Standing apart from psychoanalysis, the field of personality psychology was developed in the 1930's by Harvard theorists Murray and Allport, and worked by, among others, Cattell.

Allport saw personality less as a reaction to outside events than as a changing, internal process. Personality traits run from being specific to a certain behavior to a general way of being in the world. Three kinds of traits grouped by Allport are:

1. Common traits - comparing people in the same culture

2. Personal traits - five to ten traits used to describe a particular person

3. Cardinal traits - contributing to a dominant feature in someone's personality

Allport also concluded that you can understand a person's philosophy of life by finding out what his/or her set of values is. Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey created the Study of Values assessment, a self-report measuring moral/ethical world view according to six attitudinal categories:

1. Theoretical

2. Economic

3. Aesthetic

4. Religious

5. Social

6. Political