The person-situation debate

Question 1

context

Answer 1

The trait approach relies predominantly on self-report questionnaires to measure personality. Other approaches can be used (e.g., behavioural observation, projective techniques) but questionnaires are the most frequently used method for measuring traits.

• Social psychology also has a tendency to rely on questionnaire data as do other areas of psychology.
  
  • This critique is relevant to all research that relies on self-reports and questionnaire data.

Question 2

how has the personality measure been developed?

Answer 2

Number of items (questions)

Factor Analysis – orthogonal or oblique rotation

Number of factors – statistical or user (theoretically) defined

Labelling of factors – different names but referring to same measure

Standardisation

Validity

Reliability – Cronbach’s Alpha and over time

Question 3

sources of inaccuracy in personality measurement and testing

Answer 3

Response sets can affect test results – non-content responding.

• Acquiescence – tendency to agree with the questionnaire items irrespective of content. (Reverse scored items help combat acquiescence).
• Extreme responding – tendency to give endpoint responses.
• Social desirability responding – the tendency to give answers that will enhance social attractiveness, likeability.
• Demand characteristics – Ps alter their response or behaviour because they are part of an experiment

Question 4

social desirability

Answer 4

Some test takers choose socially acceptable answers to present themselves in a favourable light.

Individuals do not attend as much to the trait being measured as to the social acceptability of the statement.

This represents unwanted variance – distorts the data.
- Various measures have been developed to detect socially desirable responding and it is then removed statistically from other questionnaire items.

The items in scales designed typically refer to minor transgressions or inadequacies that most of us suffer from. Some items refer to ‘saint-like’ behaviour.

It is the extent to which a person denies common faults and problems and endorses perfect, well-adjusted behaviour that results in a high score on social desirability.

Question 5

what does social desirability reflect?

Answer 5

a need for approval

Question 6

Social desirability is not necessarily dishonesty, it is different from lying and faking

Answer 6

Some people may simply have a distorted view of themselves.

Some people have a very strong need to have others think well of them.

Some psychologists argue that social desirability is a trait in itself that correlates with other positive traits such as optimism, happiness, conscientiousness.

Question 7

further considerations in personality measurement and testing

Answer 7

Dishonesty or defensiveness:

• Will not admit to minor flaws and weaknesses.
• Impression Management.

Question 8

faking and impression management

Answer 8

some people taking tests may respond in a particular way to cause a desired outcome:

• Some people may be motivated to “fake good” to create a favourable impression – e.g., in employment settings.
• Others may “fake bad” either as a cry for help or perhaps to appear more maladjusted/mentally disturbed than they really are - e.g., in clinical or forensic settings

Question 9

faking

Answer 9

“Faking Bad”

People try to appear worse than they really are
- Common problem in clinical settings

NB: Most people who fake bad overdo it

Question 10

reasons for faking bad

Answer 10

Cry for help

Want to plea insanity in court

Want to show psychological damage

Question 11

faking bad

Answer 11

The Lees-Haley Fake Bad Scale (FBS) or MMPI Symptom Validity Scale - 43 items in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory aimed at detecting malingering in personal injury claimants.
- It was endorsed by the MMPI publishers in 2006 and incorporated into the official scoring keys, but is very controversial.

Detecting Fake-Good and Fake-Bad MMPI-2 Profiles.
John R. Graham, Dana Watts & Rodney E. Timbrook. (1991). Journal of Personality Assessment, 57,(2), 264-277.
- Found that the validity scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) could identify people who were faking bad or faking good and could differentiate between psychiatric patients and normal subjects who were faking bad.

Question 12

mitigating against impression management

Answer 12

Use lie scales to “flag” those who might be lying/faking e.g., EPQ has a lie scale.

Forced choice items – have to choose between two ‘desirable’ behaviours

Inconsistency scales (e.g., two different responses to two similar questions, includes reverse scored)

Use multiple assessment methods (other than self-report) e.g., observational data, interview data, other-report.

Question 13

issue with the P-S debate

Answer 13

Which is more important in determining what people do, the person or the situation?

Question 14

what determines behav? P or S?

Answer 14

Trait theory: Personality traits primarily determine behaviour.

Situationism: The idea that it is situational variables that determine behaviour, not personality.

Interactionism: Traits and situations interact to influence behaviour.

Question 15

the P-S debate - Mischell (1968)

Answer 15

Behaviour is too inconsistent from one situation to the next to allow individual differences to be characterised accurately in terms of personality traits.

• Personality traits do not predict behaviour particularly well.
• Situations are stronger predictors of behaviour.
• People tend to overestimate personality consistency - ‘fundamental attribution error’.
• Personality assessment is a waste of time.

Question 16

fundamental attribution error

Answer 16

(also known as correspondence bias/over-attribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasise dispositional/personality-based explanations for other people’s bad behavs while under-emphasising situ explanations – reverses when explain own bad behav

Can leave other people feeling unappreciated/unrecognised and impact neg on personal and word r’ships

Question 17

what is definitive useful of trait?

Answer 17

ability to predict behaviour.

Question 18

P-S debate - The definitive test of the usefulness of a personality trait is its ability to predict behaviour.

Answer 18

Mischel argued that correlations between personality and behaviour are small, typically .30 (accounts for 9% of the variability in behaviour).

Richard Nisbett (1980) revised the personality-behaviour correlation upward slightly to .40 (accounts for 16% of the variance in behaviour).

Mischel’s observations facilitated an approach known as situationism (the impact of situational factors and their role in contributing to differences in behaviour).

Situationists argue that the personality-behaviour correlation is so small that personality is not all that important in the prediction of behaviour.

Question 19

the P-S debate

Answer 19

The low personality-behaviour correlations do not demonstrate the value of situational variables because the cause may be an unmeasured personality variable.
- Need to demonstrate a high correlation between situational variables and behaviour rather than simply showing a low correlation between personality and behaviour.

a trait is more likely to predict a person’s behaviour if that trait is ‘central’ for them (Allport).
- when people for whom a trait is consistent or central are compared with those for whom the trait is not, the correlation between that trait and behaviour is higher (e.g., .50 and .57 respectively between friendly behaviours and conscientiousness trait-friendliness trait (Burger, 2004).

Situational variables are best suited to predicting behaviour in specific situations.

Personality traits are more able to predict patterns of behaviour that persist across situations and time.

Replication crisis very relevant to debate. Many early claims from social psych don’t stand up to scrutiny

Question 20

Funder and Ozer (1983)

Answer 20

reviewed studies of situational effects and computed effect-size correlations ranging from .36 to .42

• These are similar to those found between personality factors and behaviour – more or less identical
• The authors emphasised that both person and situation factors are important and appear to be comparable in their ability to predict behavioural differences

Question 21

the P-S debate and interactionism

Answer 21

The ultimate response to Mischel’s challenge came from Interactionism (e.g., Endler & Magnusson, 1976)

• traits and situations interact to influence behaviour.
• differences in behaviour reflect the interaction of personality traits and situational factors.

Endler and colleagues developed a reciprocal interaction model
- the person, situation and behaviour all have an influence on each other in a dynamic sequence. (e.g., we often choose situations, who we go with, where we go).

Question 22

situational selection

Answer 22

Person factors are likely to be underestimated in interaction models because people choose and structure situations according to their personalities.

People also differ in how they perceive and cognitively appraise situations.

• Different situations affect people in different ways.
• We can select or change a situation by behaving in a particular way.
• Some situations allow expression of personality, other situations provoke a narrower range of behaviour
• A trait will only show up in a situation where it is relevant (e.g. anxiety)

Question 23

strong and weak situs

Answer 23

Some situations allow expression of personality, other situations provoke a narrower range of behaviour.

• Strong situations – refers to situations in which most people react in similar ways (e.g., funeral services, attending lectures, religious services). Uniformity rather than difference.
• Weak situations – ambiguous and involve interpretation of the actions, motives and intentions of others – so we know we’re fitting in. This is when personality has its strongest influence on behaviour.

Question 24

situ specificity

Answer 24

Personality traits may only emerge in a situation where they are relevant. Some trait-situation interactions are rare because some kinds of situations are rare – predicting over time from traits and not states
- E.g., difficult to identify ‘courageousness’ in a person as situations that elicit it are rare.

Personality trait – state distinction.

• Anxiety as a result of a specific situation such as an exam – state anxiety. Situationally driven behaviour.
• Generally anxious about lots of things – trait anxiety. Personality driven behaviour.

Question 25

measuring the social situ

Answer 25

It is important to note that while situational variables are important in the expression of some behaviours, it is not always clear what aspects of the situation are having a causal influence.

Much research is devoted to examining this but as with personality research it is beset with measurement problems (e.g., ecological validity; unmeasured variables etc).

Replication crisis – science generally but particularly social psychology and clinical psychology also implicated

Question 26

self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974)

Answer 26

People vary in how much they adapt their behaviour to given situations.

High self-monitors observe the situation and their own behaviour, matching the two. Therefore show less consistency across situations as adapt behaviour to the situation.

Low self-monitors tend to be more consistent irrespective of the situation because they don’t generally adapt behaviour to the situation.