What Is a Personality State?

Many researchers like to think of personalities as patterns of dynamic states. Thanks to technological advances, they can now measure the states and build statistical models from these measurements. Other researchers may have remained more sceptical: after all, isn’t personality something relatively stable, by definition? Can state models really help us better understand how people differ from one another in their personality traits? Trying to make sense of this topic, René Mõttus speaks to three experts on the topic: Gabriela Harari, Kai Horstmann and Whitney Ringwald. They discuss what personality states are and how these relate to personality traits, the primary focus of personality research.