Chapter 10:

Person-Situation Interactionist Aspects of Personality

Harry Stack Sullivan

(cut-about)

Why some honest people cheat?

Personality is tied to social situations

Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations Importance of peers in forming identity (vs parents) Interpersonal theory of psychiatry The social self (from George Herbert Mead) who we are and how we think of ourselves arise from our interactions with those around us; also having an identity in a social world

Personality consistently changes as a function of relations with others

Illusion of individuality the idea that a person has a single, fixed personality is just an illusion. So, we may have many personalities!

We become different people in different social situations

In each situation we imagine how others think of us and respond accordingly

Focuses on threats that are inherently social

Importance of chums (peers) chumship Locates healthy and unhealthy psychological development in the reactions of ones peers Sullivan blames society for most problems

Henry Murray

Viewed personality as the study of human lives across time

Situations encountered throughout ones life

Combines unconscious motives and environmental pressures

NEED

Murrays Personological System

Emphasizes the importance of:

Internal needs and motives

Environmental press
Dynamic system, with feedback

Examples of Murrays Needs

Affiliation Autonomy Dominance

Order Play Sex Succorance (need to loved, nursed, controlled) Understanding

Exhibition
Harm Avoidance

Nurturance

Murrays Thema

Typical combination of needs Measured with the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A person composes a story to an ambiguous picture (projective test)

Narrative approach

Studies motives through biographies

Mischels Critique of Personality

Correlations of behavior with personality are generally .30 or less

Critique assumes a simple model of personality-behavior relations Critique assumes that a correlation of .30 is small

Walter Mischel
Four personality variables: 1. Competencies
A persons abilities and knowledge
2.

Encoding strategies

Schemas used to process and encode information Personal meanings

3.

Expectancies
outcome expectancies for our own behavior

4.

Plans Behavioral signature

Recurring situation-behavior relationships Contributes to the apparent consistency of an individual's personality

Implicit Personality Theory

Attributions: Observers tend to attribute the behaviors of others to personality
(self = situation based) Under-emphasis on the role of situation Limited information

People overestimate the consistency of their own behavior However, people are generally good judges of personality

Situations

Some situations are so powerful that they override personality effects

A fire in a crowded theater

The Power of Situations

Individual behavior at a given point in time is difficult to predict because of the poser of situations.

Consistency within situations

Problem of classifying situations

The personality of situations Where would we expect behavioral consistency?

Individual behavior at a given point in time is difficult to predict because of the poser of situations.

Consistency within situations

Trait relevance certain situations provide an opportunity for certain traits to be expressed; travel vs helping others The personality of situations aggression in all situations? no 2 situations are exactly alike Where would we expect behavioral consistency? Aggregation = the averaging of behaviors across situations to improve the reliability of behavior assessments; job & temperament

Situations

Consistency averaged across situations

Reliability issue Appropriateness of the situation Averaging cross-situational behaviors helps to deal with both of these issues (aggregation)

Personal vs. Social Situations

Field independence

Tendency to judge an entity in isolation, disregarding background influences In social situations this person acts independently of the actions of others
Tendency to judge an entity in its context, attending to background influences In social situations this person conforms

Field dependence

Mirror Neurons

Brain cells that fire in the same way for an individuals own actions and for the observed actions of others Allows people to feel or sense the experience of another Empathy correlated with mirror neuron activity Autism may involve abnormal mirror neurons

Self-Monitoring

Low self-monitors

Less sensitive to reactions and expectations of others Show more consistent behaviors across situations
More sensitive to the social influences that vary across situations More difficult to see personality effects

High self-monitors

Seeking and Creating Situations

We seek situations that reinforce our self-conception (i.e. college,
restaurant,,activity)

This makes our social environments and self-concepts appear more stable than they really are

Longitudinal Study

The close comprehensive, systematic, objective, sustained study of individuals over significant portions of the life span Various types of data: life data, observational data, test data, self-report data Examples:

Block and Blocks longitudinal study at Berkeley Lewis Termans Life-Cycle Study

Life Course Approach

Cumulative continuity promotes personality consistency

Individuals create their own person-situation interactions by interpreting and seeking out situations Patterns of behavior change as a function of age, culture, social groups, life events, and so forth. Because of internal drives, motives, and traits.

Interpreting situations as similar Eliciting similar reactions from others Seeking out similar situations

Readiness

Each experience has its effects in the context of previous experiences We are more affected by certain environments at certain times in our lives These notions are related to the concepts of imprinting and critical periods

Social interations can be categorized: 1. Affiliation dimension of warmth and harmony vs rejection and hostility 2. an assertiveness dimension of dominance and task-orientation vs submission and deference

Circumplex Model

Person-Situation Approach

Analogy

Humans as an ongoing dialogue between self and environment

Advantages

Emphasizes interpersonal influences Can draw on the best aspects of other approaches Understands that we are different selves in different situations Often studies personality across time

Limits

Difficult to define situations May overlook biological influences Extreme positions can fail to take into account the complexity of the relationship between personality, behavior, and the situation

View of free will

Free will exists but only to a limited degree

Common assessment techniques

Observation and empirical testing of cross-situational consistency, classifying situations, self-report tests, projective tests, biographical study, longitudinal study

Implications for therapy

Personality can change slowly over time, as a person seeks out and influences situations and as situations in turn interact with the persons characteristics