However, trait ascription and trait-based models of personality remain contentious in modern psychology and social science research.
[8] Incorrectly ascribing traits to other persons based on limited information or observations intuitively plays a role in the formation and perpetuation of some social phenomena such as stereotypes and prejudice.
As such, methods to mitigate the effect of trait ascription bias on personality assessments outside of the lab are also of interest to social scientists.
[6][10] Criticism is based either on the non-existence of personality traits (contrary to five factor descriptions), or suggest divergent interpretations of results and alternative mechanisms of ascription, limiting the scope of existing work.
In a 1982 study involving fifty-six undergraduate psychology students from the University of Bielefeld, Kammer et al. demonstrated that subjects rated their own variability on each of 20 trait terms to be considerably higher than their peers.
Attributional theory[17] is concerned with how people subsequently judge behavioural causes, which also bears relevance to trait ascription and related biases.
It supports the notion that there are cross-cultural, enduring traits which manifest in behaviour and can, if correctly ascribed to individuals, provide an actor with predictive power over an observer.
Trait ascription bias, regardless of the theoretical mechanisms underpinning it, intuitively plays a role in various social phenomenon observed in the wild.
[1][8][13] Furthermore, the theoretical bases for trait ascription bias are criticized[13] for failing to recognize constraints and "questionable conceptual" assumptions.