Personality theories are typically functional in their orientation. They focus on issues that are of critical importance in the development, adaptation, and survival of the organism - like the major motivations that explain human behavior. Personality theorists have customarily assigned a crucial role to the motivational process. These lead to the collection or observation of relevant empirical relations not yet observed. The acceptance or rejection of a theory is based on its utility, not by its truth or falsity .
Utility refers to verifiability and comprehensives.
It is important to distinguish between what may be called systematic and the heuristic generation of research. The capacity of a theory to generate research by suggesting ideas or even by arousing disbelief and resistance is referred to as the heuristic influence of the theory . A second function of a theory is to permit the incorporation of known empirical findings within a logically consistent and reasonably simple framework. Personality theories often lack formal elegance, yet they typically provide starting points, and focus that lead toward a better understanding of the issues we are interested in understanding. Personality theories are general theories of behavior, they attempt to deal with all behavioral phenomena of demonstrated significance.