Question

What was Walter Mischel’s critique of personality? Provide at least two arguments from this critique. Explain one example of modern research that helps to clarify the accuracy of his critique

Answer 1

According to Mischel, responses which we assume to be as a personality trait are just cognitive strategies to gain a wanted reward in a given situation.

Walter and Mischel challenged cross situational consistency assumption. According to him behavior is more situation specific and situationally determined i.e most people do not display same type of behavior across a range of situations.

They gave the interaction perspective where interaction between a person and situation is the determinant for behavior. Both situation and trait and important and neither alone is sufficient to predict or explain behavior.

Psychological Features of situations: tells how differently people interpret and perceive similar situation differently.

Sometimes situations are more powerful determinants of behavior due to:

1. Response Freedom: When there is high degree of freedom of response, personality traits bear a strong influence on behavior. When there is of degree of freedom, situational factors dominate.

2. Competency demand hypothesis: In situations where there is high competency demand, the behavior is determined by cognitive and social skills thus reflecting particular personality traits of an individual.

According to Mischel, responses which we assume to be as a personality trait are just cognitive strategies to gain a wanted reward in a given situation.

Study done by Lindzey & Runyan, 2007 tells that learned outcome predictors, are behaviors which the person has cultivated to avoid something bad and gain something good as opposed to their natural inclination due to personality.