Editorial: personality and situations

Abstract

During the last few decades the personality domain has witnessed several major controversies, including the person±situation debate and the debates on accurate re¯ection versus systematic distortion, on nomothetic versus idiographic approaches, on nature±nurture, etc. Within these controversies several sharp contrasts and pendulum movements have stood out.In particular, regarding the person±situation debate, during the late sixties global personality traits have been subjected to severe criticisms as being`excessively crude, gross units to encompass adequately the extraordinary complexity and subtlety of the discriminations that people constantly make' (Mischel, 1968, p. 301). In contrast with this, during the eighties, there was a clear renaissance of personality traits, culminating in an emerging consensus within a broad group of trait psychologists on the major dimensions underlying personality judgments within lexical approaches to personality:`Once upon a time, we had no personalities (Mischel, 1968). (. . .) Is it not exciting to see their return?' (Goldberg, 1993). During the sixties and early seventies, several commentators pointed to the low cross-situational consistency of traitrelevant behaviour, as indexed by correlations across persons between scores of objectively recorded behaviours in two dierent situations (optionally after aggregation of the scores across dierent observers, dierent time points, and dierent acts belonging to the same behaviour category). Related to the former, researchers have amply documented the importance of person by situation interactions in behavioural data. In contrast, from the late seventies on, it has been replied that behaviour scores do display high stabilities (in terms of correlations across persons), if ®rst an appropriate aggregation across situations is performed; the latter has been argued to be necessary to wash out measurement error or unreliability (Epstein, 1979).From the nineties on, however, a new movement can be discerned: at the turn of the millennium, from quite dierent angles, calls can be heard for reconciliation, synthesis, and integration. As such, Magnusson and ToÈ restad in their 1993 Annual Review chapter advocated the construction of a general theoretical framework for personality research, within a dynamic, holistic view of personality. Revelle, from his side, concludes his 1995 Annual Review chapter with the announcement that`what the next decade promises is an integration of (. . .) many separate foci' ( p. 321). Epstein (1996) simply states that`personality psychology should be integrative ' ( p. 435), whereas Funder (1996) and the guest editors of a special issue of the Journal of Research in Personality are at the outlook on the beach for the`Big One', that is, a

A multilevel framework for understanding relationships among traits, states, situations and behaviours

“…Other frameworks for examining situationally determined states have been proposed. In fact, a recent issue of this Journal (Van Mechelen & De Raad, 1999) was devoted to studying personality and situations. The present framework is not intended to replace this work; it is meant to complement it, and relationships between the present framework and some of the existing approaches to this topic are discussed following the presentation of the present framework.…”

Putting Lewin’s Equation to the Test: Assessing the Person-Situation Interaction with the B5PS

“…There is considerable agreement on the fact that the environment -or the situationinfluences behavior. This was shown empirically (Bem & Allen, 1974;Deinzer et al, 1995;Fleeson, 2004;Furr & Funder, 2004;Mischel & Peake, 1982;Mischel, 1968;Sherman et al, 2010;Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 1994) as well as theoretically argued for (Endler & Magnusson, 1976;Fleeson & Noftle, 2009;Johnson, 1999;Lewin, 1936;Magnusson, 1971;Mischel & Shoda, 1995;Mischel, 2004Mischel, , 2009Reis, 2008;van Mechelen & De Raad, 1999;Wagerman & Funder, 2009). Since the environment does influence behavior, it is important to further investigate its effect as well as the underlying mechanism.…”

“…Secondly, there may be a tendency of a person to perceive different situations in a similar way; a tendency of a person that lies within that person and thus exerts its effect on behavior across different situations (Sherman et al, 2010). The subjective approach has received support from various researchers (Bem & Allen, 1974;Cooper & Withey, 2009;Deinzer et al, 1995;Edwards & Templeton, 2005;Fleeson, 2004;Funder, 2006;Lewin, 1936;Magnusson, 1971;Mischel & Shoda, 1995;Mischel, 2009;Rauthmann, 2011;Rauthmann et al, 2014;Reis, 2008;Shoda & Mischel, 2000;van Mechelen & De Raad, 1999;Wagerman & Funder, 2009).…”

Le climat social de la classe : élaboration d’une échelle adaptée aux collégiens français et prédiction de la performance scolaire

“…Nous ne nous sommes pas intéressé à l'interaction globale entre les caractéristiques personnelles de l'élève et le climat social de la classe. Les auteurs supposent actuellement que l'interaction entre la personnalité et la situation permet une meilleure explication du comportement que l'une ou l'autre composante prise séparément (Van Mechelen & De Raad, 1999;Vignoli, 2000;Walsh, Craik, & Price, 2000). Il importerait donc d'étudier la mesure selon laquelle cette interaction détermine la performance scolaire et apporte dans son explication des contributions supplémentaires par rapport aux deux composantes de l'étude ; et ce, selon le modèle que nous représentons par la figure 5.…”