Not all children display the basic behavioral repertoires at the same age. One child, as an example, can say first words at nine months, while another is two or more years old before doing the same. Some children never display language. Traditional behaviorism never dealt with such individual differences; radical behaviorism completed rejected the field of personality as an explanation of behavior. In the PB view individual differences are very important, for people obviously do not respond the same to the same situation. They carry something within, a personality, that explains their differences in behavior. What has not been defined adequately is what that personality is. PB states it is composed of the basic behavioral repertoires that have learned. PB takes the position that the study of personality should consist of the study of the basic behavioral repertoires that determine why people behave differently. As an example, take intelligence as a personality trait. The PB approach is to analyze what the repertoires are that the intelligent person has that the less intelligent person has to a lesser extent (see Staats, 1971) Then how those repertoires are learned requires specification including empirical demonstration. PB has made a good start in providing a theoretical-empirical foundation for its theory of personality (see Staats, 1996, 2002) and has shown in research how “intelligence-BBRs” are learned (Staats & Burns, 1981).

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