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<strong>PERSONALITY</strong> <strong>PROCESSES</strong> <strong>AND</strong> <strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong><br />
<strong>DIFFERENCES</strong><br />
Intraindividual Stability in the Organization and Patterning of Behavior:<br />
Incorporating Psychological Situations Into the Idiographic<br />
Analysis of Personality<br />
Yuichi Shoda, Walter Mischel, and Jack C. Wright<br />
In nomothetic analyses, the cross-situational consistency of individual differences in social behavior,<br />
assessed in vivo in a camp setting, depended on the similarity in the psychological features of situations.<br />
As predicted by the social-cognitive theory of personality, idiographic analyses revealed that<br />
individuals were characterized by stable profiles of;/. . . then . . . , situation-behavior relationships<br />
that formed "behavioral signatures" of personality (e.g., he aggresses when warned by adults<br />
but complies when threatened by peers. Thus, the intraindividual organization of behavior variation<br />
across situations was enduring but discriminatively patterned, visible as distinctive profiles of situation-behavior<br />
relationships. Implications were examined for an idiographic reconceptualization of<br />
personality coherence and its behavioral expressions in relation to the psychological ingredients of<br />
situations.<br />
Allport (1937) introduced the concept of idiographic analyses<br />
half a century ago, urging personologists to understand each<br />
individual deeply in terms of how that person functions, instead<br />
of just studying "the operations of a hypothetical 'average'<br />
mind" (p. 61). Nonetheless, the idiographic focus has been bypassed<br />
by mainstream personality psychology. Probably this neglect<br />
reflects not a lack of interest but an absence of appropriate<br />
methods and theory for studying individual functioning in ways<br />
that are objective and scientific rather than intuitive and clinical.<br />
In our view, understanding individual functioning requires<br />
identifying first the psychological situations that engage a particular<br />
person's characteristic personality processes and the dis-<br />
Yuichi Shoda and Walter Mischel, Department of Psychology, Columbia<br />
University; Jack C. Wright, Department of Psychology, Brown<br />
University, and Wediko Children's Services, Boston, Massachusetts.<br />
Portions of the present results were presented in Yuichi Shoda's 1991<br />
Society of Experimental Social Psychology Dissertation Award address,<br />
Columbus, Ohio, October 1991.<br />
Preparation of this article and the research was supported in part by<br />
Grants MH39349 and MH45994 to Walter Mischel from the National<br />
Institute of Mental Health.<br />
We thank the administration, staff, and children of Wediko Children's<br />
Services, whose cooperation made this research possible. We are<br />
especially grateful to Hugh Leichtman and Harry Parad, Wediko's directors,<br />
for their support and Mary Powers, Philip Fisher, and Cynthia<br />
Scott for their assistance in data collection. We thank Niall Bolger,<br />
Nancy Cantor, Daniel Cervone, Chi Yue Chiu, Ying Yi Hong, Kristi<br />
Lemm, and Monica Larrea Rodriguez for their valuable comments on<br />
drafts of this article.<br />
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yuichi<br />
Shoda or Walter Mischel, Department of Psychology, Columbia<br />
University, New York, New York 10027.<br />
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994, Vol. 67, No. 4, 674-687<br />
Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. OO22-3514/94/S3.0O<br />
674<br />
tinctive cognitions and affects that are experienced in them.<br />
Then, an individual's functioning should become visible in the<br />
distinctive or unique ways the person's behavior changes across<br />
situations, not just in its overall level or mean frequency. For<br />
example, a person may often behave in a warm and empathic<br />
way with her colleagues at work but almost always in a very<br />
critical manner with her family. Another person may show the<br />
opposite pattern, so that he is warm and empathic with his family<br />
but critical with his professional colleagues. If two people are<br />
similar in their behaviors averaged across situations but differ in<br />
the situations in which they display those behaviors, are these<br />
differences merely a reflection of momentary situational influences?<br />
Or do such differences reflect differences in enduring and<br />
meaningful aspects of their personality? These are the main<br />
questions addressed in this article.<br />
In social-cognitive theory, 1 individual differences in patterns<br />
of behavior across situations reflect such underlying person<br />
variables as the individuals' encoding or construals of their experiences,<br />
and their expectations, values, goals and self-regulatory<br />
strategies (Mischel, 1973, 1990). These relatively enduring<br />
person variables within the individual interact with situational<br />
characteristics to generate stable but discriminative patterns of<br />
behavior. It is these "unique bundles or sets of temporally stable<br />
prototypic behaviors" (Mischel & Peake, 1982, p. 754), contextualized<br />
in relevant psychological situations, that constitute a<br />
locus in which personality coherence may be revealed (Mischel<br />
1990, 1991; Shoda, 1990; Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 1993a,<br />
1993b; Wright & Mischel, 1987). A major goal of the present<br />
1 In current usage, the terms social cognitive and cognitive social appear<br />
increasingly as essentially interchangeable descriptions of this general<br />
approach to personality and social behavior (e.g., Mischel, 1993).
esearch was to obtain empirical evidence relevant to the validity<br />
of this conception of intraindividual personality coherence.<br />
Our analysis of the organization of the individual's behavior<br />
is conditional or contextual in the sense that the fundamental<br />
unit of observation is not the unconditional probability of traitrelevant<br />
behavior (e.g., the tendency to be extraverted), but<br />
rather the conditional probability of a given type of behavior in<br />
given types of psychological conditions or situations (e.g., Patterson,<br />
1982; Patterson & Reid, 1984; Shoda, Mischel, &<br />
Wright, 1989; Wright & Mischel, 1987, 1988). The traditional<br />
use of the unconditional probability of trait-relevant behavior<br />
is appropriate and useful for many purposes, such as selecting<br />
persons on the basis of their predicted future behaviors on average<br />
in unspecified situations. However, beyond identifying individual<br />
differences in average levels of behavior, we view the intraindividual<br />
variability of behavior itself as the behavioral phenomenon<br />
of interest. These patterns of if ... then . . .<br />
relations link psychological situations to the person's relevant<br />
behaviors (e.g., Mischel, 1973).<br />
Responsive to the many calls for a shift from a variable-centered<br />
approach in personality research to one that is more person-centered<br />
(e.g., Carlson, 1971; John, 1990), our analysis is<br />
indeed person-centered and focuses on the within-person (intraindividual)<br />
organization of behavior and on personality coherence.<br />
However, in the search for intraindividual stability, we<br />
do not pursue the traditional configuration of global dispositions<br />
or behavioral tendencies that characterize a person (e.g.,<br />
high in extraversion and low in conscientiousness). Instead, our<br />
approach is unique in focusing on how a given type of behavior<br />
(e.g., aggression) by an individual varies distinctively but predictably<br />
across different types of psychological situations (e.g.,<br />
ifAheX,butifBheY).<br />
Stability in these patterns of if. . . then . . ., situation-behavior<br />
relations is predicted to the degree that there is stability<br />
in the underlying person variables, such as the individual's ways<br />
of construing the situation and his or her relevant goals, values,<br />
expectancies, and the like, as they are activated in the particular<br />
situation (Mischel, 1973, 1990). Suppose for example that one<br />
person encodes events like being teased or provoked by his peer<br />
as an offense that requires a response in kind, whereas he sees<br />
being warned by his supervisor as a situation in which he has<br />
to comply to avoid negative consequences. For another person,<br />
however, being teased or provoked by a peer is encoded as normal<br />
and acceptable bids for interaction, whereas warning by a<br />
supervisor is construed as a personal violation by an unaccepted<br />
authority. Such differences in the subjective meaning of different<br />
situations, reflecting stable differences in encoding (e.g.,<br />
Dodge, 1986), may result in activation of different expectancies,<br />
goals, values, and other person variables. Behaviorally, the<br />
effects should be visible as distinctively patterned if. . . then<br />
. . . , situation-behavior configurations, expressed as stable<br />
profiles of behavior variability across situations that differ in<br />
their psychological meaning for the individual. In the present<br />
article, we examine empirical data on the stability of such intraindividual<br />
situation-behavior configurations to test this<br />
hypothesis.<br />
Direct evidence that such patterns of variability in behavior<br />
are stable and distinctive within individuals would allow one<br />
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING 675<br />
to conceptualize them as behavioral signatures of personality,<br />
rather than as measurement error or as data contradictory to<br />
personality coherence. This calls for an idiographic analysis of<br />
behavioral coherence, using an extensive observation system to<br />
assess people's behaviors in natural social interactions over<br />
many occasions. Unlike many earlier studies of person-situation<br />
links that relied exclusively on self-reports, we required behavioral<br />
data that would allow us to examine individual differences<br />
in people's distinctive patterns of relating to these naturally<br />
occurring social situations. In our long-term research<br />
program, these patterns were obtained by systematic behavior<br />
observations in vivo over the course of a summer in a children's<br />
residential camp setting, Wediko Children's Services' summer<br />
program in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. The results yielded an<br />
extensive archival database that allows systematic analyses to<br />
identify personality coherence in behavior as it unfolds across<br />
naturalistic situations and over many occasions (e.g., Shoda,<br />
1990; Shoda etal., 1989,1993a, 1993b).<br />
Within a given ecological setting, such as the Wediko camp,<br />
situations may be conceptualized at different levels and with<br />
alternative units (Mischel, 1991; Shoda, 1990; Shoda et al.,<br />
1993b). At one level are the nominal situations that have been<br />
operationalized in studies of behavioral consistency traditionally<br />
(e.g., Hartshorne& May, 1928;Newcomb, 1929; Mischel &<br />
Peake, 1982). Typically they were dictated by the structure of<br />
the particular ecology (the setting), rather than by their potential<br />
psychological impact on, and meaning for, the person or by<br />
the generalizability of the observations obtained within them.<br />
Usually these nominal situations are highly complex and contain<br />
a wide array of different psychological features (Shoda et<br />
al., 1993a). In a summer camp, such as Newcomb's (1929)<br />
Camp Wawokiye or the present site, Wediko, woodworking, for<br />
example, may be a nominal situation that contains such diverse<br />
interpersonal psychological events as being praised, frustrated,<br />
teased, and punished. Nominal situations such as woodworking<br />
in the camp also tend to limit generalizability to other life settings.<br />
Thus, individual differences in relation to a specific nominal<br />
situation, even if highly stable, necessarily would be of<br />
modest psychological interest beyond the setting. On the other<br />
hand, at a deeper level, situations may be defined to capture<br />
basic psychological features or ingredients that occur in many<br />
different nominal situations and settings. In that case, information<br />
about an individual's behavior tendencies in relation to<br />
them is potentially generalizable to other situations that also<br />
contain these features. The utility of analyzing behaviors in<br />
terms of their stable relations to particular psychological features,<br />
hinges mostly on how widely the features occur in diverse<br />
nominal situations and different ecological settings.<br />
Table 1 summarizes and illustrates the distinctions among<br />
ecological settings, nominal situations, psychological features,<br />
and the interpersonal situations used as units of situations in the<br />
present study. As the table indicates, such events as being teased,<br />
provoked, or threatened are embedded within different nominal<br />
situations and contain the salient psychological features that<br />
are encoded by individuals and that affect their behaviors dynamically<br />
in the stream of social interactions. Just as individuals'<br />
responses to particular medications can be understood<br />
more fundamentally by considering the specific active ingredi-
676 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
Table 1<br />
Examples of Ecological Settings, Nominal Situations, Interpersonal Situations,<br />
and Psychological Features<br />
Setting<br />
Nominal<br />
situations Interpersonal situations<br />
Psychological<br />
features<br />
Camp Woodworking When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
Cabin meeting When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
School Playground When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
Classroom When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
Home Mealtime When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
ents rather than the brand names, the social-cognitive analysis<br />
of situations focuses on the psychologically active features of<br />
situations. Whereas nominal situations (such as woodworking)<br />
tend to contain heterogeneous sets of psychological features, in<br />
the present study we focused on interpersonal situations, each<br />
of which contains a relatively more homogeneous, distinct set<br />
of psychological features (Shoda et al., 1993b), as the units of<br />
analysis.<br />
The challenge in this type of analysis is to capture those features<br />
that are encoded distinctively by perceivers and that activate other<br />
relevant cognitive social person variables (e.g., expectancies and<br />
values) in the mediating process. Individual differences in response<br />
to nominal situations, such as the daily activities within a camp,<br />
then, may be analyzed in terms of the person's stable cognitive,<br />
affective, and behavioral responses to the encoded "active," psychological<br />
features within the nominal situations (e.g., Mischel,<br />
1973). These psychological features, in turn, may consist of combinations<br />
of even more specific features and may be analyzed in<br />
terms of their overlap and similarity.<br />
Focusing on interpersonal situations as the situation units of<br />
analysis embedded in their nominal situations within the eco-<br />
Watching TV When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive<br />
When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative<br />
When praised by an adult adult, positive<br />
When warned by an adult adult, negative<br />
When punished by an adult adult, negative<br />
logical setting of the research site, in this article we examine<br />
the consistency and stability of situation-behavior relations that<br />
characterize individuals. Guided by the social-cognitive approach<br />
to personality (e.g., Mischel, 1973, 1990; Shoda & Mischel,<br />
1993), we pursued an idiographic strategy. Specifically,<br />
we focused on the intraindividual organization of behavior in<br />
terms of the specific patterns in which that behavior varied<br />
across interpersonal situations, examining the stability of this<br />
pattern over time within each individual. We hypothesized that<br />
there would be significant intraindividual stability in the distinctive<br />
pattern by which the person's behavior varied predictably<br />
across particular types of these situations, visible as intraindividually<br />
stable "profiles" of if. . . then . . . , situationbehavior<br />
relations.<br />
Second, we examined the implications of these hypothesized<br />
intraindividually stable profiles of situation-behavior relations<br />
for the nomothetic analysis of cross-situational consistency.<br />
Namely, we hypothesized that the same underlying processes<br />
that generate stable and distinctive intraindividual profiles of<br />
behavior variation across these interpersonal situations also<br />
should generate cross-situational consistency in behavior to the
extent that the situations are similar in their psychologically active<br />
features. Then the degree of consistency in individual<br />
differences in behavior across different situations should be a<br />
function of the similarity in the psychological features that they<br />
shared. To test this hypothesis, we also examined a more traditional<br />
nomothetic aspect of behavior organization, focusing on<br />
the cross-situational consistency of individual differences examined<br />
separately for each type of behavior observed in each<br />
type of psychological situation.<br />
Method<br />
Research Program and Design<br />
The present article reports aspects of a large-scale field research program<br />
conducted at Wediko Children's Services, a summer camp residential<br />
program in New Hampshire (Shoda, 1990). The general population<br />
and setting have been described previously (e.g., Rodriguez, Mischel,<br />
& Shoda, 1989; Wright & Mischel, 1987, 1988). In the research<br />
program on which this article draws, a total of 84 children (60 boys and<br />
24 girls, mean age 10 years and 2 months) were observed for the entire<br />
duration of one summer session (6 weeks) in the camp.<br />
The exceptionally rich database that we collected in this research program<br />
yielded a unique data archive for the systematic analysis of social<br />
behavior as it unfolds over time and across settings. These data range<br />
from highly molecular (e.g., coding of videotaped social interactions in<br />
10-s units), to more molar (e.g., hourly ratings of behavior), to relatively<br />
global (e.g., dispositional judgments by counselors at the end of the summer).<br />
The data were collected by a team of 77 adult observers (a total of<br />
14 to 28 observers per child), with an average total of 167 hr of behavior<br />
observations for each child over the 6-week summer. Our design enabled<br />
studies of diverse facets of the organization and nature of the individual's<br />
distinctive and stable behavior patterns at various levels of specificity<br />
and depth. Specifically, at the level of nominal situations, we analyzed<br />
individual differences in the organization of social behavior, focusing<br />
on the role of competencies as the characteristic of the<br />
individuals and as a demand characteristic of the situations (Shoda et<br />
al., 1993a). At the level of interpersonal situations, we addressed the<br />
relationships between judgments of global dispositions and the behaviors<br />
of individuals who were good exemplars of dispositional categories<br />
(Shoda etal., 1993b).<br />
We designed the research program to include assessments of interpersonal<br />
situations with distinct sets of salient psychological features that<br />
are relevant, important, and consensually encoded by people in the population<br />
sampled. Five interpersonal situations were selected representing<br />
two of the most salient and observable psychological features identified<br />
in earlier research (Wright & Mischel, 1988), namely valence (positive<br />
vs. negative) of the interaction and type of person (adult counselor<br />
vs. child peer) involved in the interaction. The five situations selected to<br />
represent each combination of the two psychological features are summarized<br />
in the third column of Table 1.<br />
Specifically, throughout the 6-week summer, within each hour of<br />
camp activity, observers recorded the frequency with which each of<br />
these five types of situations occurred and whether the child responded<br />
with any of the five behavior categories of interest, namely, verbal aggression<br />
(teased, provoked, or threatened); physical aggression (hit,<br />
pushed, physically harmed); whined or displayed babyish behavior;<br />
complied or gave in; and talked prosocially (Shoda, 1990; Shoda et al.,<br />
1989, 1993b). In the present research we tested the hypotheses concerning<br />
the nature and stability of the intraindividual organization of social<br />
behavior in relationship to these situations from both the idiographic<br />
and nomothetic perspectives.<br />
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING<br />
Subjects<br />
677<br />
The subjects were the 84 children (60 boys and 24 girls) from the<br />
research program described above, who resided for 6 weeks in a summer<br />
camp residential setting (Wediko Children's Services) in New Hampshire.<br />
They ranged in age from 6 years 5 months to 13 years 2 months,<br />
with a mean of 10 years 2 months, and they resided in cabin groups of<br />
6-10 same-sex peers similar in age. This population is characterized<br />
by significant social adjustment problems, particularly with inadequate<br />
prosocial behavior and aggressive behavior in the home or school environment,<br />
and most of the youngsters are from low-income families in<br />
the Boston area. Data dealing with other questions and results from the<br />
same children assessed in the same setting and summer in the field study<br />
are reported in Shoda et al. (1989, 1993a, 1993b) and Rodriguez et al.<br />
(1989).<br />
Conditional Probabilities of Behaviors Within Each<br />
Interpersonal Situation<br />
The conditional probabilities of behaviors were based on the five types<br />
of behaviors described above, observed within each of the five types of<br />
interpersonal situations shown in Table 1. We use the term situationbehavior<br />
relation to refer to each of the 25 i/[or when]. . . then . . .<br />
conditional probabilities of the five behaviors in response to the five<br />
psychological situations recorded (e.g., prosocial talk when teased; prosocial<br />
talk when faced with a positive peer contact). The conditional<br />
probability of physical aggression when praised by an adult, however,<br />
was 0 for all except one child and therefore had little variation across<br />
individuals. Thus, this condition-behavior relation was excluded from<br />
further analyses.<br />
To compute conditional probability of subjects' behavioral responses<br />
in each psychological situation reliably, it was necessary that the subjects<br />
encounter each situation repeatedly. To ensure adequate reliability<br />
and resolution in the conditional probabilities in the analyses reported<br />
below, we therefore required that the subject encounter each type of<br />
situation at least a total of six times. Individuals differed in the number<br />
of times they encountered each of the five situations we observed. Specifically,<br />
the mean frequencies of encountering each type of situation<br />
were as follows (SD shown in parentheses): Peer teased, provoked, or<br />
threatened, 10.3 (6.5); Adult warned the child, 42.9 (19.5); Adult gave<br />
the child time out, 22.8 (16.0); Peer initiated positive social contact,<br />
39.8 (10.5); Adult praised the child verbally, 66.5 (14.6). We also used<br />
this subset to compute cross-situational consistency of conditional<br />
probabilities of behavioral responses so that all correlations reported in<br />
Table 3 are based on the same set of subjects regardless of the situation<br />
pairs involved.<br />
Intraindividual Situation-Behavior Profiles<br />
The if. . . then . . . pattern with which a given type of behavior<br />
displayed by an individual varied across the situations constituted an<br />
intraindividual situation-behavior profile. For example, Figure 1 shows<br />
a situation-behavior profile for verbal aggression for one individual and<br />
depicts how the person's verbal aggressiveness varied over the five interpersonal<br />
events shown along the horizontal axis. One may plot the absolute<br />
conditional probabilities of behavior across situations, but the<br />
variability of such a profile would reflect the differences among the situations<br />
in how people behave in them in general, constituting the normative<br />
level for each situation. For example, most people are more likely<br />
to display aggression when teased by peers than when praised by an<br />
adult. To plot the aspect of behavior variation that is distinctive for each<br />
person, therefore, we subtracted the normative (mean) profile observed<br />
in this sample of subjects from the individual's "raw" profiles, and the<br />
results were rescaled using as units the standard deviations of the behav-
678 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
Child # 17 profile stability: r = 0.96 Child # 9 profile stability: r = 0.89<br />
PEER TEASE ADULT WARN<br />
PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH<br />
PEER TEASE ADULT WARN<br />
PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH<br />
Child # 28 profile stability: r = 0.49 Child #48 profile stability: r = 0.11<br />
PEER TEASE ADULT WARN<br />
PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH<br />
PEER TEASE ADULT WARN<br />
PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH<br />
Figure 1. Illustrative intraindividual profiles of verbal aggression across five types of psychological situations.<br />
The two lines indicate the profiles based on two different, nonoverlapping samples of occasions in<br />
which the child encountered each type of psychological situation, shown as Time 1 (solid) and Time 2<br />
(broken).<br />
ior within each situation. In short, the distinctive profile of behavior<br />
variability across situations was identified for each individual by the<br />
pattern of standardized deviations from the normative pattern in terms<br />
of standard scores computed in each situation. Figure 1 illustrates such<br />
a profile. In the present analyses, we assessed the stability of these situation-behavior<br />
profiles within individuals to test the hypothesis that the<br />
distinctive ways in which an individual's behavior varies across situations<br />
constitutes an enduring aspect of personality, rather than merely<br />
reflecting fluctuations due to uncontrolled, random factors.<br />
Indexing Profile Similarities to Determine Their<br />
Stability<br />
To index and statistically test the stability of the intraindividual, situation-behavior<br />
profiles, the total available observations of each type of<br />
situation were randomly divided to form two sets of observations.<br />
Within each set, for each subject, conditional probabilities of each type<br />
of behavior in each type of situation were computed. This procedure<br />
yielded for each person two intraindividual situation-behavior profiles<br />
observed on two different sets of occasions. The similarity of the<br />
"shapes" of the two profiles was then indexed by an ipsative correlation<br />
coefficient, computed within each individual separately, using the interpersonal<br />
situations as the units of analysis.<br />
For example, if a person's behavior profile for the five situations from<br />
one set of nominal situations (camp activities) was [ 1.0,0.5,-1.0, —0.5,<br />
0.0], and the one from the other was [0.5, 0.0, -1.5, -1.0, -0.5], the<br />
correlation between the two would be +1.0. Note that the correlation<br />
essentially reflects the stability of the rank order among the interpersonal<br />
situations within the same individual in how the individual's behavior<br />
in each situation deviates from the respective norm in each situation.<br />
In this example, both profiles indicate that the standardized (i.e.,<br />
relative to the situation norm) behavior probability was highest in the<br />
first situation, followed by the second, fifth, fourth, and then the third.<br />
The stability coefficient of +1.0 indicates that the intraindividual rank<br />
order of situations was preserved perfectly over time. If the profile from<br />
the second set was [-1.0, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0], it would indicate a complete<br />
reversal of the intraindividual rank ordering of the five situations,<br />
and the profile stability correlation would be — 1.0.<br />
Computing Mean Consistency Coefficients Within<br />
Versus Across Interpersonal Situations<br />
As noted in the introduction, in addition to the idiographic analysis<br />
of intraindividual profile stability we also pursued a more nomothetic<br />
route to test the cross-situational consistency of if. . .then. . .relationships<br />
separately for each type of behavior in relation to each type of<br />
interpersonal situation. Therefore, to test the hypothesis that the degree<br />
of cross-situational consistency in individual differences in behavior<br />
should be a function of the similarity in the psychological features that
they shared, we examined traditional, nomothetic, cross-situational<br />
consistency coefficients of individual differences in each behavior, computed<br />
for each distinct pair of interpersonal situations. To ensure sufficient<br />
samples of observations for each type of interpersonal situation,<br />
observations from different camp activities were pooled. Specifically,<br />
the 14 camp activities were randomly grouped to form two sets of 7<br />
activities, and within each set, conditional probabilities of each type of<br />
behavior in each type of interpersonal situation were computed. The<br />
consistency of individual differences in these conditional probabilities<br />
was computed across the two sets. Different counselors led different activities,<br />
and behavior observations were made at the end of each activity<br />
on a computer-scored behavior tracking sheet by the counselor who led<br />
that activity. Because observations of behaviors in different activities<br />
were made by different counselors, consistency coefficients computed<br />
across them do not reflect possible links due to overlap in observers.<br />
To minimize chance associations present in any specific random<br />
grouping of the camp activities, this procedure was repeated 100 times,<br />
and the results were averaged using Fisher's r-to-z transformation. These<br />
average correlations should be more stable with a smaller standard error<br />
than is usually expected for a single correlation, because such averages<br />
are less subject to the sampling error associated with the specific random<br />
grouping of the 14 camp activities into two sets of 7. If the 100<br />
iterations had been conducted in independent samples, then one should<br />
be able to compute the expected standard error of the mean coefficient<br />
following the central limit theorem. However, the 100 iterations do not<br />
constitute independent samples, and therefore one cannot compute estimates<br />
of the standard error by simply applying the theorem, which<br />
assumes independence of sampling. Therefore, we used the bootstrapping<br />
procedure, whose method and theoretical rationale are described<br />
elsewhere in detail (Diaconis & Efron, 1983; Efron, 1981, 1985; Efron<br />
ATibshirani, 1986).<br />
Briefly, this computation-intensive, nonparametric method of estimating<br />
standard errors involves drawing random samples from the obtained<br />
data pool and computing the statistics of interest in each random<br />
sample. The bootstrapping procedure calls for sampling with replacement;<br />
that is, after a subject is drawn from the pool, the chosen subject<br />
is replaced back to the pool so that she or he can be chosen again. Therefore,<br />
even though it requires forming random samples of the same size<br />
as the size of the obtained data pool from which they are drawn, the<br />
exact composition of the random sample varies, due to the fact Liat in<br />
each random sample some subjects are represented multiple times while<br />
some others are not chosen. The distribution across the random samples<br />
of the statistic of interest computed in each sample (which in the case<br />
of the present analysis is the mean consistency coefficient) provides an<br />
estimate of the sampling distribution. Specifically, the standard errors<br />
reported in Table 2 are based on 500 such random samples. Within each<br />
sample, 10, rather than 100, random groupings of camp activities were<br />
made because of the limitation of computer resources; thus, we obtained<br />
conservative overestimates of standard errors and p values.<br />
Results<br />
Idiographic Analyses oflntraindividual Profile Stability<br />
Figure 1 presents examples of idiographic situation-behavior<br />
profiles for individuals, illustrating varying levels of profile stability<br />
for all five situations. The first profile in Figure 1 indicates<br />
that the pattern by which verbal aggression of Child 17 varied<br />
across the five situations was stable and distinctive. Specifically,<br />
this individual was more verbally aggressive than others when<br />
punished by an adult (standard score of over 2.0), but his level<br />
of aggression was lower than the average level when teased, provoked,<br />
or threatened by a peer (standard score of about 0.5);<br />
while in the other three situations his level of verbal aggression<br />
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING<br />
679<br />
was near average in each respective situation. The two lines indicate<br />
the profiles based on two different, nonoverlapping samples<br />
of occasions in which the child encountered each type of<br />
psychological situation, shown as Time 1 and Time 2. At both<br />
Time 1 and Time 2, his profile was characterized by the fact<br />
that his level of verbal aggression, relative to the level of the<br />
peers in each situation (i.e., the "norm"), was the highest when<br />
adults punished him and lowest when another child teased.<br />
Child 9, whose profile of verbal aggression is shown in the second<br />
panel of Figure 1, was most distinctively verbally aggressive<br />
when warned by adults and his overall profile indicated substantial<br />
stability. Child 28 (the third panel of Figure 1), on the other<br />
hand, was most distinctively verbally aggressive when peers approached<br />
him. The profile stability was relatively modest, however,<br />
because his profile with regard to the remaining psychological<br />
situations changed over time.<br />
The last panel of Figure 1, for Child 48, illustrates a case of<br />
low profile stability. His profile of verbal aggression was distinctive<br />
at Time 1 in that he was most verbally aggressive, relative to<br />
others, when praised by an adult, but this was no longer the case<br />
at Time 2.<br />
As these examples illustrate, children differed widely in the<br />
stability and nature of their intraindividual profiles for each<br />
type of behavior. To test the hypothesis that on the whole these<br />
patterns of behavior variation across situations constitute intraindividually<br />
stable profiles, rather than "error variance," the<br />
mean profile stabilities for each behavior were computed by averaging<br />
each subject's profile stability using Fisher's r-to-z transformation.<br />
Because the profile stability is computed ipsatively,<br />
we considered each child's observed stability coefficient as independently<br />
sampled from a distribution of profile stabilities<br />
and tested the statistical significance of the group mean stabilities<br />
by t tests as estimates of the sampling error using the standard<br />
deviations of the stability coefficients across individuals.<br />
The first section of Table 2 shows the mean stability coefficients<br />
of intraindividual situation-behavior profiles over all five<br />
interpersonal situations listed in Table 1. To provide a reliable<br />
assessment of the conditional probabilities of behavioral responses<br />
in relation to each situation, yet to retain a maximum<br />
number of subjects, we included all subjects as long as'they experienced<br />
each psychological situation included in a profile at<br />
least six times in the course of the 6-week summer, as indicated<br />
in the Method section. Of the total of 84 individuals in the sample,<br />
53 encountered all five situations sufficiently to meet this<br />
criterion and thus were included in this analysis. On average,<br />
they had mean stability coefficients of. 19 (p < .05) for prosocial<br />
talk, .28 (p < .001) for whining, .41 (p < .001) for compliance,<br />
and .47 (p < .001) for verbal aggression in their intraindividua!<br />
profiles of behavior variability across all five situations.<br />
It was possible to include more individuals in the analysis by<br />
excluding from the profiles the less frequently encountered<br />
types of situations. Specifically, excluding the least frequent situation<br />
(when teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer), 73<br />
people encountered each of the remaining four types of situations<br />
at least six times, and we used that subset of subjects to<br />
compute the stabilities of profiles of behavior variability over<br />
the four situations. As shown in the second section of Table 2,<br />
the average stability coefficients for these profiles were .28 (p
680 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
Table 2<br />
Mean Stability oflntraindividual, Situation-Behavior Profiles of Varying Compositions<br />
Situations<br />
All 5<br />
Mean r<br />
t<br />
df<br />
P<br />
4 situations'"<br />
Meanr<br />
t<br />
df<br />
P<br />
3 situations'<br />
Meanr<br />
t<br />
df<br />
P<br />
3 negative situations' 1<br />
Meanr<br />
t<br />
df<br />
P<br />
Prosocial<br />
talk<br />
.19<br />
2.28<br />
52<br />
situations sampled, namely, being teased, provoked, or threatened<br />
by peers; being warned by an adult; and being punished by<br />
an adult.<br />
The stability of intraindividual pattern of behavior variability<br />
over the three negative situations was computed for each subject<br />
who encountered them sufficiently in terms of the minimum<br />
frequency criterion. As shown in the bottom section of Table 2,<br />
for a significant portion of this subsample of 53 subjects, intraindividual<br />
patterns of behavior variability were stable for compliance<br />
(.45, p < .001), physical aggression, (.32, p < .05), and<br />
verbal aggression (.48, p < .001). Thus, the way in which verbal<br />
aggression, physical aggression, and compliance varied over the<br />
three types of negative situations stably characterized many individuals<br />
in the present sample, and the mean intraindividual<br />
stability for the sample was significantly above 0. This suggests<br />
that for a significant portion of the people in the present sample,<br />
these three types of negative situations were psychologically distinct<br />
and that their aggressive and compliant responses to each<br />
situation were discriminative in ways that stably characterized<br />
them. These results go beyond the findings obtained in the profiles<br />
for all five situations, because they show that the shape of<br />
the profiles even just among the three negative situations also<br />
reflected significant and personologically meaningful intraindividual<br />
variance.<br />
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING<br />
Nomothetic Analyses ofCross-Situational Consistency:<br />
Cross-Situational Consistency in Behavior as a Function<br />
of Similarity of Psychological Situations<br />
In the social-cognitive theory of personality, the basic underlying<br />
psychological processes that generate the distinctive<br />
and stable intraindividual profiles of behavior variation across<br />
psychological situations also have implications for the type of<br />
cross-situational consistency in behavior one should expect.<br />
Namely, the degree of consistency in individual differences in<br />
behavior across different situations should be a function of the<br />
similarity in the psychological features that they share (Mischel,<br />
1973). We tested this hypothesis by computing the traditional<br />
nomothetic cross-situational consistency coefficients, assessing<br />
the stability of individual differences in each type of behavior,<br />
computed separately in each type of psychological situation, as<br />
summarized in Table 3. Recall that for different psychological<br />
situations, different numbers of subjects passed the inclusion<br />
criterion for computing reliable conditional probabilities (encountering<br />
a psychological situation at least six times during the<br />
summer). Therefore, as shown in Table 3, so that all correlations<br />
are based on the same set of subjects regardless of the<br />
situation pairs involved, we used the subset of the sample (N -<br />
53) that met the reliability criterion for all five psychological<br />
situations to compute consistency of conditional probabilities<br />
of behavioral responses within and across situations.<br />
The coefficients in the Within column report the consistency<br />
of individual differences in a behavior in response to a specific<br />
psychological situation observed in one set of nominal situations<br />
(camp activities) and those in the same behavior in response<br />
to the same psychological situation observed in another<br />
set of camp activities. For example, the first entry in the table in<br />
the Within column, .40 ± . 16** indicates that the correlation<br />
between the conditional probability of verbal aggression in re-<br />
681<br />
sponse to "peer tease" across two independent sets of camp activities<br />
was .40, with an estimated standard error of. 16, and was<br />
statistically significant at p < .01. The coefficients in the Across<br />
column of Table 3 indicate the consistency obtained across<br />
different types of interpersonal situations. As expected theoretically,<br />
and consistent with the finding of stable intraindividual<br />
profiles of behavior variability across situations, individual<br />
differences in behaviors across different psychological situations<br />
were substantially less consistent than they were within the<br />
same psychological situation.<br />
In addition to the dichotomous "same versus different" distinction,<br />
the pairs of different situations can be further divided<br />
in terms of the degree to which the members of the pair are<br />
different, and the average consistency reported in the Across column<br />
of Table 3 can be grouped in terms of the degrees of similarity<br />
between each pair. Using the number of shared features<br />
as an index of similarity, we tested the hypothesis that consistency<br />
of behavior across psychological situations will be a function<br />
of the similarity of those situations in their psychological,<br />
active, ingredients.<br />
Specifically, the psychological situations in this research program<br />
had been selected to vary in the two most salient features<br />
of interpersonal situations at the camp (Wright & Mischel,<br />
1988): the valence and the type of interactant. Thus, different<br />
pairs of psychological situations can be grouped into those that<br />
share neither of the two features, one feature, and both features<br />
to test the effect of similarity. For example, being teased, provoked,<br />
or threatened by a peer (negative valence child interactant)<br />
and being praised by an adult (positive valence adult interactant)<br />
share neither the valence nor the type of interactant.<br />
Being teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer and being<br />
warned by an adult (negative-child vs. negative-adult) share<br />
valence but not the interactant. Finally, being warned by an<br />
adult and being punished by adult are examples of two psychological<br />
situations that are different but that share two features<br />
(both negative-adult). Figure 2 shows averages of the consistencies<br />
of individual differences in behavior for all combinations of<br />
different psychological situations reported in Table 3, grouped<br />
respectively for 0, 1, or 2 common features shared. The coefficients<br />
within psychological situations are shown in Figure 2 as<br />
sharing "2+" features because they share the two systematically<br />
varied features (valence and interactant) as well as any other<br />
feature associated with the particular situation (e.g., two instances<br />
of being "teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer"<br />
share more than the valence and interactant). The coefficients<br />
in the column labeled 2+ were obtained by averaging the consistency<br />
coefficients within the "same" psychological situation<br />
reported in Table 3, column 1.<br />
As predicted, as the number of shared features decreased, the<br />
consistency of individual differences in behaviors also decreased.<br />
Within the "same" psychological situations (which had<br />
at least two common features and may have shared many more),<br />
mean consistency in individual differences in verbal aggression<br />
was .28, and between two different situations that shared two<br />
features (i.e., when warned by an adult and when punished by<br />
an adult), mean consistency in individual differences in verbal<br />
aggression was .25. When two psychological situations shared<br />
just one feature the mean consistency was .15, and when the
682 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
Table 3<br />
Mean Consistency Correlations Across Nominal Situations: Within the Same Versus<br />
Across Different Interpersonal Situations<br />
Behavior and<br />
interpersonal situation<br />
Verbal aggression<br />
Peer teased, provoked<br />
Adult warned<br />
Adult punished<br />
Peer positive contact<br />
Adult praised<br />
Physical aggression<br />
Peer teased, provoked<br />
Adult warned<br />
Adult punished<br />
Peer positive contact<br />
Adult praised<br />
Whining<br />
Peer teased, provoked<br />
Adult warned<br />
Adult punished<br />
Peer positive contact<br />
Adult praised<br />
Compliance<br />
Peer teased, provoked<br />
Adult warned<br />
Adult punished<br />
Peer positive contact<br />
Adult praised<br />
Prosocial talk<br />
Peer teased, provoked<br />
Adult warned<br />
Adult punished<br />
Peer positive contact<br />
Adult praised<br />
Within the same<br />
interpersonal situation<br />
.40 ±.16**<br />
.33 ±.10***<br />
.36 ±.10***<br />
.25+ .16<br />
.03 ±.10<br />
.16 + .15<br />
.22 ± .20<br />
.3O±.12*<br />
.03 ±.13<br />
NA<br />
.45 ± .20***<br />
.27 ±.12*<br />
.25 ±.13*<br />
.25 ±.10*<br />
.23 ±.10*<br />
.39 ±.17*<br />
.26 ±.11**<br />
.37 ±.13**<br />
.09 ±.11<br />
.07 ± .09<br />
.02 ±.13<br />
.21 ±.10*<br />
.11 ±.10<br />
.35 ± .18*<br />
.14 ±.09<br />
Across different<br />
interpersonal situations<br />
.17 + . 13<br />
.16 ± .12<br />
.15 ± .16<br />
.07 ±.10<br />
.09 ±.10<br />
.12 ± .16<br />
.11 ±.16<br />
.16 ± .16<br />
.01 ±.10<br />
NA<br />
.15 ± .14<br />
.19±.1O*<br />
.14±.13<br />
.12 ± .12<br />
.09+ .11<br />
.10 ± .13<br />
.08 ±.10<br />
.04 ±.12<br />
.07 ±.15<br />
.05 ±.10<br />
.16 ± .10<br />
.11 ±.12<br />
.12 ± .12<br />
.18 ±.09*<br />
.16 ± .10<br />
Note. N = 53. The numbers following the ± symbols are bootstrapping estimates of the standard error of<br />
sampling distribution for each correlation. Entries show mean correlations of the same behavior (e.g., verbal<br />
aggression) across nominal situations in response to either the same or different interpersonal situations.<br />
Correlation coefficients reported in the Across column indicate the mean correlations between a behavior<br />
observed in one type of psychological situation and the same behavior in each of the four other types of<br />
psychological situations. For example, the first entry in the Across column, .17 ± .13, indicates that the<br />
mean of the correlations between verbal aggression when teased, threatened, or provoked in one set of camp<br />
activities and the same type of behavior in the other four interpersonal situations (i.e., verbal aggression<br />
when warned; verbal aggression when punished; verbal aggression when peer approached positively; verbal<br />
aggression when praised) was. 17 with an estimated error of. 13. NA = not available.<br />
*p
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING 683<br />
Number of shared features<br />
Figure 2. Consistency of individual differences in behavior across situations<br />
as a function of the number of shared psychological features,<br />
agg. = aggression.<br />
the present sample were characterized by distinctive and predictable<br />
patterns of behavior variation across the particular psychological<br />
situations. As predicted, the individual's distinctive<br />
profiles of behavior variability observed at different times were<br />
significantly similar to each other within a given person and thus<br />
relatively stable. In contrast, such profiles from different individuals<br />
on average would be expected to have a similarity coefficient<br />
of 0, which also was verified empirically by computing<br />
profile similarity correlations among all pairs of individuals and<br />
calculating their means over many iterations.<br />
Thus, the obtained intraindividual stable profiles reflected<br />
distinctive and personologically meaningful, nonrandom variance<br />
not shared normatively by others in the sample as a whole.<br />
Moreover, the patterns of variation across just the three negatively<br />
valenced types of psychological situations proved to be<br />
significantly stable within individuals over repeated occasions.<br />
The latter results indicated that the individuals' discriminations<br />
among situations went beyond their overall valence and that<br />
they encompassed subtler differences among situations of the<br />
same (negative) valence.<br />
In the social-cognitive view, these intraindividually stable<br />
patterns of behavior variation across situations reflect underlying<br />
person variables, such as beliefs and values, and the way<br />
different social situations are encoded by the person (e.g., Forgas,<br />
1983). For example, when personality is conceptualized in<br />
terms of the goals pursued by the individuals (e.g., Pervin, 1989;<br />
Pervin & Furnham, 1987; Read, Jones, & Miller, 1990), or by<br />
the cognitive strategies used (e.g., Miller, 1987; Miller & Mangan,<br />
1983; Norem, 1989; Showers, 1992), it is the patterns of<br />
stable //. . . then. . . relations, rather than the average behavior<br />
tendency, that are expected to reflect more directly the underlying<br />
personality differences that distinguish individuals. Regardless<br />
of specific theoretical orientation, it is this type of intraindividual<br />
stability in the pattern and organization of<br />
behavior that seems especially central for a psychology of personality<br />
ultimately devoted to understanding and capturing the<br />
uniqueness of individual functioning (e.g., Allport, 1937; Mischel,<br />
1973). It is these patterns that also are the basis for inferring<br />
underlying motivations and generating explanations about<br />
the individual's behaviors (e.g., Shoda & Mischel, 1993; Weiner,<br />
1991). By incorporating such distinctive, stable patterns of interaction<br />
into the conception, assessment, and explanations of<br />
behavioral coherence, it may be possible to understand in<br />
greater depth how and why an individual's behavior varies<br />
across specific situations (Mischel & Shoda, in press).<br />
It should be noted that the present findings do not speak to<br />
variations in behaviors across situations in their absolute levels,<br />
for example, in the differences in the number of times people<br />
smile at a party and at a funeral. Although confusion on this<br />
topic has been frequent, no personologists really expect people's<br />
behaviors to be "constant" across diverse situations in their absolute<br />
levels. Instead, they have always focused on how an individual's<br />
behavior deviates from the respective situation norms<br />
(e.g., Joe is more sociable than most people at parties) and tried<br />
to demonstrate that this will be consistent from situation to situation<br />
(e.g., Joe is also more sociable than most people at the<br />
office). Similarly, the present research also focused on how a<br />
particular individual's behavior deviated distinctively from the<br />
normative levels observed for the group as a whole. However,<br />
we did not seek behavioral coherence in the form of consistent<br />
individual differences in behavior (relative to situation norms)<br />
from one situation to another. Instead, we sought—and<br />
found—behavioral coherence in the stable intraindividual patterns<br />
of behavior variation across situations that distinguish the<br />
individual from others (i.e., from the normative patterns) and<br />
that form a part of the person's characteristic behavioral signature—he<br />
A when X, but B when Y, and does A most when Z.<br />
Analyses of characteristic intraindividual variation of behavior<br />
across psychological situations need not be limited to idiographic<br />
analyses that identify the signature patterns in behavior<br />
that uniquely characterizes a single individual (Nesselroade,<br />
1990). The same type of analyses can be used in nomothetic<br />
research to identify groups or "types" of individuals that share<br />
certain key psychological processes (e.g., Contrada, 1991). For<br />
example, as Kazdin (1990) noted, it has proved surprisingly<br />
difficult to characterize disturbed children with such broad labels<br />
as "conduct problems," "impulsive," and "socially withdrawn"<br />
by identifying common maladaptive behaviors in general.<br />
By focusing on the characteristic patterns by which their<br />
behaviors vary across psychological situations, it may be possible<br />
to identify individuals who share common types of maladaptive,<br />
or adaptive, processes that are manifested in a common<br />
if. . . then . . . pattern of behavior variation. Thus,<br />
focusing on intraindividual, situation-behavior, patterns of<br />
variation could address a clinical as well as a theoretical need.<br />
Stable, Distinctive Intraindividual Patterns of Variability<br />
Limit the Level ofCross-Situational Consistency<br />
The obtained intraindividually stable profiles of //. . . then<br />
. . . relations between psychological features of situations and<br />
the person's behavior also have important implications for the<br />
pursuit of cross-situational consistency in nomothetic research<br />
that seeks behavioral consistency across situations. Namely, as<br />
predicted from social-cognitive theory (e.g., Mischel, 1973;<br />
Shoda & Mischel, 1993), and as shown formally elsewhere<br />
(Shoda, 1990), to the extent that individuals are characterized<br />
by stable and distinctive patterns of variations in behavior<br />
across situations, there is an intrinsic limit to the levels of cross-
684 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
situational consistency across situations that can be expected.<br />
This may be illustrated by considering an individual whose behavior<br />
in one situation was at the group mean. To the extent<br />
that the individual is characterized by a stable and distinctive<br />
intraindividual profile of variability, the individual's behavior<br />
in a second situation, relative to its normative level, should be<br />
stably higher, or lower, than in the first situation. Thus, stable<br />
intraindividual variability in behavior implies changes in the<br />
individual's rank ordering with regard to a behavior across the<br />
situations and necessarily reduces the observable level of crosssituational<br />
consistency, as traditionally defined, that should be<br />
expected theoretically.<br />
In the long "person-situation" debate, the relatively high behavior<br />
variation, and consequently low cross-situational consistency<br />
of individual differences in behavior across different situations<br />
(e.g., Mischel, 1968, 1973; Mischel & Peake, 1982; Ross<br />
& Nisbett, 1991), have been misread for many years as if they<br />
undermined the utility of the personality construct (e.g., Goldberg,<br />
1993; Wiggins, 1992). In our view, however, this interpretation<br />
is valid only if one considers the variability of behaviors<br />
within individuals across situations either as "error" or as<br />
due to "situation," rather than as a meaningful reflection of enduring<br />
personality processes. The present findings provide further<br />
evidence that situation specificity and low cross-situational<br />
consistency actually are aspects of the intraindividual stability<br />
and organization of personality that can be seen at the idiographic<br />
level. They suggest that the expression of personality<br />
coherence becomes visible not in the higher cross-situational<br />
consistency of individual differences in behavior that has been<br />
sought by the field for so many years, but rather in the individual's<br />
stable patterns of variability in behavior across situations,<br />
which have been viewed as "error" by global trait theory but<br />
which may constitute essence for the personologist.<br />
Meaningful Personological Variance Is Not "Error"<br />
Typically in nomothetic personality research and assessment,<br />
intraindividual variability in behavior across situations is<br />
treated as error and one aggregates observations from multiple<br />
situations to focus on the individual differences in the mean<br />
level of the behavior (e.g., Epstein, 1979). However, while aggregation<br />
is useful for demonstrating individual differences in average<br />
behavior trends, it unfortunately obscures any meaningful<br />
patterning of behavior variation across situations and treats<br />
it as error variance. Thus, the behavioral signatures of personality<br />
seen in the intraindividual, stable ;/. . . then. . . profiles<br />
found in this research program would become lost in the<br />
process.<br />
The stable intraindividual patterns of behavior variability<br />
that characterize individuals across situations also presumably<br />
are generated by the same underlying mediating processes<br />
within individuals that produce the findings of significant Person<br />
X Situation interaction variance (Endler & Hunt, 1969; Endler,<br />
Hunt, & Rosenstein, 1962; Magnusson & Endler, 1977). In<br />
fact, the stability of intraindividual profiles is mathematically<br />
related to the Person X Situation interaction variance (see<br />
Shoda, 1990, for formal derivations). Thus, the characteristic<br />
way in which the person's behavior varies predictably and systematically<br />
across different situations is exactly the type of be-<br />
havior variation that has been labeled the Person X Situation<br />
interaction variance.<br />
Traditionally, the behavioral expressions of personality have<br />
been seen in stable differences between individuals in their typical<br />
levels of behavior averaged across different situations and<br />
over time. Consequently, the findings of significant Person X<br />
Situation interaction variance were seen as another source of<br />
variance, different both from the person component of variance<br />
and from the situation component. Viewed from the social-cognitive<br />
reconceptualization of personality (Mischel, 1973; Mischel<br />
& Shoda, in press; Shoda & Mischel, 1993), however, stable<br />
patterns of behavior variation across situations, which make<br />
up the Person X Situation variance, are the primary behavioral<br />
expression of the individual's distinctive personality and reflect<br />
its nature at least as much as the mean differences in behavior<br />
between persons (the person component of variance). Indeed,<br />
in the social-cognitive conception of personality, the patterns of<br />
Person X Situation interactions that constitute intraindividual,<br />
stable if. . . then . . . profiles provide an essential route to<br />
capturing the distinctiveness of the individual. These if. . .<br />
then. . ., situation-behavior profiles constitute basic phenomena<br />
of personality that cannot even be defined without reference<br />
to the relevant situations—the ife—to which they refer.<br />
Effects of Similarity Among Psychological Situations<br />
We predicted that individual differences in behavior should<br />
be relatively consistent across the same types of psychological<br />
situations (within situation-behavior combinations), but less<br />
consistent across different types of psychological situations. In<br />
contrast, to the degree that behaviors primarily reflect individual<br />
differences in overall, situation-wnspecific behavior tendencies,<br />
consistency between behaviors observed within the same<br />
types of psychological situation (within consistency coefficients)<br />
should not be different from consistency observed in different<br />
types of psychological situations (across consistency coefficients).<br />
As predicted, the data showed that individual differences<br />
in behaviors were much more consistent within the same<br />
types of psychological situations, even when they were sampled<br />
from diverse nominal situations, than were individual differences<br />
in behavior in different psychological situations also sampled<br />
across diverse nominal situations.<br />
This general relationship has been hypothesized often (e.g.,<br />
Krahe, 1990; Lord, 1982; Magnusson, 1991; Magnusson &<br />
Ekehammar, 1973; Magnusson, Gerzen, & Nyman, 1968; Pervin,<br />
1977; Price & Bouffard, 1974). In a typical study, for example,<br />
it has been shown that individual differences in behavior<br />
in a laboratory situation with unstructured social interactions<br />
were more consistent with those in a similar unstructured laboratory<br />
social interaction than they were with behavior in a laboratory<br />
debate on capital punishment (Funder & Colvin, 1991).<br />
The present analyses attempted to move beyond demonstrating<br />
greater consistency in essentially the same situations compared<br />
with very different situations by analyzing situations in terms of<br />
the psychological features that are important in determining the<br />
behavior of interest in the ecology of the setting. The results<br />
indicated, as expected, that as the number of the psychological<br />
features that are shared between situations increased, the con-
sistency of individual differences across those situations also<br />
increased.<br />
From Nominal Situations to Psychological Features<br />
In spite of much discussion about the importance of situations<br />
(e.g., Bern & Funder, 1978; Funder & Colvin, 1991; Lord,<br />
1982), research into their role in behavior organization has<br />
identified them in terms of what we consider nominal situations<br />
specific to the particular setting: the activities and places of daily<br />
life routine. In such field study sites as Wediko, or in Newcomb's<br />
classic summer camp Wawokiye (Newcomb, 1929),<br />
these nominal situations have involved such regularly scheduled<br />
events as fishing and trampoline and eating in the dining<br />
hall, or in the Carleton College study (Mischel & Peake, 1982),<br />
events in classrooms, a library reserve room, or dormitory<br />
rooms. Personality psychologists traditionally have dismissed<br />
situation-specific individual differences in behavior as not very<br />
informative or generalizable in part because they operationalized<br />
situations in terms of the traditional, nominal units. In<br />
fact, if such behavior tendencies are specific to a particular nominal<br />
situation, there is little generalizability because each nominal<br />
situation contains its own configuration of features of unspecified<br />
psychological ingredients. In contrast, in the present<br />
approach, we conceptualized situations in terms of their psychological,<br />
"active" ingredients or features. These psychologically<br />
active features of situations constitute a main part of the<br />
individual's personal experience and "life space." Individuals<br />
are not just fishing or doing athletics: They are being provoked,<br />
teased, threatened, warned, praised, sought out, or shunned.<br />
These encounters and events, embedded in diverse nominal situations,<br />
contain psychological features—or active ingredients—that<br />
interact with the individual's unique configuration<br />
of social-cognitive person variables to generate a distinctive behavioral<br />
signature.<br />
To the extent that such features are found widely in various<br />
nominal situations and settings, the stable configuration of //<br />
. . . then . . . relationships will constitute a coherent pattern<br />
that "stays" with a person across diverse nominal situations and<br />
settings. Then it should be possible to incorporate into the analysis<br />
of personality coherence people's specific interactions with<br />
particular situational features without sacrificing generalizability.<br />
For example, a child who at a summer camp may be characterized<br />
by the profile of compliant behavior when warned,<br />
but very aggressive behaviors when punished, may be characterized<br />
by the same profile at home or at school in relation to psychological<br />
features of situations. If the psychological meaning<br />
of relatively molar nominal situations can be analyzed in terms<br />
of more basic psychological micro features of situations, it<br />
should become possible to understand and predict people's interactions<br />
with them with increasing precision.<br />
In idiographic assessment it is useful to identify for each person<br />
a characteristic set of "activating psychological features."<br />
For example, for Child 17 in Figure 1, the "activating feature"<br />
for aggressive behaviors is being punished by an adult. For Child<br />
28, on the other hand, peer positive contact constitutes a single<br />
most prominent activating psychological feature for this behavior.<br />
If one knows the psychological ingredients of a given nominal<br />
situation (e.g., frequencies of each type of psychological fea-<br />
STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING<br />
685<br />
ture contained), then one may be able to predict the nominal<br />
situations in which a given person will be likely to display this<br />
behavior. The pattern by which a person's behavior varies across<br />
the nominal situations will depend on the frequency or salience<br />
of the psychological features that activate the relevant behavior<br />
for that individual within the particular nominal situations encountered.<br />
Because individuals are characterized by distinctive<br />
sets of activating features, the pattern by which a given person's<br />
behavior varies across the situations also is expected to be distinctive<br />
but potentially predictable.<br />
Our approach to identifying the psychologically active ingredients<br />
of situations is of course not the only route. The units<br />
of situations used need not necessarily be at the level of single<br />
interpersonal interaction, and interpersonal interactions are not<br />
the only psychologically significant aspects of situations (e.g.,<br />
Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990). For example, in a related study<br />
also conducted at the same field site and with the same subjects,<br />
units of nominal situations such as camp activities were characterized<br />
in terms of the types of competencies they demanded.<br />
As predicted, cross-situational consistency in behavior was<br />
found to increase as a function of the similarity in these types<br />
of demands (Shoda et al., 1993a). Likewise, an earlier study in<br />
the same setting but with a different sample was focused on the<br />
overall levels of cognitive, social, and self-regulatory competencies<br />
demanded by nominal situations and found that individual<br />
differences in aggressive behaviors in situations that were more<br />
demanding were more strongly related to the global dispositional<br />
ratings of aggressiveness than were aggressive behaviors in<br />
less demanding situations (Wright & Mischel, 1987). Moreover,<br />
many important psychological features of situations involve internal<br />
states, such as "when stressed" (Bolger & Schilling,<br />
1991), "when angry," and "when frustrated," that must be included<br />
in a comprehensive analysis of the individual's if. . .<br />
then . . . , situation-behavior profiles (Wright & Mischel,<br />
1988).<br />
Although not all psychological features are part of everyone's<br />
personality signature, social-cognitive theory proposes that all<br />
persons have such characteristic patterns with regard to particular<br />
sets of them that activate their distinctive configuration of<br />
person variables (Mischel, 1973, 1990). Consequently, the individuals'<br />
characteristic ways of processing social information become<br />
revealed in the patterning of their behavior in relationship<br />
to those features of situations. The continuing challenge then is<br />
to identify for each individual, or group or type of individuals,<br />
the critical psychological features, to assess distinctive and stable<br />
patterns of behavior variation across them, and to understand<br />
the psychological processes that generate them.<br />
Toward Idiographic Personality Psychology<br />
The social-cognitive reconceptualization of personality of<br />
course recognizes the existence of broad overall average individual<br />
differences at the aggregate level with regard to which most<br />
people can be compared on most dimensions (Mischel, 1973).<br />
Whereas such overall average differences are highly informative,<br />
our basic thesis is that essential aspects of personality coherence<br />
become visible in the intraindividual pattern of variability,<br />
rather than in the traditional cross-situational consistency coefficient<br />
(Mischel, 1973, 1990). The present research, we hope,
686 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT<br />
has demonstrated that rather than threatening the existence of<br />
the personality construct, an explicit focus on the relationships<br />
between psychologically relevant contexts and the individual's<br />
behaviors in them are vital for the conception of personality and<br />
expand its domain (also see Mischel & Shoda, in press).<br />
Although intraindividual coherence has long been a central<br />
concern for personologists, it has proved difficult to find objective,<br />
systematic methods for assessing and identifying its behavioral<br />
manifestations. The intraindividual patterns of behavior<br />
variability, the configuration of if. . . then . . . , situationbehavior<br />
relations illustrated here, far from undermining the<br />
concept of personality actually enable idiographic studies of<br />
personality and thus provide a systematic method for personality<br />
psychology's most enduring basic goal (e.g., Allport, 1937;<br />
Bern & Allen, 1974; Magnusson & Torestad, 1993; Mischel,<br />
1968). By addressing not only the average level of behavior (e.g.,<br />
overall agreeableness) but also when, where, and with whom it<br />
occurs, one can see the individual's distinctive, coherent, and<br />
systematic patterns of behavior variation and glimpse the psychological<br />
processes and person variables that underlie them.<br />
Most earlier work within an idiographic framework has been<br />
restricted to the individual case, and most nomothetic research<br />
has tended to be focused on the hypothetical "average mind"<br />
that Allport (1937) hoped the psychology of personality would<br />
transcend. In contrast, the present study suggests a new route<br />
that is not limited to a single individual and allows potentially<br />
generalizable findings of broad relevance while still retaining an<br />
essentially idiographic, person-centered focus. First one analyzes<br />
the intraindividual organization and regularities of individual<br />
functioning, as seen in the stable, intraindividual patterns<br />
of behavior variability. Then one seeks features of such<br />
patterns that are common to groups and types and other categories<br />
of persons who share similar underlying personality processes.<br />
Finally, one identifies the mediating personality processes<br />
that underlie and generate these patterns.<br />
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Received July 1,1993<br />
Revision received April 1, 1994<br />
Accepted April 21, 1994 •