Personality and Assessment

Walter Mischel

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134996520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

After many "out-of-print" years, this volume has been reissued in response to an increasing demand for copies. This reflects that the fundamental questions that motivated this book thirty years ago are still being asked. But more important, the answers -- or at least their outlines -- now seem to be in sight. In 1968, this book stood as an expression of a paradigm crisis in its critique of the state of personality psychology. The last three decades have been filled with controversy and debate about the dilemmas raised here, and then with renewal and fresh discoveries. It therefore seems especially timely to revisit the pages which posed the challenges. Mischel outlined the need to encompass the situation in the study of personality, but with a focus on the acquired meaning of stimuli and on the situation as perceived, viewing the individual as a cognitive-affective being who construes, interprets, and transforms the stimulus in a dynamic reciprocal interaction with the social world. He focused on the idiographic analysis of personality that had originally motivated the field, and the complexity, discriminative facility, and uniqueness of the individual, and sought to connect the expressions of personality to the individual's behavior -- that is, to what people do and not just what they say. Even the intrinsically contextualized "if...then..." expressions of the personality system -- its essential behavioral signatures -- were foreshadowed in this book that fired the opening salvo in a search for "a truly dynamic personality psychology."

INTRODUCTION

Personality theory, experimental personality research, and assessment have quite different histories and their mutual implications have not been explored thoroughly. Courses on personality theory usually review the concepts advocated by different authors and offer omnibus surveys of psychological conceptions of man. Personality assessment, on the other hand, typically is relegated into the “how to do it” practical domain, and is inserted as an applied, independent course on assorted measurement techniques. Especially distressing, most approaches to personality still remain largely separated from developments in behavior theory and experimental research, in spite of many protests and some major efforts to the contrary (Bandura & Walters, 1963; Rotter, 1954).

Progress in the area of personality psychology and assessment has been hindered by the failure to apply relevant principles about the conditions that produce, maintain, and modify social behavior. The principles that emerge from basic research too often have not been seen as directly relevant to the understanding of the determinants of test responses in the clinic or the assessment project. It is as if we live in two independent worlds: the abstractions and artificial situations of the laboratory and the realities of life. In part this dualism between research and practice has resulted from the failure of basic psychological research to deal with social problems relevant to persons. Until fairly recently most experimental research offered as an aid in the understanding of human social behavior was not only nonsocial, in the sense of not dealing with interpersonal conditions, but also nonhuman, the subjects usually being rats, pigeons, or monkeys. Research with persons was confined largely to correlational studies, most frequently interrelating the checking responses of college students on different paper-and-pencil inventories. More recently, however, exciting progress has occurred in experimental social research with people. The resulting principles and techniques are being applied to the measurement and modification of the complex problems of persons–often severely disturbed persons.

Traditional separations between theory, basic research, and assessment practices come from historical accidents and professional biases rather than from logical necessity or convenience, and they take their toll in the training of personality and clinical psychologists. The resulting schisms within the field are reflected in the reactions of students who begin their practicum training and soon wonder, quite rightly, what their theoretical seminars in basic psychology have to do with their new daily activities. These frequent dissonances are being recognized increasingly. Anne Anastasi, for example, has called attention to the fact that the measurement of behavior is “… dissociated from the mainstream of contemporary psychology” (1967, p. 297), and that “… testing today is not adequately assimilating developments from the science of behavior” (p. 300). As she points out, developments in personality assessment have been largely oblivious to advances in our knowledge of the conditions that change and influence human behavior. The present state of affairs has led another critic (Kelly, 1965) to dub the contemporary graduate education of personality and clinical psychologists as “training for professional obsolescence.”

This book examines developments in theory, research, and personality assessment relevant to complex human behavior regardless of the usual textbook boundaries. We shall review and search these areas for their interrelationships, and examine how they do, or could, or should have critical effects on each other and on the activities of both the clinician and the researcher.

PERSONALITY CONSTRUCTS

Personality psychology seeks reliable statements either about the personality or about the directly observed behavior of one or more persons. Such statements always have to be based on observable events and behaviors, although unobservable processes underlying these manifestations may be inferred when their link to behavior is justifiable. We say “reliable” statements to stress that they must be arrived at by reproducible steps that lead to the same descriptions when followed by different observers. This differentiates them from personal assertions that cannot be reproduced independently by others. A scientific statement has to be susceptible at some point to acceptance, modification, or rejection on the basis of evidence obtainable by other observers using replicable steps. That is what is meant by “objective” (Bass & Berg, 1959). But the human actions that the psychologist observes, and that constitute his data, can be construed in any number of alternative ways, depending on the constructs and theory through which he views them.

The psychologist’s theory influences his interpretation of the problems that require assessment or study and his selection of specific procedures and criteria. His theory about the determinants of behavior and the conditions that change behavior dictates his choice of data, of specific procedures, and of criteria for evaluating them. The influence of theory becomes apparent even in efforts to assess seemingly simple bits of behavior.

To take a clinical illustration, consider the assessment of a young child brought to a clinic by his mother with the complaint that he is excessively demanding, unruly, stubborn, spoiled, and immature. Assume, also, that this boy is of average intelligence and has no gross organic problems. Even the first tentative hypotheses about the child depend on the interpreter’s theoretical approach. A Freudian might be alert to the child’s behavior as a sign of weak ego strength and ambivalence toward the mother related to basic problems in handling impulses, or perhaps as a reflection of the mother’s own unconscious neurotic conflicts. An Adlerian would attend to rivalry between the boy and his siblings, or to his inferiority complex and compensatory strivings. The Rogerian might think about self-realization, growth crises, and problems with the ego ideal, and an Erikson disciple might entertain hypotheses about identity crises and autonomy. Enthusiasts of personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) probably would start with an inquiry into the personal constructs of the mother to elaborate the subjective meanings and the referents she has for terms like “demanding,” “unruly,” and “spoiled.” A behaviorist would abstain from all speculations about the psychodynamic meanings of the problem behaviors. Instead, he would define the observable behavioral referents for the described problems and seek to assess the stimulus conditions that seem to affect and maintain them in the child’s current life.

For each “school” of personality there is a different orientation and focus. The hypotheses and expectations of the investigator are not merely private views: they affect not only what he looks for but also what he finds, both in research (e. g., Rosenthal, 1963) and in psychotherapy (e.g., Heine, 1953).

At present an enormous number of personality constructs exists. Examples from the available collection of personality constructs include: complexes (inferiority, Oedipal, Icarus); needs and motivations (security, ascendance, abasement, achievement, dependency, recognition, competence); anxieties (sexual, social, basic, free-floating, neurotic); levels (psychosexual, cognitive, aspirational); habit hierarchies; factors (primary, surface, source, cardinal); ego strength; ego ideal; and so on. And of course “personality” itself is a construct, endowed with diverse meanings. The question that must be asked is what do particular personality constructs add to the analysis, prediction, and modification of behavior–what is their utility? This question will be posed often in later chapters.

“Personality” and “behavior” often are used interchangeably by psychologists, producing great confusion. Personality is an abstraction or hypothetical construction from or about behavior, whereas behavior itself consists of observable events. Statements that deal with personality describe the inferred, hypothesized, mediating internal states, structure, and organization of individuals. Traditionally, personality psychology has dealt with these inferences about the individual’s personality, focusing on behavioral observations as signs of underlying attributes or processes within the person that serve as clues to his personality. This strategy has been the most dominant one in the field.

Until recently, the two main approaches to personality have been found in trait theories and in psychodynamic or state theories. Not surprisingly, therefore, most theoretical issues traditionally have hinged on controversies about the utility of specific techniques for inferring personality or, even more often, about the substantive content, structure, and organization of the psyche (e.g., Sanford, 1963).

Traditional personality theories assume an internal structural-dynamic hierarchy in which various hypothesized aspects of the person stand in superordinate-subordinate relations to each other (e. g., Sanford, 1963). This structural pyramid view is seen in such concepts as personality “levels,” and in dichotomies like “deep versus superficial,” “basic versus surface,” or “underlying core versus symptomatic.” The implication in all hierarchical personality models is that some internal entities underlie others, and that their dynamic interrelations determine or produce the behavior that the person displays. For example, impulses, motives, needs, or drives are evaluated and reacted upon by other features of the personality, as when the ego disguises or otherwise censors and modifies id impulses. In other formulations, underlying attitudinal or response predispositions are seen as the guides and monitors of behavior, and are given an instrumental role in determining the overt behavior that ensues.

Both trait and state theorists would interpret the excessively demanding behaviors of the previously cited boy as signs of underlying traits or psychodynamic processes that exist within the child and that predispose him to behave as he does. Assessment would concentrate on a description of these hypothesized attributes, including attempts to reconstruct their history. Any predictions about the boy’s future behavior are likely to involve extrapolations from his presumed traits and dynamics as inferred from test responses or other behaviors. For example, his future achievement behavior might be predicted by clinical judgments about how a child with his personality is likely to react to the stresses, demands, and challenges of the school situation. In the same vein, one might try to predict the probability of future delinquency from inferences about his hypothesized “ego strength.”

TRAITS

“Trait” has become a confusing term because it is used in several different ways. At the simplest level a trait refers to the differences between the directly observable behavior or characteristics of two or more individuals on a defined dimension. For example, “a trait is any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from others” (Guilford, 1959, p. 6). In this sense a trait is merely a summary label for some observed stable individual differences in behavior.

A trait also can be a personality construct created for its explanatory convenience and power. In that meaning a trait is a construct or abstraction to account for enduring behavioral consistencies and differences; as such, it does not necessarily have any concrete real existence as a “thing,” “state,” or “process” within persons.

Many personality theorists, however, have conceptualized traits as underlying characteristics, qualities, or processes that do exist in persons (Allport, 1937, 1966). Thus, for some researchers traits are constructs, created by psychologists; for others they are real states in persons, the construct being the psychologist’s inference about the underlying attribute in the person.

Generally traits have been viewed both as psychological realities that exist in some tangible form in the person and also as the causes of behavior (Allport, 1966; Cattell, 1950). As Gordon Allport puts it: “A trait has more than nominal existence … and is dynamic, or at least determinative, in behavior” (1966, p. 1). A chief aim of the trait approach is to infer the underlying personality structure of individuals and to compare persons and groups on trait dimensions. Underlying traits are inferred from behavior and, in turn, are invoked to account for the observed behavioral consistencies.

Psychologists who accept the basic assumptions of trait theory believe that the personality is made up of certain definite attributes or traits. They also assume that particular traits, or “mental structures," are common to many people, vary in amount, and can be inferred by measuring their behavioral indicators (e.g., Cattell, 1957; Guilford, 1959). Most important, it is widely assumed that traits are relatively stable and enduring predispositions that exert fairly generalized effects on behavior (Sanford, 1963; Allport, 1966). These predispositions either may be acquired through learning or may be constitutionally or genetically inherent.

Much of the research on traits, especially the work of psychometricians, has been guided by a cumulative quantitative measurement model. In such a cumulative model trait indicators are related additively to the inferred underlying disposition (Loevinger, 1957). For example, the more submissive behavior the person displays, as by endorsing more submissive content on an inventory, the stronger the underlying trait of submissiveness. In contrast, psychodynamic theory posits highly indirect, nonadditive relations between behavior and hypothesized underlying states. Thus submissive behavior may be interpreted as a sign of underlying aggression, or of passivity-hostility conflicts, or of resistance disguising some other more threatening characterological problems. This inference process from indirect signs is at the core of psychodynamic theory, and its main assumptions are summarized in the following section.

PSYCHODYNAMIC ASSUMPTIONS

Psychodynamic theory, like trait theory, assumes that the underlying personality is more or less stable regardless of the situation. According to the psychodynamic view, the individual develops during childhood a basic personality core that does not change much in its essentials. In research and assessment the environmental “situation” therefore is a variable to be “controlled out” so that it does not interfere with the expression of core materials—that is, with the manifestations of the person’s basic motives and defenses.

Psychodynamic theory contends that all responses from a person ultimately reveal his enduring basic problems and personality organization if the underlying meaning of the behaviors is interpreted properly. This belief is most clearly reflected in the psychodynamic interpretation of projective data (MacFarlane & Tuddenham, 1951). It is believed that in an unstructured, ambiguous, or projective situation the person’s responses reveal his basic personality organization. Further, all aspects of his behavior are interpreted as potentially revealing this basic underlying personality configuration (MacFarlane & Tuddenham, 1951). The same assumptions guide the psychoanalytic interpretation of dream materials, free associations, memory losses. Every bit of psychological behavior, if interpreted in sufficient depth and detail, is thought to reveal the individual’s underlying personality organization.

In clinical situations, the psychodynamic assessor may pay as much attention to seemingly irrelevant, trivial, and casual behavior as to evidence that the client himself says is important. For example, repeated references to current interests, strong beliefs, daily activities, or work may be construed by the clinician as “resistances” to be overcome, whereas jokes, errors, slips of the tongue, mannerisms may be deemed revealing clues worthy of further intensive exploration, since they may reflect unconscious material that partially “bypassed” the defenses. This practice is based on the psychoanalytic conviction that the individual is largely unaware of his own most important motives. It is further believed that the major determinants of human behavior are not only unconscious but also irrational, and that individuals are driven by persistent, illogical demands from within. These urgings or instinctual impulses, chiefly sexual and aggressive in origin, are believed to press for immediate discharge and satisfaction (Freud, 1953).

According to the psychodynamic view, elaborate defenses are developed to avoid anxiety and to come to terms with the vicissitudes of instinctual impulses as they conflict with the barriers of the external world and internalized inhibitions (White, 1964). These complex disguises help man to hide from himself as well as from others but may become inadequate, as in pathological conditions. Even under the usual circumstances of everyday life the defenses occasionally are penetrated and the person betrays himself. Such betrayals, according to the theory, are manifested most readily when defenses are relaxed, as in the dream life during sleep, or when situational cues are vague, as in responses to inkblots in a projective test.

The defense process involves distortion and displacement; private meanings develop as objects and events become symbols, representing things quite different from themselves, whose meanings are revealed only indirectly by behavioral signs or symptoms. Psychodynamics are inferred from indirect behavioral signs. In accord with psychoanalytic theory, motives are believed to be expressed indirectly after defensive disguising and distortion. Behavior therefore is interpreted symbolically for its meaning as signs of underlying dynamic motives and states. A projective test story that begins with the image of “woman out of breath because she has just run up a flight of stairs,” a Rorschach response in which a man is “clinging to rocks,” are examples of responses considered symbol laden and for which latent meanings are sought.

Overt behavior in itself is of little interest in psychodynamic theory except insofar as it reveals something about the individual’s unconscious processes and dynamics. No matter where one seeks data, however, they can be found only in the form of observable events. Talk about inner life and private events should not obscure the fact that these are known only by such observable manifestations as verbal self-reports, interview behavior, autonomic measures, and the like. The extent to which psychodynamic inferences about the meanings of these behavioral signs is justified depends entirely on the reliability and utility of the results.

TRAITS, STATES, AND INDIVIDUAL ...