PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ...

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extent that the situations are similar in their psychologically active features. Then the degree of consistency in individual differences in behavior across different situations should be a function of the similarity in the psychological features that they shared. To test this hypothesis, we also examined a more traditional nomothetic aspect of behavior organization, focusing on the cross-situational consistency of individual differences examined separately for each type of behavior observed in each type of psychological situation. Method Research Program and Design The present article reports aspects of a large-scale field research program conducted at Wediko Children's Services, a summer camp residential program in New Hampshire (Shoda, 1990). The general population and setting have been described previously (e.g., Rodriguez, Mischel, & Shoda, 1989; Wright & Mischel, 1987, 1988). In the research program on which this article draws, a total of 84 children (60 boys and 24 girls, mean age 10 years and 2 months) were observed for the entire duration of one summer session (6 weeks) in the camp. The exceptionally rich database that we collected in this research program yielded a unique data archive for the systematic analysis of social behavior as it unfolds over time and across settings. These data range from highly molecular (e.g., coding of videotaped social interactions in 10-s units), to more molar (e.g., hourly ratings of behavior), to relatively global (e.g., dispositional judgments by counselors at the end of the summer). The data were collected by a team of 77 adult observers (a total of 14 to 28 observers per child), with an average total of 167 hr of behavior observations for each child over the 6-week summer. Our design enabled studies of diverse facets of the organization and nature of the individual's distinctive and stable behavior patterns at various levels of specificity and depth. Specifically, at the level of nominal situations, we analyzed individual differences in the organization of social behavior, focusing on the role of competencies as the characteristic of the individuals and as a demand characteristic of the situations (Shoda et al., 1993a). At the level of interpersonal situations, we addressed the relationships between judgments of global dispositions and the behaviors of individuals who were good exemplars of dispositional categories (Shoda etal., 1993b). We designed the research program to include assessments of interpersonal situations with distinct sets of salient psychological features that are relevant, important, and consensually encoded by people in the population sampled. Five interpersonal situations were selected representing two of the most salient and observable psychological features identified in earlier research (Wright & Mischel, 1988), namely valence (positive vs. negative) of the interaction and type of person (adult counselor vs. child peer) involved in the interaction. The five situations selected to represent each combination of the two psychological features are summarized in the third column of Table 1. Specifically, throughout the 6-week summer, within each hour of camp activity, observers recorded the frequency with which each of these five types of situations occurred and whether the child responded with any of the five behavior categories of interest, namely, verbal aggression (teased, provoked, or threatened); physical aggression (hit, pushed, physically harmed); whined or displayed babyish behavior; complied or gave in; and talked prosocially (Shoda, 1990; Shoda et al., 1989, 1993b). In the present research we tested the hypotheses concerning the nature and stability of the intraindividual organization of social behavior in relationship to these situations from both the idiographic and nomothetic perspectives. STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING Subjects 677 The subjects were the 84 children (60 boys and 24 girls) from the research program described above, who resided for 6 weeks in a summer camp residential setting (Wediko Children's Services) in New Hampshire. They ranged in age from 6 years 5 months to 13 years 2 months, with a mean of 10 years 2 months, and they resided in cabin groups of 6-10 same-sex peers similar in age. This population is characterized by significant social adjustment problems, particularly with inadequate prosocial behavior and aggressive behavior in the home or school environment, and most of the youngsters are from low-income families in the Boston area. Data dealing with other questions and results from the same children assessed in the same setting and summer in the field study are reported in Shoda et al. (1989, 1993a, 1993b) and Rodriguez et al. (1989). Conditional Probabilities of Behaviors Within Each Interpersonal Situation The conditional probabilities of behaviors were based on the five types of behaviors described above, observed within each of the five types of interpersonal situations shown in Table 1. We use the term situationbehavior relation to refer to each of the 25 i/[or when]. . . then . . . conditional probabilities of the five behaviors in response to the five psychological situations recorded (e.g., prosocial talk when teased; prosocial talk when faced with a positive peer contact). The conditional probability of physical aggression when praised by an adult, however, was 0 for all except one child and therefore had little variation across individuals. Thus, this condition-behavior relation was excluded from further analyses. To compute conditional probability of subjects' behavioral responses in each psychological situation reliably, it was necessary that the subjects encounter each situation repeatedly. To ensure adequate reliability and resolution in the conditional probabilities in the analyses reported below, we therefore required that the subject encounter each type of situation at least a total of six times. Individuals differed in the number of times they encountered each of the five situations we observed. Specifically, the mean frequencies of encountering each type of situation were as follows (SD shown in parentheses): Peer teased, provoked, or threatened, 10.3 (6.5); Adult warned the child, 42.9 (19.5); Adult gave the child time out, 22.8 (16.0); Peer initiated positive social contact, 39.8 (10.5); Adult praised the child verbally, 66.5 (14.6). We also used this subset to compute cross-situational consistency of conditional probabilities of behavioral responses so that all correlations reported in Table 3 are based on the same set of subjects regardless of the situation pairs involved. Intraindividual Situation-Behavior Profiles The if. . . then . . . pattern with which a given type of behavior displayed by an individual varied across the situations constituted an intraindividual situation-behavior profile. For example, Figure 1 shows a situation-behavior profile for verbal aggression for one individual and depicts how the person's verbal aggressiveness varied over the five interpersonal events shown along the horizontal axis. One may plot the absolute conditional probabilities of behavior across situations, but the variability of such a profile would reflect the differences among the situations in how people behave in them in general, constituting the normative level for each situation. For example, most people are more likely to display aggression when teased by peers than when praised by an adult. To plot the aspect of behavior variation that is distinctive for each person, therefore, we subtracted the normative (mean) profile observed in this sample of subjects from the individual's "raw" profiles, and the results were rescaled using as units the standard deviations of the behav-
678 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT Child # 17 profile stability: r = 0.96 Child # 9 profile stability: r = 0.89 PEER TEASE ADULT WARN PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH PEER TEASE ADULT WARN PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH Child # 28 profile stability: r = 0.49 Child #48 profile stability: r = 0.11 PEER TEASE ADULT WARN PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH PEER TEASE ADULT WARN PEER APPROACH ADULT PRAISE ADULT PUNISH Figure 1. Illustrative intraindividual profiles of verbal aggression across five types of psychological situations. The two lines indicate the profiles based on two different, nonoverlapping samples of occasions in which the child encountered each type of psychological situation, shown as Time 1 (solid) and Time 2 (broken). ior within each situation. In short, the distinctive profile of behavior variability across situations was identified for each individual by the pattern of standardized deviations from the normative pattern in terms of standard scores computed in each situation. Figure 1 illustrates such a profile. In the present analyses, we assessed the stability of these situation-behavior profiles within individuals to test the hypothesis that the distinctive ways in which an individual's behavior varies across situations constitutes an enduring aspect of personality, rather than merely reflecting fluctuations due to uncontrolled, random factors. Indexing Profile Similarities to Determine Their Stability To index and statistically test the stability of the intraindividual, situation-behavior profiles, the total available observations of each type of situation were randomly divided to form two sets of observations. Within each set, for each subject, conditional probabilities of each type of behavior in each type of situation were computed. This procedure yielded for each person two intraindividual situation-behavior profiles observed on two different sets of occasions. The similarity of the "shapes" of the two profiles was then indexed by an ipsative correlation coefficient, computed within each individual separately, using the interpersonal situations as the units of analysis. For example, if a person's behavior profile for the five situations from one set of nominal situations (camp activities) was [ 1.0,0.5,-1.0, —0.5, 0.0], and the one from the other was [0.5, 0.0, -1.5, -1.0, -0.5], the correlation between the two would be +1.0. Note that the correlation essentially reflects the stability of the rank order among the interpersonal situations within the same individual in how the individual's behavior in each situation deviates from the respective norm in each situation. In this example, both profiles indicate that the standardized (i.e., relative to the situation norm) behavior probability was highest in the first situation, followed by the second, fifth, fourth, and then the third. The stability coefficient of +1.0 indicates that the intraindividual rank order of situations was preserved perfectly over time. If the profile from the second set was [-1.0, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.0], it would indicate a complete reversal of the intraindividual rank ordering of the five situations, and the profile stability correlation would be — 1.0. Computing Mean Consistency Coefficients Within Versus Across Interpersonal Situations As noted in the introduction, in addition to the idiographic analysis of intraindividual profile stability we also pursued a more nomothetic route to test the cross-situational consistency of if. . .then. . .relationships separately for each type of behavior in relation to each type of interpersonal situation. Therefore, to test the hypothesis that the degree of cross-situational consistency in individual differences in behavior should be a function of the similarity in the psychological features that
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