Re: “Odd Man Out,”1 animals don’t have personalities since they are not persons. But individuals in many species (most, all?) differ from one another in the way they behave. If you do a behavioral experiment on rats, they will differ in how they respond, and the differences are in some situations consistent across tests that measure similar characteristics (like fear responses). So the rats differ in behavioral characteristics. You might want to call it something besides personality, but that’s a matter of labeling.
Joseph LeDoux
New York University
New York, NY
ledoux@cns.nyu.edu
Sociologically, we often have a knee-jerk response to using terms typically isolated to humans when studying animals.
At the same time, if the best word for what we are attempting to describe in animals happens to be “personality,” then for conciseness in communication I would argue to allow the word to be utilized. If we take the alternative ...
