0.4 Personality psychology and social interaction  (Page 2/4)

It makes sense to look at someones behaviors and use this as to clues as to what their personality is. I don't know if thinking that every behavior someone does is a symptom of some sort of deep-seated sexual drive is accurate, however. I would think that a lot of personality traits that people have aren't related to each other sexually. It makes sense, however, that each different personality trait is sexual in some way and consistent with who that person is sexually.

With the failure of type-theories in personality, and the limited appeal of dynamic models, trait-theories have become dominant. As Mishel Mischel, W. (1973). Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. Psychological Review , 80, 252-283. (1973) suggests, "During the last 50 years, when basic concepts were changing rapidly in most fields of psychology, the most fundamental assumptions about the nature of personality seem to have been retained with few substantial modifications". The central assumptions of these trait-based approaches to personality are that "personality comprises broad underlying dispositions which pervasively influence the individual's behavior across many situations and lead to consistency in his behavior ... These dispositions are not directly observed, but are inferred from behavioral signs..." As a consequence of this orientation "personality research has been a quest for such underlying broad dimensions", leading to the development of "hundreds of tests designed to infer dispositions and almost none to measure situations".

So a trait in personality, something like "nice", means that the person is nice throughout all of their behaviors - generally speaking. Furthermore, it is a complex thing that the person is nice, there could be many different factors pointing to the fact that the person is kind. However, people often can reach the conclusion that someone has a certain personality trait after talking to them only briefly. It probably hasn't occurred to most people that they could make a detailed list outlining someones behaviors that shows how someone shows various personality traits in their actions.

The central assumption of trait theories of personality, cross-situational consistency, came under fire fairly early on, but without much impact on personality theorists until later. In a widely ignored article published in the American Journal of Sociology, Reinhardt Reinhardt, J. M. (1937). Personality traits and the situation. American Journal of Sociology , 2, 492-500. (1937) was one of the first to point out the shortcomings of this model: "The reliability of predictions as to future behavior...when based solely upon a personality classification derived from individual reaction in a clearly defined type of situation depends not upon the constancy of individual purpose alone...but also upon the continuance or recurrence of the same type of situation". More important from the point of the current person v. situation controversy was the gradual accumulation of evidence suggesting that the personal consistency model underlying trait theories is only valid in certain circumscribed situations. Thus self-ratings of traits on paper-and-pencil instruments, the very stuff of personality tests, are fairly consistent over time. Similarly, other behaviors may also be consistent as long as the situation is more or less exactly replicated. Finally personality traits with a strong intellectual component were shown to have a reasonably high cross-situational consistency, which may be interpreted as the reflection of the well-known "g" factor in different tasks requiring intellectual problem solving. What the studies have not shown, however, is that pure personality traits can predict behavior across different situations. Although the evaluation of this emerging empirical evidence began a while ago, the person v. situation issue has only developed into a full-blown controversy in the early seventies.