Character vs Personality

Character: 品质，品德
Personality: 个性

Character traits are objective, constant, and timeless.

Character traits include honesty, trust, respect, responsibility, leadership, loyalty and courage. One’s character can be objectively judged.

Character is defined as right or wrong.

Character, despite its detractors, can be taught.

However educators are bypassing the difficulty of teaching character and have gone directly to self-esteem, the reward of strong character. But without character, self-esteem is a hollow, free-floating concept.

And while character traits are universal, each individual has the choice to accept or reject them.

One of character’s best features is that you can mimic them without conviction and the end result is the same.

For instance, a coward can recognize he’s a coward yet still perform an act of bravery and no one will fault him acting out of character.

Personality is subjective.

Personality includes your sense of humor (or lack of), whether you’re outgoing or shy, friendly or stoic, your interests, passions, and the list goes on.

While some people have well-developed personalities, their character sucks and you eventually avoid them even though “they’re a lot of fun.”

Taking the historical big-picture long view, personality is neither right nor wrong.

Some people will like any particular personality and others won’t.