Profiting from controversy: Lessons from the person-situation debate.

Abstract

For the past two decades the person-situation debate has dominated personality psychology and had important repercussions in clinical, social, and organizational psychology. This controversy strikes to the heart of each of these disciplines because it puts on trial the central assumption that internal dispositions have an important influence on behavior. According to emerging views of scientific progress, controversy serves the useful function of narrowing the field of competing hypotheses. In this light, we examine seven hypotheses that arose during the course of the person-situation debate, ranging from most to least pessimistic about the existence of consensual, discriminative personality traits. The accumulated evidence fails to support the hypotheses that personality traits are simply (a) in the eye of the beholder, (b) semantic illusions, (c) artifacts of base-rate accuracy, (d) artifacts of shared stereotypes, (e) due to discussion between observers (who ignore behavior in favor of verbal self-presentation or reputation), or (f) mere by-products of situational consistencies. Evidence also fails to support the hypothesis (g) that although traits are related to behavior, the relationship is too small to be important. Yet we have not simply come full circle to a reacceptance of traits as they were understood 20 years ago. Research generated by these hypotheses has allowed us to better specify the circumstances under which personality assessments will be valid.Whether we are acting as professional psychologists, as academic psychologists, or simply as lay psychologists engaging in everyday gossip, the assumption that people have "traits" (or enduring cross-situational consistencies in their behavior) provides a basis for many of our decisions. When a clinical or counseling psychologist uses a standard assessment battery, he or she assumes that there is some degree of trait-like consistency in pathological behavior to be measured. When an organizational psychologist designs a personnel selection procedure, he or she assumes that consistent individual differences between the applicants are there to be found. When an academic psychologist teaches a course in personality, he or she must either assume some consistency in behavior or else face a bit of existential absurdity for at least three hours a week. Likewise, a good portion of our courses on clinical and developmental psychology would be unimaginable unless we assumed some cross-situational consistency.Even in everyday lay psychology, our attempts to analyze the behaviors of our friends, relatives, and co-workers are riddled with assumptions about personality traits.Despite the wide appeal of the trait assumption, personality psychologists have been entangled for some time in a debate about whether it might be based more on illusion than reality (e.g., Alker

What moderates implicit—explicit consistency?

“…Second, attention shifted to methodological explanations which attributed inconsistencies to poor measurement techniques (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977) and a search for psychological moderator variables that identify when attitudes or traits reliably predict behaviour (Ajzen, 1987;Bem & Allen, 1974;Block, 1977;Schmitt, 1990;Snyder & Ickes, 1985). Third, the identification and cataloguing of moderators provided an opportunity to develop theoretical models illustrating a deeper understanding of why traits and behaviours are highly related in some cases and not others (e.g., Kenrick & Funder, 1988). This sequence bears notable similarities (and differences) to the present investigations of implicitexplicit consistency.…”

Duel or Diversion? Conscientiousness and Executive Function in the Prediction of Health and Longevity

“…Related issues have been covered ad nauseum elsewhere (7,8), but we feel credit is due to those researchers whose multi-source and/or longitudinal designs resulted in many of the important findings discussed in our review. There are few more parsimonious accounts of the power of personality than showing how parent and teacher ratings of childhood conscientiousness predict longevity (9,10).…”

Toward a metaphor-enriched personality psychology.

“…Although not desired (Mischel, 2009), this book was interpreted to suggest that behavior is a function of situations not personalities (Ross & Nisbett, 1991). A schism between social and personality psychology occurred as a result of this controversy (Kenrick & Funder, 1988). Personality psychology largely abandoned outcome predictions to focus on issues of taxonomy among self-reported traits.…”