Walter Mischel's Observations on Personality

Mischel’s Observations on Personality

Walter Mischel is considered to have an interactionist approach to personality science. An interactionist believes a person’s behavior varies depending on the situation they are presented; this approach makes studying personality regarding broad traits difficult at best. However, by the time Mischel published his claims, it was well accepted by personality psychologists that situations do influence behaviors. Mischel’s opinion looked at the size of the relation between an individual’s behavior across a variety of situation and the degree of behavioral variance in them (Friedman & Schustack, 2016).

Mischel’s Argument

The foundation of Mischel’s argument is on “how well could we predict people’s behavior knowing something about their traits, and just how consistent is personalty-based behavior across differing situations?” (Friedman & Schustack, 2016, p. 238). In essence, Mischel viewed personalty as an invalid construct to accurately correlate behavior.

From Mischel’s perspective (2009), trait theorists contend that personality traits inherent to the individual are predominantly predictive of future behavior, while there is a lack of empirical data to support this claim. Specifically, Mischel notes that numerous research studies have been unable to predict behavior based on personality traits alone. Instead, research evidences a tendency for behavior to vary significantly depending on situations (Friendman & Schustack, 2016). Mischel’s critique relied on a correlation coefficient ( r ), which is a statistic relating how well a variable predicts or correlates with another variable, and stated that a positive correlation between trait and behavior should always equal 1.0. Friedman and Schustack (2016) gave the example that knowing a woman to be extraverted would allow us to always predict extraverted behavior for her.

Mischel argued that a correlation of 0.30 – 0.40 is rather insignificant when a perfectly positive correlation is 1.0 (Friendman & Schustack, 2016). For example, if the odds of winning the lottery were a mere 30 to 40%, a great many more people might be likely interested in playing. Considering also that finding out you have a 30 to 40% chance of succumbing to a hereditary illness would generate quite a few visits to the local doctor for checkups.

Two arguments from Mischel’s critique

However, it is important to note that two problems weaken Mischel’s analysis. This assumes personality traits are an in a fixed and simple model in which traits lead directly to behaviors. It also does not explain what it means when most correlations of personality with behavior are only 0.30, assuming that this is a small change in behavior. Statistically speaking, Ozer and Benet-Martinez explained that “such a correlation is small if we expect to be able to predict perfectly. But in real life, an effect this large is often considered very important and meaningful” (as cited in Friedman & Schustack, 2016, p. 238).

However, Mischel’s criticisms are not entirely without merit. His argument was not anti-trait as many have argued after the publication of his book Personality and Assessment in 1968. Rather, he argued for a more balanced perspective, an understanding of the necessity of allocating an equal value to both situation and trait influences on behavior. In fact, he suggests arguing trait versus situation is overly simplified (Mischel, 2009).

Supportive contemporary research

            Research on complicated behaviors involving leadership (Derue, et. al., 2011), sexual risk-taking (Cooper, 2010), and automated behaviors such as driving (Stephens & Groeger, 2007) are all evidence that situation and trait influences are conjoined to have significant impacts on the behavior of individuals.

References

Cooper, M. L. (2010). Toward a person× situation model of sexual risk-taking behaviors: Illuminating the conditional effects of traits across sexual situations and relationship contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 319.

Friedman, H. S. & Schustack, M. W. (2016). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (6th ed.). MA: Pearson.

Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N. E. D., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta‐analytic test of their relative validity. Personnel psychology, 64(1), 7-52.

Mischel, W. (2009). From personality and assessment (1968) to personality science, 2009. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(2), 282-290

Stephens, A. N., & Groeger, J. A. (2009). Situational specificity of trait influences on drivers’ evaluations and driving behaviour. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 12(1), 29-39.