Calvin says, "To understand human personality, you have to know if people behave to get rewards or to avoid punishments." Hobbes says, "I think that you also have to take into account each person's unique way of looking at the world and consider how that viewpoint determines personality." Calvin uses the approach, while Hobbes takes the approach to understanding personality.

Cognitive-behavioral approach focuses on contextual, environmental, and situational determinants of behavior, thought, and feeling, deemphasizing within-person dispositions in favor of external explanations. The cognitive-behavioral approach considers behaviors to be learned in various ways. Through one's own experience, the observation of others, processes of classical or operant conditioning, language

The trait approach focuses on relatively enduring dispositions that reside within a person. Traits are almost always defined as dimensions on which every person can be compared with other people. The trait position has also put conceptual and empirical emphasis on demonstrating the stability.