PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ...

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situations sampled, namely, being teased, provoked, or threatened by peers; being warned by an adult; and being punished by an adult. The stability of intraindividual pattern of behavior variability over the three negative situations was computed for each subject who encountered them sufficiently in terms of the minimum frequency criterion. As shown in the bottom section of Table 2, for a significant portion of this subsample of 53 subjects, intraindividual patterns of behavior variability were stable for compliance (.45, p < .001), physical aggression, (.32, p < .05), and verbal aggression (.48, p < .001). Thus, the way in which verbal aggression, physical aggression, and compliance varied over the three types of negative situations stably characterized many individuals in the present sample, and the mean intraindividual stability for the sample was significantly above 0. This suggests that for a significant portion of the people in the present sample, these three types of negative situations were psychologically distinct and that their aggressive and compliant responses to each situation were discriminative in ways that stably characterized them. These results go beyond the findings obtained in the profiles for all five situations, because they show that the shape of the profiles even just among the three negative situations also reflected significant and personologically meaningful intraindividual variance. STABILITY OF INTRA<strong>INDIVIDUAL</strong> BEHAVIOR PATTERNING Nomothetic Analyses ofCross-Situational Consistency: Cross-Situational Consistency in Behavior as a Function of Similarity of Psychological Situations In the social-cognitive theory of personality, the basic underlying psychological processes that generate the distinctive and stable intraindividual profiles of behavior variation across psychological situations also have implications for the type of cross-situational consistency in behavior one should expect. Namely, 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 share (Mischel, 1973). We tested this hypothesis by computing the traditional nomothetic cross-situational consistency coefficients, assessing the stability of individual differences in each type of behavior, computed separately in each type of psychological situation, as summarized in Table 3. Recall that for different psychological situations, different numbers of subjects passed the inclusion criterion for computing reliable conditional probabilities (encountering a psychological situation at least six times during the summer). Therefore, as shown in Table 3, so that all correlations are based on the same set of subjects regardless of the situation pairs involved, we used the subset of the sample (N - 53) that met the reliability criterion for all five psychological situations to compute consistency of conditional probabilities of behavioral responses within and across situations. The coefficients in the Within column report the consistency of individual differences in a behavior in response to a specific psychological situation observed in one set of nominal situations (camp activities) and those in the same behavior in response to the same psychological situation observed in another set of camp activities. For example, the first entry in the table in the Within column, .40 ± . 16** indicates that the correlation between the conditional probability of verbal aggression in re- 681 sponse to "peer tease" across two independent sets of camp activities was .40, with an estimated standard error of. 16, and was statistically significant at p < .01. The coefficients in the Across column of Table 3 indicate the consistency obtained across different types of interpersonal situations. As expected theoretically, and consistent with the finding of stable intraindividual profiles of behavior variability across situations, individual differences in behaviors across different psychological situations were substantially less consistent than they were within the same psychological situation. In addition to the dichotomous "same versus different" distinction, the pairs of different situations can be further divided in terms of the degree to which the members of the pair are different, and the average consistency reported in the Across column of Table 3 can be grouped in terms of the degrees of similarity between each pair. Using the number of shared features as an index of similarity, we tested the hypothesis that consistency of behavior across psychological situations will be a function of the similarity of those situations in their psychological, active, ingredients. Specifically, the psychological situations in this research program had been selected to vary in the two most salient features of interpersonal situations at the camp (Wright & Mischel, 1988): the valence and the type of interactant. Thus, different pairs of psychological situations can be grouped into those that share neither of the two features, one feature, and both features to test the effect of similarity. For example, being teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer (negative valence child interactant) and being praised by an adult (positive valence adult interactant) share neither the valence nor the type of interactant. Being teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer and being warned by an adult (negative-child vs. negative-adult) share valence but not the interactant. Finally, being warned by an adult and being punished by adult are examples of two psychological situations that are different but that share two features (both negative-adult). Figure 2 shows averages of the consistencies of individual differences in behavior for all combinations of different psychological situations reported in Table 3, grouped respectively for 0, 1, or 2 common features shared. The coefficients within psychological situations are shown in Figure 2 as sharing "2+" features because they share the two systematically varied features (valence and interactant) as well as any other feature associated with the particular situation (e.g., two instances of being "teased, provoked, or threatened by a peer" share more than the valence and interactant). The coefficients in the column labeled 2+ were obtained by averaging the consistency coefficients within the "same" psychological situation reported in Table 3, column 1. As predicted, as the number of shared features decreased, the consistency of individual differences in behaviors also decreased. Within the "same" psychological situations (which had at least two common features and may have shared many more), mean consistency in individual differences in verbal aggression was .28, and between two different situations that shared two features (i.e., when warned by an adult and when punished by an adult), mean consistency in individual differences in verbal aggression was .25. When two psychological situations shared just one feature the mean consistency was .15, and when the
682 Y. SHODA, W. MISCHEL, <strong>AND</strong> J. WRIGHT Table 3 Mean Consistency Correlations Across Nominal Situations: Within the Same Versus Across Different Interpersonal Situations Behavior and interpersonal situation Verbal aggression Peer teased, provoked Adult warned Adult punished Peer positive contact Adult praised Physical aggression Peer teased, provoked Adult warned Adult punished Peer positive contact Adult praised Whining Peer teased, provoked Adult warned Adult punished Peer positive contact Adult praised Compliance Peer teased, provoked Adult warned Adult punished Peer positive contact Adult praised Prosocial talk Peer teased, provoked Adult warned Adult punished Peer positive contact Adult praised Within the same interpersonal situation .40 ±.16** .33 ±.10*** .36 ±.10*** .25+ .16 .03 ±.10 .16 + .15 .22 ± .20 .3O±.12* .03 ±.13 NA .45 ± .20*** .27 ±.12* .25 ±.13* .25 ±.10* .23 ±.10* .39 ±.17* .26 ±.11** .37 ±.13** .09 ±.11 .07 ± .09 .02 ±.13 .21 ±.10* .11 ±.10 .35 ± .18* .14 ±.09 Across different interpersonal situations .17 + . 13 .16 ± .12 .15 ± .16 .07 ±.10 .09 ±.10 .12 ± .16 .11 ±.16 .16 ± .16 .01 ±.10 NA .15 ± .14 .19±.1O* .14±.13 .12 ± .12 .09+ .11 .10 ± .13 .08 ±.10 .04 ±.12 .07 ±.15 .05 ±.10 .16 ± .10 .11 ±.12 .12 ± .12 .18 ±.09* .16 ± .10 Note. N = 53. The numbers following the ± symbols are bootstrapping estimates of the standard error of sampling distribution for each correlation. Entries show mean correlations of the same behavior (e.g., verbal aggression) across nominal situations in response to either the same or different interpersonal situations. Correlation coefficients reported in the Across column indicate the mean correlations between a behavior observed in one type of psychological situation and the same behavior in each of the four other types of psychological situations. For example, the first entry in the Across column, .17 ± .13, indicates that the mean of the correlations between verbal aggression when teased, threatened, or provoked in one set of camp activities and the same type of behavior in the other four interpersonal situations (i.e., verbal aggression when warned; verbal aggression when punished; verbal aggression when peer approached positively; verbal aggression when praised) was. 17 with an estimated error of. 13. NA = not available. *p
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