Abstract: The pattern of intra-individual variation may not change across situations and over time, therefore it contains a large amount of significant information about a person's personality. The stable variation pattern is called a person’s “behavioural signature”, which characterizes stability and uniqueness in each individual behaviour to certain characteristics of a situation. Compared to the trait paradigm which dwells on motionless and phenomenological description, the rule of intra-individual variation, from the dynamic perspective, may reflect an inner cognitive pattern and mechanism. The paper briefly introduces to the Chinese psychologists the simulated situations approach, which can help personality researchers understand and find out the pattern of intra-individual variation.

Key words: personality, behavioral signature, dynamics process, the simulated situation approach