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Personality and Assessment
... Old problems concerning the accuracy of person perception and the utility of trait constructs persist (Block, 1977;Cronbach, 1955;McArthur& Baron, 1983;Meehl, 1954;Shweder, 1977;Swann, 1984). In personality psychology, attention continues to focus on the usefulness of trait constructs in predicting and explaining behavior (Buss & Craik, 1983;Mischel, 1968;Wright & Mischel, 1987). In social psychology, attention has concentrated on the nature of people's intuitive trait theories and the process by which people make inferences about dispositions (Jones, 1979;Nisbett, 1980;Nisbett & Ross, 1980). ...
... Early work on impression formation recognized that people use trait terms in contextualized ways and warned of the dangers of studying trait terms that were removed from their conversational contexts (see Asch, 1946, p. 284). Although some theoretical definitions of traits and dispositions originally were contextualized, their operational definitions, as revealed in the research practices of the fields, were not (Mischel, 1968;Peterson, 1968;Vernon, 1964;Wiggins, 1973). In the personality literature, standardized assessment procedures (e.g., behavior checklists, MMPI items) provided respondents with little opportunity to convey the qualifiers they might ordinarily use. ...
... Second, it led some to the conclusion that the validity of people's dispositional constructs could be evaluated using the same empirical criteria developed in the early personality literature: cross-situational consistency coefficients (Nisbett, 1980). As a result, the failure in the early trait literature to find global cross-situational consistencies in social behavior (Hartshorne & May, 1928;Mischel, 1968) was interpreted as indirect evidence of the shortcomings of the layperson. Indeed, the decontextualized view implied that people's mere use of dispositional terms demonstrated their insensitivity to the variability of behavior. ...
The view that the intuitive psychologist exaggerates the consistency of personality implies that dispositional constructs are condition-free summary statements about generalized behavioral tendencies. This article considers the alternative view that dispositional constructs summarize specific condition—behavior contingencies. Despite their condition-free appearance, the dispositional constructs used by child and adult observers in their personality descriptions were hedged by modifiers that reflected knowledge of the variability of behavior. Children's descriptions of their aggressive and withdrawn peers included probabilistic hedges that indicated uncertainty about the occurrence of behaviors (person sometimes does x). Adults made dispositional attributions with greater certainty, but more often modified them with conditional statements which identified when dispositionally relevant behaviors might be observed (person does x when y). Content analyses of these conditional statements revealed that adults systematically linked specific categories of conditions (e.g., aversive interpersonal events) to specific categories of social behavior (e.g., aggressive acts). The results help to clarify how people may hedge dispositional terms in ways that reflect their sensitivity to covariation between situations and behaviors.
... Despite the wide appeal of the trait assumption, personality psychologists have been entangled for some time in a debate about whether it might be based more on illusion than reality (e.g., Alker, 1972;Allport, 1966;Argyle & Little, 1972;Bem, 1972;Block, 1968Block, , 1977Bowers, 1973;Epstein, 1977Epstein, , 1979Epstein, , 1980Fiske, 1974;Gormly & Edelberg, 1974;Hogan, DeSoto, & Solano, 1977;Hunt, 1965;Magnusson & Endler, 1977;Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1983West, 1983). Murmurs of the current debate could be heard more than 40 years ago (Ichheisser, 1943), but the volume increased markedly after Mischel's (1968) critique, and things have not quieted down yet (Bem, 1983;Epstein, 1983;Funder, 1983;Kenrick, 1986;Mischel, 1983;Mischel & Peake, 1982. ...
... Despite the wide appeal of the trait assumption, personality psychologists have been entangled for some time in a debate about whether it might be based more on illusion than reality (e.g., Alker, 1972;Allport, 1966;Argyle & Little, 1972;Bem, 1972;Block, 1968Block, , 1977Bowers, 1973;Epstein, 1977Epstein, , 1979Epstein, , 1980Fiske, 1974;Gormly & Edelberg, 1974;Hogan, DeSoto, & Solano, 1977;Hunt, 1965;Magnusson & Endler, 1977;Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1983West, 1983). Murmurs of the current debate could be heard more than 40 years ago (Ichheisser, 1943), but the volume increased markedly after Mischel's (1968) critique, and things have not quieted down yet (Bem, 1983;Epstein, 1983;Funder, 1983;Kenrick, 1986;Mischel, 1983;Mischel & Peake, 1982. Of late, discussants have begun to express yearning to end what some see as an endless cycle of repeating the same arguments. ...
... In this light, the debate can be seen as an intellectually stimulating chapter in the history of the discipline, replete with useful lessons for professionals who include assessment in their repertoire. Argyle & Little, 1972;Mischel, 1968): that people show powerful, unmodulated consistencies in their behavior across time and diverse situations. This position has been attacked frequently over the years. ...
For the past two decades the person—situation debate has dominated personality psychology and had important repercussions in clinical, social, and organizational psychology. This controversy strikes to the heart of each of these disciplines because it puts on trial the central assumption that internal dispositions have an important influence on behavior. According to emerging views of scientific progress, controversy serves the useful function of narrowing the field of competing hypotheses. In this light, we examine seven hypotheses that arose during the course of the person—situation debate, ranging from most to least pessimistic about the existence of consensual, discriminative personality traits. The accumulated evidence fails to support the hypotheses that personality traits are simply (a) in the eye of the beholder, (b) semantic illusions, (c) artifacts of base-rate accuracy, (d) artifacts of shared stereotypes, (e) due to discussion between observers (who ignore behavior in favor of verbal self-presentation or reputation), or (f) mere by-products of situational consistencies. Evidence also fails to support the hypothesis (g) that although traits are related to behavior, the relationship is too small to be important. Yet we have not simply come full circle to a reacceptance of traits as they were understood 20 years ago. Research generated by these hypotheses has allowed us to better specify the circumstances under which personality assessments will be valid.
... The principles of opposites, complements, antitheses, and introjects apply consistently among all 108 points of the model. These features give the model considerable power: in the generation of hypotheses about etiology; in aiding our understanding of how current life situations affect behavior of the person in question, which is relevant to the recent state-trait controversy (Mischel, 1968(Mischel, , 1973; and in therapeutic goal setting (Benjamin, 1977). ...
... When contrasted with the DSM, interpersonal assessment would seem strong in these domains; the interpersonal models allow for either situation-specific or generalized behavioral predictions (the validity of the former will of course be higher; cf. Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1973; of perhaps even greater potential value are the clear implications for treatment specified by an interpersonal evaluation (see Dimond, Havens, & Jones, 1978, for a relevant discussion) ...
... Diagnostic and statistical manuals clearly presuppose the existence of traits, and indeed Leary's pioneer efforts to relate interpersonal descriptions to standard diagnostic categories appear to assume cross-situational consistency, although Leary (1957, p. 60) did stress the importance of measuring behavior in its "functional context." Arguments to the contrary (Mischel, 1968(Mischel, , 1973, there is a fair amount of evidence in support of trait conceptualizations (e.g., Huba & Hamilton, 1976). ...
Based on concerns about the scientific and clinical shortcomings of the pending Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), it is proposed that psychology consolidate its knowledge in the form of an interpersonal behavior taxonomy. It is argued that a substantial body of literature suggests that the most useful aspects of current psychiatric diagnostic schemata are psychosocial in nature and that most diagnoses of "functional mental disorders" are made on the basis of observed interpersonal behavior. A review of social behavior coding models suitable for clinical use and a discussion of how L. S. Benjamin's structural analysis of social behavior could be used for developing an interpersonal nosology are included. The clinical and scientific advantages of such a nosology over traditional psychiatric nomenclature are emphasized. The application of the Benjamin model to clinical practice is illustrated with a brief case history of a 5-yr-old boy, and a specific example of how a DSM-III diagnosis might be translated into this model is given. (69 ref)
... In the long "person-situation" debate, the relatively high behavior variation, and consequently low cross-situational consistency of individual differences in behavior across different situations (e.g., Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1973Mischel & Peake, 1982;Ross & Nisbett, 1991), have been misread for many years as if they undermined the utility of the personality construct (e.g., Goldberg, 1993;Wiggins, 1992). In our view, however, this interpretation is valid only if one considers the variability of behaviors within individuals across situations either as "error" or as due to "situation," rather than as a meaningful reflection of enduring personality processes. ...
... then . . . , situationbehavior relations illustrated here, far from undermining the concept of personality actually enable idiographic studies of personality and thus provide a systematic method for personality psychology's most enduring basic goal (e.g., Allport, 1937;Bern & Allen, 1974;Magnusson & Torestad, 1993;Mischel, 1968). By addressing not only the average level of behavior (e.g., overall agreeableness) but also when, where, and with whom it occurs, one can see the individual's distinctive, coherent, and systematic patterns of behavior variation and glimpse the psychological processes and person variables that underlie them. ...
In nomothetic analyses, the cross-situational consistency of individual differences in social behavior, assessed in vivo in a camp setting, depended on the similarity in the psychological features of situations. As predicted by the social–cognitive theory of personality, idiographic analyses revealed that individuals were characterized by stable profiles of if…then…, situation–behavior relationships that formed “behavioral signatures” of personality (e.g., he aggresses when warned by adults but complies when threatened by peers. Thus, the intraindividual organization of behavior variation across situations was enduring but discriminatively patterned, visible as distinctive profiles of situation–behavior relationships. Implications were examined for an idiographic reconceptualization of personality coherence and its behavioral expressions in relation to the psychological ingredients of situations.
... Positions that emphasize either person or situation factors at the relative exclusion of the other have been criticized because they fail to account for the variation of responses or persons across different situations. Trait approaches do not easily explain the only moderate consistencies evident in trait-related behavior across different situations (e.g., Mischel, 1968). Situationism does not adequately explain the existing consistencies of persons across situations (e.g., Bowers, 1973). ...
... The method examines the client's constructs and perceptions for organizing experience, which are not obtained from samples of overt behavior. Also, self-report is often highly correlated with actual performance (Mischel, 1968). Because of the flexibility of self-report in identifying a broad range of situations and responses, it presents a viable method to study response covariations through the interactional method. ...
Symptom substitution has served as a focal point for debates about alternative treatments and their conceptual underpinnings. The notion has also directed attention to the multiplicity of changes that may follow treatment. Recently, research has demonstrated that for a given individual several behaviors tend to be correlated to form clusters of responses. Therapeutic changes in one response in a particular cluster are likely to affect other, related responses. The concomitant changes associated with treatment of a particular problem may be both positive and negative, depending on the behaviors that ordinarily covary with the target problem. Response covariation, as an empirical alternative to symptom substitution, has important implications for therapy outcome research and clinical treatment. The present article reviews evidence for response covariation in the context of treatment. An interactional model of personality is outlined to examine the possible bases for the development of response covariation and to provide an assessment strategy for systematically evaluating the organization of behavior. Implications of response covariation and an interactional assessment approach for evaluating treatment are discussed. (87 ref)
... But Ross (1977) coined the term to criticize psychologists: "Many of the best known and most provocative studies in our field depend, for their impact," on researchers' "erroneous expectation that individual differences and personal dispositions will overcome relatively mundane" perceptions of the situation (p. 6). Mischel's (1968Mischel's ( , 1973 historically important critique of trait personality stems from a similar observation: What is empirically most striking about human behavior is not individual differences in behavior but shared behaviors driven by perceptions of external circumstances. Both introverts and extroverts, for example, are rather quiet at funerals. ...
When ancient humans gained the ability to investigate abstract questions, what first question did they pose? This article offers a novel, sweeping, historical analysis with important implications for psychological theory. The story begins with identifying the first question in Ancient Greek philosophy as “Where am I?” with particular interest in the world’s overarching basic traits. For example, Pythagoras proposed the world was defined by beauty and Heraclitus suggested change. Though this discourse has traditionally puzzled historians, recent psychological research suggests it might have been largely a debate over primal world beliefs, an emerging research topic that this article introduces and situates historically. Recently, the latent structure of primal world beliefs was mapped statistically, revealing 26 dimensions. Most of these beliefs were new to psychologists, yet already posed by ancient philosophers—including Pythagoras’ Beautiful world belief and Heraclitus’ Changing world belief. Identifying first questions in early history may have value for psychological theorizing because it hints at something that social psychologists have long suspected: that humans are creatures fundamentally driven to understand their situation and what it calls for.
... Lubkowitz, 2020, S. 7-17). Während der Benjaminsche Flaneur durch die Pariser Arkaden lustwandelt, nutzt der psychogeografische Raumforscher die Technik des Umherschweifens, also des "eiligen Durchquerens abwechslungsreicher Umgebungen" (Debord, 2020b, S. 35 (Mischel, 1968) inspirierten Ansatz zum menschlichen Verhalten und seinen Bedingungen zu suchen. Den Kern dieses Ansatzes bildet die Annahme, dass jedes Verhalten letztendlich durch die Umwelt und nicht durch Motivationen und innere Eigenschaften des Menschen beeinflusst wird. ...
Paul Scraton, born in 1979 in England, has lived in Berlin since 2001. He is the author of several books about different areas of Germany (e.g. the Baltic coast and Berlin) and the editor of the online-magazine Elsewhere. A Journal of Place. His travel book Am Rand: Um ganz Berlin includes descriptions of the outlying districts and reflections on his emotional relationship to these areas made on 10 walks along the Berlin city border. Scraton’s narratives are largely based on contemporary psychogeography as the method of exploration of the urban environments with special reference to personal connections to spaces and places called borderlands, edgelands and non-places. The article presents the reconstruction of the urban landscape outlined in Scraton’s book and reflections on the representational potential of the concept of psychogeography.
... Almost all previous research has focused on self-compassion as a trait (e.g., . However, an individual's behavior also depends on situational cues and is not necessarily expressed consistently across diverse situations that differ in meaning (e.g., Mischel, 1968). Thus, individuals may feel and behave more or less self-compassionately at different points in time or across different situations. ...
Background: The concept self-compassion (SC), a special way of being compassionate with oneself while dealing with stressful life circumstances, has attracted increasing attention in research over the past two decades. Research has already shown that SC has beneficial effects on affective well-being and other mental health outcomes. However, little is known in which ways SC might facilitate our affective well-being in stressful situations. Hence, a central concern of this dissertation was to focus on the question which underlying processes might influence the link between SC and affective well-being. Two established components in stress
processing, which might also play an important role in this context, could be the amount of experienced stress and the way of coping with a stressor. Thus, using a multi-method approach, this dissertation aimed at finding to which extent SC might help to alleviate the experienced stress and promotes the use of more salutary coping, while dealing with stressful circumstances.
These processes might ultimately help improve one’s affective well-being. Derived from that, it was hypothesized that more SC is linked to less perceived stress and intensified use of salutary
coping responses. Additionally, it was suggested that perceived stress and coping mediate the relation between SC and affective well-being.
Method: The research questions were targeted in three single studies and one meta-study. To test my assumptions about the relations of SC and coping in particular, a systematic literature
search was conducted resulting in k = 136 samples with an overall sample size of N = 38,913. To integrate the z-transformed Pearson correlation coefficients, random-effects models were calculated. All hypotheses were tested with a three-wave cross-lagged design in two short-term longitudinal online studies assessing SC, perceived stress and coping responses in all waves.
The first study explored the assumptions in a student sample (N = 684) with a mean age of 27.91 years over a six-week period, whereas the measurements were implemented in the GESIS
Panel (N = 2934) with a mean age of 52.76 years analyzing the hypotheses in a populationbased sample across eight weeks. Finally, an ambulatory assessment study was designed to
expand the findings of the longitudinal studies to the intraindividual level. Thus, a sample of 213 participants completed questionnaires of momentary SC, perceived stress, engagement and disengagement coping, and affective well-being on their smartphones three times per day over seven consecutive days. The data was processed using 1-1-1 multilevel mediation analyses.
Results: Results of the meta-analysis indicated that higher SC is significantly associated with more use of engagement coping and less use of disengagement coping. Considering the relations between SC and stress processing variables in all three single studies, cross-lagged paths from the longitudinal data, as well as multilevel modeling paths from the ambulatory assessment data indicated a notable relation between all relevant stress variables. As expected, results showed a significant negative relation between SC and perceived stress and disengagement coping, as well as a positive connection with engagement coping responses at the dispositional and intra-individual level. However, considering the mediational hypothesis, the most promising pathway in the link between SC and affective well-being turned out to be perceived stress in all three studies, while effects of the mediational pathways through coping responses were less robust.
Conclusion: Thus, a more self-compassionate attitude and higher momentary SC, when needed in specific situations, can help to engage in effective stress processing. Considering the underlying mechanisms in the link between SC and affective well-being, stress perception in particular seemed to be the most promising candidate for enhancing affective well-being at the dispositional and at the intraindividual level. Future research should explore the pathways between SC and affective well-being in specific contexts and samples, and also take into account additional influential factors.
... Perhaps most problematically, this approach makes the implicit assumption that climate anxiety is constant across situations, which is unlikely (Dutriaux et al., 2023). Indeed, much research finds that an individual's experiences and behaviours depend more on situational than individual differences (e.g., Bandura, 1978;Cervone, 2005;Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2021;Mischel & Shoda, 1995;Mischel, 1968). Not only do traits vary extensively across situations, but individuals vary widely in how they express traits in the same situations (i.e., individual by situation interactions; Dutriaux et al., 2023). ...
Climate change increasingly affects mental health and wellbeing. Although recent research has begun to examine climate anxiety, little is known about the situations where it is experienced or situational factors that predict it. To help understand how climate anxiety is experienced in UK residents, we developed and evaluated a situated psychometric instrument for assessing climate anxiety in 31 relevant situations (e.g., hearing about climate catastrophes on the news). Of interest was how climate anxiety is experienced in the UK as largely the anticipation of climate disaster and environmental pollution, rather than as actually experienced climate disaster, as in it is experienced by populations in more vulnerable countries where significant climate disaster has occurred. In an online study (N = 303 UK residents), we investigated how much climate anxiety individuals experienced in each situation, along with how much they experienced 13 factors that potentially influence climate anxiety (e.g., expectation violation, threat, coping). An individual measure of climate anxiety averaged across situations exhibited high reliability, construct validity, and content validity. Large differences in climate anxiety were observed between situations, along with a large individual by situation interaction. In linear regressions for individual participants, the 13 factors tended to correlate with climate anxiety as predicted, explaining a median 75% of climate anxiety variance. By identifying factors that predict climate anxiety for individuals, our approach provides detailed understanding of climate anxiety in each individual across situations. These predictive profiles could support screening for climate anxiety, identifying situations where it occurs, and designing individualised support.
... The competing accounts for voter choice, between pre-existing political ideology and threat exposure, can be framed in the classic person versus situation debate (Block & Block, 1981;Mischel, 1968). In particular, pre-existing ideology and situational threats can be broadly construed as determinants of political decision from within the person (e.g., relatively stable personality or ideology) and outside the person (e.g., fluctuating circumstances). ...
ABSTRACT: Protectionism is often depicted as an instinctive response to global challenges. This paper examined the sway of recent large-scale threats on Canadian voters, particularly their support for policies and candidates advocating isolationist positions. Study 1 randomly primed 593 Canadians with either neutral social media messages or messages about the migrant crisis. Participants reported their pre-existing political ideologies, summarized the messages, and rated their risk perceptions and political choices. Between-subject t-tests and two-way ANOVAs found no significant changes in the way participants endorsed right-leaning policies or conservative candidates. To diagnose the lack of shifts, structural equation models showed that pre-existing political ideology supplanted risk perception as a determinant of voter choice. Study 2 replicated the diagnosis under a new threat landscape by randomly exposing 577 Canadian participants to social media messages on the topics of COVID-19 or COVID-19 vaccination. Moderated mediation analyses found the aforementioned diagnosis generalizable across the two threat types, with the exception of a small partial mediation. Fears and anxieties have been used as justifications for protectionist policies. This insecurity narrative stands to sugarcoat ideologically based political choices as if they were threat responses.
... A second source of personality's difficulty is, of course, Mischel's (1968) critique and the ensuing decades of arguments, rebuttals, and obfuscations. The controversy resulted in some hard-won enlightenment (Kenrick & Funder, 1988) but also left behind damage that included decimated or disestablished graduate programs, careers that ended prematurely or never even began, and a lingering image in the minds of a surprising number of smart psychologists outside the field that "personality" is a quaint, outdated idea that exaggerates the role of individual differences. ...
... In psychology, the so-called person-situation debate has been going on for more than a century, and Almaatouq et al. obviously belong to the "situation" faction. Although influential studies such as the famous work of Mischel (1968) have given the "person" faction a backlash since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a recent resurgence in personality psychology that emphasizes the importance of individual differences (see Roberts & Yoon, 2022). Also in other fields, the importance of the individual has been recognized for quite some time. ...
The integrative experiment design proposal currently only relates to group results, but downplays individual differences between participants, which may nevertheless be substantial enough to constitute a relevant dimension in the design space. Excluding the individual participant in the integrative design will not solve all problems mentioned in the target article, because averaging results may obscure the underlying mechanisms.
... The influence of contextual factors on human behaviour has long been acknowledged. Dating back to the 1960s, research within social psychology revealed the power of situations to influence human behaviour (Mischel, 1968), including the capacity of 'normal' people to engage in 'abnormal' behaviour under certain circumstances (e.g. Milgram, 1974;Zimbardo, 2007). ...
There is growing recognition of the contextual dynamics of child sexual abuse, with a developing evidence base supporting it, sparking calls to ensure prevention efforts are contextualised. Contextual approaches extend the focus of prevention beyond the individual, to include immediate situations, and the physical and social contexts in which abuse occurs. Although academic and industry support for contextual approaches is gaining momentum, there is no consistent definition of contextual prevention nor operational clarity currently available to inform research, policy and practice. This contributes to a lack of policy guidance and practice consistency; also impeding much needed evaluation research, and likely slowing scholarly and practice uptake. In this article, we address this important gap. Based on a critical review of relevant literature, we propose a conceptual definition of contextual prevention and its operationalisation and provide a framework and guidance for policymakers and practitioners tasked with protecting children from child sexual abuse.
... By the mid-1980s, the field of personality psychology was emerging from a long war that pitted trait theorists against the situationists. Beginning with Mischel (1968), the situationists argued that behavior is so specific to environmental conditions that internal dimensions like traits have almost no relevance. But research in the 1980s was beginning to prove them wrong, as more and more studies showed that individual differences in trait scores are (1) surprisingly stable over long periods of time, (2) strongly associated with aggregated behavioral trends across situations, and (3) highly predictive of important life outcomes such as happiness, success, divorce, and mortality. ...
p>In this intellectual autobiography, I trace the development of the idea of narrative identity as manifest in personality and developmental psychology. As far as my own work in this area is concerned, the story begins in the early 1980s when my students and I struggled to understand the meaning of Erik Erikson’s concept of identity. Early work on a life-story model of identity aimed to situate the concept within the rapidly transforming field of personality psychology, first articulated as an alternative to the ascending conception of the Big Five traits. Eventually, I turned my attention to the redemptive life stories told by highly generative American adults, as my understanding of narrative identity came to be more fully contextualized in culture and history. While hundreds of nomothetic, hypothesis-testing studies of narrative identity have been conducted in the past two decades, the concept has also proven useful in the realm of psychobiography, as illustrated in my case studies of the redemptive life story constructed by the American President George W. Bush, and in my research into the strange case of President Donald J. Trump, whose most striking psychological attribute may be the near total absence of a narrative identity.</p
... In the current context, he was what Thomas Kuhn would have called a paradigmbuster. In a painstaking and creative analysis of how well traits assessed by personality tests predicted behavior in various situations and over time,Mischel (1968) argued that situational analyses were more useful and valid. In this way he made seminal contributions to behavior therapy's emphasis on functional analysis. ...
A discussion of the past and present of cognitive behavior therapy from the perspective of my academic and clinical career
... The studies we present here examined the language that people use in a variety of written contexts to look for evidence of individual consistency across these contexts. Dating from Mischel's (1968) critique of the role of personality in the prediction of behavior, establishing the cross-situational consistency of behaviors has been a focus of research in personality. This research has focused primarily on "large-scale" behaviors such as helping or being friendly. ...
Can language use reflect personality style? Studies examined the reliability, factor structure, and validity of written language using a word-based, computerized text analysis program. Daily diaries from 15 substance abuse inpatients, daily writing assignments from 35 students, and journal abstracts from 40 social psychologists demonstrated good internal consistency for over 36 language dimensions. Analyses of the best 15 language dimensions from essays by 838 students yielded 4 factors that replicated across written samples from another 381 students. Finally, linguistic profiles from writing samples were compared with Thematic Apperception Test coding, self-reports, and behavioral measures from 79 students and with self-reports of a 5-factor measure and health markers from more than 1,200 students. Despite modest effect sizes, the data suggest that linguistic style is an independent and meaningful way of exploring personality.
... The prediction and explanation of interindividual differences in behavior, attitudes, and feelings by personality traits is one of the major aims of personality psychology. The utility of personality traits for predicting behavior was questioned by Mischel (1968). In the debate on the consistency and stability of behavior that was ignited by Mischel's book, different approaches were discussed to enhance the predictability of behavior by trait variables (Bern & Allen, 1974;Schmitt, 1990;Zuckerman et al., 1988Zuckerman et al., , 1989. ...
This article gives an overview of previous work on affect variability, discusses the methodological shortcomings of research on affect variability, and presents the results of an empirical study of intraindividual variability in primary emotions across time. The results of a daily assessment study using structural equation modeling and nonlinear regression analyses showed that intraindividual variability in affect is a multidimensional construct that is sufficiently stable to be considered a psychological trait and can be reliably measured by the intraindividual standard deviation. Intraindividual variability showed convergent validity with mean level scores and neuroticism but was sufficiently distinct to be considered a unique trait. This was particularly true of intraindividual variability in positive emotions; only about 10% of the variance could be accounted for by mean affect levels and the variables of the 5-factor model of personality.
... Indeed, Myers and Diener (1995) reported that close to 8,000 studies on happiness and subjective well-being were published during the 1980s alone, and Freedman (1978) noted that the majority of respondents thought about happiness at least once every day. Moreover, despite continuing controversy about the magnitude and conceptual status of global personality traits in general (i.e., Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1984; see also Bern & Allen, 1974;Epstein, 1979;Kenrick & Funder, 1988;Ross & Nisbett, 1991), everyone can identify people who seem consistently happier than their peers or than the objective circumstances of their lives would dictate-individuals who truly seem able to "see the world through rose-colored glasses" and to "turn lemons into lemonade." Similarly, most individuals know people who, even in the absence of adversity, seem chronically dysphoric and inclined to accentuate the negative. ...
In 3 studies the authors compared the responses of self-rated happy and unhappy students in situations involving choice. In Study 1, high school seniors evaluated colleges after applying for admission and then later after making their selections. Happy students tended to be more satisfied than unhappy ones with the colleges they ultimately chose and those they ultimately rejected, and they more sharply devalued the colleges that rejected them. Studies 2 and 3 dealt with postdecisional consequences of less consequential decisions about fancy desserts. In Study 2, unhappy participants sharply derogated the desserts they rejected or were denied, relative to those selected by or for them, whereas happy participants showed no such derogation. These group differences, moreover, proved to be largely independent of self-esteem and optimism. The design of Study 3 helped explicate underlying mechanisms by inducing both groups to distract themselves or to self-reflect. Doing so eliminated all group differences. Implications of the results for the link between cognitive processes and hedonic consequences are discussed.
... When we conducted the SPE 25 years ago, we were, in a sense, on the cutting edge of new and developing situational and contextual models of behavior. Mischel's (1968) pathbreaking review of the inadequacy of conventional measures of personality traits to predict behavior was only a few years old, Ross and Nisbett (1991) were assistant professors who had not yet written about situational control as perhaps the most important leg in the tripod of social psychology, and no one had yet systematically applied the methods and theories of modern psychology to the task of understanding social contextual origins crime and the psychological pains of imprisonment. Intellectually, much has changed since then. ...
In this article, the authors reflect on the lessons of their Stanford Prison Experiment, some 25 years after conducting it. They review the quarter century of change in criminal justice and correctional policies that has transpired since the Stanford Prison Experiment and then develop a series of reform-oriented proposals drawn from this and related studies on the power of social situations and institutional settings that can be applied to the current crisis in American corrections.
... Wide individual differences in hypnotizability are a fact of life: At best, only about 15% of an unselected sample of college students classify as hypnotic virtuosos (Hilgard, 1965;Register & Kihlstrom, 1986). When it comes to predictors and correlates, hypnosis researchersregardless of their theoretical orientation-would sell their souls to obtain the "personality coefficients" disparaged by Mischel (1968). Nor need neodissociation theorists bear any responsibility for the excesses of those psychotherapists who think dissociative disorder is pandemic (or a Central Intelligence Agency plot to create Manchurian candidates) and who discover (or create) dozens or hundreds of multiple personalities in their patients. ...
I. Kirsch and S. J. Lynn's (1998) critique of the neodissociation theory of divided consciousness fails to consider evidence of dissociations between explicit and implicit memory and perception in hypnosis. Contrary to their conclusions, evidence that the rate of hidden observer response (like other hypnotic responses) varies with the wording of instructions does not contradict neodissociation theory; rather, it underscores the fact that hypnosis entails social interaction as well as alterations in conscious awareness. Neodissociation and sociocognitive theories of hypnosis complement each other: Each draws attention to aspects of the experience of hypnosis that the other neglects.
... This well-known rationale for projective techniques is accompanied, however, by an equally well-known history of controversy and disappointment in the effectiveness of such techniques. Although projective testing continues to have its champions (e.g., Exner, 1993;McClelland, 1980), critics of the technique point to its poor reliability and variable validity (e.g., Dawes, 1994;Mischel, 1968;Scott & Johnson, 1972). These problems are not surprising in view of the difficult task the projectives are designed to perform: They must find some behavioral indication of unconscious content that can be observed reliably, but that does not cause the test-taker to become conscious of the content. ...
Deep cognitive activation occurs when a thought is so accessible as to have measurable effects on behavior or judgment, but is yet not consciously reportable. This state of mind has unique properties mimicking some characteristics of the psychoanalytic unconscious, but following theoretically from a consideration of processes of cognitive activation. The sources and consequences of deep cognitive activation are examined, with a view toward understanding how this state is implicated in the assessment, etiology, and treatment of psychopathology.
... During the 1970s, personality researchers undertook a major reassessment of the relationship between traits and behavior. Dissatisfied with what Mischel (1968) had identified as an apparent correlational ceiling of .30, researchers took several different approaches to understanding and explaining these empirical relationships (West, 1983). ...
Accurate prediction requires information not only about central tendencies but also about variability. In personality prediction, however, most research has focused on trait-level central tendencies. Previously proposed moderators of personality prediction are all conceptually similar in comparing an individual's central tendency in response patterns with that of the normative person. This article proposes an alternative: Trait-level prediction is enhanced by measuring the temporal stability of response patterns within persons. Across 2 studies, individuals with temporally stable response patterns had higher self–other agreement on conscientiousness and extraversion than did individuals with less temporally stable patterns. By comparison, normatively based variables (interitem variability, scalability, or construct similarity) did not moderate self–other agreement. The implications for personality structure, assessment, and prediction are discussed.
... Evidence for the predictive and construct validity of brief measures such as those used in this study has been available for some time (Carroll, 1952;D. L. Hamilton, 1971;Mischel, 1968) and is supported by more recent studies using singleitem measures (Aron. Aron, & Smollan, 1992;Burisch, 1984;Russell, Weiss, & Mendelsohn, 1989). ...
Participants completed anxiety and coping diaries during 10 periods that began 7 days before an academic stressor and continued through the evening after the stressor. Profile analysis was used to examine the anxiety and coping processes in relation to 2 trait anxiety grouping variables: debilitating and facilitating test anxiety (D-TA and F-TA). Anxiety and coping changed over time, and high and low levels of D-TA and F-TA were associated with different daily patterns of anxiety and coping. Participants with a debilitative, as opposed to facilitative, trait anxiety style had lower examination scores, higher anxiety, and less problem-solving coping. Covarying F-TA, high D-TA was associated with a pattern of higher levels of tension, worry, distraction, and avoidant coping, as well as lower levels of proactive coping. Covarying D-TA, high F-TA was associated with higher levels of tension (but not worry or distraction), support seeking, proactive and problem-solving coping.
... Intelligence is so often related to personality variables that Campbell (Campbell, 1960;Campbell & Fiske, 1959) has recommended that presentations of new measures include correlations between the measure and commonly available intelligence tests. Research on a number of promising individual difference variables in psychology has fallen on hard times when measures of the variables have been shown to have higher correlations with measures of constructs from which they were supposed to be conceptually distinct than with measures of constructs they were supposed to resemble (e.g., field dependence-independence [Witkin, 1965] and authoritarianism [Mischel, 1968]). Additional variables some researchers guard against in the representational phase of scale development include inconsistent responding (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989;Tellegen, 1988), lying (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943), and yea-and naysaying (Couch & Keniston, 1960). ...
The data investigators should provide to support the validity of inferences they make based on scores from a measure depend on (a) whether the measure is assumed to assess a hypothetical construct or behavior and (b) the purposes for which the measure is intended. The authors distinguish between the representational phase of validity assessment, which establishes that a measure produces scores that reflect the construct or behavior it purports to assess, and the elaborative validity phase, in which the meaning and utility of scores are examined. Key issues relevant to convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity are examined for measures of latent traits or constructs and then for measures of behaviors or response classes.
... Furthermore, because we measured how much they had consumed at a random point in the evening rather than how much they would consume in the entire outing, our measure was biased by such important factors as how recently they had arrived and how rapidly they drink. It is very unlikely that such a poor measure of a personality trait to drink would be correlated, even weakly, with a single measure of the personality trait to say um infrequently (see Mischel, 1968, for an extensive discussion of the difficulty of predicting a single behavior reflecting one trait from another single behavioral measure of that trait, let alone a single measure of a different trait). Rather than quibble about causality, however, we note simply that the approach made a nonobvious prediction about a naturalistic behavior, and that prediction was confirmed. ...
Although several studies have documented a link between anxiety and filled pauses (um s, er s, and uh s), numerous failures make it impossible to believe that the two are linked in any simple way. This article suggests anxiety may increase um s not when it makes the speech task harder but when it causes the speaker to pay attention to the speech. Two experiments examined this idea. One manipulated evaluation apprehension, and the other manipulated self-consciousness. Both showed dramatic increases in um s. Two more studies examined the real-world implications of this approach. Alcohol, which makes speaking harder but also makes speakers care less about what they say, was found to reduce um s. The second study found that Broca’s aphasics, who produce simple speech but must deliberate over every word, produce many um s. Wernicke’s aphasics may not talk well, but do not mind, and manage with few um s.
... For example, agreement with the statement "I am dominant" is assumed to reflect a tendency for the person to take control of situations or to be unusually assertive and influential among his or her peers. However, such research in personality and social psychology has shown that selfreport measures reflect behavioral tendencies only modestly (Bern & Allen, 1974;Bern & Funder, 1978;Epstein, 1979;Mischel, 1968;Mischel & Peake, 1982) or do so only under certain circumstances (Schutte, Kenrick, & Sadalla, 1985). ...
Descriptions of self (e.g., “I am dominant”) may reflect not only a person's behavioral tendencies but also idiosyncratic definitions of the social concepts and categories being considered. Five studies revealed that participants who differed in their self-ratings along trait dimensions also tended to associate different behaviors and performances with those traits. For example, participants who described themselves as dominant tended to emphasize desirable over undesirable behaviors and characteristics in their definitions of the trait, whereas self-described nondominants highlighted the opposite. Participants' self-ratings on dominance were also influenced by making positive or negative examples of dominant behavior salient to them. Moreover, when participants were induced to shift self-descriptions in self-serving ways, they tended to do so by revising their prototype of the trait in question. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for the prediction of behavior and the interpretation of some social science results.
... There are two commonly accepted, major sources of individual differences in human stable (personality) dispositions: hereditary predispositions (Tellegen et al., 1988) and learning (Bandura, 1977;Mischel, 1981). The latter factor, according to all theories of learning, represents some kind of generalization of experience and reflects either the specific nature of reality encountered by the individual in the outside world or the result of the individual's own thinking (e.g., symbolic experiences or anticipation of consequences; Bandura, 1977Bandura, , 1982. ...
The process of encoding new information involves the imposition of preexisting interpretive categories on newly encountered stimuli, even if the categories do not match perfectly those stimuli. We hypothesized that such encoding of stimuli as supportive of preexisting encoding dispositions may become a source of a perceiver's subjective experiences that support these dispositions. Through this nonconsciously operating mechanism, encoding rules may gradually develop in a self-perpetuating manner, even in the absence of any objectively supportive evidence. Results demonstrated this self-perpetuating process in three studies involving different stimulus materials and experimental tasks (matrix-scanning paradigm and two “intuitive judgment” tasks). The self-perpetuating development of encoding biases is discussed as one of the elementary mechanisms involved in the development of interpretive categories and other individually differentiated cognitive dispositions.
... Funder went on to suggest that as long as subjects are well known to each other, one can obtain at least modest degrees of agreement between self-report and ratings by another. The prevailing theoretical accounts of personality have tended to make strong arguments for the salience of situational factors (e.g., Bern & Allen, 1974;Mischel, 1968),traits(e.g., Cattell, 1982;Eysenck, 1967;McCrae, 1982), or situation-trait interactions (e.g., Epstein, 1983). It is clear that any satisfactory theory will have to take into account each of these sources of influence on an individual's behavior in any one setting (Pervin, 1985). ...
Under trait theory, ratings may be modeled as a function of the temperament of the child and the bias of the rater. Two linear structural equation models are described, one for mutual self- and partner ratings, and one for multiple ratings of related individuals. Application of the first model to EASI temperament data collected from spouses rating each other shows moderate agreement between raters and little rating bias. Spouse pairs agree moderately when rating their twin children, but there is significant rater bias, with greater bias for monozygotic than for dizygotic twins. MLE's of heritability are approximately .5 for all temperament scales with no common environmental variance. Results are discussed with reference to trait validity, the person–situation debate, halo effects, and stereotyping. Questionnaire development using ratings on family members permits increased rater agreement and reduced rater bias.
... This consistency of avoidance is a phenomenon that merits further study before all hope of demonstrating behavioral consistency is relinquished (cf. Mischel, 1968). The limited free-choice situation in Session 2 of Experiment 1 restricted avoidance behavior by providing no active nonachievement choice. ...
Three experiments were conducted to develop a computer-based measure of individual differences in resultant achievement motivation (RAM) on the basis of level-of-aspiration, achievement motivation, and dynamics-of-action theories. In Experiment 1, the number of atypical shifts and greater responsiveness to incentives on 21 trials with choices among easy, intermediate, and difficult levels of an achievement-oriented game were positively correlated and were found to differentiate the 62 subjects (31 men, 31 women) on the amount of time they spent at a nonachievement task (watching a color design) 1 week later. In Experiment 2, test-retest reliability was established with the use of 67 subjects (15 men, 52 women). Point and no-point trials were offered in blocks, with point trials first for half the subjects and no-point trials first for the other half. Reliability was higher for the atypical-shift measure than for the incentive-responsiveness measure and was higher when points were offered first. In Experiment 3, computer anxiety was manipulated by creating a simulated computer breakdown in the experimental condition. Fifty-nine subjects (13 men, 46 women) were randomly assigned to the experimental condition or to one of two control conditions (an interruption condition and a no-interruption condition). Subjects with low RAM, as demonstrated by a low number of typical shifts, took longer to choose the achievement-oriented task, as predicted by the dynamics-of-action theory. The difference was evident in all conditions and most striking in the computer-breakdown condition. A change of focus from atypical to typical shifts is discussed.
... In designing this study, we did not assume that people exhibit consistency in attributional patterns across all situations. Instead, similar to some personality theorists (e.g., Mischel, 1968), we allowed for the possibility that people may show some situational specificity in attributional patterns (e.g., achievement domain vs. interpersonal domain; see Abramson et al., 1986;Abramson et al., 1986aAbramson et al., , 1986bMetalsky & Abramson, 1981). Our specific-vulnerability results point to the potential usefulness of this approach. ...
To provide a more powerful test of the diathesis-stress component of the reformulated theory of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978), we extended and refined the Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel, and Peterson (1982) study and examined whether the content of college students' attributional styles (hypothesized attributional diathesis) as measured at Time 1 interacted with the outcomes students received on a class midterm exam to predict their subsequent depressive mood responses. In addition, to test the mediation component of the theory, we examined whether the relation between the hypothesized attributional diathesis and failure students' subsequent depressive mood responses to their low midterm grades was mediated by the particular causal attributions these students made for their low grades. The results partially corroborated the current statement (Abramson, Alloy, & Metalsky, 1986; Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1986a, 1986b) of the diathesis-stress component of the theory. Whereas students' immediate depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the outcomes they received on the class midterm exam, their enduring depressive mood reactions were predicted solely by the hypothesized Attributional Diathesis × Outcome on Midterm Exam interaction. The direction and form of the interaction were in line with prediction. The results fully corroborated predictions derived from the mediation component of the theory as they applied to students' enduring mood responses.
... The stability of self-reported personality characteristics is not sufficient evidence to prove the longitudinal stability of personality. Mischel (1968) argued that the stability of selfreported characteristics may relate more to the persistence of self-perceptions than to the existence of veridical personality traits. In addition, there is the possibility that the practice gained from repeated administrations of personality inventories produces an artifactual stability. ...
The longitudinal stability of personality was investigated in a group of several hundred adults who were rated by themselves, their marriage partners, and their acquaintances in 1935–1938 and by themselves and their marriage partners in 1954–1955. For both men and women, there were very similar factorial structures in all five sources of ratings. Individual differences in neuroticism, social extraversion, and impulse control had reasonably high levels of longitudinal stability over a 19-year period. Both the synchronic and diachronic correlations converged across methods and discriminated among traits. Self-report personality inventory data available in 1935–1938 and 1954–1955 provided corroborating evidence of the longitudinal and methodological robustness of personality traits. In data gathered on the same panel in 1980–1981, the questionnaire and the life history correlates of neuroticism and social extraversion displayed patterns indicative of temporal stability, methodological convergence, and discrimination among constructs. The data of this longitudinal study carried out over five decades strongly indicate that there is a set of personality traits that are generalizable across methods of assessment and are stable throughout adulthood.
... Requests for reprints should be sent to D. S. Moskowitz, who is now at the Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1B1. particularly significant in relation to assertions by several researchers that individual differences in behavior are unstable (e.g., Mischel, 1977) and that children are highly resilient and able to cope with adverse environmental events (Kagan, 1978). The study of the stability of psychopathological syndromes at different ages, then, has implication for decisions about when to intervene and which symptom clusters are indicative of continuing or future adjustment problems. ...
Stability and change in aggression and withdrawal were examined in the context of both normal and deviant behavioral development. The design included three age cohorts separated in age by 3 years. Aggression and withdrawal were measured initially when the cohorts were in Grades 1, 4, and 7, and a second time when the cohorts were in Grades 4, 7, and 10, respectively. Members of four classification groups were included in the sample: an aggressive group, a withdrawn group, an aggressive-withdrawn group, and a nondeviant control group. The stability of aggression was found to be moderately high, regardless of sex of child or grade at time of initial assessment. Moderate stability was found for withdrawal for both boys and girls when initial assessments were conducted at Grades 4 and 7. The withdrawn children became more withdrawn over the 3-year period. It was concluded that for many children the problems of aggression and withdrawal do not appear to be transitory.
... Thus, people do behave in a stable manner as a means of attaining their interaction goals. The Athay and Darley formulation therefore acknowledges the influence of situations on behavior (e.g., Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1973 but assumes that people behave in a stable manner because there is stability in the nature of the situational pressures they encounter. & Gets, 1970;Goffman, 1959), and so on. ...
Proposes that an adequate conceptualization of the person perception process must consider the interpersonal context in which that process occurs as well as the purpose for which it is intended. In line with this proposal, a pragmatic approach to person perception is presented that emphasizes the interpersonal aspects of person perception, particularly those whereby perceivers and targets negotiate the identities that targets are to assume during their interactions. A major implication of this formulation is that contemporary accounts underestimate the accuracy of the person perception process. It is concluded that past treatments of the person perception process are limited and misleading because theorists and researchers have refrained from considering the uniquely social aspects of that process. Research may wish to devote more attention to the manner in which this process is woven into the fabric of people's ongoing social relationships. (4|14 p ref)
... These findings regarding the relationship between personality differences and performance in stressful situations are relevant to the current controversy in personality theory with respect to the consistency, stability, and utility of traits (e.g., Block, 1977;Bowers, 1973;Mischel, 1968Mischel, , 1973Mischel, , 1977. The lack of a main effect for traits implies that a simple model of trait consistency is inadequate. ...
The 1st author and his associates reported that the administration of moderate doses of caffeine (C) hindered performance of introverts and helped performance of extraverts on a cognitive task similar to the verbal test of the Graduate Record Examination. Assuming that C increases arousal, this interaction between introversion–extraversion (I–E) and drug condition supports H. J. Eysenck's I–E theory. The interaction was explored in 5 experiments with 629 undergraduates. The interaction between personality and drug condition was replicated and extended to additional cognitive performance tasks. However, these interactions were affected by time of day and stage of practice, and the subscales of I–E, Impulsivity, and Sociability of the Eysenck Personality Inventory were differentially affected. In the morning of Day 1, low impulsives (LIs) were hindered and high impulsives (HIs) helped by C. This pattern reversed in the evenings of Days 1 and 2. It is concluded that the Day 1 results require a revision of Eysenck's theory. Instead of a stable difference in arousal between LIs and HIs, it appeared that these groups differed in the phase of their diurnal arousal rhythms: LIs were more aroused in the morning and less aroused in the evening than were HIs. (68 ref)
... As we all know, these impressions from everyday experience are also substantiated in the empirical literature (cf. Mischel, 1968). The correlations between self-report of behavior and actual behavior, for example, typically hover in the mid-twenties; rarely do they even reach into the thirties. ...
Two studies tested the hypothesis that self-directed attention would cause increased awareness of internal states and would thus reduce suggestibility effects. Exp I applied this reasoning to the experience of an emotion. 55 male undergraduates viewed moderately arousing slides of female nudes after being led to expect the slides to be either highly arousing or nonarousing. As predicted, ratings of the slides corresponded less with these experimentally manipulated anticipations when self-focus was heightened by the presence of a mirror than when it was not. Exp II examined a different internal experience: the perception of taste. Ss were 41 male and 31 female undergraduates. Some Ss were led to expect a strong flavor as part of a test series, and other Ss were led to expect a weak flavor. Ss high in private self-consciousness (assessed by the A. Fenigstein et al 1975 scale) were less affected by this expectancy manipulation and more accurate in reporting their actual internal state than Ss low in private self-consciousness. (34 ref)
... This review focuses on the perceptions that professional helping agents have of the personality characteristics of their clients. Diagnostic judgments and the processes by which they are made are not considered (for reviews, see Goldberg, 1968;Mischel, 1968). The helpers considered in this review are professionals such as psychologists, counselors, or social workers, providing assistance to clients in a setting such as a mental health clinic, psychiatric hospital, or welfare agency. ...
Reviews evidence on the perceptions that professional helpers have of the personality characteristics of their clients (exclusive of diagnostic judgments). Factor-analytic studies have indicated perceptual dimensions representing clients' manageability, treatability, and likability. Studies are reviewed that have examined the absolute level of helpers' perceptions, the relative level of helpers' and lay persons' perceptions, or the effect of professional experience on perceptions of clients; this literature generally indicates a negative tendency in helpers' perceptions. This evidence is considered with reference to 4 processes: (a) similarity and attraction, (b) personalistic tendency in attributions, (c) perceptual consequences of clients' resistance to influence, and (d) tendency to sample negative aspects of clients' behavior. It is concluded that in professional helping relationships, these processes work against favorable perceptions of clients. (5 p ref)
... This method is alleged to evoke all of the prejudices a counselor may hold about one or the other sex, and causes the counselor to project them on the ambiguous stimulus object. Mischel (1968) issued a cautionary note for researchers using this methodology: that ratings of person descriptors more often reflect the relationships of the semantic meanings of the words and less often the attributes of the person described. ...
A review of the literature suggests that the notion that existing research proves the sex bias inherent in counseling and psychotherapy is pervasive. Almost every subsequent study has taken as a major premise the finding by I. K. Broverman et al that clinicians hold different standards of mental health for men and women. In the present research, both the published and unpublished studies of sex bias in either counseling or psychotherapy were analyzed and their results integrated using meta-analytic techniques. Overall results show an absence of bias against women or against nonstereotyped roles for women in studies of either counselors or psychotherapists. In published studies there was a small sex-bias effect, and unpublished studies showed the same magnitude of bias toward women and a degree of rigor in research design at least as good as that evident in published studies. (45 ref)
... Rather than focusing on personal characteristics of obese clients, the search for predictor variables might be more profitable if attention is directed to how they respond to the initial treatment program (Jeffery et al., 1978) and to performance on specific treatment program-related tasks (Bellack,197S). As with personality assessment in general, the emphasis should be on what the subject does in relation to specific controlling variables rather than what the subject is like (Mischel, 1968). Finally, the manner in which subjects are recruited for treatment studies should also be spelled out. ...
Identifies methodological problems in treatment research on obesity. The importance of multiple measurement of outcome, including appropriate assessment of weight, activity, and relevant physical, emotional, and social indices of adjustment, is emphasized. Traditional evaluation criteria need to be broadened to encompass factors such as cost effectiveness of treatment. The relative merits of alternative single-S and between-groups experimental designs are discussed, the latter including the treatment package, constructive, dismantling, and comparative research strategies. Ways of controlling for non-specific treatment influences are reviewed, and the contribution of client and therapist variables to outcome are mentioned. The reasons for conspicuous lack of long-term follow-ups are analyzed, and recommendations for reducing S attrition during treatment and follow-up are advanced. (80 ref)
Die vorliegende Studie untersucht, basierend auf der Theorie der Situational Strength von Mischel wie Kontextfaktoren Servant Leadership in der Schweizer Armee beeinflussen. Neben den wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen werden auch praktische Implikationen vorgestellt.
प्रस्तुत शोध पत्र के अध्ययन का उद्देश्य ‘माता-पिता की सहभागिता का माध्यमिक स्तर के विद्यार्थियों के तनाव में सम्बन्ध ज्ञात करना।’ उद्देश्य की पूर्ति हेतु शून्य परिकल्पना ‘‘माता-पिता की सहभागिता और माध्यमिक स्तर के विद्यार्थियों के तनाव में कोई सार्थक सम्बन्ध नही ंहै’’ का प्रयोग किया गया। कुल 300 विद्यार्थियों तथा उनके माता-पिता को प्रयोज्यों के रूप में चयनित कर उचित दिशा निर्देश देते हुए प्रपत्र के माध्यम से आँकड़®ं संग्रहण किया गया। सहभागिता एवं तनाव नामक दो चरों के मापन के लिए डाॅ. विजय लक्ष्मी एवं डाॅ. श्रुति नारायन जी द्वारा बनाई गई तनाव मापनी तथा माता-पिता की सहभागिता स्केल डा. रीता चोपड़ा एवं डाॅ. सुराबाला साहू द्वारा विकसित की गई सहभागिता मापनी का प्रयोग किया गया। परीक्षण के लिए ‘सहसम्बन्ध विश्लेषण‘ के उपयोग करते हुए माता-पिता की सहभागिता और माध्यमिक स्तर के विद्यार्थियों के तनाव नामक दोनों चरों के रैखिक सम्बन्ध का आकलन करने के परिणाम स्वरूप प्राप्त एकल संख्या सहसम्बन्ध गुणांक इन दो चरों के मध्य सम्बन्ध की दिशा और ताकत का वर्णन करते हुए इस ओर इंगित करता हैं कि माता-पिता की सहभागिता और माध्यमिक स्तर के विद्यार्थियों के तनाव के मध्य ऋणात्मक सार्थक सम्बन्ध हंै। अर्थात् दोनों चरों में विपरीत दिशीय सम्बन्ध हैं जो स्पष्ट करते हैं कि माता-पिता की सहभगिता में वृद्धि होने से माध्यमिक स्तर के विद्यार्थियों में तनाव में कमी आती है।
Over the past decade, several studies have demonstrated that idiosyncratic animal behaviors remain stable over long time periods. The stability of individually variable behaviors over time is often referred to as an animal’s individuality, or personality. However, most studies have focused on individuality in a single, well-defined environmental context, whereas it is well-established from population studies that animal behavior is highly context-dependent. The ongoing ‘person-situation debate’ in humans raises the question whether also animal behavior remains stable across different situations, such as changing environmental contexts. For instance, one individual might be generally more visually guided than another, or rely only on one particular visual cue, or even on this very cue only in a specific environmental context. Here we use a combination of both well-established and novel behavioral assays to investigate the relationship between individual behavior and environmental context. The stability of three individual traits (exploration, attention, and anxiety) was investigated under changing environmental contexts (temperature, visual cues, arena shape), in both walking and flying Drosophila melanogaster . We find that individuality is highly context-dependent, but even under the most extreme environmental alterations tested, stability of behavior always persisted in at least one of the traits. Furthermore, our quantification reveals a hierarchical order of environmental features influencing individuality. In summary, our work demonstrates that similar to humans, animal individuality persists across different contexts, and individual differences shape behavior across variable environments.
The research examines creativity as an important factor in the production of ecological products and the promotion of sustainable development in the regional economy. The research aims to examine how to promote creativity in the regional economy, what tools should be implemented to develop creativity in individuals, and how creativity is associated with overall prosperity and economic growth in the country. Nowadays, the problems of exploiting natural resources and management of constrained natural resources in the context of ecological production are increasingly relevant. To motivate young entrepreneurs to produce new ecological environmentally friendly products, creativity in individuals should be encouraged, which would serve as an incentive for individuals to start their own businesses in regions. The role of the creative economy in regions could be observed across all the industries where commercialization of products and services is possible. A plan for the environmental economy should be designed within regional policies in accordance with regional characteristics and ecological problems, thereby contributing to regional sustainability and development. The research could serve as a basis for further discussion on creativity and ecology in the regional economy.
This article investigates 2 models of the cognitive process underlying trait ratings: The trait-to-trait process states that trait inferences are guided by the conceptual similarity among traits. We presented Ss with 6 fictitious persons. Each was described by acts referring to 1 of 6 traits. Ss rated the targets on interpersonal trait terms. If trait ratings are gathered immediately after the presentation of behavioral information about a single target (Study 1) these ratings correspond closely to the prototypicality ratings of the acts on the trait concepts (behavior-to-trait process). However, if Ss have to keep the behavioral information about several targets in memory (Study 2), the trait ratings are guided by the conceptual relations among the concepts under study (trait-to-trait process).
Different types of self-discrepancies are associated with different negative affects. Two studies were conducted to determine whether automatic activation of specific actual-self: self-guide mismatches, as cognitive structures, would induce distinct emotional states. Subjects possessing significant discrepancies between their actual self and either their ideal self-guide (attributes that someone wishes or hopes the person would possess) or their ought self-guide (attributes that someone believes the person has the duty or obligation to possess) responded verbally to an audiotape while “thinking about other people.” Study 1 involved two kinds of priming attributes: self-relevant and yoked (another subject’s self-relevant attributes). Activating mismatches induced momentary syndromes of dejection (sadness, decreased arousal) in ideal-discrepant subjects but induced agitation (nervousness, increased arousal) in ought-discrepant subjects. In Study 2, subjects were randomized to either self-relevant/nondiscrepant, self-discrepant, or yoked priming. The findings of Study 1 were replicated for the self-discrepant priming condition alone. Results indicate that (a) mismatches constitute cognitive structures and (b) automatic activation of different mismatches via contextual priming induces distinct types of emotional discomfort.
Four aspects of the item content of personality inventories were studied: (a) the area of psychological functioning addressed (cognitive, preferences, feelings, behavioral), (b) degree of reference to situational factors, (c) degree of reference to response frequency, and (d) the nature of reference to time. Three judges rated items of the California Psychological Inventory, Eysenck Personality Inventory, Maudsley Personality Inventory, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Jackson Personality Research Form, and Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. Behavioral acts were found infrequently addressed in inventory items, and the other areas of functioning were approximately equally represented. More than half of the items referred to situation characteristics, 39% included the notion of frequency of behavior or experience, and most referred to the present. Rating reliabilities were also presented, and results for individual inventories were compared. Implications for controversies in the field of personality were discussed.
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