Persons, behaviors and situations: An agenda for personality psychology in the postwar era

The internecine war over the relative importance of persons and situations, triggered 40 years ago by Walter Mischel’s Personality and Assessment, is largely over, so it is time for researchers to develop an agenda for personality psychology in the postwar era. The possibilities include a return to the status quo ante characterized by questionnaire-based research, focusing on narrower trait constructs than the “global” traits that have undergone so much criticism, and concentrating upon within-person variance (as well as or even instead of between person variance) in behavior. Each of these possibilities offers some promise but also hazards that may be under-appreciated. The present article suggests that personality theory and research be re-organized in terms of the personality triad of persons, behaviors, and situations. A precondition for understanding the elements of this triad is better conceptualization and measurement of behavior and, especially, situations. While the interactions among these elements may turn out to be important, a first order of business is to understand the main effects of each element, a formidable but exciting research agenda that will entail a turn to broadly descriptive research rather than the testing of narrow, isolated hypotheses. Looking further ahead, a post-interactionist personality psychology may someday recognize that personality is a latent construct only indirectly indicated through behavior, and the ultimate understanding of that construct will be empirically tested by the ability to predict behavior in new and unique situations.