Walter Mischel Born in 1930 in Vienna fled

Walter Mischel Born in 1930 in Vienna, fled Nazi’s with family in 1938, came to NYC. Studied clinical psychology at City College of New York, worked as social worker, completed doctoral work at Ohio State in 1935. Influenced by Kelly, Julian Rotter. Taught at Stanford from 1962 - 1983, moved to Columbia, where he still is.

Issues – Two questions • Are traits real? Allport regarded traits as “heuristically” real. They are perhaps not the “real” organizational properties of personality, but they do illuminate perspectives and make it possible to observe important relationships we could not observe without using them. Allport divided traits into cardinal, central, peripheral. (Say a bit about Cattell’s surface and source traits; 16 PF. Eysenck reduced to three: (introversion extraversion; neuroticism - emotionally stable; psychoticism - superego; big five added conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness; dropped psychoticism)

• Are they useful (for prediction, selection, etc. )?

Mischel’s Personality and Assessment (1968) • 1. Traits usually lack the consistency and cross-situational generality that is assumed by the trait name. Examples: Hartshorne & May’s Studies of Deceit found correlations between honest behaviors of pre-teens to be. 2 to. 3. Dudycha (1963) found that college students’ “punctuality” correlations from one situation to another correlated on average. 19. • 2. There is low agreement in trait ratings of individuals (a) as described by multiple raters, (b) as determined by different methods (self-ratings, observer ratings, experimental tests). So even if traits are real, how can they be assessed accurately? • 3. The correlation between any general trait measure and specific behavior rarely exceeds. 3 (9% of the variance). Such low correlations have little predictive usefulness. • 4. Specific behaviors can best be predicted by other methods.

Responses to Mischel • A. Aggregation • 1. Reanalysis of Hartshorne and May. “When Hartshorne and May combined several tests of honesty into a single score, the reliability coefficient increased to. 73. Burton (1963) found that a general factor of honesty accounted for 50% of the variance. • “Just as one test is an insufficient and unreliable measure in the case of intelligence, so one test of deception is quite incapable of measuring a subject’s tendency to deceive. That is, we cannot predict from what a pupil does on one test what he will do on another. If we use ten tests of classroom deception, we can safely predict what a subject will do on the average whenever ten similar situations are presented. ” (H & M, 1928, p. 135)

Epstein’s four studies • • • A. Stability of self-recorded data. One month, students recorded daily 60 positive and negative emotions, behavior, impulses. Correlated successive days and all odd-even days. Exemplary results: All Successive Emotion: Happy. 92 -. 03 Tense. 77. 26 Impulse: Affiliation. 68. 36 Achievement. 58. 10 Mental Escape. 68 -. 06 Behavior: Nurturance. 95. 06 Pleasure. 89 -. 28 Mean. 76. 19 • B. • C. Directly observed behavior. Recorded daily tallies of social telephone calls, letters written, forgetting instructions (to bring a pencil), errors and omissions on instruction sheets, erasures, etc. Erasures: . 60. 10 Entertainment. 70 -. 11 Phone calls. 91. 43 Lateness. 94. 53 • • D. Ratings by others over a month of the same dispositions produced similar results. Correlations with standard scales. (Mischel says rarely above. 30). Extroversion predicted # of summed social contacts. 52 Self-esteem predicted summed optimism. 55, worthiness. 47 Average across a number of scales was. 50.

Diener & Larsen (1984) • Showed that activity level on one day correlated just. 08 with activity level on another. • But the average across two three-week periods correlated. 66.

Weigell & Newmann (1976) • Showed same principle extends to attitudes. Students given measurement of attitudes toward environmentalism. Over next 8 months, “unrelated” persons offered them 14 opportunities to participate in environmental causes (petition drive, help with recycling program. Average r with single acts was. 24; with the sum of 14 acts was. 62.

Traits Predict Single Act Well - • When situational pressures are weak!

Monson (1982) • Study 1: Waiting room behavior in forced-extroversion, forced-introversion, and neutral conditions (created by doubleblind stooge). Correlations between extroversion and extraverted behavior: • Forced Introversion: . 36 • Neutral: . 63 • Forced extroversion. 25

Monson, cont. • Study 2: Students given a choice of 5 -page paper or giving a talk in front of the class. Pressure to do one or the other was varied. Correlations of choosing speech with extroversion: • Strong pressure for speech: . 41 • Moderate pressure for speech. 45 • No pressure for either. 52 • Moderate pressure for paper. 49 • Strong pressure for paper. 09 • Similar pattern on three other behaviors.

Gormley (1983) • Gave persons a free choice of how to become acquainted with others: Interact, watch a videotape of them. Extroversion correlated. 53 with choosing to interact. • Gave persons a free choice of “Performing physical tasks, like lifting and moving objects” vs. “fine motor tasks like tracing patterns, sorting nuts and bolts. ” A trait measure of “energetic” correlated. 62 with choosing the first task.

Conclusion • Moral: When people are free to select situations and behaviors without external pressures, personality traits can be quite predictive; when situtational pressures are strong, traits are far less predictive of behavior.

Mischel’s Enduring Characteristics (Alternative to traits) • a. Encodings -- constructs of self, people, events, situations • b. Expectancies and beliefs -- concerning outcome of behavior, meaning of stimuli in a particular situation, confidence of ability in a particular situation. • c. Competencies -- what one knows and can do. • d. Goals and values -- both positive and negative outcomes, affective states, life projects. • e. Self-regulatory plans -- like Bandura’s self-efficacies.

Mischel’s current view • Habitual cognitive interpretation of environmental events is the most central feature of personality to Mischel. People have “an impressive ability to discriminate between situations. ” “Idiosyncratic social learning histories produce idiosyncratic stimulus meanings. ” Personality must account for the variation in behavior (e. g. aggressiveness, extroversion) across situations as well as the central tendency. Most “traits” (e. g. aggressiveness, extroversion) are manifest in particular situations. An “if. . . then” analysis of situation-behavior patterns, and thus of personality.