Introduction to Mischel’s Personality Theory necessity of using empirical evidence to

evaluate all claims of psychology

- Personality theories are of two types
1. Processing dynamics approach
o Personality as a dynamic entity
o Adler, Maslow, Bandura
o Emphasizes cognitive and
affective dynamics that interact
with environment to produce
behavior
2. Personal dispositions approach
o Personality as a function of
relatively stable traits or
personal dispositions
o Allport, Eysenck, McCrae and
Costa
o People are motivated by a
limited number of drives or
personal traits and result to
somewhat consistent behavior
- Walter Mischel originally supported the
first one; however, later on, he and his
colleagues advocated a reconciliation
between the 2 approaches
Biography of Walter Mischel
- Born on February 22, 1930 in Vienna
- Second son of upper-middle-class
parents
- He and his brother grew up in a pleasant
environment
- He became passionately interested in art
(painting and sculpture)
- His humanistic inclinations were
solidified by reading Freud, the
existential thinkers and the great poets
- Entered the MA program in clinical
psychology at City College of New York
- While working on his degree, he was a
social worker in the slums
- Led him to doubt the usefulness of
psychoanalytic theory and to see the
- During his doctoral, Mischel admired
both Rotter and Kelly – two of the most
influential faculty at Ohio State
University
- Mischel’s cognitive social theory is
influenced by both Rotter’s and Kelly’s
theories
- Much of his later research revolved
around understanding why people
prefer future valuable rewards over
immediate less valuable ones
- His interest in personality theory and
assessment was further stimulated upon
his joining of the Department of Social
Relations at Harvard
- Married Harriet Nerlove and had 3
daughters
- Personality and Assessment: Traits are
weak predictors of performance in a
variety of situations and that the
situation is more important than traits in
influencing behavior
- Several awards:
o Distinguished Scientist award
(1978)
o APA’s award for Distinguished
Scientific Contribution (1982)
o Grawemeyer Award (University
of Louisville)
Background of the Cognitive-Affective
Personality System
Consistency Paradox
- Professional psychologist and
laypersons intuitively believe that
people’s behavior is relatively consistent
however empirical evidence suggests
much variability in behavior
- Many people assume that global
personality traits will be manifested over
 a period of time and from situation to
another
- Mischel: Basic traits do persist over time
but little evidence exists that they
generalize from one situation to another
- Empirical evidence failed to support the
consistency of personality across
situations
- Even with perfectly reliable measures,
specific behaviors will not accurately
predict personality
Person-Situation Interaction
- Mischel acknowledged that most people
have some consistency in their behavior
but continued to insist that the situation
has a powerful effect on behavior
- Objection to use of traits as predictors
Behavior Prediction
was not because they were unstable but
because they were inconsistent from
one situation to another
- Personal dispositions influence behavior
only under certain conditions and in
certain situations
o Suggests that behavior =
people’s perceptions of
themselves in a particular
situation
- Conditional view: Behavior = Personal
dispositions + Person’s specific cognitive
and affective processes
o Cognitive and Affective
processes: belief, values, goals,
cognition feelings
Situation Variables
Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS)
- Mischel and Shoda proposed a cognitive-
affective personality system that
attempts to reconcile these two
approaches to predicting human
behaviors
- Accounts for variability across situations
as well as stability of behavior within a
person
- Inconsistencies of person’s behavior are
actually potentially predictable
behaviors that reflect stable patterns of
variation within a person
- The CAPS predicts that a person’s
behavior will change from situation to
situation but in a meaningful manner
o If A, then X; but if B, then Y
- The frequently observed variability in
behavior is an essential part of a unifying
stability of personality
- Behavioral signature of personality –
the consistent manner of varying
behavior in particular situations
- Basic theoretical position: If personality
is a stable system that processes the
information about the situations,
external or internal, then it follows that
as individuals encounter different
situations their behaviors should vary
across the situations
- Assumes
o Personality may have temporal
stability
o Behaviors may vary from
situation to situation
o Prediction of behavior depends
on the knowledge of and when
cognitive-affective units are
activated
- The relative influence of situation
variables and personal qualities can be
determined by observing the uniformity
or diversity of people’s responses in a
given situation
Cognitive-Affective Units o Inconsistency in behavior –
inability to predict other
- In 1973, Mischel proposed a set of 5
people’s behavior
overlapping, relatively stable person
4. Goals and Values
variables that interact with situation to
o People react towards situations
determine behavior
in an active and goal-oriented
- What a person does in a certain situation
manner
includes more than actions – it includes
5. Affective Responses
cognitive and affective qualities
o Include emotions, feelings, and
- All those psychological, social, and
physiological reactions
physiological aspects of a person that
o Are inseparable from cognitive
cause them to interact with their
processes and influence each of
environment with a relatively stable
the other CAUs
pattern of variation
Related Research

- Locus of Control and Holocaust Heroes

1. Encoding Strategies
o People’s way of categorizing
information received from
external stimuli
o Stimuli  cognitive process 
personal constructs
2. Competencies and Self-Regulatory
Strategies
o Pertains to the potential
behaviors available to us, our
beliefs of what we can do, our
plans and strategies for enacting
behaviors, and our expectancies
for success
Critique of the Social Learning Theory
o Competencies – beliefs in what
we can do
o Self-regulatory strategies –
strategies to control behavior
thru self-imposed goals and self-
produced consequences
3. Expectancies and Beliefs
o The specific expectancies and
beliefs a person has about the
consequences of each of the
different behavioral possibilities
o Behavior-outcome expectancy
o Stimulus-outcome expectancy
o Use of personality variables to
predict who was a Holocaust
hero and who was a bystander
- Person-situation Interaction
o If I am in this situation, then I do
X; but if I am in that situation,
then I do Y
o To show that people understand
the if-then framework and use it
when making judgments about
others
- Significant body of research? Mischel’s
theory as generated somewhat less
research but the research is more
relevant to his core ideas
- Is it falsifiable? The empirical nature of
Mischel’s work exposes the theories to
possible falsification and verification;
Mischel’s theory lends itself somewhat
more adequately to falsification
- Organizing knowledge? Above average.
Continued to broaden scope of his
theory to include both personal
dispositions and dynamic CAU able to
predict and explain behavior
- A useful guide to action? Mischel’s
theory is only moderately useful to the
therapist, teacher, or parent. Few
guidelines for action
- Internally consistent? Mischel has
evolved a theory from solid empirical
research, a procedure that greatly
facilitates consistency
- Parsimonious? It is relatively simple and
does not purport to offer explanations
for all human personality