1. Mischel claims that he is misunderstood by his critics. “I never said that people show no consistencies” The real question rather is, “WHAT IS THE UTILITY OF GLOBAL TRAITS AS EXPLANATIONS OF BEHAVIOR.”

2. The issue of the power of situations versus personality as explanations of behavior is a pseudo controversy because research studies can be constructed to support either side. Some situations are powerful determinants of behavior. All people will act similarly and show minimum individual differences. Other situations are “weak” and allow for a wide range of individual differences. The relative importance of individual differences will depend on the situation selected, the behavior assessed, and the purpose of the assessment.

3. Regarding moderator variables: Yes, Mischel agrees that research has shown that the effects of particular individual difference (personality) traits or stimulus situations is frequently moderated by such variables as gender, IQ, gender of the experimenter, the amount of stress in a situation, etc. THE MORE THE NUMBER OF MODERATOR VARIABLES NECESSARY TO EXPLAIN BEHAVIOR, THE LESS THE USEFULNESS OF GLOBAL TRAITS, AND THE MORE THE DEPENDENCY UPON SPECIFIC CONDITIONS FOR ACCURATE PREDICTION.

4. It is possible to recognize continuity in behavior. But what people do in any situation may be changed dramatically even by relatively trivial alterations in the particular features of the immediate situation.

Mischel actually seems to question the existence of global traits, suggesting that they are the constructions of the personality theorists and any people who are the observers of life. Research has shown that when people explain their own behavior they use situational explanations, “I fell down because of a crack in the sidewalk.” People tend to explain the behavior of others using trait explanations, “You fell down because you are clumsy.” Because there are many more possible situations than traits, people may not be able to organize their understanding of the world in an efficient manner using situations as explanations, so they “make up” trait explanations. Mischel suggests that it is possible to view traits as “only summary terms of observed behaviors”, not true causes of behavior. Following this (in an apparent inconsistent manner), Mischel presents 5 classes of COGNITIVE PERSONALITY VARIABLES, which he believes function as true causal traits.

In introducing his cognitive personality variables, Mischel uses the term “discriminative facility” to potentially explain why people change from situation to situation. People behaving adaptively are sensitive to changing aspects of the environment and have a well-developed capacity to discriminate changes in the environment. Each of us have unique discriminations that we make. Various stimulus situations have different MEANINGS for people. Thus to predict from situations, you must know not only that situation, but also THE PARTICULAR MEANING that the situation has acquired for the person. ASSESSING THE ACQUIRED MEANING OF SITUATIONS is the core of social behavior assessment. The meaning and impact of stimuli can be changed by the COGNITIVE TRANSFORMATIONS (cognitive personality variables) used by a person. The next direction in understanding behavior is then NOT TO FIND WHAT GLOBAL TRAITS A PERSON HAS, but to identify the ways in which a person CONSTRUCTS HIS/HER ENVIRONMENT COGNITIVELY. Mischel then suggests 5 classes of COGNITIVE PERSONALITY VARIABLES, which would be fruitful to study how people mediate the impact of situations and generate distinctive behavior patterns.

1. COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL CONSTRUCTION COMPETENCIES. Behavioral competencies (abilities)1st. Through direct and observational learning a person acquires the potential to generate a repertoire of behavior. Does this repertoire have a wide range or narrow range. A professional actor, able to portray a wide variety of emotions and roles, would be said to have a very good (large) behavioral construction competencies. Someone who is unable to say “No.” could be said to have less of a behavioral construction competency. Behavioral construction competencies refer to how many different kinds of behavior a person is capable of displaying.

COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTION COMPETENCIES refer to how many different kind of ways I am capable of understanding my environment. It is related to IQ.

2. Encoding strategies and Personal Constructs. These refer to a perceiver’s ways of encoding various aspects of the environment and classifying information. Cognitive mechanisms like selective attention and filtering (e.g., repression/sensitization) are examples of encoding strategies. An example of Personal Constructs involves the number of categories which a person utilizes to encode and understand the environment, and how the person utilizes these categories. Think of someone who is only able to see the world in term of “black and white”--all things are either Good or Bad. This person would be quite different cognitively than someone who was also able to see shades of grey between the black and white. A different individual may be capable of seeing both Good and Bad things in any event or situation. Knowledge of the personal constructs of EVALUATION in these 3 people would be important considerations in predicting what they would do in any situation.

THIS IS THE NEW MATERIAL--Personal Constructs, cont’d

EVALUATION is only one of many examples of a personal construct. Osgood identified what he believed was 3 primary dimensions of meaning, which could be evaluated by what is known as the SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL. Below you will see many pairs of bipolar ratings. These (plus hundreds more) have been subject to many research studies. Using a Likert scale (usually from 1 [very] through 4 [neutral] to 7 [very], you could rate any number of things (your mother, President Clinton, yourself, your left shoe, indeed all things on a dimension of Pleasant to Unpleasant. When these bi-polar adjectives are factor analyzed, three primary dimensions of meaning often emerge. The table below shows the first three Semantic (meaning) dimensions and examples of bi-polar adjectives that would represent each dimension:

EVALUATION: GOOD VS. BAD

Pleasant vs. Unpleasant

Kind vs. Cruel

Fair vs. Unfair

POTENCY: STRONG VS. WEAK

Confident vs. Doubtful

Stubborn vs. Yielding

Dominant vs. Submissive

ACTIVITY: ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE

Fast vs. Slow

Tense vs. Relaxed

Rash vs. Cautious

The meaning that the world has for us is represented in these categories. Knowledge of how a person uses these categories would be important in understanding the meaning of any event for a person.

3. BEHAVIOR-OUTCOME (B-O)AND STIMULUS-OUTCOME (S-O) EXPECTANCIES

These are the cognitive counterparts of instrumental conditioning (B-O) and classical conditioning (S-O). Mischel (and other cognitive theorists) argue that people develop IF____THEN____hypotheses when they learn. Someone who has been reinforced for studying hard for exams would develop the B-O expectancy, IF I study hard for exams, THEN I will get an A. Someone who observes the weather would develop the S-O expectancy IF very dark clouds appear on the western sky accompanied by thunder, THEN it is very likely that it will rain. Cognitive theorists believe that the effectiveness of reinforcement depends of the ability of reinforcement to change B-O and S-O expectancies. Rotter’s locus of control scale is an example of cognitive attributions about the source of reinforcement (Internal vs. External). The original learned helpless theory of depression is also an example of a cognitive learning theory. Research by Dr. Baron in our department was cited by Mischel as supportive of the importance of cognitive.

4. SUBJECTIVE STIMULUS VALUES

This cognitive variable refers to the fact that any one event does not have the same reinforcing or punishing capability for all individuals. Money as a reinforcer has different values (different meanings) for different people (often dependent on how much money they already have). Friendship may be more valuable to one person than esteem, while the reverse may be true for someone else.

5. SELF-REGULATORY SYSTEMS AND PLANS

In addition to external determinants of behavior, people regulate their own behavior by self-imposed goals (standards) and self-produced consequences. Individuals set performance goals for themselves and react with self-criticism or self-satisfaction to their behaviors depending on how well it matches their expectations and criteria. A perfectionist that gets an A (49 out of 50 possible points) on an exam may be dissatisfied (not reinforced) because her/his standard may be perfection (all answers correct). In class, I will give an example of a friend of mine who has (on occasion) found losing $50 to be more rewarding than gaining $100. Strange, but easily understandable in light of this person’s standards.

IN ADDITION TO KNOWING THE EVENTS THAT HAPPEN TO PEOPLE, ONE MUST KNOW THE MEANING OF THE EVENTS TO THAT PERSON. THIS ENTAILS KNOWLEDGE OF COGNITIVE VARIABLES, from Mischel’s perspective.

Mischel asks “When do individual difference (personality) variables make a difference?” That is when do personality variables add to our ability to predict behaviors over and above a knowledge of the situation?

Mischel answers that personality variables make a difference in situations that are weak, when situations are not uniformly encoded by people, when situations do not generate uniform expectancies concerning desired behaviors, when situations do no offer sufficient incentives, when situations offer stimuli minimally valued, or when situations fail to provide the learning conditions required for successful constructions of behavior.