Chapter 10  

                      

Basis for interactionist approaches to personality

Personality and situation interact to affect behavior, people express their personality in different
ways in different situations

Personality as Pattern of Interpersonal Interactions

Perhaps the easiest way to understand a key contribution of Sullivan to personality theory is to
consider his idea of chumship, the important role played by peers in the formation of identity.   

For Sullivan, personality is inextricably tied to social situations; personality is “the relatively
enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations” that characterizes a person’s life.            

The social self is the idea that who we are and how we think of ourselves arises from our
interactions with those around us.

                               

Motivation and Goals: Henry A. Murray

Henry Murray can be considered a primary founder of the interactionist approach to personality.
Focus on the process of personality rather than to rely on static concepts such as enduring
structures in the mind. Systems—dynamic influences with feedback—are key. Thus, he referred
to his theory as a personological system.           

Murray emphasized the integrated, dynamic nature of the individual as a complex organism
responding to a specific environment. Therefore, on the one hand, Murray stressed the
importance of needs and motivations, an emphasis that has proved quite influential. On the other
hand, Murray also emphasized the environmental press—the push of the situation. These are
directional forces on a person that arise from other people or events in the environment.

Murray accepted (and studied) unconscious fantasies and instinctual drives.Murray emphasized
social roles and situational determinants.           

He looked at the combination of internal motivations and external demands.

Examples of Murray’s needs  Affiliation, Autonomy, Dominance, Exhibition, Harm

Avoidance, Nurturance, Order, Play, Sex, Succorance, Understanding

Thema

For Murray, a typical combination of needs and pressures was termed a thema. He measured
them with his Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT.
Walter Mischel’s Theory

Walter Mischel- Delay of gratification is a specific aspect of self-control that occurs when an
individual chooses to forgo an immediate reinforcer to wait for a later, better reinforcer.
Variables that influence the individual’s ability to delay gratification: modeling (i.e., seeing
another person delay), the visibility of the desired object (out of sight helps keep it out of mind),
and cognitive strategies like thinking about other things (distraction).               

Mischel has discussed four personality variables: competencies—the person’s abilities and
knowledge; encoding strategies—the schemas and mechanisms one uses to process and encode
information; expectancies, including outcome expectancies for our own behavior and self-
efficacy expectancies (that is, whether we think we can do something and how likely it is that we
will succeed); and plans. The “consistency” of personality seems to be due to similarity of the
perceived features of situations—that is, people identify situation–behavior relationships that
become behavioral signatures of their personalities. 

The Power of Situations→

One reason that personality is sometimes a weak predictor of behavior is that the power of the
situation is sometimes so strong that it overrides our inclinations. To take an extreme example, if
a fire breaks out in a theater and the crowd panics and rushes toward the exits, it is not surpris-
ing that a calm, rational person caught in the crowd will act excitedly and irrationally.

              

Trait Relevance and the “Personality” of Situations

All traits are not equally relevant to all people. Furthermore, certain situations provide an opportunity for certain
traits to be expressed. For example, if you score high on risk- taking, and that trait is central to your personality, this
may show up as relevant in situations involving travel to exotic destinations or moving to new jobs, but it might not
be so relevant to situations involving going out of your way to help a friend or to repair a flat tire.

There is difficulty in assessing situations because no two situations are the same

Personal Versus Social Situations

Although we develop a social self, the social self is more prominent in certain people, or at certain times, or in
certain situations.

One of the first theories of this psychosocial differentiation involved “field depend- ence versus field
independence”. Recall from your studies of the cognitive aspects of personality, field-dependent people have a
harder time separating the figure from the background in a perceptual task but field-independent people can
disregard compel- ling background influences. Thus, in the social realm, they tend to act more independently. Field-
dependent people are more reliant on others and respond in line with the demands of the social situation.

Some people are so tied to social roles that, almost chameleon-like, they take on the colors—the demands—of the
social situation. For exam- ple, some actors seem to have almost no identity of their own—they become their current
roles. On the other hand, other people are so unable to play social roles that they find social situations very
uncomfortable. They may be called nerds. This could produce a consistency in personality; for example, they act
conscientiously in private and continue to act conscientiously even when at a riotous party
Longitudinal Study

Longitudinal study is “the close, comprehensive, systematic, objective, sustained study of

individuals over significant portions of the life span”. Simply put, this means following people
over time.

In studying personality across the life span or life path, psychologist Avshalom Caspi prefers the
term life-course approach. Such terms emphasize that patterns of behavior change as a function
of age, culture, social groups, life events, and so on, as well as because of internal drives,
motives, abilities, and traits.

A model termed cumulative continuity sums up these various ways in which personality tends to
remain stable even though it is possible to change. By interpreting situations as similar, by
eliciting similar reactions from others, and by seeking out certain similar situations, as well as by
responding to stable genetic influences and stable environments (social and economic), the
average adult maintains a fairly consistent personality.                    

Personality Consistency

Personality generally seems most stable for people in their 50s. However, because this
information comes from a compilation of various smaller studies rather than a major study of the
same people across their lives,we must be careful in interpreting such findings. Longitudinal
studies show that some traits, such as conscientiousness, are fairly stable and important
throughout life

Advantages and Limitations of Approach

Advantages

Emphasizes interpersonal influences.

Can draw on the best aspects of other approaches.
Understands that we are different selves in different situations.
Often studies personality across time.

Disadvantages 

Difficult to define situations and to study the many complexities of interactions.

Extreme positions can fail to take into account the complexity of the relationship between
personality, behavior, and the situation.
May overlook biological influences.