toward a cognitive social learning...

Psychological Review1973, Vol. 80, No. 4, 252-283

TOWARD A COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNINGRECONCEPTUALIZATION OF PERSONALITY J

WALTER MISCHEL 2

Stanford University

Diverse data challenge and undermine ihe central assumptions of the traditional trait approach to personality. The implications for conceptions ofindividual differences and situations in the study of personality are examined.The issues discussed include the nature of behavioral "specificity," the acquiredmeaning of stimuli, the uses and misuses of traits, and the construction ofpersonality. To move toward a more adequate theoretical approach to per-sons, the following cognitive social learning variables are proposed as basicunits for the study of individuals: cognitive and behavioral construction com-petencies, encoding strategies and personal constructs, behavior-outcomeand stimulus-outcome expectancies, subjective stimulus values, and self-regulatory systems and plans. The specific interactions between these personvariables and psychological situations are analyzed within the framework ofa cognitive social learning approach.

There has been a curious—indeed alarm-ing—bifurcation between progress in theo-ries regarding complex social behavior andcognition on the one hand, and in con-ceptualizations regarding the basic natureof personality on the other. Many of thetherapeutic implications of social learning(social behavior) theories have become evi-dent in the last few years. There havebeen notable advances in treatment tech-niques as well as significant reconceptuali-zations of the treatment process itself (e.g.,Bandura, 1969). These developments arejust starting to be accompanied by com-parable parallel developments in person-ality theory. In a second direction, therehas been vigorous progress in cognitivepsychology (e.g., Neisser, 1967). Butwhile cognitive and symbolic processes havereceived increasing attention both in the

1 Parts of this manuscript are based on the Addressof the Chairman, Section I I I , Division 12, AmericanPsychological Association, Washington, D. C.,September 3, 1971. Preparation of this paper was fa-cilitated by National Institute of Mental HealthGrant M-6830 and National Science FoundationGrant GS-32582. Constructive comments have beenreceived from more colleagues and students thancan be listed here; the author is grateful for theirhelp.

2 Requests for reprints should be sent to WalterMischel, Department of Psychology, Stanford Uni-versity, Stanford, California 94305.

laboratory and in therapeutic applications,their implications for personality psychol-ogy have not yet been thoroughly exploredand their impact on the basic traditionalassumptions of personality psychology untilrecently has been limited.

During the last 50 years, when basicconcepts were changing rapidly in mostfields of psychology, the most fundamentalassumptions about the nature of personalityseem to have been retained with few sub-stantial modifications. Of course therehave been many changes in the names andparticular characteristics of the trait dis-positions advocated by different theore-ticians and personality researchers in thelast few decades. But in spite of the hetero-geneity of hypothesized dimensions orstructures, perhaps the most fundamentalassumptions about them have remainedalmost monolithic until very recently. Thispaper briefly reviews the central assump-tions of global dispositional approaches topersonality, considers some of the mainmisconceptions, issues, and implicationsarising from recent challenges to thoseassumptions, and finally attempts a re-conceptualization of person variables in thelight of concepts from the study of cogni-tion and social learning.

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GLOBAL DISPOSITIONAL APPROACHESTO PERSONALITY

Assumptions of Traditional TraitApproaches

It has generally been assumed thatpersonality dispositions or traits—the basicunits of personality study—are relativelystable, highly consistent attributes thatexert widely generalized causal effects onbehavior. Whether one uses the languageof factors, or of habits, or of basic atti-tudes, or of dynamics and character struc-ture, this fundamental assumption has beenshared: personality comprises broad under-lying dispositions which pervasively in-fluence the individual's behavior acrossmany situations and lead to consistencyin his behavior (e.g., Allport, 1937).3 Thesedispositions are not directly observed butare inferred from behavioral signs (traitindicators), either directly or indirectly(Mischel, 1968). Guided by this assump-tion, personality research has been a questfor such underlying broad dimensions, forbasic factors, or for pervasive motives, orfor characteristic life styles. In personalityassessment the trait assumptions regardingstructure are seen in the existence of hun-dreds of tests designed to infer dispositionsand almost none to measure situations.The same belief in global traits that mani-fest themselves pervasively is perhaps bestseen in the projective test assumption thatresponses to vague or minimal stimuli willreveal individual differences in fundamentalgeneralized dispositions (MacFarlane &Tuddenham, 1951).

Empirical Status of Assumptions

Given the pervasiveness of the con-sistency assumption of dispositional per-sonality theory, its empirical status be-comes especially important. There havebeen several recent reviews of that evi-dence (e.g., Mischel, 1968, 1969, 1971;Peterson, 1968; Vernon, 1964). The data

3 In social psychology, the "attitude" has beenthe unit endowed with properties parallel to thoseassigned to the trait in the field of personality, and itappears to be subject to very similar criticisms andproblems (e.g., Abelson, 1972).

cannot be summarized adequately here,but several themes emerge. To recapitu-late briefly, impressive consistencies oftenhave been found for intellective features ofpersonality and for behavior patterns suchas cognitive styles and problem-solvingstrategies that are strongly correlated withintelligence (e.g., Witkin, 1965). Con-sistency also is often high when peoplerate their own traits, as in questionnairesand other self-reports (e.g., E. L. Kelly,1955). Temporal continuity also has beendemonstrated often when the individual'sbehavior is sampled at different timeperiods but in similar situations. Whenone goes beyond cognitive variables topersonality dimensions and when onesamples personality by diverse methods andnot just by self-report questionnaires, thedata change and undermine the utility ofinferring global personality dispositionsfrom behavioral signs, as has been docu-mented in detail (Mischel, 1968):

Response patterns even in highly similar situationsoften fail to be strongly related. Individuals showfar less cross-situational consistency in their be-havior than has been assumed by trait-state theories.The more dissimilar the evoking situations, the lesslikely they are to produce similar or consistentresponses from the same individual. Even seem-ingly trivial situational differences may reduce cor-relations to zero. Response consistency tends to begreatest within the same response medium, withinself-reports to paper-and-pencil tests, for example,or within directly observed non-verbal behavior.Intra-individual consistency is reduced drasticallywhen dissimilar response modes are employed.Activities that are substantially associated withaspects of intelligence and with problem solvingbehavior—like achievement behaviors, cognitivestyles, response speed—tend to be most consistent[p. 177].

Psychodynamic Approach to Consistency

Recognizing both the specificity and com-plexity of behavior, psychodynamic theo-rists long ago rejected the idea of broadovert behavioral consistencies across situa-tions. Instead, psychodynamic theoriesemphasize that behavior varies, but diversebehavioral patterns serve the same endur-ing and generalized underlying dynamic ormotivational dispositions. The search fordispositions thus rests on a distinction be-

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tvveen surface behaviors ("signs" or"symptoms") and the motives that theyserve. This involves the familiar distinc-tion between the "phenotypic" and the"genotypic" and entails an indirect, ratherthan a direct measurement model (Mischel,1968). Indeed, the most common argumentfor personality consistency in the face ofseeming behavioral specificity is the dis-tinction between the phenotypic and thegenotypic. Granted that overt behavioris not highly consistent, might it not beuseful to posit genotypic personality dis-positions that endure, although their overtresponse forms may change? This geno-typic-phenotypic model has been at thecrux of dynamic dispositional theories ofpersonality (Mischel, 1969). The psycho-dynamic model construes behaviors ashighly indirect signs of the dispositions thatunderlie them, because defenses are hy-pothesized to distort and disguise the truemeaning of the observed behaviors. Ifbasic motives express themselves only in-directly after being distorted by defensivemaneuvers, then their overt behavioralmanifestations have to be interpreted sym-bolically as indirect signs. Thus, for ex-ample, using the white space of an inkblotin a percept may be taken as a sign ofnegativistic tendencies, or saying the ink-blot looks like blood may be interpreted asa sign of a psychopathic personality. Thepsychodynamic approach thus shares withthe trait approach a disinterest in behaviorsexcept as they serve as signs—albeit moreindirect signs—of generalized dispositions.

While inherently logical, the utility ofthe indirect sign approacli to dispositionsdepends on the value of the inferencesprovided by the clinical judge. Con-sequently, the reliability and validity ofclinicians' judgments become crucial. Theextensive empirical studies on this issuehave investigated in detail the value ofclinicians' efforts to infer broad disposi-tions indirectly from specific symptomaticsigns and to unravel disguises in order touncover the motivational dispositions thatmight be their roots. As is now generallyrecognized, the accumulated findings givelittle support for the utility of clinical judg-

ments, even when the judges are expertpsychodynamicists working in clinical con-texts and using their favorite techniques.Reviews of the relevant research generallyshow that clinicians guided by conceptsabout underlying genotypic dispositionshave not been able to predict behaviorbetter than have the person's own directself-report, simple indices of directly rele-vant past behavior, or demographic vari-bles (e.g., Mischel, 1968, 1971, 1972).

MISCONCEPTIONS AND ISSUES

The findings on the specificity-con-sistency of personality traits and the im-plications of social behavior theory for thepsychology of personality may be leadingto a paradigm crisis in the field (e.g.,Fiske, 1973), and hence it is not surprisingthat they are easily misunderstood. Thesemisunderstandings are evident in repeatedcritiques (e.g., Adelson, 1969; Adinolfi,1971; Alker, 1972; Craik, 1969; Dahlstrom,1970; Wachtel, 1973) aimed at applica-tions of social behavior theory to the do-main of personality (e.g., Mischel, 1968,1969) and particularly to the issue of thespecificity-generality of behavior. Thethrust of these reactions is that social be-havior theory, especially in its emphasis onthe discriminativeness ("specificity") of be-havior, implies a "personalityless" view ofman.

Common Misconceptions

The position developed in Mischel's(1968) Personality and Assessment has beenwidely misunderstood to imply that peopleshow no consistencies, that individual dif-ferences are unimportant, and that "situa-tions" are the main determinants of be-havior (e.g., Bowers, 1972). For example,Alker (1972) has thoroughly distorted thebasic issues (as Bern, 1972, has shown),guarding the traditional personality para-digm against evidence that "behavior variesfrom situation to situation." But the factthat behavior varies across different situa-tions is not questioned by anyone, includ-ing classical trait theorists. More seriousissues, instead, are the consistency-speci-


ficity with which the same person reacts tosituations that ostensibly are relativelysimilar (i.e., that are selected to evoke thesame trait), and most important, the utilityof predictions based on global trait infer-ences (Mischel, 1968). In the same vein,Wachtel (1973) defended psychodynamictheory against being forever consigned toa "scientific Valhalla" by emphasizing thatpsychodynamic theories in fact recognizepeople's responsiveness to variations instimulus conditions. Unfortunately, heignored the data and challenges that arerelevant, most notably the failure of thepsychodynamically oriented clinician todemonstrate the utility of the indirect signapproach when compared to more parsi-monious alternatives (Mischel, 1968, 1972,1973b).

Evidence for the lack of utility of in-ferring hypothesized global trait disposi-tions from behavioral signs should not bemisread as an argument for the greater im-portance of situations than persons (Bow-ers, 1972). Is information about in-dividuals more important than informationabout situations? The author has per-sistently refrained from posing this ques-tion because phrased that way it is un-answerable and can serve only to stimulatefutile polemics. Moreover, in current de-bates on this topic, "situations" are oftenerroneously invoked as entities that sup-posedly exert either major or only minorcontrol over behavior, without specifyingwhat, psychologically, they are or how theyfunction (Alker, 1972; Bowers, 1972; Wal-lach & Leggett, 1972). But while somesituations may be powerful determinantsof behavior, others are likely to be ex-ceedingly trivial. The relative importanceof individual differences will depend on thesituation selected, the type of behaviorassessed, the particular individual dif-ferences sampled, and the purpose of theassessment. In later sections, an attemptwill be made to consider in detail howcognitive social learning person variablesinteract with conditions and how "situa-tions" function psychologically. But firstit is necessary to review further, and hope-fully to clarify, some of the main issues and

misconceptions regarding the status ofglobal traits.

Moderator Variables and Person-SituationInteractions

Several recent trait studies have in-vestigated the relative separate quantita-tive contributions of persons and situationsas well as the variance accounted for bythe interaction of the individual and theenvironment (e.g., Argyle & Little, 1972;Endler & Hunt, 1966, 1968, 1969; Endler,Hunt, & Rosenstein, 1962; Moos, 1968,1969). The essential method consists ofsampling the behavior of individuals (byquestionnaire and/or by observation) acrossa series of situations and through variousresponse modes. On the whole, thesestudies have indicated that the sampledindividual differences, situations, and re-sponse modes when considered separatelytend to account for less variance thandoes their interaction.

The overall results suggest, as Endlerand Hunt (1969, p. 20) noted with regardto their own findings for anxiety, thatbehavior "is idiosyncratically organized ineach individual. . . . " A similar conclu-sion emerges from Moos's (1968) studiesof self-reported reactions by staff andpatients to various settings. Consider, forexample, his obtained interactions betweenpersons and nine settings with regard to"sociable, friendly, peaceful" versus "un-sociable, hostile, angry" behavior. Theresults revealed that although differentindividuals reacted differently to the set-tings, a given person might be high on thedimension in the morning but not atlunch, high with another patient but notwhen with a nurse, low in small grouptherapy, moderate in industrial therapy,but high iti individual therapy, etc. Anentirely different pattern might characterizethe next person. These results and inter-pretations are totally congruent with theconclusions emerging from earlier reviewsthat emphasize the idiosyncratic organiza-tion of behavior within individuals(Mischel, 1968, p. 190).

It would be wasteful to create pseudo-controversies that pit person against situa-

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tion in order to see which is more important.The answer must always depend on theparticular situations and persons sampled;presumably, studies could be designed todemonstrate almost any outcome. Theinteraction studies correctly demonstratedthat the question of whether individualdifferences or persons are more importantis a fruitless one that has no generalanswer. The views of Moos (1972, personalcommunication) regarding the limits of thekinds of interaction studies that he andEndler and Hunt pioneered seem extremelysensible. Moos recognized that thesestudies can be designed so that:

any result is possible. I think that all one can sayis that given relatively real life situations (e.g.,patients on wards or in outpatient psychotherapy,or your delay of gratification studies) that the majorproportion of the variance simply does not appear tobe accounted for by individual difference variables.One could certainly, however, easily design studiesin which the major portion of the variance wouldbe accounted for by individual difference variables.Frankly this is why I have stopped doing studiesof this sort. It seems to me that the point has nowbeen amply demonstrated, and it is time to get onwith other matters.

It is encouraging that recent research ondispositions has started to recognize ser-iously the extraordinary complexity of theinteractions found between subject vari-ables and conditions. The concept of"moderator variables" was introduced totrait theory to refer to the fact that theeffects of any particular disposition gen-erally are moderated by such other vari-ables as the subject's age, his sex, his IQ,the experimenter's sex, and the character-istics of the situation (Wallach, 1962).When one examines closely the interactionsobtained in research on the effects ofdispositions and conditions, the number ofmoderator variables required to predictbehavior and the complexity of their inter-relationships (e.g., McGuire, 1968) tend tobecome most formidable. For example, topredict a subject's voluntary delay ofgratification, one may have to know howold he is, his sex, the experimenter's sex,the particular objects for which he iswaiting, the consequences of not waiting,the models to whom he was just exposed,

his immediately prior experience—the listgets almost endless (Mischel, 1973a). Thisseems to be another way of saying in thelanguage of moderator variables and inter-action terms that what a person does tendsto be relatively specific to a host of vari-ables, and that behavior is multiply de-termined by all of them rather than beingthe product of widely generalized disposi-tions. Some psychologists may find theseinterpretations more palatable if they arenot phrased as reflecting the specificity ofthe acquired meanings of stimuli and theresulting specificity of behavior patterns(Mischel, 1968). Instead, they may preferto construe the data as highlighting theuniqueness and complexity of personality.To say that what a person thinks, and does,and feels—and hence what he is at anymoment—depends on many subject andcondition variables is also to underlinethe complexity and uniqueness of hisbehavior.

The foregoing discussion does not implythat predictions cannot be made from sub-ject variables to relevant behaviors, butit does suggest severe limits on the rangeand level of relationships that can beexpected. Consider, as a representativeexample, a recent effort to relate individualdifferences in young children's expectanciesabout locus of control to their behavior intheoretically relevant situations (Mischel,Zeiss, & Zeiss, 1973). To explore theseinteractions, the Stanford Preschool Inter-nal-External Scale was developed as a mea-sure of expectancies about whether eventsoccur as a consequence of the child's ownaction ("internal control") or as a con-sequence of external forces ("externalcontrol"). Expectancies about locus ofcontrol were measured separately for posi-tive and negative events so that scoresreflect expectancies for degree of internalcontrol of positive events (I + ), of nega-tive events (I — ), and a sum of these two(total 1). Individual differences in I + ,I — , and total I then were correlated withthe children's ability to delay gratificationunder diverse working and waiting condi-tions. The results provided highly specificbut theoretically meaningful patterns of


relationships. To illustrate, relationshipsbetween total I and overall delay be-havior were negligible, and 1+ was un-related to I — . As expected, 1+ (but notI — ) was found to be related to persistencein three separate situations where instru-mental activity would result in a positiveoutcome; I — (but not 1+) was related topersistence when instrumental activitycould prevent the occurrence of a negativeoutcome.

The overall findings showed that in-dividual differences in children's beliefsabout their ability to control outcomes arepartial determinants of their goal-directedbehavior, but the relationships hinge onextremely specific moderating conditions,both with regard to the type of behaviorand the type of belief. If such moderatingconditions had not been considered and allindices of "delay behavior" had been com-bined regardless of their positive or nega-tive valence, the actual role of the relevantindividual differences would have beentotally obscured. While the results wereof considerable theoretical interest, thenumber and mean level of the achievedcorrelations were not appreciably higherthan those typically found in correlationalpersonality research. Moreover, the abilityof these correlations to survive cross-validation remains to be demonstrated.

The more moderators required to qualifya trait, the more the "trait" becomes arelatively specific description of a behavior-situation unit. That is, the more highlycircumscribed, "moderated," and situa-tion specific the trait, the more it becomesindistinguishable from a specific behavior-situation description. At its extreme, whenmany strings of hyphenated moderatorvariables are required, the behavioral"signs" from which the disposition is in-ferred may become equivalent to the in-ferred disposition and make the inferencegratuitous. As we increasingly qualifythe description of a person to specify theexact response modes and conditions inwhich a particular behavior will occur, wemove from characterizing him with general-ized traits to describing his behavior in

particular forms and under particularconditions.

The language of "interactions" and"moderator variables" provides simplyanother way of talking about the idiosyn-cratic organization of behavior and itsdependence upon specific conditions unless(as Bern, 1972, p. 21, has noted) one can"predict on a priori grounds which moder-ators are likely to divide up the world intouseful classes. . . . " Demonstrations thatboth subject and situational moderatorscan be used predictively, not merely topartial out the variance from each sourcepost hoc, are especially important in lightof the negative conclusions reached byWallach, one of the main formulators ofthe moderator variable strategy in person-ality research. Commenting on the ex-tensive results from his decade of work onthe problem:

Further analyses and additional data collection byus and others suggest that not only are findingsungeneralizable from one sex to the other, but evenwhen, within sex, one simply tries to duplicate theresults of a given study, such attempts do not panout. . . . we cannoti'sayf.that use of moderatorshas successfully pinpointed subgroups for whomconsistency among diverse tests will be predictable.. . . The empirical basis for recommending modera-tors as the answer to the search for consistency thusseems more apparent than real [Wallach & Lcggett,1972, p. 313].

In regard to this last issue, the inter-action studies of the sort conducted byEndler and Hunt and Moos, unfortunately,leave perhaps the most important questionunanswered: once an individual's idiosyn-cratic pattern has been identified, can itbe used accurately to predict consistenciesin his subsequent behavior later in thesame or (even more interestingly) in similarsettings? While the interaction studieshave demonstrated the existence of ex-tensive Person X Situation interactions,they have not yet addressed themselves tothe challenge of demonstrating that usefulpredictions can be made a priori aboutindividual consistencies across a set ofspecified conditions. Such demonstrationsare particularly necessary in light of thefrequent failures to achieve replications inthis domain (e.g., Averill, Olbrich, &

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Lazarus, 1972; Wallach & Leggett, 1972,pp. 313-314). Moreover, the interactionstudies have not in any sense explained thenature of the obtained interactions. Latersections of this paper attempt to analyzethe psychological bases for "interaction";in the absence of such an analysis, anemphasis on interaction is in danger ofbeing little more than the proclamation ofa truism.

In sum, when interpreting the meaningof the data on Person X Situation inter-actions and moderator variables, it hasbeen tempting to treat the obtained inter-actions as if they had demonstrated thatpeople behave consistently in predictableways across a wide variety of situations.But demonstrations of the predictive util-ity of the moderator variable-interactionstrategy still lie in the future (e.g., Bern,1972). The available data on this topicnow merely highlight the idiosyncraticorganization of behavior within individuals,and hence the uniqueness of stimulusequivalences and response equivalences foreach person. Such data provide encourage-ment for idiographic study (Allport, 1937)but not for the predictive utility of "com-mon" (nomothetic) personality traits.

"Specificity" or Discriminative Facility?

Viewed from the perspective of thetraditional personality paradigm, the "spe-cificity" and "inconsistency" found in be-havior constitute an embarrassment thatis generally attributed to methodologicalflaws and faulty measurements. Thusempirical evidence concerning the specifi-city of the relations between social be-havior and conditions usually has beeninterpreted as due to the inadequacies ofthe tests and measures, faulty sampling,and the limitations of the particular ratersor clinical judges. These and many othersimilar methodological problems undoubt-edly are sources of error and seriously limitthe degree of consistency that can be ob-served (e.g., Block, 1968; Emmerich, 1969).

An alternative interpretation, however,and one favored by a specific interactiontheory of social behavior, is that the"specificity" so regularly found in studies

of noncognitive personality dimensionsaccurately reflects man's impressive dis-criminative facility and the inadequency ofthe assumption of global dispositions, andnot merely the distortions of measurement(Mischel, 1968). The term "discrimina-tive facility" seems to fit the data betterthan "specificity" and avoids the unfortun-ate negative semantic connotations ofspecificity when applied to persons (e.g.,the implications of inconsistency, in-sincerity, fickleness, unreliability; see alsoGergen, 1968).

Whereas discriminative facility is highlyfunctional (Gibson, 1969) diminished sensi-tivity to changing consequences (i.e., in-discriminate responding) may be a hall-mark of an organism coping ineffectively.In fact, indiscriminate responding (i.e.,"consistent" behavior across situations)tends to be displayed more by maladaptive,severely disturbed, or less mature personsthan by well-functioning ones (Moos,1968). For example, on the basis of theirstudies of hyperaggressive children under-going therapeutic treatment, Raush, Ditt-man, and Taylor (1959) reported: "thereappears to be a trend for social behavior tobecome more related to situational in-fluences with ego development . . . thechildren seem to have gained in the abilityto discriminate between different situa-tions [p. 368]." Yet although relativelymore "indiscriminate behavior" tends to befound in more immature and/or severelyabnormal persons, its extent should not beexaggerated. Even extremely autistic be-havior, for example, is highly discrimina-tive when closely analyzed (e.g., Lovaas,Freitag, Gold, & Kassorla, 1965).

Discrimination, Generalization, andIdiosyncratic Stimulus Meanings

The discriminativeness found in be-havior is not so great that we cannot recog-nize continuity in people. It is also notso great that we have to treat each newbehavior from a person as if we never sawanything like it from him before. But thefindings remind us that what people do inany situation may be changed dramaticallyeven by relatively trivial alterations in

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their prior experiences or by slight modifica-tions in the particular features of the im-mediate situation. Rather than argueabout the existence of "consistency," itwould be more constructive to analyze andstudy the cognitive and social learningconditions that seem to foster—and toundermine—its occurrence.

If expected consequences for the per-formance of responses across situations arelargely uncorrelated, the responses them-selves should not be expected to covarystrongly, as they indeed do not in mostempirical studies. When the probablereinforcing consequences to the person forcheating, waiting, or working differ widelyacross situations depending on the partic-ular task or circumstances, the behavior ofothers, the likelihood of detection, theprobable consequences of being caught, thefrustration induced, the value of success,etc., impressive generality will not befound. Conversely, when similar be-haviors are expected and supported innumerous situations, consistency will beobtained.

Because most social behaviors producepositive consequences in some situationsbut negative ones in other contexts, therelatively low associations found amongan individual's response patterns even inseemingly similar situations should not besurprising. Consider, for example, theintercorrelations among measures intendedto sample dependent behaviors, such as"touching, holding, and being near." If achild has been rewarded regularly atnursery school for "touching, holding, andbeing near" with his teacher but not withhis father at home, a high correlation be-tween dependency measured in the twosituations will not be found and should notbe expected.

The consequences for similar contentexpressed in different response modes alsotend to be drastically different. If on aprojective test a person tells stories fullof aggressive themes, he would be judgedto have a healthy fantasy life, but he wouldbe jailed if he enacted those themes in hisrelations with other people. It thereforeshould not be surprising that when different

response modes are used to sample theindividual's behavior (e.g., data fromquestionnaires, from behavior observation),consistency is even harder to demonstrate(Mischel, 1968).

To the degree that idiosyncratic sociallearning histories characterize each per-son's life, idiosyncratic (rather than cul-turally shared) stimulus equivalences andhence idiosyncratic behavior patterns maybe expected. As was noted earlier (Mischel,1968, p. 190, italics added):

The phenomena of discrimination and generaliza-tion lead to the view that behavior patterns areremarkably situation-specific on the one hand, whilealso evokable by diverse and often seeminglyheterogeneous stimuli on the basis of generaliza-tion effects. The person's prior experiences withrelated conditions and the exact details of the particularevoking situation determine the meaning of the stimuli,i.e., their effects on all aspects of his life. Usuallygeneralization effects involve relatively idiosyncraticcontextual and semantic generalization dimensionsand are based on more than gradients of physicalstimulus similarity . . . one must know the propertiesor meaning that the stimulus has acquired for thesubject. If the history is unknown, the response hasto be assessed directly.

Idiosyncratic histories produce idiosyn-cratic stimulus meanings. In clinical as-sessment of the individual, it is apparent,for example, that seemingly heterogeneousstimuli may come to elicit similar intenseapproach or avoidance patterns accom-panied by strong arousal (Mischel, 1968).Because the conditions under which stimuliacquire their meaning and power are oftenboth adventitious and unique, and be-cause the dimensions of stimulus and re-sponse generalization tend to be idiosyn-cratic, it may be futile to seek commonunderlying dimensions of similarity on thebasis of which diverse events come toevoke a similar response pattern for allpersons. Especially when the individual'sprior learning history is unknown, andwhen he is exposed to multiple and ex-ceedingly complex stimuli as in virtuallyall life situations, it becomes important toassess the effective stimuli, or "stimuli ascoded," which regulate his responses in

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particular contexts. These stimuli as codedshould not be confused with the totalityof objective physical events to which he isexposed. It is hardly novel now to assertthat the objective distal stimulus imping-ing on sense organs does not necessarilycorrespond to the "effective" stimulus;organisms respond selectively to particularaspects of the objective stimulus event(Lawrence, 1959).

The meaning and impact of a stimuluscan be modified dramatically by cognitivetransformations. Such transformations areillustrated in research on the determinantsof how long preschool children will actuallysit still alone in a chair waiting for a pre-ferred but delayed outcome before theysignal with a bell to terminate the waitingperiod and settle for a less preferred butimmediately available gratification (e.g.,Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1972). Wehave been finding that the same child whoon one occasion may terminate his waitingin less than half a minute may be capableof waiting by himself for long times onanother occasion a few weeks earlier orlater, if cognitive and attentional conditionsare appropriate (Mischel, 1973a).

For example, if the child is left duringthe waiting period with the actual rewardobjects (e.g., pretzels or marshmallows)in front of him, it becomes extremelydifficult for him to wait for more than afew moments. But through instructionshe can cognitively transform the rewardobjects in ways that permit him to waitfor long time periods (e.g., Mischel &Baker, 1973). If he cognitively transformsthe stimulus, for example, by thinkingabout the pretzel sticks as little brown logsor by thinking about the marshmallows asround white clouds or as cotton balls, hemay wait much longer than our graduatestudent experimenters. Conversely, if thechild has been instructed to focus cogni-tively on the consummatory qualities ofthe reward objects, such as the pretzel'scrunchy, salty taste or the chewy, sweet,soft taste of the marshmallows, he tendsto be able to wait only a short time.Similarly, through instruction the childrencan easily transform the real objects (pre-

sent in front of them) into a "color picturein your head," or they can transform thepicture of the objects (presented on a slideprojected on a screen in front of them) intothe "real" objects by pretending in im-agination that they are actually there on aplate in front of them (Mischel & Moore,1973b).

The results clearly show that what is inthe children's heads—not what is physicallyin front of them—determines their abilityto delay. Regardless of the stimulus intheir visual field, if they imagine the realobjects as present, they cannot wait longfor them. But if they imagine pictures(abstract representations) of the objects,they can wait for long time periods (andeven longer than when they are distractingthemselves with abstract representations ofobjects that are comparable but not rele-vant to the rewards for which they arewaiting). Through instructions (adminis-tered before the child begins to wait) aboutwhat to imagine during the delay period,it is possible to completely alter (indeed,to reverse) the effects of the physicallypresent reward stimuli in the situation andto cognitively control delay behavior withconsiderable precision. But while in ex-periments the experimenter provides in-structions (which our subjects obliginglyfollowed) about how to construe the stim-ulus situation, in life the "subject" supplieshis own instructions and may transform thesituation in many alternative (unpre-dictable) ways. The ability of individualsto cognitively transform the meaning andimpact of stimuli in any given situation(e.g., by self-instructions) makes it evenmore unlikely that the assessor will dis-cover a priori broad equivalence classesof stimulus meanings for many individualsacross many situations, unless they alltransform the stimuli in the same way.

Recognition of the idiosyncratic organiza-tion of behavior in each person suggests thatindividually oriented assessments are boundto have very limited success if they tryto label a person with generalized traitterms, sort him into diagnostic or typecategories, or estimate his average posi-tion on average or modal dimensions (Mis-


chel, 1968).4 Instead, it may be more use-ful for the clinician to assess the exactconditions that regularly covary with in-crements or decrements in the problem-producing behaviors for the particularperson. For this purpose in a behavioralanalysis, one attempts to sample directlythe individual's relevant cognitions andbehaviors in relation to the conditions ofparticular current concern:In this sense, behavioral assessment involves anexploration of the unique or idiographic aspects ofthe single case, perhaps to a greater extent than anyother approach. Social behavior theory recognizesthe individuality of each person and of each uniquesituation. This is a curious feature when one con-siders the "mechanistic S-R" stereotypes not in-frequently attached by critics to behavioral analyses.A ssessing the acquired meaning of stimuli is the coreof social behavior assessment . . . [Mischel, 1968, p.190, italics added].

The above point is often misunderstood.For example, Adinolfi (1971, p. 174) asked:"How then does the social-behavioralcritic of current clinical and personalitytheory propose to determine the stimulusconditions to which the observed is respond-ing?" The answer to this question comesfrom actively enrolling the "observed"person in the assessment process (Mischel,1968). In collaboration with the assessorthe individual provides hypotheses aboutthe conditions that lead to increases anddecreases in his own problematic behaviors.To elaborate, verify, or modify these hy-potheses, the stimulus conditions are intro-duced and systematically varied, and theirimpact on the person is assessed from hisself-report and from other changes in hisbehavior. In this manner, one can analyzehow changes in the particular stimulusconditions are correlated with changes inthe behavior of interest. The acquiredmeanings of a stimulus can only be knownby determining what the person does withit verbally and behaviorally, when it is

4 It is possible that for each individual there areunique but broad classes of subjective stimulusequivalences, but these cannot be assessed by com-paring individuals in situations that are construedas equivalent by the assessor. Such subjectiveequivalences certainly merit attention, but so farthe clinician has not demonstrated his ability tofind them reliably (Mischel, 1968).

introduced and varied in sampled situa-tions. To reveal the acquired meanings ofstimuli, one must assess what the individualsays and does when they occur in symbolicform (e.g., when discussed in interviews)and more realistically when presented inhypothetical, role-playing or life situations,as has been discussed in detail (Mischel,1968). Considerable evidence suggeststhat in this assessment enterprise, directinformation from the person is the bestsource of data (Mischel, 1972).

Some of the clearest examples of theanalysis of stimulus conditions influencingbehavior are found in efforts to constructsubjective anxiety hierarchies (e.g., Wolpe,1961). In collaboration with the assessor,the individual can identify the specificconditions that generate fear in him andarranges them on a gradient of severityfrom least to most intense. For one client,items such as "thinks I only did an hour'swork today," "sitting at the movies,""going on a casual stroll" and "staying inbed during the day (even though ill)" weresome of the events arranged on a subjectivecontinuum of "guilt"-producing stimuli.Such individually oriented assessmentslead naturally to the design of individuallyoriented treatments intended to providethe best possible conditions for achievingeach individual's objectives (Bandura,1969). In the case of the client sufferingfrom guilt, for example, after the subjec-tive hierarchy of guilt-inducing stimuli hadbeen identified, conditions could be ar-ranged to help him make new responses in-compatible with anxiety when the problem-producing stimuli are presented cogni-tively through thought-inducing instruc-tions.

Uses and Misuses of Traits

In sum, obviously behavior is not en-tirely situation specific; we do not have torelearn everything in every new situation,we have memories, and our past predis-poses our present behavior in criticallyimportant and complex ways. Obviouslypeople have characteristics and overall"average" differences in behavior betweenindividuals can be abstracted on many

262 WALTER MISCHEL

dimensions and used to discriminate amongpersons for many purposes. Obviouslyknowing how a person behaved before canhelp predict how he will behave again insimilar contexts. Obviously the impact ofany stimulus depends on the organism thatexperiences it. No one suggests that theorganism approaches every new situationwith an empty head, nor is it questioned byanyone that different individuals differmarkedly in how they deal with most stim-ulus conditions. What has been questioned(Hunt, 1965; Mischel, 1968) is the utilityof inferring broad dispositions from be-havioral signs as the bases for trying toexplain the phenomena of personality andfor making useful statements about in-dividual behavior. The available data donot imply that different people will not actdifferently with some consistency in dif-ferent classes of situations; they do implythat the particular classes of conditionsmust be taken into account far more care-fully than in the past, tend to be muchnarrower than traditional trait theorieshave assumed, and for purposes of impor-tant individual decision making, requirehighly individualized assessments of stim-ulus meanings (Mischel, 1968, pp. 235-280).The data also suggest that inferences aboutglobal underlying traits and dispositionstend to have less utility for most assess-ment efforts to predict or therapeuticallymodify individual behavior than do moreeconomical, alternative analyses based onmore direct data such as the person's pastbehavior in similar situations or his directself-report.

A critique of traits as inadequate causalexplanations and an indictment of theutility of indirect trait inferences for manyindividually oriented assessment and clin-ical purposes (Mischel, 1968) does notimply a rejection of their other possibleuses. The layman as well as the traitpsychologist generates and employs traitconstructs. The question becomes not "dotraits really exist?" but when are traitconstructs invoked and "what are theiruses and misuses?"

Research on the layman's attribution ofcausation to dispoeitional versus situational

factors helps to clarify when person vari-ables and individual differences are used inthe everyday formation of impressions.Person (trait) explanations are invokedwhen the individual's behavior is "dis-tinctive" (Kelley, 1967), that is, when itdeviates from others' behavior in the samesituation. Thus, behaviors that are atvariance with relevant group norms (e.g.,success when others fail, failure whenothers succeed) are attributed to the per-son or to "internal causes" (e.g., Frieze &Weiner, 1971; Weiner & Kukla, 1970).Conversely, when a person's behavior isconsistent with the norms in the situation(when the person succeeds when otherssucceed, or fails when others fail), hisperformance is attributed to situationalfactors such as task difficulty (Weiner et al.,1971).

Traits are constructs which are inferredor abstracted from behavior. When therelations between the observed behaviorand the attributed trait are relativelydirect, the trait serves essentially as asummary term for the behaviors that havebeen integrated by the observer. Peopleemit behaviors and these are perceived,integrated, and categorized by those whoobserve them, including those who emitthem. The process of integrating theobserved information is receiving muchstudy but is still not completely understood(e.g., Anderson, 1971, 1972). Regardlessof the exact genesis of trait impressions,trait labels may serve as summaries (es-sentially arithmetic averages) for categoriesof observed behavior (e.g., "dependent onpeers," "physically aggressive with sib-lings"). For purposes of global character-izations of salient personal qualities, broad,highly abstract categories may be usefulwith minimal moderators or specific situa-tional qualifiers. But for purposes of morespecific communication and for predictionof specific behavior in relation to specificconditions, careful discriminative limitsmust be included.

Estimates of mean past behavior oftenare the best predictors of future behaviorin similar situations, especially when thereare no other bases for prediction (Mischel,


1968, 1972). The predictive limitations oftraits become evident, however, when oneattempts to predict from past behavior tobehavior in different new situations. More-over, when observers categorize an in-dividual's behavior in trait terms, the "sali-ent" (central, mean, primary) features ofthe behavior may become the basis for thecategorization, so that the person becomeslabeled as "anxious," for example, even ifthat term accurately characterizes only asmall portion of his total social behavior.Then the "moderators" become omittedand the situation-free trait abbreviationsthat remain may serve more as globalstereotypes and broad character sketchesthan as accurate bases for the prediction ofspecific behaviors.

When the consistency issue is viewed interms of the utility of inferring broad re-sponse tendencies and not in terms of themore metaphysical question of the exis-tence or validity of personality dispositions,it becomes evident that the answer mustdepend on the particular objective orpurpose for which the inference is made.For example, while global trait inferencesmay have little utility for the predictionof the subject's specific future behavior inspecific situations or for the design ofspecific treatment programs, they mayhave value for the person himself—forinstance, when he must abstract attributesto answer such everyday questions as: Isyour assistant reliable? or What kind ofperson is my psychotherapist? or Mightthis stranger lurking on the next corner bea murderer? or What are you like? Simi-larly, an indictment of the relative lack ofutility of inferring broad dispositions forpurposes of predicting and/or thera-peutically modifying the individual's be-havior does not deny the utility of usingsuch inferences for many other purposes—such as for gross initial screening decisionsor for studying average differences betweengroups of individuals in personality research(Mischel, 1968).

The limitations of traditional personalitytheories which invoke trait constructs asthe psychologist's explanations for be-havior should not deflect attention from

the importance of the layman's everydayuse of trait categories. How do traitcategorizations function for the layman?Do they serve him well? For what pur-poses might they be used ? In our researchmy students and I are asking such ques-tions now. For example, we find that whenrequired to predict a person's behavior andgiven a choice of how to categorize theavailable behavioral information, subjectsoverwhelmingly preferred to organize datain terms of traits rather than settings(Jeffrey & Mischel, 1973). But when theperceiver's purpose was structured asmemorizing as much information as pos-sible, setting categories were used. Clearlythe functions of trait constructs for thelayman deserve serious attention and hope-fully will inform us further about thepsychological uses and abuses of traitcategorization.

From Behavior to the Construction ofPersonality

As Heider (1958) has noted, in thepsychology of common sense the subjectgoes quickly from act to global internalizeddisposition. While behavior often may behighly situation specific, it seems equallytrue that in daily life people tend to con-strue each other as if they were highly con-sistent, constructing consistent personalitieseven on the basis of relatively inconsistentbehavioral fragments.

This discrepancy may reflect in part thatpeople go rapidly beyond the observationof some consistency which does exist inbehavior to the attribution of greaterperceived consistencies which they con-struct (e.g., Mischel, 1969; Schneider,1973). After these construction systemshave been generated, they may be adheredto tenaciously even in the face of seeminglydisconfirmatory data (Mischel, 1968, 1969).

Many processes contribute to the con-struction and maintenance of consistentimpressions of others. Tversky and Kahne-mon (1971), for example, contended^thatboth sophisticated scientists and naivesubjects intuitively but often erroneouslyinterpret small samples of observations asif they were highly representative. More-

264 WALTER MISCHEL

over, after an initial impression of a personhas been formed, observations of his sub-sequent behavior are biased toward con-sistency with the initial impression (Hay-den & Mischel, 1973). Like the clinician(e.g., Chapman & Chapman, 1969), thelayman's impressions may perpetuate con-sistent but invalid "illusory correlations."There even seems to be a substantial biasof memory for the attributes of behaviorin the direction of preexisting cognitivestructures or implicit personality theories(D'Andrade, 1970, 1973). Consequently,recall-based trait ratings may yield datathat are systematic but unrelated to resultsbased on direct observation of ongoing be-havior as it occurs (Shweder, 1972).

The overattribution of consistency maybe something people do unto others morethan to themselves. Jones and Nisbett(1971) noted that when explaining otherpeople's behavior we invoke their con-sistent personality dispositions: Steve is thesort of person who puts bumper stickerson his car; Jill tripped because she'sclumsy. But when asked to explain ourown behavior we consider specific condi-tions: "AAA sent me this catchy bumpersticker in the mail" or "I tripped becauseit was dark." Thus Jones and Nisbett(1971, p. 58) on the basis of some promis-ing preliminary data theorized that "actorstend to attribute the causes of their be-havior to stimuli inherent in the situationwhile observers tend to attribute behaviorto stable dispositions of the actor." Jonesand Nisbett analyzed many possible rea-sons for this seemingly paradoxical stateof affairs, including the tendency to treatevery sample of behavior we observe fromanother person as if it were modal or typicalfor him. It thus seems as if traits may bethe consistent attributes that other peoplehave. When describing other people, weseem to act more like trait theorists, butwhen we attempt to understand ourselveswe function more like social behaviorists.Might there be a warning here for clini-cians? Do we pin our clients with consis-tent dispositional labels and trait ex-planations more than we do ourselves? Ifthat is true it may be because we have more

information about ourselves and the multi-plicity, variety, and complexity of thesituations we encounter in our own lives,whereas we know others in only limitedcontexts and therefore tend to over-generalize from their behavior in thoseinstances.

Traits as Causes versus Traits asSummary Labels

According to the traditional trait para-digm, traits are the generalized disposi-tions in the person that render manystimuli functionally equivalent and thatcause the individual to behave consistentlyacross many situations (Allport, 1937).The present view, in contrast, construesthe individual as generating diverse be-haviors in response to diverse conditions;the emitted behaviors are observed andsubsequently integrated cognitively by theperformer, as well as by others who per-ceive him, and are encoded on semanticdimensions in trait terms. Thus while thetraditional personality paradigm viewstraits as the intrapsychic causes of be-havioral consistency, the present positionsees them as the summary terms (labels,codes, organizing constructs) applied toobserved behavior. In the present view,the study of global traits may ultimatelyreveal more about the cognitive activityof the trait theorist than about the causesof behavior, but such findings would be ofgreat value in their own right.

COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNINGPERSON VARIABLES

The previous sections have consideredthe limitations of the basic assumptions oftraditional global dispositional theories ofpersonality and some of the main mis-conceptions and issues arising from recentchallenges to those assumptions. Progressin the area of personality will require morethan criticism of existing positions andhinges on the development of an alterna-tive conceptualization. In this sectiontherefore a set of person variables is pro-posed, based on theoretical developments inthe fields of social learning and cognition.


Given the overall findings on the dis-criminativeness of behavior and on thecomplexity of the interactions between theindividual and the situation, it seems rea-sonable in the search for person variablesto look more specifically at what the personconstructs in particular conditions, ratherthan trying to infer what broad traits hegenerally has, and to incorporate in de-scriptions of what he does the specificpsychological conditions in which the be-havior will and will not be expected tooccur. What people do, of course, includesmuch more than motor acts and requiresus to consider what they do cognitively andaffectively as well as motorically.

The proposed cognitive social learningapproach to personality shifts the unit ofstudy from global traits inferred from be-havioral signs to the individual's cognitiveactivities and behavior patterns, studiedin relation to the specific conditions thatevoke, maintain, and modify them andwhich they, in turn, change (Mischel, 1968).The focus shifts from attempting to com-pare and generalize about what differentindividuals "are like" to an assessment ofwhat they do—behaviorally and cogni-tively—in relation to the psychologicalconditions in which they do it. The focusshifts from describing situation-free peoplewith broad trait adjectives to analyzingthe specific interactions between conditionsand the cognitions and behaviors ofinterest.

Personality research on social behaviorand cognition in recent years has focusedmainly on the processes through whichbehaviors are acquired, evoked, maintained,and modified (e.g., Bandura, 1969; Mis-chel, 1968). Much less attention has beengiven to the psychological products withinthe individual of cognitive development andsocial learning experiences. Yet a viablepsychology of personality demands at-tention to person variables that are theproducts of the individual's total historyand that in turn mediate the manner inwhich new experiences affect him.

The proposed person variables are asynthesis of seemingly promising con-structs in the areas of cognition and social

learning. The selections should be seenas suggestive and open to progressive re-vision rather than as final. These tenta-tive person variables are not expected toprovide ways to accurately predict broadlycross-situational behavioral differences be-tween persons: the discriminativeness andidiosyncratic organization of behavior arefacts of nature, not limitations unique totrait theories. But these variables shouldserve to demonstrate that a social behaviorapproach to persons does not imply anempty organism. They should suggestuseful ways of conceptualizing and study-ing specifically how persons mediate theimpact of stimuli and generate distinctivecomplex molar behavior patterns. Andthey should help to conceptualize person-situation interactions in a theoreticalframework based on contributions fromboth cognitive and behavioral psychology.

The proposed cognitive social learningperson variables deal first with the in-dividual's competencies to construct (gener-ate) diverse behaviors under appropriateconditions. Next, one must consider theindividual's encoding and categorization ofevents. Furthermore, a comprehensiveanalysis of the behaviors a person performsin particular situations requires attentionto his expectancies about outcomes, thesubjective values of such outcomes, and hisself-regulatory systems and plans. Thefollowing five sections discuss each of theseproposed person variables. While thesevariables obviously overlap and interact,each may provide distinctive informationabout the individual and each may be mea-sured objectively and varied systematically.

Cognitive and Behavioral ConstructionCompetencies

Through direct and observational learn-ing the individual acquires informationabout the world and his relationship to it.As a result of observing events and attend-ing to the behavior of live and symbolicmodels (through direct and film-mediatedobservation, reading, and instruction) inthe course of cognitive development theperceiver acquires the potential to generatevast repertoires of organized behavior.

266 WALTER MISCHEL

While the pervasive occurrence and impor-tant consequences of such observationallearning have been convincingly demon-strated (e.g., Bandura, 1969; Campbell,1961), it is less clear how to conceptualizejust what gets learned. The phenomenato be encompassed must include suchdiverse learnings as the nature of sexualgender identity (e.g., Kohlberg, 1966), thestructure (or construction) of the physicalworld (e.g., Piaget, 1954), the social rulesand conventions that guide conduct (e.g.,Aronfreed, 1968), the personal constructsgenerated about self and others (e.g., G.Kelly, 1955), the rehearsal strategies of theobserver (Bandura, 1971a). Some theoristshave discussed these acquisitions in termsof the products of information processingand of information integration (e.g., Ander-son, 1972; Bandura, 1971a; Rumelhart,Lindsey, & Norman, 1971), others in termsof schemata and cognitive templates (e.g.,Aronfreed, 1968).

The concept of cognitive and behavioralconstruction competencies seems sufficientlybroad to include the vast array of psycho-logical acquisitions of organized informa-tion that must be encompassed. Theterm "constructions" also emphasizes theconstructive manner in which informa-tion seems to be retrieved (e.g., Neisser,1967) and the active organization throughwhich it is categorized and transformed(Bower, 1970; Mandler, 1967, 1968). Ithas become plain that rather than mimick-ing observed responses or returning memorytraces from undisturbed storage vaults, theobserver selectively constructs (generates)his renditions of "reality." Indeed, re-search on modeling effects has long recog-nized that the products of observationallearning involve a novel, highly organizedsynthesis of information rather than aphotocopy of specific observed responses(e.g., Bandura, 1971b; Mischel £ Grusec,1966). The present concept of construc-tion competencies should call attention tothe person's cognitive activities—the opera-tions and transformations that he performson information—rather than to a store offinite cognitions and responses that he"has."

Although the exact cognitive processesare far from clear, it is apparent that eachindividual acquires the capacity to con-struct a great range of potential behaviors,and different individuals acquire differentbehavior construction capabilities. Theenormous differences between persons inthe range and quality of the cognitive andbehavioral patterns that they can generateis evident from even casual comparison ofthe construction potentials of any givenindividual with those, for example, of anOlympic athlete, a Nobel Prize winner, aretardate, an experienced forger, or asuccessful actor.

The person's behavior construction po-tential can be assessed readily by introduc-ing incentives for the most complete con-structions that he can render on particularperformance tasks. In a sense, the assess-ment conditions here are identical to thosein achievement testing (Wallace, 1966).The same strategy can be used to assesswhat subjects "know" (i.e., the cognitiveconstructions they can generate, for ex-ample, about abstract and physical proper-ties and relationships as in mathematicsand geography) and what they are capableof doing (enacting) in the form of socialbehaviors. For example, to assess whatchildren had acquired from observing amodel, attractive rewards later were offeredto them contingent upon their reproducingthe model's behaviors (e.g., Bandura,1965; Grusec & Mischel, 1966). The re-sults showed that the children had acquireda great deal of information from observa-tion of the model which they could recon-struct elaborately but only when givenappropriate incentives.

For many purposes, it is valuable toassess the quality and range of the cogni-tive constructions and behavioral enact-ments of which the individual is capable.In this vein, rather than assess "typical"behavior, one assesses potential behaviorsor achievements. One tests what the per-son can do (e.g., Wallace, 1966) rather thanwhat he "usually" does. Indeed one of themost recurrent and promising dimensionsof individual differences in research seemsto involve the person's cognitive and be~


havioral (social) competencies (e.g., White,1959; Zigler & Phillips, 1961, 1962). Thesecompetencies presumably reflect the degreeto which the person can generate adaptive,skillful behaviors that will have beneficialconsequences for him. Personality psy-chology can profit from much greater atten-tion to cognitive and intellectual com-petencies since these "mental abilities"seem to have much better temporal andcross-situational stability and influencethan most of the social traits and motiva-tions traditionally favored in personalityresearch (e.g., Mischel, 1968, 1969).

The relevance of cognitive-intellectivecompetencies for personality seems evidentin light of the important, persistent con-tributions of indices of intelligence to theobtained networks of personality correla-tions (Campbell & Fiske, 1959; Mischel,1968). In spite of extensive efforts tominimize or "partial out" the role ofintelligence in personality studies, for ex-ample, cognitive competencies (as testedby "mental age" and IQ tests) tend to beamong the very best predictors of latersocial and interpersonal adjustment (e.g.,Anderson, 1960). Presumably, brighter,more competent people experience moreinterpersonal success and better workachievements and hence become morepositively assessed by themselves and byothers on the evaluative "good-bad"dimension which is so ubiquitous in traitratings (e.g., Vernon, 1964). Cognitiveachievements and intellective potential, asmeasured by mental age or IQ tests, alsoare receiving a central place in currentcognitive-developmental theories (e.g.,Kohlberg, 1969) and presumably are animportant ingredient of such concepts as"ego strength" and "ego development."Indeed, it is tempting to speculate that thepervasive and substantial "first factor"found on tests like the MM PI (Block,1965), often labeled with terms connoting"adjustment" at the positive end andmaladaptive character structure at thenegative end, reflects to a considerabledegree the individual's level of cognitive-social competence and achievement. Tothe degree that certain demographic vari-

ables (e.g., socioeconomic class, high schoolgraduation) reflect the individual's con-struction capacities and achievements, theyalso may be expected to predict "adjust-ment" and interpersonal competencies, asthey often do (e.g., Robbins, 1972). Theassessment of competence in response tospecific problematic situations in the directmanner developed by Goldfried andD'Zurilla (1969) seems especially promising.

The relative stability of the person'sconstruction capacities may be one of theimportant contributors to the impressionof consistency in personality. The factthat cognitive skills and behavior-generat-ing capacities tend to be relatively endur-ing is reflected in the relatively high sta-bility found in performances closely relatedto cognitive and intellectual variables, ashas been stressed before (Mischel, 1968,1969). The individual who knows how tobe assertive with waiters, for example, orwho knows how to solve certain kinds ofinterpersonal problems competently, orwho excels in singing, is capable of suchperformances enduringly.

Encoding Strategies and Personal Constructs

From the perspective of personalitypsychology, an especially important com-ponent of information processing concernsthe perceiver's ways of encoding and group-ing information from stimulus inputs. Asdiscussed in earlier sections, people canreadily perform cognitive transformations onstimuli (Mischel & Moore, 1973), focusingon selected aspects of the objective stim-ulus (e.g., the taste versus the shape of afood object): such selective attention,interpretation, and categorization substan-tially alter the impact the stimulus exertson behavior (see also Geer, Davison, &Gatchel, 1970; Schachter, 1964). Like-wise, the manner in which perceivers en-code and selectively attend to observedbehavioral sequences greatly influenceswhat they learn and subsequently can do(Bandura, 1971a, 1971b). Clearly, dif-ferent persons may group and encode thesame events and behaviors in differentways. At a molar level, such individualdifferences are especially evident in the

268 WALTER MISCHEL

personal constructs individuals employ(e.g., Argyle & Little, 1972; G. Kelly,1955) and in the kinds of information towhich they selectively attend (Mischel,Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1973).

The behaviorally oriented psychologisteschews inferences about global disposi-tions and focuses instead on the particularstimuli and behaviors of interest. Butwhat are "the stimuli and behaviors ofinterest?" Early versions of behaviorismattempted to circumvent this question bysimplistic definitions in terms of clearlydelineated motor "acts" (such as bar press)in response to clicks and lights. As longas the behaviors studied were those oflower animals in experimenter-arrangedlaboratory situations, the units of "be-havior" and "stimuli" remained manage-able with fairly simple operational defini-tions. More recent versions of behaviortheory, moving from cat, rat, and pigeonconfined in the experimenter's apparatusto people in exceedingly complex socialsituations, have extended the domain ofstudied behavior much beyond motor actsand muscle twitches; they seek to encom-pass what people do cognitively, emotion-ally, and interpersonally, not merely theirarm, leg, and mouth movements. Now theterm "behavior" has been expanded to in-clude virtually anything that an organismdoes, overtly or covertly, in relation to ex-tremely complex social and interpersonalevents. Consider, for example, "aggres-sion," "anxiety," "defense," "dependency,""self-concepts," "self-control," "self-rein-forcement." Such categories go consider-ably beyond self-evident behavior descrip-tions. A category like aggression involvesinferences about the subject's intentions(e.g., harming another versus accidentalinjury) and abstractions about behavior,rather than mere physical description ofactions and utterances.

A focus on behavior must not obscurethe fact that even the definition and selec-tion of a behavior unit for study requiresgrouping and categorizing. In personalityresearch, the psychologist does the con-struing, and he includes and excludes eventsin the units he studies, depending on his

interests and objectives. He selects acategory—such as "delay of gratification,"for example—and studies its behavioralreferents. In personality assessment, how-ever, it becomes quickly evident that thesubject (like the psychologist) also groupsevents into categories and organizes themactively into meaningful units. The lay-man usually does not describe his experi-ence with operational definitions: he cate-gorizes events in terms of his personal con-structs (G. Kelly, 1955), and these mayor may not overlap either with those of thepsychologist or of other individuals. Aspreviously noted (Jeffery & Mischel, 1973),observers tend to group information aboutpersons with dispositional categories (suchas "honest," "intolerant," "freaky," "dogooder"). Skepticism about the utility oftraditional trait constructs regarding thesubject's broad dispositions in no wayrequires one to ignore the subject's con-structs about his own and other's character-istics. People invoke traits and other dis-positions as ways of describing and explain-ing their experience and themselves, justas professional psychologists do, and itwould be strange if we tried to define outof existence the personal constructs andother concepts, perceptions, and experi-ences of the individuals whom we arestudying. The study of personal constructsystems (e.g., Little & Stephens, 1973), ofimplicit personality theories (e.g., Hamil-ton, 1971; Schneider, 1973), and of self-concepts (e.g., Gergen, 1968) promises toilluminate an important set of still poorlyunderstood person variables.

Cognitive consistency tends to be en-hanced by selective attention and codingprocesses that filter new information in amanner that permits it to be integrated withexisting cognitive structures (e.g., Norman,1969). Cognitive processes that facilitatethe construction and maintenance of per-ceived consistency (e.g., U'Andrade, 1970;Hayden & Mischel, 1973) have been men-tioned earlier and are elaborated elsewhere(Mischel, 1968, 1969). After informationhas been integrated with existing cognitivestructures and becomes part of long-termmemory, it remains available enduringly

RKCONCKPTUALIZATION OF PERSONALITY 269

and exerts further stabilizing effects. Forexample, the individual's subjective con-ception of his own identity and continuitypresumably rests heavily on his ability toremember (construct) subjectively similarbehaviors on his part over long time periodsand across many situations. That is, theindividual can abstract the common ele-ments of his behavior over time and acrosssettings, thereby focusing on his more en-during qualities.

There is considerable evidence thatpeople categorize their own personal quali-ties in relatively stable trait terms (e.g.,on self-ratings and self-report question-naires). These self-categorizations, whileoften only complexly and tenuously relatedto nonverbal behavior, may be relativelydurable and generalized (Mischel, 1968,1969). Such stable styles of self-presenta-tion and self-description may be reflectedin personality test "response sets" likesocial desirability (Edwards, 1957), and intendencies to depict oneself in relativelypositive or negative terms found in thebehavior of so-called "repressers" versus"sensitizers" on the Byrne (1961) Repres-sion-Sensitization Scale (Mischel, Ebbesen,& Zeiss, 1973). While traditional person-ality research has focused primarily on ex-ploring the correlates of such self-categor-izations, in the present view they comprisemerely one kind of person variable.

Behavior-Outcome and Stimulus-OutcomeExpectancies

So far the person variables considereddeal with what the individual is capableof doing and how he categorizes events.To move from potential behaviors toactual performance, from constructioncapacity and constructs to the construc-tion of behavior in specific situations, re-quires attention to the determinants ofperformance. For this purpose, the personvariables of greatest interest are the sub-ject's expectancies. While it is often in-formative to know what an individual cando and how he construes events and himself,for purposes of specific prediction of be-havior in a particular situation it is es-

sential to consider his specific expectanciesabout the consequences of different be-havioral possibilities in that situation. Formany years personality research hassearched for individual differences on thepsychologist's hypothesized dimensionswhile neglecting the subject's own ex-pectancies (hypotheses). More recently,it seems increasingly clear that the ex-pectancies of the subject are central unitsfor psychology (e.g., Holies, 1972; Estes,1972; Irwin, 1971; Rotter, 1954). Thesehypotheses guide the person's selection(choice) of behaviors from among theenormous number which he is capable ofconstructing within any situation.

On the basis of direct eqaerieace, in-structions, and observational learning,people develop expectancies about en-vironmental contingencies (e.g., Handura,1969). Since the expectancies that arelearned within a given situation pre-sumably reflect the objective contingenciesin that situation, an expectancy constructmay seem superfluous. The need for theexpectancy construct as a person variablebecomes evident, however, when one con-siders individual differences in responseto the same situational contingencies dueto the different expectancies that eachperson brings to the situation. An ex-pectancy construct is justified by the factthat the person's expectancies (inferredfrom statements) may not be in agreementwith the objective contingencies in thesituation. Yet behavior may be generatedin light of such expectancies, as seen, forexample, in any verbal conditioning studywhen a subject says plural nouns on theerroneous hypothesis that the experi-menter is reinforcing them.

In theories based on lower animal be-havior, the expectancy construct has servedas a limited heuristic (e.g., Bolles, 1972),since rats and pigeons cannot tell us theirexpectancies. Fortunately, humans arenot so handicapped and under appropriateassessment conditions are willing and ableto externalize their expectancies. Hencethe expectancy construct applied to humanrather than animal learning leads readilyto measurement operations and to research

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strategies that can take account directlyof the subject's hypotheses. Empirically,since direct self-reports seem to he one ofthe best data sources about the individual(Mischel, 1968, 1972), it should be possibleto fruitfully assess behavior-outcome ex-pectancies by asking the subject.

One type of expectancy concerns be-havior-outcome relations under particularconditions. These behavior-outcome ex-pectancies (hypotheses, contingency rules)represent the "if ; then " relationsbetween behavioral alternatives and prob-able outcomes anticipated with regard toparticular behavioral possibilities in par-ticular situations. In any given situation,the person will generate the response pat-tern which he expects is most likely tolead to the most subjectively valuableoutcomes (consequences) in that situation(e.g., Mischel, 1966; Rotter, 1954). In theabsence of new information about the be-havior-outcome expectancies in any situa-tion the individual's performance will de-pend on his previous behavior-outcomeexpectancies in similar situations. Thispoint is illustrated in a study (Mischel &Staub, 1965) which showed that pre-situational expectancies significantly affectchoice behavior in the absence of situationalinformation concerning probable perfor-mance-outcome relationships. But the Mis-chel and Staub study also showed that newinformation about behavior-outcome rela-tions in the particular situation may quicklyovercome the effects of presituational ex-pectancies, so that highly specific situa-tional expectancies become the dominantinfluences on performance.

When the expected consequences for per-formance change, so does behavior, as seenin the discriminative nature of respondingwhich was elaborated in earlier sections anddocumented elsewhere (Mischel, 1968).But in order for changes in behavior-out-come relations to affect behavior sub-stantially, the person must recognize them.In the context of operant conditioning, ithas become evident that the subject'sawareness of the behavior-outcome rela-tionship crucially affects the ability ofresponse consequences (reinforcements) to

modify his complex performances (e.g.,Spielberger & DeNike, 1966). As pre-viously stressed, the essence of adaptiveperformance is the recognition and ap-preciation of new contingencies. To copewith the environment effectively, theindividual must recognize new contin-gencies as quickly as possible and reorganizehis behavior in the light of the new ex-pectancies. Strongly established behavior-outcome expectancies with respect to aresponse pattern may constrain an in-dividual's ability to adapt to changes incontingencies. Indeed, "defensive reac-tions" may be seen in part as a failure toadapt to new contingencies because theindividual is still behaving in response toold contingencies that are no longer valid.The "maladaptive" individual is behavingin accord with expectancies that do notadequately represent the actual behavior-outcome rules in his current life situation.

In the present view, the effectiveness ofresponse-contingent reinforcements (i.e.,operant conditioning) rests on their abilityto modify behavior-outcome expectancies.When information about the responsepattern required for reinforcement is con-veyed to the subject by instructions, "con-ditioning" tends to occur much morereadily than when the subject must experi-ence directly the reinforcing contingenciesactually present in the operant trainingsituation. For example, accurate instruc-tions about the required response and thereinforcement schedule to which subjectswould be exposed exerted far more powerfuleffects on performance than did the rein-forcing contingencies (Kaufman, Baron, &Kopp, 1966). 'Presumably, such instruc-tions exert their effects by altering response-outcome expectancies. To the extent thatinformation about new response-reinforce-ment contingencies can be conveyed tomotivated human beings more parsimon-iously through instructions or observationalexperiences than through operant condi-tioning procedures (e.g., Kaufman et al.,1966), an insistence upon direct "shaping"may reflect an unfortunate (and wasteful)failure to discriminate between the animallaboratory and the human condition.


A closely related second type of expec-tancy concerns stimulus-outcome relations.As noted previously in the discussion ofgeneralization and discrimination, the out-comes expected for any behavior hinge ona multitude of stimulus conditions thatmoderate the probable consequences of anypattern of behavior. These stimuli ("signs")essentially "predict" for the person otherevents that are likely to occur. More pre-cisely, the individual learns (through directand observational experiences) that certainevents (cues, stimuli) predict certain otherevents. This concept of stimulus-outcomeexpectancy is similar to the S-S* expectancyrepresenting stimulus-outcome contingen-cies proposed by Bolles (1972) in the con-text of animal learning.

Stimulus-outcome expectancies seem es-pecially important person variables forunderstanding the phenomena of classicalconditioning. For example, through thecontiguous association of a light and painfulelectric shock in aversive classical condi-tioning the subject learns that the lightpredicts shock. If the product of classicalconditioning is construed as a stimulus-outcome expectancy, it follows that anyinformation which negates that expectancywill eliminate the conditioned response.In fact, when subjects are informed thatthe "conditioned stimuli" will no longer befollowed by pain-producing events, theirconditioned emotional reactions are quicklyeliminated (e.g., Grings & Lockhart, 1963).Conversely, when subjects were told that aparticular word would be followed byshock, they promptly developed condi-tioned heart-rate responses (Chatterjee &Eriksen, 1962). In the same vein, butbeyond the conditioning paradigm, ifsubjects learn to generate "happy thoughts"when faced by stimuli that otherwise wouldfrustrate them beyond endurance, they canmanage to tolerate the "aversive" situa-tion with equanimity (Mischel, Ebbesen, &Zeiss, 1972). Outside the artificial con-fines of the laboratory in the human inter-actions of life, the "stimuli" that predictoutcomes often are the social behaviors ofothers in particular contexts. The mean-ings attributed to those stimuli hinge on a

multitude of learned correlations betweenbehavioral signs and outcomes.

Just as correlational personality researchyields a host of validity associations be-tween behavioral "signs" from persons inone context and their behavior in othersituations, so does the perceiver's learninghistory provide him with a vast repertoireof meaningful signs. For example, as re-search on person perception suggests,"shifty eyes," "tight lips," "lean and hun-gry looks," obese body build, age, sex, andan enormous number of even subtler be-havioral cues (e.g., regarding the statusand power of others) come to predict forobservers other correlated behaviors. If itwere possible to compute them, many ofthese correlations probably would notaverage more than the .30 "personalitycoefficient" (Mischel, 1968) typically foundin correlational personality research, butthat may be sufficiently accurate (especiallyon an intermittent schedule) to assure theirpersistent use. Some of these stimulus-outcome associations presumably reflectthe perceiver's idiosyncratic learning his-tory and his own evolving personal rulesabout stimulus meanings. Many of theseassociations, however, are likely to bewidely shared by members of a commonculture and probably depend importantlyon the transcultural semantic associationsdiscussed by D'Andrade (1970) andShweder (1971, 1972). An adequate studyof stimulus-outcome expectancies there-fore would require attention to the rulesystem of the individual as well as to theshared "sign" grammar of the culture andof the transcultural lexicon structure.

Both behavior-outcome and stimulus-outcome expectancies depend on inferencesabout the intentions motivating behavior(i.e., its perceived causes). For example, aperson's reactions to a physical blow fromanother will crucially depend on whetherit was perceived as accidental or deliberate.Similarly, whether praise and attentionproduces in the recipient a warm glow (and"conditioning" of his preceding behaviors)or suspicion (and a rebuff) depends onwhether the behaviors are perceived assincere or as ingratiating (Jones, 1964).

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Extremely subtle social and interpersonalcues affect the interpretation of the motiva-tion (and hence the impact) of these com-plex human behaviors.

Although expectancy constructs oftenhave been proposed, some of the mainformulations have been based entirely onanimal research (e.g., Bolles, 1972) whichmakes their relevance for human person-ality remote. Rotter's (1954) "subjectiveexpectancy" construct was an importantand theoretically influential exception.However, it deals only with one type ofexpectancy (similar to the present "be-havior-outcome expectancies"); it does notconsider stimulus-outcome expectancies.Moreover, Rotter's formulation focuses on"generalized expectancies" which are func-tionally similar to generalized traits andare not posited in the present approach.

In the present view, the person's ex-pecttmcies mediate the degree to which hisbehavior shows cross-situational consist-ency or discriminativeness. When the ex-pected consequences for the performance ofresponses across situations are not highlycorrelated, the responses themselves shouldnot covary strongly (Mischel, 1968). Aspreviously noted, since most social be-haviors lead to positive consequences insome situations but not in other contexts,highly discriminative specific expectanciestend to be developed and the relatively lowcorrelations typically found among a per-son's response patterns across situationsbecome understandable (Mischel, 1968).lixpectancies also will not become general-ized across response modes when the con-sequences for similar content expressed indifferent response modes are sharply dif-ferent, as they are in most life circumstances(Mischel, 1968). Hence expectancies tendto become relatively specific, rather thanbroadly generalized. Although a person'sexpectancies (and hence performances)tend to be highly discriminative, therecertainly is some generalization of expectan-cies, but their patterning in the individualtends to be idiosyncratically organized tothe extent that the individual's history isunique. (See the earlier section in this

paper on generalization, discrimination,and idiosyncratic stimulus meanings).

While behavior-outcome and stimulus-outcome expectancies seem viable personvariables, it would be both tempting andhazardous to transform them into general-ized trait-like dispositions by endowingthem with broad cross-situational con-sistency or removing them from the contextof the specific stimulus conditions on whichthey depend. At the empirical level,"generalized expectancies" tend to begeneralized only within relatively narrow,restricted limits (e.g., Mischel & Staub,1965; Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1973).As was noted before in this paper, for ex-ample, the generality of "locus of control"is in fact limited, with distinct, unrelatedexpectancies found for positive and nega-tive outcomes and with highly specificbehavioral correlates for each (Mischel,Zeiss, & Zeiss, 1973). If expectancies areconverted into global trait-like dispositionsand extracted from their close interactionwith situational conditions, they are likelyto become just as useless as their manytheoretical predecessors. On the otherhand, if they are construed as relativelyspecific (and modifiable) "if , then

" hypotheses about contingencies, itbecomes evident that they exert importanteffects on behavior (e.g., Mischel & Staub,1965).

Subjective Stimulus Values

Even if individuals have similar ex-pectancies, they may select to performdifferent behaviors because of differencesin the subjective values of the outcomeswhich they expect. For example, giventhat all persons expect that approval froma therapist depends on verbalizing partic-ular kinds of self-references, there may bedifferences in the frequency of such verbal-izations due to differences in the perceivedvalue of obtaining the therapist's approval.Such differences reflect the degree to whichdifferent individuals value the response-contingent outcome. Therefore it is neces-sary to consider still another personvariable: the subjective (perceived) valuefor the individual of particular classes of


events, that is, his stimulus preferencesand aversions. This unit refers to stimulithat have acquired the power to inducepositive or negative emotional states inthe person and to function as incentives orreinforcers for his behavior. The sub-jective value of any stimulus pattern maybe acquired and modified through instruc-tions and observational experiences as wellas through direct experiences (Bandura,1969).

Stimulus values can be assessed by mea-suring the individual's actual choices inlife-like situations as well as his verbalpreferences or ratings (e.g., Mischel, 1966;Mischel & Grusec, 1966). Verbal reports(e.g., on questionnaires) about values andinterests also may supply valuable infor-mation about the individual's preferencesand aversions, and appear to provide someof the more temporally stable data in thedomain of personality (E. L. Kelly, 1955;Strong, 1955). Alternatively, subjects maybe asked to rank-order actual rewards(Rotter, 1954), or the reinforcement valueof particular stimuli may be assesseddirectly by observing their effects on theindividual's performance (e.g., Gewirtz &Baer, 1958).

Reinforcement (incentive) preferencesmay also be assessed by providing in-dividuals opportunities to select the out-comes they want from a large array ofalternatives, as when patients earn tokenswhich they may exchange for objects oractivities: the "price" they are willing topay for particular outcomes provides anindex of their subjective value (e.g., Ayllon& Azrin, 1965). The concept that anybehavior which has a high natural fre-quency of occurrence can serve as a rein-forcer for other less likely behaviors (Pre-mack, 1965) also suggests that subjectivereinforcers may be discovered by asses-sing the individual's naturally occurringhigh frequency behaviors in particularsituations (Mischel, 1968).

A comprehensive assessment of stimulusvalues must include attention to stimulithat have acquired strong emotion-elicitingpowers, as in the conditioned autonomicreactions seen in intense fears. For this

purpose, specific self-report inventories,physiological measures, and direct be-havior sampling of approach and avoidancebehavior in response to the real or sym-bolically presented emotional stimulus mayall be useful (Mischel, 1968).

The measurement operations for assess-ing stimulus values require considerablespecifity. Just as the probable conse-quences of any behavior pattern hinge on ahost of specific moderating considerations,so does the affective value (valence) of anystimulus depend on the exact conditions—in the person and in the situation—in whichit occurs. The many variables known toaffect the emotional meaning and valenceof a stimulus include its context, sequenc-ing, and patterning (e.g., Helson, 1964);social comparison processes (e.g., Festinger,1945); and the cognitive labels the personassigns to his own emotional arousal state(Schachter & Singer, 1962). Thus, likeinstrumental responses, emotional reac-tions also tend to become far more dis-criminative than dispositional theories haveassumed. Lazarus (1963), for example,has noted the specificity of sexual fears infrigid women. For instance, one womancould calmly imagine herself engaged incertain sexual caresses, but only if theyoccurred in the dark. Or consider the pilotwho became debilitatingly anxious whenflying, but only when his plane was higherthan 9,000 feet (White, 1964), or the youngwoman who had asthmatic attacks mostlyafter she had contacts with her mother(Metcalf, 1956). Good illustrations of theanalysis of stimulus conditions influencingemotional responses come from attempts tocreate subjective anxiety hierarchies (e.g.,Wolpe, 1961).

Self-Regulatory Systems and Plans

While behavior is controlled to a con-siderable extent by externally administeredconsequences for actions, the individualalso regulates his own behavior by self-imposed goals (standards) and self-pro-duced consequences. Even in the absenceof external constraints and social monitors,persons set performance goals for them-selves and react with self-criticism or self-

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satisfaction to their behavior depending onhow well it matches their expectations andcriteria. The concept of self-imposedachievement standards is seen in Rotter's(1954) "minimal goal" construct and inmore recent formulations of self-reinforcingfunctions (e.g., Bandura, 197Ic; Kanfer,1971; Kanfer & Marston, 1963; Mischel,1968, 1973a).

The essence of self-regulatory systems isthe subject's adoption of contingency rulesthat guide his behavior in the absence of,and sometimes in spite of, immediate ex-ternal situational pressures. Such rulesspecify the kinds of behavior appropriate(expected) under particular conditions, theperformance levels (standards, goals) whichthe behavior must achieve, and the con-sequences (positive and negative) of at-taining or failing to reach those standards.Each of these components of self-regulationmay be different for different individuals,depending on their unique earlier historiesor on more recently varied instructions orother situational information.

Some of the components in self-regula-tion have been demonstrated in studies ofgoal setting and self-reinforcement (e.g.,Bandura & Whalen, 1966; Bandura &Perloff, 1967; Mischel & Liebert, 1966).Perhaps the most dramatic finding fromthese studies is that even young childrenwill not indulge themselves with freelyavailable immediate gratifications but,instead, follow rules that regulate condi-tions under which they may reinforce them-selves. Thus, children, like adults, farfrom being simply hedonistic, make sub-stantial demands of themselves and imposecomplex contingencies upon their ownbehavior. The stringency or severity ofself-imposed criteria is rooted in the ob-served standards displayed by salientmodels as well as in the individual's directsocialization history (e.g., Mischel & Lie-bert, 1966), although after they have beenadopted, the standards may be retainedwith considerable persistence.

After the standards (terminal goals) forconduct in a particular situation have beenselected, the often long and difficult routeto self-reinforcement and external rein-

forcement with material rewards is prob-ably mediated extensively by covert sym-bolic activities, such as praise and self-instructions, as the individual reachessubgoals. When individuals imagine rein-forcing and noxious stimuli, their behaviorappears to be influenced in the same manneras when such stimuli are externally pre-sented (e.g., Cautela, 1971). These covertactivities serve to maintain goal-directedwork until the performance matches orexceeds the person's terminal standards(e.g., Meichenbaum, 1971). Progress alongthe route to a goal is also mediated by self-generated distractions and cognitive opera-tions through which the person can trans-form the aversive "self-control" situationinto one which he can master effectively(e.g., Mischel et al., 1972; Mischel &Moore, 1973a, 1973b). While achievementof important goals leads to positive self-appraisal and self-reinforcement, failure toreach significant self-imposed standardsmay lead the individual to indulge inpsychological self-lacerations (e.g., self-condemnation). The anticipation of suchfailure probably leads to extensive anxiety,while the anticipation of success may helpto sustain performance, although the exactmechanisms of self-regulation still requiremuch empirical study.

Self-reactions and self-regulation also areinfluenced by the person's affective state.Following positive experiences, individualsbecome much more benign both towardthemselves and others than after negativeexperiences. For example, after successexperiences or positive mood inductions,there is greater selective attention to posi-tive information about the self (Mischelet al, 1973), greater noncontingent self-gratification (e.g., Mischel, Coates, & Ras-koff, 1968; Moore, Underwood, & Rosen-han, 1973), and greater generosity (e.g.,Isen, Horn, & Rosenhan, 1973).

In conceptualizing the organization ofcomplex self-regulatory behavior, it willbe necessary to consider the individual's"priority rules" for determining the se-quencing of behavior and "stop rules" forthe termination of a particular sequence ofbehavior. The ideas concerning "plans"


as hierarchical processes which control theorder in which an organism performs asequence of operations, proposed by Miller,Galanter, and Pribram (1960), seem rele-vant. Subjectively, we do seem to generateplans, and once a plan is formed (to goon a trip, to marry, to move to a new job,to write a paper) a whole series of sub-routines follows. While intuitively plaus-ible, the concept of plans has not yetstimulated the necessary personality-ori-ented cognitive research. Promising stepstoward the study of plans are the conceptsof behavioral intentions (Dulany, 1962),intention statements, and contracts (e.g.,Kanfer, Cox, Greiner, & Karoly, 1973).Although self-instructions and intentionstatements are likely to be essential com-ponents of the individual's plans and thehierarchical organization of his self-regu-latory behavior, at present these topicsprovide perhaps the largest void and thegreatest challenge in personality psy-chology.

To summarize, a comprehensive ap-proach to person variables must take ac-count of the individual's self-regulatorysystems. These systems include: the rulesthat specify goals or performance standardsin particular situations; the consequences ofachieving or failing to achieve those cri-teria ; self-instructions and cognitive stim-ulus transformations to achieve the self-control necessary for goal attainment; andorganizing rules (plans) for the sequencingand termination of complex behavioralpatterns in the absence of external sup-ports and, indeed, in the face of externalhindrances.

Overview of Person Variables

In sum, individual differences in be-havior may reflect differences in each ofthe foregoing person variables and in theirinteractions, summarized in Table 1.First, people differ in their constructioncompetencies. Even if people have similarexpectancies about the most appropriateresponse pattern in a particular situationand are uniformly motivated to make it,they may differ in whether or not (and howwell) they can do it, that is, in their ability

TABLE 1SUMMARY OF COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNING

PERSON VARIABLES

1. Construction competencies: ability to construct(generate) particular cognitions and behaviors.Related to measures of IQ, social and cognitive(mental) maturity and competence, ego develop-ment, social-intellectual achievements and skills.Refers to what the subject knows and can do.

2. Encoding strategies and personal constructs:units for categorizing events and for self-descriptions.

3. Behavior-outcome and stimulus-outcome ex-pectancies in particular situations.

4. Subjective stimulus values: motivating andarousing stimuli, incentives, and aversions.

5. Self-regulatory systems and plans: rules and self-reactions for performance and for the organizationof complex behavior sequences.

to construct the preferred response. Forexample, due to differences in skill andprior learning, individual differences mayarise in interpersonal problem solving,empathy and role taking, or cognitive-intellective achievements. Response dif-ferences also may reflect differences in howindividuals categorize a particular situa-tion (i.e., in how they encode, group, andlabel the events that comprise it) and inhow they construe themselves and others.Differences between persons in their per-formance in any situation depend on theirbehavior-outcome and stimulus-outcomeexpectancies, that is, differences in the ex-pected outcomes associated with particularresponses or stimuli in particular situations.Performance differences also may be due todifferences in the subjective values of theoutcomes expected in the situation.Finally, individual differences may be dueto differences in the self-regulatory systemsand plans that each person brings to thesituation.

COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNINGVIEW OF INTERACTION

In this final section, some issues in cur-rent theorizing about personality will bereconsidered and interpreted in light of theproposed cognitive social learning personvariables. These issues concern the role

276 WALTER MISCHEL

of individual differences and the specificinteraction of person variables and situa-tions.

When Do Individual Differences Make aDifference?

From the present viewpoint, the condi-tions or "situational variables" of thepsychological environment provide theindividual with information which in-fluences the previously discussed personvariables, thereby affecting cognitive andbehavioral activities under those conditions."Situations" thus affect behavior insofaras they influence such person variables asthe individual's encoding, his expectancies,the subjective value of stimuli, or theability to generate response patterns. Inlight of the proposed set of person vari-ables, it is now possible to return to thequestion of when situations are most likelyto exert powerful effects and, conversely,when person variables are likely to bemost influential.

Psychological "situations" and "treat-ments" are powerful to the degree that theylead all persons to construe the particularevents the same way, induce uniform ex-pectancies regarding the most appropriateresponse pattern, provide adequate in-centives for the performance of that re-sponse pattern, and instill the skills neces-sary for its satisfactory construction andexecution. Conversely, situations andtreatments are weak to the degree that theyare not uniformly encoded, do not generateuniform expectancies concerning the de-sired behavior, do not offer sufficient in-centives for its performance, or fail toprovide the learning conditions required forsuccessful construction of the behavior.

Individual differences can determinebehavior in a given situation most stronglywhen the situation is ambiguously struc-tured (as in projective testing) so thatsubjects are uncertain about how to cate-gorize it and have no clear expectationsabout the behaviors most likely to be ap-propriate (normative, reinforced) in thatsituation.* To the degree that the situa-tion is "unstructured," the subject willexpect that virtually any response from

him is equally likely to be equally ap-propriate (i.e., will lead to similar con-sequences), and variance from individualdifferences will be greatest. Conversely,when subjects expect that only one re-sponse will be reinforced (e.g., only one"right" answer on an achievement test,only one correct response for the driverwhen the traffic light turns red) and thatno other responses are equally good, andall subjects are motivated and capable ofmaking the appropriate response, thenindividual differences will be minimal andsituational effects prepotent. To thedegree that subjects are exposed to power-ful treatments, the role of individual dif-ferences will be minimized. Conversely,when treatments are weak, ambiguous, ortrivial, individual differences in personvariables should exert significant effects.

There have been several empiricaldemonstrations of these points. Mischeland Staub (1965) examined some of theconditions determining the interaction andrelative importance of individual differ-ences and situations. Adolescent subjectswere assessed on a measure of their ex-pectancies for success in ability areas.Three weeks later, they worked on a seriesof problems and in one treatment obtainedsuccess, in a second, failure, and in a third,no information. Next, they had to makemany choices, including one between anoncontingent but less preferred rewardand a more preferred reward whose at-tainment was contingent upon their suc-cessful performance on a task similar tothe one on which they had previouslyeither succeeded, failed, or received noinformation. On this choice, situationalsuccess and failure had the expected effects:subjects who had succeeded chose muchmore often to work for the contingentpreferred reward than did those who hadfailed. The effects of situational successand failure were so strong that they wipedout the role of individual differences inpreexperimental expectancy for success.But in the "no-information" condition (inwhich subjects obtained no feedback abouttheir performance quality in the situation)preexperimental expectancy was a highly


significant determinant of their choice towork for contingent rewards. Thus situa-tional manipulations which provided newexpectancies minimized the effects of rele-vant preexisting individual differences,but when situational variables were weakor ambiguous (the no-information about-performance condition) the expectanciesthat persons brought to the situationaffected their behavior. Similar conclusionscome from a recent study investigating theinfluence of success and failure experienceson subsequent selective attention to in-formation about the self (Mischel et al.,1973).

The complex social settings of life alsomay be construed as varying in the degreeto which they prescribe and limit therange of expected and acceptable behaviorfor persons in particular roles and settingsand hence permit the expression of in-dividual differences (e.g., Barker, 1966).In some settings the rules and prescriptionsfor enacting specific role behaviors imposenarrow limits on the range of possible be-haviors (e.g., in church, at school, in atheatre, at a conference), while in others therange of possible behaviors is broad andoften the individual can select, structure,and reorganize situations with minimalexternal constraints. Because in particularsettings certain response patterns arereinforced while others are not, differentsettings become the occasion for particularbehaviors in different degrees. Raush(1965), for example, found that in a sampleof normal American boys, friendly acts ledto unfriendly responses in 31% of the in-stances in game situations but in only 4%of the time at mealtimes.

Person—condition interactions are neverstatic, but environmental stabilities canbe identified which help to account forcontinuities in behavior and permit usefulpredictions (e.g., Mischel, 1968). While itwould be bizarre to ignore the person inthe psychology of personality, behavioroften may be predicted and controlledefficaciously from knowledge about relevantstimulus conditions, especially when thoseconditions are powerful (Mischel, 1968).The potency of predictions based on knowl-

edge of stimulus conditions is seen, forexample, in predictive studies regardingposthospital prognosis for mental patients.Of special interest are studies which re-vealed that the type, as well as the severity,of psychiatric symptoms depended strik-ingly on whether the person was in thehospital or in the community, with littleconsistency in behavior across changingsituations (Ellsworth, Foster, Childers,Gilberg, & Kroeker, 1968). Moreover,accurate predictions of posthospital ad-justment hinged on knowledge of the en-vironment in which the ex-patient will beliving in the community, such as the avail-ability of jobs and family support, ratherthan on any measured person variables orin-hospital behavior (e.g., Fairweather,1967). In another context, predictions ofintellectual achievement are greatly im-proved if they take account of the degreeto which the child's environment supports(models and reinforces) intellectual de-velopment (Wolf, 1966). Finally, whenpowerful treatments are developed, such asmodeling and desensitization therapies forphobias, predictions about outcomes arebest when based on knowing the treatmentto which the individual is assigned (e.g.,Bandura, Blanchard, & Ritter, 1969). Onthe other hand, when relevant situationalinformation is absent or minimal, or whenpredictions are needed about individualdifferences in response to the same condi-tions, or when treatment variables arcweak, information about person variablesbecomes essential.

Specific Interactions between Behavior andConditions

Traditionally, trait research has studiedindividual differences in response to the"same" situation. But some of the moststriking differences between persons maybe found not by studying their responses tothe same situation but by analyzing theirselection and construction of stimulusconditions. In the conditions of life out-side the laboratory the psychological "stim-uli" that people encounter are neitherquestionnaire items, nor experimental in-structions, nor inanimate events, but they

278 WALTER MISCHEL

involve people and reciprocal relationships(e.g., with spouse, with boss, and withchildren). The person continuously in-fluences the "situations" of his life as wellas being affected by them in a mutual,organic two-way interaction. These inter-actions reflect not only the person's reac-tions to conditions but also his active selec-tion and modification of conditions throughhis own cognitions and actions.

As the analysis of complex social inter-actions illustrates (e.g., Patterson & Cobb,1971), the person continuously selects,changes, and generates conditions just asmuch as he is affected by them. Themutual interaction between person andconditions (so easily forgotten when onesearches for generalized traits on paper-and-pencil tests) cannot be overlookedwhen behavior is studied in the inter-personal contexts in which it is evoked,maintained, and modified.

Generally, changes in behavior towardothers tend to be followed by reciprocalchanges in the behavior of those others(Raush et al., 1959). In Raush's (1965)studies of naturalistic interactions, forexample, "the major determinant of an actwas the immediately preceding act. Thusif you want to know what child B will do,the best single predictor is what child A didto B the moment before [p. 492]." Con-strued from the viewpoint of Child A,this means that A's own behavior deter-mines B's reactions to him. In that sense,the person is generating his own conditions.Such subject variables as the person'sexpectancies, self-regulatory rules, plans,and constructs presumably guide the situa-tions which he selects, generates, ^lnd struc-tures for himself.

The proposed cognitive social learningapproach to person variables emphasizesmost strongly the need to study the in-dividual's behavior in specific interactionwith particular conditions. Indeed, theconceptualization of behavior, whetherpsychologist defined (as in research) orsubject defined (as in clinical, individuallyoriented assessment) must be embedded inrelation to the specific conditions in whichthe behavior occurs. Rather than talk

about "behavior," it may be more usefulto conceptualize behavior-contingency unitsthat link specific patterns of behavior tothe conditions in which they may be ex-pected. Accurate descriptions require spec-ifying as precisely as possible the responsemode of the behavior as well as the con-tingencies in which it is expected to be ofhigh or low frequency, as was discussed inearlier sections on situational moderatorvariables. Thus rather than describe aperson as "aggressive," it would be neces-sary to qualify the mode of aggressive be-havior (e.g., verbal insults but not physicalattacks) and the specific contingencies (e.g.,when criticized for poor athletic perfor-mance on playground but not in class). Suchcumbersome, hyphenated descriptions (e.g.,Mischel, 1969) would lack the "thumbnailsketch" appeal of global trait portraits.But they would remind us of the discrim-inativeness and complexity of the indivi-dual's behavior, its idiosyncratic organiza-tion, its dependence on conditions, and thehazards of attempting to abbreviate itgrossly.

The previously discussed person variablesshould make it plain that, a cognitive sociallearning approach does not construe theindividual as an empty organism buffetedentirely by situational forces. Yet itshould be equally apparent that the natureand effects of these person variables dependon specific interactions between the in-dividual and the psychological conditionsof his life. Construction capacities cannotbe adequately understood without linkingthem to the cognitive social learning condi-tions through which they develop and aremaintained and to the behaviors whichthey yield. Similarly, the study of ex-pectancies must not lose sight of their rootsin the individual's direct and vicariousexperiences and of their ready modifi-ability in the light of changes in behavior-outcome and stimulus-outcome relation-ships. While subjective stimulus valuesand the individual's preferences and aver-sions may have a greater degree of sta-bility, their meaning and impact alsohinge on the specifics of the conditionsin which they occur. Self-regulatory


rules, standards, and plans serve to imposeadditional continuity and consistency uponbehavior and guide the individual in theabsence of immediate situational forces.Yet such standards, rules, and plans alsoare not situation free, and their flexibilityin response to changing conditions providesfurther testimony to human adaptiveness.

Perhaps substantial immunity to situa-tional changes is shown by some of theindividual's personal constructs. The"theories" formed about behavior (as inthe subject's implicit personality theoriesabout self and others) may be some of themost stable and situation-free construc-tions. That has double-edged conse-quences; the person's constructs provide ameasure of perceived stability in an other-wise excessively complex, disorganized,and unstable world, but they also maybecome hard to disconfirm. Yet even inthe realm of constructs, consistency is farfrom pervasive. For example, Gergen's(1968) findings reveal that contrary to thepopular belief, when it comes to theirself-perceptions people do not have a con-sistent, unitary self-concept. Indeed, heconcludes with regard to the phenomena ofself-concepts that "inconsistency" ratherthan "consistency" seems to be the naturalstate of affairs.5

The proposed approach to personalitypsychology emphasizes the interdependenceof behavior and conditions, mediated bythe constructions and cognitive activitiesof the person who generates them, andrecognizes the human tendency to inventconstructs and to adhere to them as wellas to generate subtly discriminative be-haviors across settings and over time. Itemphasizes the crucial role of situations(conditions) but views them as informa-tional inputs whose behavioral impact de-pends on how they are processed by theperson. It focuses on how such informa-tion processing hinges, in turn, on the priorconditions which the individual has ex-

6 In the same vein, in their analysis of sources ofvariance in personal constructs, Argyle and Little(1972 )found that^the average variation attributableto persons was only 16.1%, whereas the percentagesfor situations and interaction were 43.6 and 40.2,respectively.

perienced. And it recognizes that theperson's behavior changes the situations ofhis life as well as being changed by them.The term "personality psychology" neednot be preempted for the study of differ-ences between individuals in their con-sistent attributes: it fits equally well thestudy of the individual's cognitive and be-havioral activities as he interacts with theconditions of his life.

Three Perspectives in Personality Study

The study of persons may be construedalternatively from three complementaryperspectives. Construed from the view-point of the psychologist seeking proceduresor operations necessary to produce changesin performance, it may be most useful tofocus on the environmental conditionsnecessary to modify the subject's behaviorand therefore to speak of "stimulus con-trol," "operant conditioning," "classicalconditioning," "reinforcement control,""modeling" and so on. Construed fromthe viewpoint of the theorist concernedwith how these operations produce theireffects in the subject who undergoes them,it may be more useful to speak of altera-tions in processed information and specif-ically in constructs, expectancies, subjec-tive values, rules, and other theoreticalperson variables that mediate the effects ofconditions upon behavior. Construed fromthe viewpoint of the experiencing subject,it may be more useful to speak of the sameevents in terms of their phenomenologicalimpact as thoughts, feelings, wishes, andother subjective (but communicable) in-ternal states of experience. Confusionarises when one fails to recognize that thesame events (e.g., the "operant condi-tioning" of a child's behavior at nurseryschool) may be alternatively construed from'each of these perspectives and that the.choice of constructions (or their combina-tions) depends on the construer's purpose.Ultimately, conceptualizations of the fieldof personality will have to be large enoughto encompass the phenomena seen fromall three perspectives. The present cogni-tive social learning approach to personshopefully is a step in that direction.

280 WALTER MISCHEL

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(Received December 12, 1972)

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