Walter Mischel

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Walter Mischel

• Born in 1930 in Vienna, fled Nazis 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.

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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 Cattells 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)

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

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Mischels Personality and Assessment (1968)

• 1. Traits usually lack the consistency and
  cross-situational generality that is assumed by
  the trait name. Examples
• Hartshorne Mays 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.

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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 subjects 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)

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Epsteins 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. Ratings by others over a month of the same
  dispositions produced similar results.
• 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

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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.

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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.

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Traits Predict Single Act Well --

• When situational pressures are weak!

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Monson (1982)

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Mischels 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 Banduras
  self-efficacies.

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Mischels 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.