Chp 10 - Person Situation Interactions Flashcards
Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal (4)
*Personality and identity tied to social situations
*Late childhood-early adolescence shift in social world: Family -> peers
*Acceptance by peers
*Important role in identity formation (played by peers in formation of identity)
Henry Murray Views (3)
*Importance of goals
*Focus on process
*Environmental Press
Environmental Press (3)
All the environmental forces acting on an individual, including the social situation
- External factors and behaviour
- Integrated, dynamic nature of individual
-The direction “push” of the situation, other people
Competence and Environmental Press
Competence: Skills that you have to apply in the situation
When env press is strong, to function well, need a high level of confidence
Determines whether is a positive or negative
But when no env press, high competence:
- Nth calling on you to use the skills
- No info on what skills should be used
Traditional Personality Theory
B = f(P)
Behaviour (B) is a function of Personal Factors (P)
But behaviour does not occur in a vacuum.
What about the situation?
Mischel: The Consistency Paradox
Perception of consistency in personality
vs
Empirical tests find powerful lower consistency
(correlation personality – behaviour, r’s <.3)
- e g. I’m reserved around ppl idk, I’m really extroverted around frds and fam”= inconsistent
Powerful control by situation.
“I believe we help people when they need assistance”
- But bystander effect
- e.g. falling on the street
- Even if one rates high in altrurism, people are more likely not to help
- the more people are around, the less likely ppl to help, diffusion of responsibiltiy
Mischel’s Personality Variables: What the Person Brings to the Situation (4)
Each Cat Eats Poop
Encoding Strategies: Concepts, interpretations, perceptions; how we process and encode info
Competencies: What we can do; the person’s abilities and knowledge
Expectancies: What will happen; outcome expectancies, including self-efficacy
Plans: What we will do; our intentions for actions
Situationism
Behaviour controlled by the situation, not personality traits
B= f(E)
Behaviour is function of the environment (physical, social)
Mischel: Situationism
Do we even need the concept of Personality?
(3)
Consistency paradox
- When tested, poor cross-situational consistency
Social roles
- Control by the situation, power of social roles
Person bias
- Illusion of consistency in other’ behaviour because of person bias
- e.g. in the library quiet, but we attribute person’s behaviour as their personality
Person Bias, the Fundamental Attribution Error:
- Tendency to attribute behaviour of others to their personality, not situation
- Common and powerful, even when we know that it is incorrect
Person bias (manager experiment)
Subjects randomly assigned to role of clerk or manager
Students assigned to the role of manager scored higher for
Leadership
Assertiveness
Intelligence
Supportiveness
Likelihood of future success
Mischel: Delay of Gratification (1+4+1)
Ability to defer present gratification for larger, delayed rewards, develops during childhood
- Aspect of ego control, related to impulse control, self-efficacy
Delay More Difficult under conditions if:
- Reward is visible
- Cognition centered on hedonic value of reward (e.g. thinking of how the food tastes like)
- Reward sampled (e.g. “im just gonna have a taste”)
Measure of ego control:
- Can children of different ages show diff control and get bigger reward
Delay of Gratification, By 5 most learn: (5)
*Cover/hide reward;
*Use imagery in place of actual reward
*Think about something else, Direct attention to sth else
*Attend to appropriate models
Strategies effective for delay for delay of gratification also useful for impulse control
Delay of gratification at ages 4,5, were positively correlated with high school measures of: (5)
*verbal and math scores
*concentration
*coping mechanisms (frustration, stress)
*emotional maturity
*social skills.
ego-control (4)
Delayed gratification is an aspect of ego-control
*Stable
*Correlated with academic success, occupational success, social skills, well-being,
*negatively with divorce rates.
