What Is the Difference Between Personality and Character?

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The difference between personality and character is that personality often refers to traits that an individual was born with while character largely involves defining an individual’s integrity. Common examples of personalities include extroverted, shy, energetic, lazy, confident, funny and negative. Character traits may include kindness, honesty and virtue.

When meeting an individual for the first time, most people can make at least a basic assessment of the person’s personality. Although it can take another meeting to confirm the personality, character traits often take a period of time to become apparent to an individual. In contrast to personality, many character traits come from a person’s beliefs. Unlike personalities in most instances, character traits may change in time.