Abstract
It is argued that the concepts of individual differences and personality are an indispensable part of any scientific psychology, by virtue of the fact that stimulus‐response sequences are inevitably mediated by an organism the structure of which, partly determined genetically and partly by its reinforcement history, critically affects the sequence. Theories in this field, to be useful, must be linked with the theories and findings of experimental psychology, and reflect advances in conceptualization and thinking there. Personality theories are both descriptive and causal, and it is argued that without the causal element descriptive patterns, usually arrived at by correlational and factor analytic methods, possess an element of subjectivity which is so strong as to make any definitive statements impossible. It is further argued that such a paradigm, embracing both descriptive and causal factors, is already in existence, and is capable of integrating well with many different areas of experimental psychology.

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