Chapter 10: Person-Situation Interactionist Aspects Of Personality

Front 1

Kurt Lewin - Cheater's Study (1927)

Back 1

people are inconsistent
researchers took cheaters and gave the kids opportunities to cheat - found that some kids cheated and others did not
children were not consistently honest or dishonest

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Harry Stack Sullivan

Back 2

Interpersonal Psychiatry - approach to personality that focuses on the recurring social situations faced by an individual
said personality is tied to social situations - we can't have a personality separate from society, even when we're alone

Front 3

Chumship

Back 3

term by Harry Stack Sullivan - idea derived from sociological concept of the social self - preadolescent's chums serve as a social mirror for forming his or her identity
Sullivan said that peers or "chums" is important, without it a child is disadvantaged

Front 4

social self

Back 4

Mead's idea that who we are and how we think of ourselves arise from our interactions with those around us, having an identity in a social world

Front 5

illusion of individuality

Back 5

idea that a person has a single, fixed personality is an illusion
personality emerges as a combination of individual inclinations and the social situations

Front 6

Henry Murray

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Motivation and Goals
emphasized importance of needs and motivations as well as environmental presses

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personological system

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emphasizes the richness of the life of each person and the dynamic complex organism responding to a specific environment

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systems

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sets of dynamic influences with feedback

Front 9

environmental presses

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the push of the situations, directional forces on a person that arise from other people/events in the environment

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thema

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term Murray used to describe the combination of needs and presses typical for the individual

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narrative approach

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involves studying motivations through biographies in order to understand the full life context of the whole person

Front 12

Walter Mischel

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modern interactionist approaches
- early work dealt with cognitive and situational factors that influence behaviours like the delay of gratification in children
- Mischel's studies demonstrated that an individual's actions, are the result of both environmental constraints and internal, cognitive characteristics of the individual

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delay of gratification

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specific aspect of self-control that occurs when an individual choose to forgo an immediate reinforcer in order to wait for a later, better reinforcer

Front 14

strategies

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Walter Mischel's idea that individual differences in the meanings people give to stimuli and reinforcement that are learned during experiences with situations and their rewards

Front 15

Mischel's 4 Personality Variables

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competencies: person's abilities and knowledge
encoding strategies: schemas and mechanisms one uses to process and encode information
expectancies: a personality variable encompassing a person's outcome expectancies and self-efficacy expectancies
plans: a personality variable encompassing our intentions for our actions

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behavioural signatures

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set of situation-behaviour relationships that are typical of an individual and that contribute to the apparent consistency of an individual's personality

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attribution theories

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theories that examine the ways in which individuals draw inferences about other people's behaviour - we often have biases and make errors when judging others

Front 18

Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment

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random participants (university students) split into 2 groups - prisoners and guards
found that situations are so powerful that they can override personality

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aggregation

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averaging of behaviours across situations (or over time), to improve the reliability of behaviour assessments

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personal vs. social situations: the social self

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social self is more prominent in certain people, or at certain times or situations

Front 21

self-monitoring

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paying attention to the reactions of other people

Front 22

person high in self-monitoring

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pay a lot of attention to people, more aware of social situations, less likely to behave inappropriately, may not be as authentic

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person low in self-monitoring

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less sensitive to reactions and expectations of others, more consistent in different situations, behaviour less influenced by others around

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self-verification theory

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we seek out situations that confirm what we already are, which makes our behaviour appear more similar

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Avshalom Capsi

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life-course approach, studied children and looked at different characteristics of these kids and changes

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life-course approach

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developed by Capsi, emphasizes that patterns of behaviour change as a function of age, culture, social groups, life events, etc., as well as because of internal drives, motives, and traits

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cumulative continuity

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tendency of personality to remain stable over time through consistency of interpretations, environments, and reactions

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readiness

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extent to which individuals are likely to respond appropriately in a given situation, as a function of their prior experiences with that situation
- each experience has its effects in the context of previous experiences, we are more affected by certain environments at certain times in our lives

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circumplex model

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arrangement of two basic dimensions of social interaction that shows the circular pattern of the combined characteristics

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2 dimensions of circumplex model

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affiliation dimension: hostile vs. friendly
assertiveness dimension: dominant vs. submissive

Front 31

advantages of person-situation interactionist

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emphasizes interpersonal influences
can draw on best aspects of other approaches
understands that we are different selves in different situations
often studies personality across time

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disadvantages of person-situation interactionist

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extreme positions can fail to take into account the complexity of the relationship b/w personality, behaviour, and situation
may overlook biological infleunces
difficult to define situations and to study the many complexities of interactions

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person-situation interactionist's view of free will

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free will exists to a limited degree