Read the text carefully and answer the questions:
Meenakshi is ten years old. The psychologist assessed her intellect and her mental age was found to be twelve years. Based on the normal curve, she is considered to be on the extreme side of the curve.
IQ scores are distributed in the population in such a way that the scores of most people tend to fall in the middle range of the distribution. The frequency distribution for the IQ scores tends to approximate a bell shaped curve.
Meenakshi is also extraverted and enjoys being with people. She has the ability to understand the motives, feelings and behaviours of other people. She also believes strongly in non violence and her entire life is guided by this value. Her friends call her Gandhian due to these traits. Further, they believe that she has developed these traits because of the culture in which she grew up.
Meenakshi's life is guided by the values of non-violence and her friends call her 'Gandhian'. According to Allport's trait theory, this trait is an example of :
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Cardinal traits
Allport categorised traits into cardinal, central and secondary.
Option (1) Surface traits — Incorrect. Surface traits belong to Cattell’s theory, not Allport’s: they result from the interaction of the stable, basic source traits. They are not one of Allport’s three kinds of traits.
Option (2) Secondary traits — Incorrect. These are the least generalised characteristics of a person, such as ‘likes mangoes’ or ‘prefers ethnic clothes’. A value that guides a whole life is far wider than this.
Option (3) Central traits — Incorrect. These are less pervasive but still quite generalised dispositions, such as warm, sincere or diligent, the qualities written in a testimonial. They describe a person without being the goal of her/his whole life.
Option (4) Cardinal traits — Correct. Cardinal traits are highly generalised dispositions that indicate the goal around which a person’s entire life seems to revolve; Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence is a cardinal trait, and such traits give identities like the ‘Gandhian’ trait. Meenakshi’s entire life is guided by non-violence and her friends call her Gandhian.
Note 1: The case study is taken from the chapter ‘Variations in Psychological Attributes’, but this question is based on the chapter ‘Self and Personality’. However, since it is a case-study based question, all the questions on this case study are tagged to the chapter the case study is taken from.
Note 2: A similar question was also asked in CUET (UG) 2023 on 15-06-2023 (Slot 3).
NCERT (2025-26): “Allport’s Trait Theory … Allport, based on this, categorised traits into cardinal, central, and secondary. Cardinal traits are highly generalised dispositions. They indicate the goal around which a person’s entire life seems to revolve. Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence and Hitler’s Nazism are examples of cardinal traits. Such traits often get associated with the name of the person so strongly that they derive such identities as the ‘Gandhian’ or ‘Hitlerian’ trait. Less pervasive in effect, but still quite generalised dispositions, are called central traits. These traits (e.g., warm, sincere, diligent, etc.) are often used in writing a testimonial or job recommendation for a person. The least generalised characteristics of a person are called secondary traits. Traits such as ‘likes mangoes’ or ‘prefers ethnic clothes’ are examples of secondary traits.…” “Cattell: Personality Factors … Raymond Cattell believed that there is a common structure on which people differ from each other. This structure could be determined empirically. He tried to identify the primary traits from a huge array of descriptive adjectives found in language. He applied a statistical technique, called factor analysis, to discover the common structures. He found 16 primary or source traits. The source traits are stable, and are considered as the building blocks of personality. Besides these, there are also a number of surface traits that result out of the interaction of source traits.…” |