PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

esearch was to obtain empirical evidence relevant to the validity of this conception of intraindividual personality coherence. Our analysis of the organization of the individual's behavior is conditional or contextual in the sense that the fundamental unit of observation is not the unconditional probability of traitrelevant behavior (e.g., the tendency to be extraverted), but rather the conditional probability of a given type of behavior in given types of psychological conditions or situations (e.g., Patterson, 1982; Patterson & Reid, 1984; Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 1989; Wright & Mischel, 1987, 1988). The traditional use of the unconditional probability of trait-relevant behavior is appropriate and useful for many purposes, such as selecting persons on the basis of their predicted future behaviors on average in unspecified situations. However, beyond identifying individual differences in average levels of behavior, we view the intraindividual variability of behavior itself as the behavioral phenomenon of interest. These patterns of if ... then . . . relations link psychological situations to the person's relevant behaviors (e.g., Mischel, 1973). Responsive to the many calls for a shift from a variable-centered approach in personality research to one that is more person-centered (e.g., Carlson, 1971; John, 1990), our analysis is indeed person-centered and focuses on the within-person (intraindividual) organization of behavior and on personality coherence. However, in the search for intraindividual stability, we do not pursue the traditional configuration of global dispositions or behavioral tendencies that characterize a person (e.g., high in extraversion and low in conscientiousness). Instead, our approach is unique in focusing on how a given type of behavior (e.g., aggression) by an individual varies distinctively but predictably across different types of psychological situations (e.g., ifAheX,butifBheY). Stability in these patterns of if. . . then . . ., situation-behavior relations is predicted to the degree that there is stability in the underlying person variables, such as the individual's ways of construing the situation and his or her relevant goals, values, expectancies, and the like, as they are activated in the particular situation (Mischel, 1973, 1990). Suppose for example that one person encodes events like being teased or provoked by his peer as an offense that requires a response in kind, whereas he sees being warned by his supervisor as a situation in which he has to comply to avoid negative consequences. For another person, however, being teased or provoked by a peer is encoded as normal and acceptable bids for interaction, whereas warning by a supervisor is construed as a personal violation by an unaccepted authority. Such differences in the subjective meaning of different situations, reflecting stable differences in encoding (e.g., Dodge, 1986), may result in activation of different expectancies, goals, values, and other person variables. Behaviorally, the effects should be visible as distinctively patterned if. . . then . . . , situation-behavior configurations, expressed as stable profiles of behavior variability across situations that differ in their psychological meaning for the individual. In the present article, we examine empirical data on the stability of such intraindividual situation-behavior configurations to test this hypothesis. Direct evidence that such patterns of variability in behavior are stable and distinctive within individuals would allow one STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING 675 to conceptualize them as behavioral signatures of personality, rather than as measurement error or as data contradictory to personality coherence. This calls for an idiographic analysis of behavioral coherence, using an extensive observation system to assess people's behaviors in natural social interactions over many occasions. Unlike many earlier studies of person-situation links that relied exclusively on self-reports, we required behavioral data that would allow us to examine individual differences in people's distinctive patterns of relating to these naturally occurring social situations. In our long-term research program, these patterns were obtained by systematic behavior observations in vivo over the course of a summer in a children's residential camp setting, Wediko Children's Services' summer program in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. The results yielded an extensive archival database that allows systematic analyses to identify personality coherence in behavior as it unfolds across naturalistic situations and over many occasions (e.g., Shoda, 1990; Shoda etal., 1989,1993a, 1993b). Within a given ecological setting, such as the Wediko camp, situations may be conceptualized at different levels and with alternative units (Mischel, 1991; Shoda, 1990; Shoda et al., 1993b). At one level are the nominal situations that have been operationalized in studies of behavioral consistency traditionally (e.g., Hartshorne& May, 1928;Newcomb, 1929; Mischel & Peake, 1982). Typically they were dictated by the structure of the particular ecology (the setting), rather than by their potential psychological impact on, and meaning for, the person or by the generalizability of the observations obtained within them. Usually these nominal situations are highly complex and contain a wide array of different psychological features (Shoda et al., 1993a). In a summer camp, such as Newcomb's (1929) Camp Wawokiye or the present site, Wediko, woodworking, for example, may be a nominal situation that contains such diverse interpersonal psychological events as being praised, frustrated, teased, and punished. Nominal situations such as woodworking in the camp also tend to limit generalizability to other life settings. Thus, individual differences in relation to a specific nominal situation, even if highly stable, necessarily would be of modest psychological interest beyond the setting. On the other hand, at a deeper level, situations may be defined to capture basic psychological features or ingredients that occur in many different nominal situations and settings. In that case, information about an individual's behavior tendencies in relation to them is potentially generalizable to other situations that also contain these features. The utility of analyzing behaviors in terms of their stable relations to particular psychological features, hinges mostly on how widely the features occur in diverse nominal situations and different ecological settings. Table 1 summarizes and illustrates the distinctions among ecological settings, nominal situations, psychological features, and the interpersonal situations used as units of situations in the present study. As the table indicates, such events as being teased, provoked, or threatened are embedded within different nominal situations and contain the salient psychological features that are encoded by individuals and that affect their behaviors dynamically in the stream of social interactions. Just as individuals' responses to particular medications can be understood more fundamentally by considering the specific active ingredi-
676 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT Table 1 Examples of Ecological Settings, Nominal Situations, Interpersonal Situations, and Psychological Features Setting Nominal situations Interpersonal situations Psychological features Camp Woodworking When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative Cabin meeting When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative School Playground When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative Classroom When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative Home Mealtime When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative ents rather than the brand names, the social-cognitive analysis of situations focuses on the psychologically active features of situations. Whereas nominal situations (such as woodworking) tend to contain heterogeneous sets of psychological features, in the present study we focused on interpersonal situations, each of which contains a relatively more homogeneous, distinct set of psychological features (Shoda et al., 1993b), as the units of analysis. The challenge in this type of analysis is to capture those features that are encoded distinctively by perceivers and that activate other relevant cognitive social person variables (e.g., expectancies and values) in the mediating process. Individual differences in response to nominal situations, such as the daily activities within a camp, then, may be analyzed in terms of the person's stable cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to the encoded "active," psychological features within the nominal situations (e.g., Mischel, 1973). These psychological features, in turn, may consist of combinations of even more specific features and may be analyzed in terms of their overlap and similarity. Focusing on interpersonal situations as the situation units of analysis embedded in their nominal situations within the eco- Watching TV When peer initiated positive contact peer, positive When peer teased, provoked, or threatened peer, negative When praised by an adult adult, positive When warned by an adult adult, negative When punished by an adult adult, negative logical setting of the research site, in this article we examine the consistency and stability of situation-behavior relations that characterize individuals. Guided by the social-cognitive approach to personality (e.g., Mischel, 1973, 1990; Shoda & Mischel, 1993), we pursued an idiographic strategy. Specifically, we focused on the intraindividual organization of behavior in terms of the specific patterns in which that behavior varied across interpersonal situations, examining the stability of this pattern over time within each individual. We hypothesized that there would be significant intraindividual stability in the distinctive pattern by which the person's behavior varied predictably across particular types of these situations, visible as intraindividually stable "profiles" of if. . . then . . . , situationbehavior relations. Second, we examined the implications of these hypothesized intraindividually stable profiles of situation-behavior relations for the nomothetic analysis of cross-situational consistency. Namely, we hypothesized that the same underlying processes that generate stable and distinctive intraindividual profiles of behavior variation across these interpersonal situations also should generate cross-situational consistency in behavior to the
Page 1: PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUA
Page 5 and 6: 678 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, AND J. WR

PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?