Situation-based contingencies underlying trait-content manifestation in behavior. Hofmans and colleagues demonstrate that the sensitivity of individual CSE states to work pressure is moderated by levels of trait CSE.
More research on the nomothetic within-person effects that explain behavior is one path for gaining insights into general principles of personality that apply to individuals. Future research utilizing contingent units of personality will need to consider theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for different functional forms based on existing research evidence for the impacts of situational variables. Consistent with theories of prosocial behavior and the conceptualizations of traits as individual differences in the sensitivity to situations (Marshall and Brown, 2006), Hofmans et al. Bull.
Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. J. Psychol. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The integration of trait and social-cognitive theories promises to bring about a more differentiated understanding of personality, it also highlights where blind spots have been and data is still scarce or missing.
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Psychol. doi: 10.1037/a0039517. Test validity from a temporal perspective: incorporating time in validation research. Psychol. 70, 157171.
J. This research was supported under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP160103335).
Principles of situation research: towards a better understanding of psychological situations. The Mill et al. doi: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2011.02.009, Lamiell, J. T. (2014). Eur. The resulting data can be used to describe processes and structures that apply to a group of individuals (nomothetic, e.g., Minbashian et al., 2010) as well as single individuals (idiographic, e.g., Cripps et al.). A random walk down university avenue: life paths, life events, and personality trait change at the transition to university life. 32, 165174. B. Psychol.
), aesthetic appreciation (Fayn et al. investigate the structure of psychopathology in individuals with personality disorder. The case for an idiothetic psychology of personality: a conceptual and empirical foundation. The SWAP includes a dictionary of 200 statements that provide detailed descriptions of diagnostic behaviors, including motives, functions, and contextual details, which enables clinicians to develop a profile of the patient using the Q-sort method. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000021, Judge, T. A., Simon, L. S., Hurst, C., and Kelley, K. (2014). *Correspondence: Robert E. Wood, rwood@cel.edu.au; nadin.beckmann@durham.ac.uk, Dynamic Personality Science. Editorial on the Research Topic Dynamic Personality Science. 111, 183204. New frontiers for self-regulation research in IO psychology. Eur.
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doi: 10.1037/pspp0000136. Clearly, the choice of situational variables will need to be based on the theoretical arguments that link situations to responses of interest. Psychol. Rev. Carving personality description at its joints: confirmation of three replicable personality prototypes for both children and adults. Allport's work was preceded by that of German psychologist Stern (1911), whose framework included psychography, which he described as the study of attributes within an individual (Asendorpf, 2015).
It also means that often only a subset of items is taken from established measures. (in press). Wood, R. E. (2005). doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.043. Stern, W. (1911).
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Behav. Neurol. J. Abnorm. findings highlight the need for measurement of both trait and state emotions to take account of a range of potential biases in responses. doi: 10.1002/per.1994, Robins, R. W., John, O. P., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., and Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1996). Psychol. Cuadrado et al.
A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Statisticism in personality psychologists' use of trait constructs: what is it?
The three personality prototypes identified by Block (1971), resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled (also known as ARC types1), have been widely researched and are generally considered as having the strongest theoretical foundation and empirical rigor of existing typologies for the classification of individuals as personality types (Chapman and Goldberg, 2011).
doi: 10.1027/1015-5759/a000245, Rauthmann, J. F., Sherman, R. A., and Funder, D. C. (2015). 44, 593601. Time in applied psychology: the study of what happens rather than what is. Eur.
102, 246268. Psychol. Psychol. Hofman and colleagues show that the relationship between work pressures and core self-evaluation (CSE) states is curvilinear. Asendorpf, J. As reflected in the opening quote, the papers in this Research Topic build on a tradition of studying personality from a within-person perspective that dates back at least to Allport (1937), who described a person-centered approach that focused on the organization of personality attributes within the individual and the development of the personality system over time (Allport, 1961). doi: 10.5465/amj.2010.0837, Lamiell, J. T. (1981). Finnigan, K. M., and Vazire, S. (2017).
66, 486498. Beyond personality traits: a study of personality states and situational contingencies in customer service jobs.
Within-person refers to the analysis of structure and processes based on the repeated measurement of the same individual(s) over time and situations. ; Hofmans et al.).
Child Dev. 11, 164. Therefore, on average, this would produce a positive relationship between perceived collaboration and state extraversion. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft Books. (2015). 1. The earlier approaches to the integration of stable between-person traits and dynamic within-person states relied on group-level methods such as repeated measures ANOVAs and SEM (e.g., Wood and Bandura, 1989; Cuadrado et al. Bayesian techniques are not widely used or understood in psychology and are not yet available in easy to use packages but offer additional flexibility in the modeling of complex and dynamic response patterns at the level of the individual. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
is thought to be common to all individuals (nomothetic within), whilst the underlying interpersonal knowledge structures are unique to single individuals (idiographic within). Bull. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. B. Overmier, and J. M. Prieto (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), 233268. 109, 10901104. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. This Research Topic aims to move forward frontiers, both conceptually and empirically, for several of those questions.
Fort Worth TX: Harcourt College Publisher. CAPTION-ing the situation: a lexically-derived taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics. 74, 11911218.
97, 10971114. Psychol. Assess. Both S and P S effects represent within-person variance (see also Wright et al. Previous research has modeled the relationships in contingent units of personality as linear in form. Grice, J. Front. (1995). Gardner, D. G., and Cummings, L. L. (1988). 64, 6168.
Life events and personality trait change.
29, 404405. 99, 199221.
For instance, task-contingent conscientiousness refers to individual differences in the level with which one responds to increases in task demands with increases in state conscientiousness (Minbashian et al., 2010).
Studies have also uncovered the within-person mechanisms that link stable individual differences with behavior for traits outside the Big Five, including, in this Research Topic, dispositional prosocialness (Cuadrado et al.)
show how dipositional prosocialness and other dispositions are manifest as prosocial motivational states that predict levels of prosocial behavior. 29, 363381. Trait theorists and social-cognitive theorists have begun to integrate their respective descriptions and explanations of personality. Comput. This research has a relative long tradition (e.g., Wood and Bandura, 1989) and is captured by two of the papers in this Research Topic (Cuadrado et al. Soc.
Multilevel random coefficient analyses of event-and interval-contingent data in social and personality psychology research. Psychol.
Rev. Received: 06 July 2017; Accepted: 17 August 2017; Published: 08 September 2017. J. Pers.
Psychol.
More recently, integrative approaches have employed growth curve modeling and Bayesian techniques (e.g., Cripps et al.
doi: 10.1177/0146167206288488. Am. The role of ego control and ego resiliency in the organization of behavior, in Development of Cognition, Affect, and Social Relations: The Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology, ed W. A. Collins (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum), 39101.
Between-person findings are often used as proxies for within-person phenomena even though it has been repeatedly demonstrated that this is inappropriate (see Lamiell, 1981, 2014; Nezlek, 2001; Borsboom et al., 2003; Molenaar, 2004; Schmitz, 2006; Grice, 2015). Advantages of studying processes in educational research. Minbashian, A., Beckmann, N., and Wood, R. E. (in press). J. Pers. Thus, we suggest the top-down approach be complemented by a bottom-up approach. Individual differences in personality malleability, i.e., flexibility in personality responding, might indicate an underlying ability that enables some individuals to better adapt and adjust to various changes in life circumstances than others.
Psychol.
Powerful situations: some real progress but some future considerations. Hudson and Fraley (2015), for example, show that people can actively change their personality traits, if they are motivated to do so, and such change can be facilitated by carefully designed interventions. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.1011, Fleeson, W. (2007). 16, 433449.
doi: 10.1027/1016-9040.13.1.37, Roe, R. A. Pers. Psychol.
provide a timely reminder of potential biases in the measurement of emotions, one of the core responses in units of personality. How was it contracted? Another frontier is the type of statistical methods used to model within-person processes. Soc. Soc.
Mill et al.
J. Res. The focus in this Research Topic is data collected across occasions at the within-person or intra-individual level (idiographic) to come to conclusions about groups of people or the population (nomothetic).
doi: 10.1037/pspp0000111, Rauthmann, J. F., Gallardo-Pujol, D., Guillaume, E. M., Todd, E., Nave, C. S., Sherman, R. A., et al. doi: 10.1111/jopy.12286. ^ARC refers to Asendorpf-Robins-Caspi, who were the lead authors of three articles that reported the initial extensions of Block's types (Caspi and Silva, 1995; Robins et al., 1996; Asendorpf et al., 2001). doi: 10.1002/per.408, Beckmann, N., Wood, R., and Minbashian, A.
We now consider two areas of research that we think deserve more attention.
Eur. The rejectionrage contingency in borderline personality disorder.
and core self-evaluations (CSE, Hofmans et al.).
doi: 10.1037/a0020016, Mischel, W., and Shoda, Y. Parrigon, S., Woo, S. E., Tay, L., and Wang, T. (2017). Allport, G. W. (1961).
Instruct. The theoretical status of latent variables.
In conclusion, the papers in the current issue highlight both progress toward and areas requiring further research for an integrated approach to personality. In clinical psychology, the Shefler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP) provides clinicians with a diagnostic tool that integrates the scientific rigor of empirical approaches with the complexity and relevance required in clinical assessments. (2016) give an example of how providing feedback through digital technology can be used to disrupt and change habits, which may also be employed in reshaping the contingent units of personality that predict targeted behaviors.
(2014). ; Hofmans et al.) Bridging the idiographic-nomothetic divide: a follow-up study. 95, 793806.
Leipzig: Barth. Whilst at the between-person level they found a two-dimensional structure comprising the widely accepted broad dimensions of mental disorder (internalizing, externalizing), findings at the within-person level suggested a more differentiated four-dimensional structure of psychopathology (negative affect, detachment, hostility, impulsivity). Dif. More recently, the numbers of trials or measurement moments for within-person states have been extended through the use of digital technologies, which has enabled individual level modeling of the within-person dynamics. Emotional intelligence individual differences in affective processes underlying task-contingent conscientiousness. J. Pers. J. Pers. The architecture of personality.
Allport, G. W. (1937). 6:1007. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01007, Grice, J., Jackson, B., and McDaniel, B. 120:681. doi: 10.1037/a0023335, PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar, Blagov, P. S., Bi, W., Shedler, J., and Westen, D. (2012).
[Epub ahead of print]. Acad. The authors outline how idiosyncratic within-person knowledge structures and processes might explain the emergence of stable, between-person differences as described by specific traits such as rejection sensitivity, and potentiallythough this is an open empirical questionmore global interpersonal traits such as agreeableness and extraversion. (1989).
Task-contingent conscientiousness as a unit of personality at work.
Assess. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.2.203, Caspi, A., and Silva, P. A. Manage. However, as noted above, these data collection methods and analyses do not capture the intra-individual dynamics provided by data collected across occasions. Grice, J. W., Yepez, M., Wilson, N. L., and Shoda, Y. doi: 10.1080/1359432X.2013.804177, Schmitz, B. The recently introduced taxonomies provide personality researchers with tools to conceptualize, categorize, and measure situations, and a language to communicate about situations, both with regard to objective features (PERLS, Noftle and Gust, 2015) and subjective perceptions of situations (DIAMONDS, Rauthmann et al., 2014; Rauthmann and Sherman, 2016; CAPTION, Parrigon et al., 2017). They base their conclusions on the same data as between-person trait analysis (in Stern's framework correlation research) but the data is analyzed differently using Q-sort or inverted factor analysis (in Stern's framework comparative research). Topics might include the trainability of personality, personality change in response to life events (e.g., work, schooling), and personality interventions for clinical and non-clinical samples (e.g., in educational, organizational settings). An integrated framework of personality raises many interesting questions. Learn. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2016.07.008. The editor and reviewer's affiliations are the latest provided on their Loop research profiles and may not reflect their situation at the time of review. Psychol.
Rauthmann and Sherman outline a comprehensive research programme to study situation change, including person-situation transactions, and provide preliminary data illustrating their approach at both the between- and within-person level of analysis. A central objective of this Research Topic is to integrate and, where possible, to synthesize different conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of personality and their empirical outcomes. on the relational self provides a good example of such an approach in their application of the CAPS model of Mischel and Shoda (1995) to the interpersonal domain. Other authors prioritize within-person processes and start with process-level variables as antecedents of between-person individual differences. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01216.x, Hudson, N. W., and Fraley, R. C. (2015). The big five as states: how useful is the five-factor model to describe intraindividual variations over time?
An additional complication is that the number of items that can reasonably be presented to participants on a daily basis has to be relatively small, providing less room for exploration and testing of new questions. Psychol. Psychol.
Pers. An alternative approach to the study of situations is to focus on specific domains (e.g., tasks or interpersonal domains), and study them at a more fine-grained (e.g., facet) level.
Stress-related changes in personality: a longitudinal study of perceived stress and trait pessimism. J. Pers. Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: traits as density distributions of states.
57, 6174. (2006).
; Fayn et al. The implications of big five standing for the trait manifestation in behavior: fifteen experience sampling studies and a meta-analysis. For example, Liu and Huang studied personality change in the context of cross-cultural adjustment.
(2006). Hermsen et al. ), situation change networks (Rauthmann and Sherman) and implicit theories (Cripps et al.). Person centred approaches to personality, in Handbook of Personality Processes and Individual Differences, eds M. L. Cooper and R. Larsen (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), 403424. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2006.09.004, Shedler, J., and Westen, D. (2007). The SWAP has been shown to have good reliability, validity, and clinical utility (Shedler and Westen, 2007; Blagov et al., 2012) and is a measurement method that could be used in other applied areas, such as organizational psychology. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Thus, it is worth testing alternative approaches and their validity. 32, 202221.
Rev. Is there a cure? Die Differentielle Psychologie in Ihren Methodischen Grundlagen [Methodological Foundations of Differential Psychology]. show that the personality domain Openness/Intellect reflects individual differences in aesthetic appreciation due to underlying appraisal-emotion contingencies that unfold at the level of the individual. Whilst individuals differ from each other in predictable waysdifferences that can sufficiently be described by broad trait constructs such as neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, extraversion, and core self-evaluationsthey also vary systematically in the ways they respond to situations they encounter and change as a person over time.
Participants sometimes find the daily requests for responses intrusive and they might not respond if they are engaged in an activity. Also, because they do not assume asymptotic normality of the sample estimates, inferences about patterns of individual responding can be made based on relatively few observations. 101, 593606.
doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.102.2.246, Moeller, S. K., Robinson, M. D., and Bresin, K. (2010).
Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought (Allport, 1961, p. 28). Pers.
Psychol. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-0597.2005.00204.x, Wood, R. E., and Bandura, A. 101:620. doi: 10.1037/a0023743, Marshall, M. A., and Brown, J. D. (2006).
A manifesto on psychology as idiographic science: bringing the person back into scientific psychology, this time forever. Psychol.
Researchers interested in the measurement of personality traits will find a number of validated instruments.
Contingent units of personality are another example. ; Cripps et al.).
Ultra-brief measures for the situational eight DIAMONDS domains. (2017). It is here where personality research might be most relevant and have lasting impact outside the ivory towers of academia. Psychol. doi: 10.1177/0013164416667985. Second, and following from the first point, research should test the validity of more efficient measurement procedures for the collection of data used to assess dynamic components of personality. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-541411-1.50007-7, Ldtke, O., Roberts, B. W., Trautwein, U., and Nagy, G. (2011). Cripps et al. Soc. J. Pers. Contingent units of personality are trait-like in that they are relatively stable between-person constructs, however, and in contrast to other traits such as the Big Five, they represent within-person structures and processes. Asendorpf (2015) provides a critical review and recommendations for the methods and measures used in studies of ARC types that include assessments of the elevation, shape, and scatter of intra-individual personal profiles or configurations of traits. 18, 459482.
Psychol. Noftle, E. E., and Gust, C. J. Dweck, C. (1999). Block, J. H., and Block, J. J. Pers.
However, assessments of risk may differ between individuals and lead to different scores for the collaboration-extraversion relationship. (1995).
Similarly, the process of transference outlined by Andersen et al. (2011). Others have identified similar situation-response contingencies for other traits (e.g., Fleeson, 2007; Berenson et al., 2011; Huang and Ryan, 2011; Judge et al., 2014; Sherman et al., 2015).
(2003). Pers. Pattern and Growth in Personality. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.111.1.183, Chapman, B. P., and Goldberg, L. R. (2011).
The situational eight DIAMONDS: a taxonomy of major dimensions of situation characteristics. We provide new evidence in support of an integrated approach to personality, highlight currently active areas of research, and propose new directions of research into why individuals think, feel, and behave the way they do. As Bayesian and other statistical techniques become more widely available, there is no excuse for not collecting intensive repeated measurement data and modeling within-person processes longitudinally and at the level at which they occurthe individual.
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They show how ratings of emotions that require retrospective recall ranging from 1 day to 2 weeks are more negative for older people and for those who are more tired at the time of the data collection, when compared to those who are younger and less tired. Lives Through Time. New Ideas Psychol. 36:276. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.36.3.276, Lamiell, J. T. (2013). for nomothetic and idiographic within-person structures). J. Pers. Soc.