0.4 Personality psychology and social interaction  (Page 3/4)

So if someone is "nice", does this mean that they are nice in every situation? People probably have consistent intellectual abilities in different situations, as your intellect stays the same, but do people change other aspects of their personality from situation to situation? Maybe all people really have multiple personality types, they just aren't aware of it. If you are nice to some people but mean to others, would you call yourself a nice person or a mean one? Everyone is mean in some way - when you label someone as "nice", are you taking into account the other way you could easily perceive them - as being extremely mean?

The controversy was strongly stimulated by Mischels Mischel, W. (1968). "Personality and Assessment." Wiley, New York. arguments. He reviewed a broad spectrum of empirical studies and concluded that both trait and state theories are based on the assumption of intrapsychic consistency in behavior, an assumption which is clearly not supported by the evidence. As a replacement, he offers social behavior theory, which "seeks the determinants of behavior in the conditions that covary with the occurrence, maintenance, and change of behavior..social behavior theory seeks order and regularity in the form of general rules which relate environmental changes to behavior changes". This formulation implicitly emphasizes the importance of physical, external, environmental forces on shaping behavior, and has a strong flavor of the old S-R formulations. This approach, which has, perhaps unjustly, been labelled "situationism", was no doubt strongly influenced by the then Zeitgeist in psychology with its strong reliance on positivistic methodology, and the patent success of pragmatic behavior therapies in clinical psychology, formerly a client-branch of personality theory.

Mischel's arguments have been criticized on numerous accounts. The most important of these is that he appears to ignore cognitive mediating factors in the determination of behavior, and he also seems to deny the role of individual differences, in favor of assigning a casual determinant status to situations. Thus Alker (1972) sought to defend the trait model by arguing that cross-situational consistency is not a necessary assumption for trait theories. He argued that personality variables remain a major source of variance in behavior, and criticized the studies showing situations differences on methodological grounds (the samples were too homogeneous, disturbed rather normal people were used, etc). Bem (1972) and later Endler (1973) have taken issue with Alker's propositions, defending Mishel's position in its importance aspects. Bowers Bowers, K. S. (1973). Situationism in psychology: An analysis and a critique. Psychological Review , 80, 307-336. (1973) has also criticized Mischel's alleged "situationism", but his critique was oriented more towards the perceived extremity of Mischel's S-R formulations, and not against the substance of his thesis. Thus, he suggested that "situationsim has gone too far in the direction of rejecting the role of organismic or intrapsychic determinants of behavior...It is my argument that both the trait and the situationist positions are inaccurate and misleading and that a position stressing the interaction of the person and the situation is both conceptually satisfying end empirically warranted".