Studies in intuitive personology from an idiothetic point of view: Implications for personality theory

Abstract

Following Lamiell's (1981) critique of the individual differences approach to the scientific study of personality, questions have arisen concerning (a) the nature of the empirical research to which the "idiotheric" framework he proposed as an alternative has thus far led, and (b) the wider theoretical implications of that research. The present article seeks to address these questions within the medium of research on the nature of the reasoning process by which lay persons formulate and express subjective personality impressions. It is argued that the findings of this research offer strong empirical support for a conception of the intuitive personologist as a dialectician. Among other things, the discussion of these findings focuses on their implications for a humanistic conception of the relation between cognition and behavior, and thus of personality more broadly defined.

Person × Situation interactions: Choice of situations and congruence response models.

“…Although persons accounted for large amounts of variance in mean levels of affect, this variance was not in turn captured by the personality scales used in this study. This finding supports the view that more idiographic approaches might be needed to understand individual variation (Lamiell, 1981;Lamiell, Foss, Larsen, & Hempel, 1983). The personality trait measures simply did not capture the large person consistency that was found in affect.…”

The intuitive personologist and the individual differences model

“…According to Lamiell, individuals can be characterized, not only with reference to the behaviour of others, but also and above all in relation to what their conduct might have been in the situations they have found themselves in; in short in relation to the extreme behaviour which they might have manifested. Subsequently, Lamiell and his colleagues (Lamiell, Foss, Trierwieler and Leffel, 1983; Lamiell, FOSS, Larsen and Hempel, 1983) have tried to show that this is how naive psychologists proceed when they give their overt judgment: they do not situate a given Spa in relation to the totality of observed SWs, but they refer it dialectically to extreme, unobserved Spas:…”

Nomothetic and idiothetic measurement in personality

“…We suggest three problems with Lamiell s proposed alternative to nomothetic personality assessment (a) Lamiell s suggested measure of personality consistency is arbitrary and may yield unreasonable interpretations of consistency, {b) a more appropriate, and not uncommon, quantification of behavior consistency when applied to ldiothehcally based data is found to produce consistency coefficients highly correlated with those based on nomothetically based data, and (c) by felling to incorporate information about behavior base rates, the idiothetic method can lead to ambiguities and misinterpretations of personality characteristics and behavior consistencies that could be avoided by employing classical nomothetic treatments Although aspects of Lamiells idiothetic method have already generated some debate, these discussions have involved issues not addressed m this note The earlier concems have been predominantly related to empincal applications ofthe ldiothebc method to the study of cognitive processes involved m person perception (see Conger, 1983, Lamiell, Foss, Larsen, & Hempel, 1983, Lamiell, Foss, Tnerweiler, & Leffel, 1983, Woody, 1983 Our paper is addressed specifically to issues conceming the apphcation ofthe idiothetic method m assigning personality trait scores and behavior consistency coefficients to individuals (see Lamiell, 1981Lamiell, , 1982a Nomothettc and Idtothettc Measurement Lamiell s (1981Lamiell s ( , 1982a idiothetic approach to personahty assessment IS founded on the measurement model commonly underlying individual differences research This model is well-known and postulates that a raw trait score S for a person p on attnbute a is a weighted function of observations or measurements on m component vanables V Thus, in the case of an additive function,…”