Personality Psychology: Approaches, Situations, and Cognition
Approaches to Personality
Internalist Approach
This approach dominated the landscape of personality psychology until the 1970s. It argues that:
- Behavior is merely a reflection of internal structures.
- Behavior always has a purpose: an objective.
- Internal structures are the key meaning and define the individual, so they are considered stable.
- Any behavior of the subject will have meaning for their personality.
- The individual is involved in particular situations and is active towards them.
Situationist Approach
This approach takes the opposite point of view to the internalist approach.
- Overt behavior is the only observable indicator of personality. To evaluate the subject, only analyze their behavior.
- Behavior is driven by the characteristics of each situation and the learning history the subject has in similar situations.
- We only find stability and consistency in the behavior of individuals when the context is identical or similar situations are evoked.
- Situations are the particles that make responses appropriate.
Interactionist Approach
This approach intends to unify the two above, in addition to providing new premises.
- Personality is defined in part by the internal variables of the subject and partly by the characteristics of the situation, but what best explains the cause of the individual is the interaction between who they are and in which situations they are.
- In this person-situation interaction, the prior learning history of the subject and the particular ways of perceiving situations that characterize them (expectations and attributions) play an important role.
- The individual is active against the context. They are the one who gives meaning to the situation and their response.
Real and Perceived Situation
Real situation: Seeks to provide basic responsibility for the individual’s behavior to objective situations. If all positions were equal, we would all act the same when we were in identical circumstances.
Perceived situation: Seeks to provide basic responsibility for the conduct to interpreted objective situations. It is a real situation, built and represented by the subject. The perceived situation is defined as the objective situation subjectified by the individual who sees it.
Expectations and Attributions
Expectations help explain individual differences in the same objective situation. Expectations are the thoughts that we have about a situation, predictions about what will happen and what the right response is. There are two types of expectations:
- Those linked to the expected results of behavior. Individuals, through our learning history, have an idea of what results usually follow our behaviors.
- The consequences associated with certain stimuli present in situations. The influence of stimuli on expectations is clear: the system is configured to stimulate a particular situation, and we learn to differentiate certain stimuli that predict some events more frequently than others.
Attributions are explanations that subjects give to the results of our behavior. They are what we invent about why things happen.
The issue of cognitive functions has created a clinical intervention model that we call cognitive restructuring. The principles of intervention are:
- The replacement of certain rigid, general, or irrational expectations with more appropriate ones.
- The replacement of uncontrolled feelings with feelings of control.
Mischel’s Five Variables of the Individual
- Competence: The individual’s social skills, achievements, and capabilities in the task.
- Storage strategies: How the individual categorizes and interprets events and environmental features.
- Expectations: What the individual expects to occur in different situations and the rewards and punishments for specific behaviors.
- Subjective values: The value or importance attached to the results.
- Systems and plans for self-regulation: The rules that guide the conduct of the individual and their self-imposed targets and standards for behavior.