • rusk 8y ago
          The nice thing about psychology, is understanding a little bit about how the mind works, means you can optimise for increasing your capacity to learn all sorts of other things!