, and ^tm sodai

psychc^sgicai ir)¥®di0n of
Douglas T. Kenrick and Arthur Dantdiik, Arizona StMe
University

Abstract

The present paper discusses three recent developments in the field of personality:
(1) an infusion of social p&ycbolc^ists, (2) a proliferation of interactionist models, (3)
the developnent ofraethodoic^calstrategies combining nomothetic and idiographic
approaches. Advantages and disadvantages of these developments are discussed, and
three problems associated with them are addressed: (1) an overemphasis on pheno-
menology, (2) an overemphasis on idiosyncracy, and (3) an unsatisfactory level of
theory development. It is concluded that the present deveJopments have had a
stimulating effect on the field but they need to be int^rated with the traditional
personological goals of: (1) developing a taxonomy of individuals (as well as a
taxonomy of interactions) and (2) developing a more satisfactory theory of the whole
organism within which to embed our minitheories. We recommend that such a
theory attempt to incorporate the insights of the social learning and social cognition
approaches with the recent and exciting developments in evt^uttonary theory.

A decade ago, there were rumors that the field of personality was dead,
or if not yet among the departed, at least on the critical list. The critical
injuries can be traced in large part to several disparaging reviews of the
traditional assessment literature, and Mischel (1968) is often credited with
delivering the most damaging blow. There were several reactions to the
alleged demise of the field of personality. There were those who greeted
the death knell with skepticism. For instance. Block (1971, 1977) argued
that critiques such as Mischel's had missed the mark, by focusing on poorly
done studies of personality (see also Alker, 1972; Hogan, DeSoto, & Solano,
1977; and Wachtel, 1973 for similar responses to Mischel's critique). Some
accepted the disheartening news, but attempted to breathe new life into
the field with methodological resuscitation. One such approach can be seen
in the rise in popularity of "person-environment-interactionist" models,
which hold that individual differences can be studied fruitfully, but not
without the joint consideration of situational variables. Another such ap-
proach is found in the attempts to combine the traditional nomothetic
methodologies with the idiographic approach that Allport (1937) claimed
as essential to personology. Finally, there were those who accepted the fact

We wisii to thank David Funder and Stephen G. West for their heipfui comments on an
earlier draft of this article. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Douglas T. Kenrick,
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287.
Journal of Personality 51:3, September 1983. Copyright© 1983 by Duke University Press.
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 287

of this imminent passing as an opportunity to expand their own territories.

Social psychologists, some of whom relegated the traditional field of person-
ality to an epistomological status just above that of phrenology and astrology,
moved in vast numbers to fill the anticipated vacancy before the body was
even cold.
Whatever the merits of the traditional approaches to personality, it can
hardly be denied that the contributions of the interactionists, idiographers,
and social psychologists have had a profound effect on the current shape of
the field of personality. The main purpose of this paper will be to elucidate
some of the theoretical issues associated with these three developments.

The Social Psychological Presence

If one were to list cumulatively the members of the editorial boards of
the Journal of Personality, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
The Journal of Research in Personality, and Personality and Social Psy-
chology Bulletin, during the last decade, one would find the ratio of social
psychologists to personologists quite a bit out of line with the relative
preeminence of the word "personality" in the titles of these journals. The
state of affairs in Division 8 (Personality and Social) was enough to prompt
a small group of desperate personality researchers to solicit help in an
attempt to get representation there. According to Carlson (1976), "Person-
ality psychology, in recent years, seems to have lost its organizational home
in APA (Division 8, JPSP)." For most of the '70s the associate editors ("action
editors") oiJPSP were all primarily social psychologists (cf. Sechrest, 1976).'
Since social psychologists tend to hold a number of theoretical and meth-
odological biases that are directly at odds with key assumptions of person-
ality research, the preponderance of social psychologists in key positions on
the personality journals is perhaps rather ironic.

Situationism
Social psychologists were particularly receptive to the suggestions of
social learning theorists like Mischel (1968) who argued that more of the
causal variance in behavior could be found in the environment than inside
the person. Jones and Nisbett (1972), for example, embraced Mischel's
position in an influential paper claiming that personality traits exist largely
"in the eye of the beholder," and Ross (1977), writing in the prestigious
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, argued that the tendency to
attribute causality to traits of the behaver, rather than to situational deter-
minants, is the "fundamental attributional error." There are a number of
1. This state of affairs has been changed very recently with the somewhat controversial
splitting of the Journal of Persortality and Social Psychology into three parts. The first author
of this paper has heard more than one experimental social psychologist respond with resentment
to the "giving away" of such a large part of "our" journal to the personologists.
288 Kenrick and Dantchik
converging influences causing social psychologists to favor situationism,
including: (a) primary reliance on the laboratory experiment (cf. Helmreich,
1975; West & Gunn, 1978), (b) a tendency toward political liberalism and
(c) the influence of sociological thought.
The laboratory experiment has a number of appealing characteristics,
allowing for maximal control and causal inference, but whether its results
are generalizable to the natural phenomena of interest is often highly
questionable. This liability may be a particularly important one in the area
of personality. As Bowers (1973) points out, the experiment is blind to
individual differences (which function mainly as noise to be eliminated).
Monson and Snyder (1977) have argued that even when individual differ-
ences are considered in mixed design laboratory studies, the laboratory
situations severely constrain the operation of most personality differences.
Monson and Snyder's (1977) point is in some ways related to one frequently
made by sociologists who argue that behavior in a laboratory reflects the
norms of the laboratory more than anything else (Denzin, 1970).
A second factor that favors situationism among social psychologists is the
strong influence of "liberalism" on our thinking (cf. Baumgardner, 1977;
Hogan & Emler, 1978). According to Hogan and Emler (1978) this ideolog-
ical bias favors the assumptions that (1) there is no fixed core to human
nature and (2) there are no inherent individual differences between people.
As Baumgardner (1977) notes, this bias led us to reject vociferously Mc-
Dougall's (1908) Darwinian approach to social psychology in the absence
of empirical evidence against his claims.
A third factor is the influence of sociological thought on the theorizing
of social psychologists. Although it has been pointed out that psychological
"social psychology" and sociological ".social psychology" generally function
with little regard for one another's existence (Stryker, 1977), there has
nevertheless been at least some cross-fertilization (cf. Secord & Backman,
1974). The influence of sociology on our own discipline can be seen, for
instance, in our attention to "roles," "norms," and "expectations." These
constructs presume that the "actor's" behavior is not part of his inner self,
but is instead tailored to his (frequently changing) audience. As Stone and
Farberman (1970) point out, most (not all) sociologists reject the idea of
"personality" because, they argue, "inconsistency . . . is usual" (p. 368). As
an example of sociological influence, Zimbardo and his colleagues (Haney,
Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973) went to great lengths to emphasize that it was
"role" demands and not any inner characteristics of the participants that
were responsible for eliciting cruelty in their well-known "prison simulation"
study.

Cognitive Bias
As Manis (1977) notes: "Social psychology is presently dominated by the
cognitive point of view." This point of view includes "an emphasis on
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 289

personal beliefs and hypotheses as the immediate determinants of behavior"

(Manis, 1977, p. 550). Such a view, according to Manis, emphasizes the
"perceived world over the objective world," and attends to "the inferences
and illusions that derive from cognitive reality" (Manis, 1977, p. 550).
Although Manis has some reservations about this cognitive emphasis, (e.g.,
he points out its disregard for potentially important biological influences)
he notes a number of advantages, including "matters of convenience . ..
experimental paradigms that enable ambitious investigators to complete
systematic research programs within a manageable budget of time and
money" (Manis, 1977, p. 563). We agree that a number of interesting
advances have been made by social psychologists who have adopted a
cognitive perspective. The application of the social cognitive approach to
the study of personality, however, has thus far been a mixed blessing.
The social cognition approach is well suited to examining potential errors
in person perception, and these are certainly relevant to the domain of
personality. However, experimental studies of such errors tell us little about
the relative frequency of accurate vs. inaccurate person perception under
natural circumstances. Neither do they have much relevance to the question
of whether personality traits really exist, independent of any errors in
laymen's perceptions of them. Nevertheless, because subjects often make
mistakes of attribution in a half-hour laboratory study in which they interact
with total strangers (or pieces of paper describing selective attributes of
those strangers), social psychologists have made the unwarranted presump-
tion that such errors characterize most of person perception in the real
world, even between people who know one another well. This has resulted
in a peculiar view of personality traits. According to much of the social
cognition literature (cf. Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Ross, 1977) trait attributions
can occur in the absence of any real consistency, owing to selective attention,
selective memory, and other forms of biased information processing. To this
view, a trait is as much (or more) a construction of the perceiver as it is an
attribute of the person being observed (e.g., Mischel, 1973).
Another mixed advantage of the social cognition approach has come from
its attention to higher cortical functions. Certainly much of the interesting
variance in human behavior was missed by what Maslow (1965) called the
first two "forces" in the field of psychology—i.e., the psychoanalytic view
of humans as driven by irrational, unconscious urges, and the radical
behaviorist view of humans as "black boxes" buffetted about by unmediated
external contingencies, according to the same principles applied to the
behavior of laboratory rats. However, rather than producing a flattering
humanistic portrait of our species, social psychologists have, in large part,
continued to accentuate the negative even in attending to our "higher"
processes, choosing to focus mainly on errors of perception, as Manis (1977)
notes. There is, of course, no necessary connection between a cognitive
290 Kenrick and Dantchik
approach and a view of humans as faulty perceivers, and excellent counter-
examples exist (Kruglanski & Ajzen, 1983; Miller & Ross, 1975).
Another problem stems from this focus on higher capacities. Too exclusive
a reliance on cognition sometimes results in a view of the human being as
"a disembodied cortex, seeking 'information' as its sole sustenance" (Kenrick,
1979, p. 505). The rational capacities of the human cortex evolved as an
adaptation to serve the biological needs of the limbic system, and any
scheme that ignores the role of affect, or gives it a secondary role, is bound,
in our opinion, to be an unsatisfactory one. This is particularly true for the
field of personality where a major focus is on the integrated funetion of the
whole organism as opposed to its isolated part processes (cf. Hogan, 1982).
Recently, social cognition researchers have been attempting to incorporate
affect into their explanatory schemes (cf. Fiske, 1981; Wright & Mischel,
1982; Zajonc, 1980) and we feel that this is a necessary expansion.
Additionally, social cognition research tends to focus mainly on proximate
(or immediate) causes of behavior, partly in allegiance to Lewin's argument
that any element of a situation can drastically change the "phenomenal
field" and that the immediate present is therefore the most fruitful time
frame for a psychological analysis (Lewin, 1936, 1951). While the influence
of momentary "sets," "salience," and focus of attention are no doubt of
interest to psychology, they are largely irrelevant to the study of personality,
which is concerned with ultimate rather than proximate explanations of
behavior (Rychlak, 1976). This bias toward the study of the immediate
present goes hand in hand with the use of the convenient laboratory
experiment, in which the investigator is limited to the study of only those
social events that unfold within a 45-minute time span.
Finally, as a result of this focus on proximate analysis, social cognition
research has tended to be process oriented rather than structure oriented.
However, it is structural differences between individuals rather than proc-
esses that are of major concern to the field of personality. Although it has
not generally been the case, a social cognition approach can incorporate
structural variables, as Markus' (1977) work with "schematic" vs. "asche-
matic" individuals has shown (cf. also Mischel, 1973). Although it is
doubtless the case that some "traits" can accurately be classified in the
domain of cognition, it would nevertheless be a mistake to attempt to
explain personality solely in cognitive terms.

Counterintuitive Findings
In the section above, we noted that social cognition research has placed
a heavy emphasis on errors of cognition. This is consistent with another
important historical aspect of the social psychological approach. As Ring
noted in 1967, social psychologists have shown a fascination with findings
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 291

that violate our intuitions. The fact that over 50% of Milgram's obedient
subjects repeatedly shocked a screaming and possibly injured fellow subject
was nicely contrasted with the predictions of other groups (including
psychiatrists and college students), who guessed that less than one percent
would do so. Likewise the study of "cognitive dissonance" phenomena has
been so intriguing because its predictions oppose common sense.
Despite the valiant efforts of our subjects to look good (Sigall, Aronson,
& Van Hoose, 1970), we have delighted in making them look foolish. Have
things changed since Ring's (1967) complaint? It would not appear so, in
that the recent social psychological literature still tells a story of "mindless"
subjects (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978) falling easy prey to the "foot-
in-the-door" (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), the "door-in-the-face" (Cialdini,
Vincent, Lewis, Catalan, Wheeler, & Darby, 1975), and so on. No doubt
such counterintuitive findings help to keep our undergraduate students
wide-eyed (or at least awake) during our lectures. Of course one favorite
eye-opener is to tell them that the traits that they have been attributing to
themselves and to their neighbors are largely figments of their imagination.

Minitheories, Multitheories and Laundry Lists

According to some observers, social psychologists have generally paid
more attention to empirical phenomena than to theoretical explanation (cf.
Elms, 1975; Strickland, Aboud, Gergen, Jahoda, & Tajfel, 1976). As Hol-
lander (1976) described theory in social psychology, "There are few 'Grand
Theories' like those in the social sciences, and many so-called theories are
nothing more than identifiers which say, in effect, 'look at this variable'."
In fact, most social psychological texts are organized around processes such
as "leadership," "interpersonal attraction," and "social influence," rather
than theories. A prototype is provided by Secord and Backman (1974), who
begin with a very brief chapter on "the nature of social psychology" without
any discussion of theory in the field, and move on to sixteen chapters on
processes like "persuasive communication" and "intergroup attitudes."
This is not to argue that social psychologists as a group have been totally
unconcerned with theory (cf. Shaw & Costanzo, 1970; West & Wicklund,
1980). Compared with personality psychologists, however, who tend to
focus a bit more on theories of the "whole organism" (cf. Hall & Lindzey,
1978; Hogan, 1976; Rychlak, 1973) social psychologists more frequently
take a "minitheory" approach, developing a limited set of propositions to
deal with the empirical phenomenon of interest. Different minitheories are
generated for separate processes, resulting in a multitude of explanatory
constructs that are often unconnected. Thus, "social facilitation," "deindi-
viduation," and the "leadership-contingency model" may be discussed in
separate sections of a chapter on group processes. Not only are interrelations
292 KenricK and Dantchik

among these minitheories unlikely to be addressed, but a separate list of

such narrow range theories will be presented to address the topic of
"interpersonal attraction," another list for "attitude change," and so on.
Another approach is simply to develop a "laundry list" of possible variables
to be empirically investigated. For instance, a social psychologist might
generate a list of factors that could conceivably influence a dependent
variable such as attitude change (e.g., physical attractiveness of the com-
municator, or order of presentation of arguments), or a list of possible social
processes that might be influenced by an independent variable like physical
attractiveness. Such lists are often generated with no specific theory in
mind, and include variables whose interaction with other variables on the
list is considered only empirically, not conceptually.

Interactionism

A decade ago, it would perhaps have been meaningful to divide psychol-

ogists into two somewhat opposing camps—those who focused on situational
determinants vs. those who felt that internal determinants were the major
causes of behavior (cf. Bowers, 1973; Cronbach, 1975). It is indeed a happy
compromise that allows both parties in a dispute to conclude that they were
right after all. Such has been the promise of the person-environment
interactionist approach (e.g.. Bowers, 1973; Ekehammer, 1974, Endler &
Magnusson, 1976). On the one hand, no trait psychologist ever seriously
argued that personality characteristics manifested themselves without regard
to the appropriateness of the situation (cf. Hogan, 1982). As Allport noted
in 1937:
Any specific action is a product of innumerable determinants, not only
of traits but of momentary pressures and specialized influences . .. (traits
are inferred from the) repeated occurrence of actions having the same
significance (equivalence of response) to a definable range of stimuli
having the same personal significance (equivalence of stimuli) .. . Traits
are not at all times active, but .. . are distinguished by low thresholds of
arousal . .. (Traits derive their significance from) the role they play in
advancing adaptation within, and mastery of the personal environment
(Allport, 1937, pp. 339-342).

In 1966, Allport remarked further that:

Differing situations elicit differing tendencies from my repertoire. I do
not perspire except in the heat, nor shiver except in the cold (Allport,
1966, p. 2).
On the other side, although Mischel has frequently been identified as a
pure situationist, he points out that his major argument was not that there
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 293

were no individual differences, but merely that our broad generalizations

about specific persons needed to be qualified or "hyphenated" to reflect
individual experiences with, and interpretations of, particular environments
(e.g., Mischel, 1977b).
In brief, the interactionist position is that the person's behavior is not
simply a function of the situation, but that:
1. The individual selects environments to play out his or her personal
characteristics (Bowers, 1973; Wachtel, 1973; Snyder & Gangestad, 1982).
2. The characteristics of the individual can reciprocally alter the environ-
ment he or she encounters (e.g., Rausch, 1965; Wachtel, 1973).
3. Neither personality factors alone, nor situational factors alone, are
sufficient in predicting behavior; both must be considered jointly (e.g..
Bowers, 1973; Endler & Magnusson, 1976). For instance, a consideration of
the relative school success of "internals" vs. "externals" might reveal little
or no difference due to that personality variable. At the same time, a
comparison of "authoritarian" vs. "democratic" classrooms might reveal a
null effect due to the type of environment. However, closer examination
might reveal that students with an "internal" locus of control orientation do
poorly in authoritarian classes but well in democratic ones, while the
opposite might be true of students with an "external" orientation (e.g.,
Harpin & Sandier, 1979).
4. The pattern of individuals' responses to situations in-a particular
domain is idiosyncratic. That is. Person A may be anxious in crises, calm
on airplane trips, and virtually incapacitated at the sight of spiders, while
Person B may be calm in crises and spider confrontations, but anxious on
airplane trips (cf. Argyle & Little, 1972; Endler & Hunt, 1966).
Although such "interactions" could be explained in several ways, it
appears that currently the strong consensus is to conceptualize them in
cognitive terms. For instance, in a central paper in this area, Endler and
Magnusson (1976) conclude:
On the person side of the interaction, cognitive factors are the essential
determinants of behavior . . . On the situation side, the psychological
meaning of the situation is the important determining factor (p. 968).
Likewise, in an historical review of interactionism, Ekehammer (1974)
states that according to modern person-environment conceptions, person
variables are expressed "in terms of cognitive structures" (p. 1027).
Thus, the popular current view of interaetionism is compatible with the
social cognition tradition among social psychologists, and it is therefore not
surprising to find a good deal of overlap between the two areas. Much of
the interesting work by Mark Snyder, for example, has spanned the social
cognition and the interactionist traditions (e.g., Snyder, 1979). Another very
thoughtful paper in this hybrid domain is Carver's (1979) review of self-
294 Kenrick and Dantchik

attention processes. While some thought-provoking research has emerged

from this tradition, and while cognition no doubt plays some role in
mediating interactions, we will argue that the heavily phenomenological
emphasis taken by writers such as Endler and Magnusson (1976) has resulted
in a limiting view of person-environment interactions.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches

Much of the empirical research on individual differences has been based
upon a nomothetic model that compares groups of individuals on common
dimensions. Gordon Allport (1937) introduced the word "nomothetic" into
the psychological lexicon, borrowing the term from the philosopher Win-
delband. However, Windelband had suggested that while the study of
natural events was best approached through nomothetic methods, historical
analysis was accomplished through idiographic approaches (Marceil, 1977).
Just as the historian or the biographer uses idiographic science to understand
particular events in nature or society, Allport argued, so the study of the
individual in psychology should take an idiographic approach (although he
did not argue that nomothetic approaches were to be eschewed—in fact,
he generally used such methods himself) (Marceil, 1977).
One reason for the popularity of nomothetic over idiographic methods
among scientifically oriented investigators of individual differences is that
the quantitative technology for nomothetic methods has been developed to
a far greater degree (although there has very recently been- some attention
given to the quantitative study of variables within individuals [e.g., Harris,
1980; Lamiell, 1981]). While these purely idiographic methods have not yet
received a great deal of attention, there has been a recent surge of interest
in a promising hybrid approach that was suggested by Bem and Allen
(1974). Their approach involved a continued application of nomothetic
research methodology combined with a moderator variable approach that
is based upon a theoretical consideration of Allport's idiographic principle.
Working on the presumption that not all traits apply equally well to all
individuals, Bem and Allen (1974) divided their subjects into subject groups
based upon their self-reported cross-situational consistency on a given trait.
Eiem and Allen's (1974) findings indicated that the .30 ceiling (which
Mischel [1968] argued to be characteristic of personality research) could be
broken through by analyzing the data from the highly consistent subjects
separately from those who reported less consistency on the trait in question.
Zanna, Olson, and Fazio (1980) likewise found support for a similar
approach in a study relating religious attitudes and behaviors. Much stronger
correlations were found in analyses that focused on subjects whose self-
reports indicated that they were cross-situationally consistent in their reli-
gious behaviors.
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 295

Kenrick and Stringfield (1980) noted that the fact that Bem and Allen
(1974) used only two traits, and considered these one at a time, did not
allow for an optimal integration of the idiographic assumption with nom-
othetic analysis procedures. They argued that an even better approach
would involve allowing each subject to pick his or her own most consistent
dimension from some limited but comprehensive domain (they chose to use
common-usage labels for the dimensions in Cattell's 16 PF [Cattell, 1965]).
Kenrick and Stringfield (1980) suggested an additional moderator based
upon the following line of reasoning:
In line with the notion that the subject is in the best position to observe
his or her own behavior (Monson & Snyder, 1977), it should be possible
to use the subject's own phenomenological perspective to determine the
public observability of his or her behavior on a given dimension . .. Using
emotionality as an example, we may imagine two persons who have
observed that they are characteristically highly emotional. Both rate
themselves as similarly consistent and check the same point on a 7-point
scale labeled emotional-unemotional .. . however. Person A becomes
motorically hyperactive when emotional, whereas Person B experiences
visceral agitation. It seems likely that B, though perhaps observing her
own "emotionality" as easily as A observes his, will also be aware that her
emotionality is not accessible to others (pp. 92-93).
Kenrick and Stringfield (1980) therefore asked subjects to indicate the
extent to which their trait-relevant behaviors on each dimension were
observable to others. They found support for the utility of both of these
approaches towards isolating more predictable traits within subjects and
subjects within traits. Although certain of Kenrick and Stringfield's (1980)
original analyses contained statistical ambiguities (Rushton, Jackson, &
Paunonen, 1981), Kenrick and Braver (1982) performed additional analyses
removing these ambiguities, and still supported the utility of the general
approach.
Recently, Cheek (1982) has replicated the basic effects found by Bem
and Allen (1974) and Kenrick and Stringfield (1980). In Cheek's study each
subject was rated by three fraternity brothers on four of the five major
personality dimensions isolated by Norman (1963) (i.e., extraversion, agree-
ableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability). Self-peer correlations
tended to be relatively stronger for subjects who rated themselves as low
(vs. high) in variability or as observable (vs. unobservable) on a given trait.
The observability moderator provided somewhat more discriminating
power, especially for the emotionality dimension, as Kenrick and Stringfield
predicted. In Cheek's sample, peer-self correlations on the emotionality
dimension were — .09 for the low observability vs. + .46 for the high
296 Kenrick and Dantchik

observability subjects. Kenrick and Stringfield had found comparable figures

of + .06 vs. + .43 for the analogous groups in their sample.
Two general points should be noted about the moderator strategies we
have been discussing; (1) These approaches are compatible with the inter-
actionist viewpoint to the extent that they suggest a somewhat idiosyncratic
arrangement of individual differences, although they are more specific and
limited in their qualifications; and (2) thus far, these approaches have not
been grounded in a more general theoretical framework. Bem and Allen
(1974) give the impression that the two traits they chose could almost have
been any of the 17,953 trait terms in the dictionary, and Kenrick and
Stringfield (1980) chose a set of trait adjectives based upon Cattell's empir-
ically derived list.

Some Problems with These Developments

Although each of the developments we have discussed thus far has
resulted in a number of intriguing findings and each has in part contributed
to the renewed excitement surrounding the study of personality, we see
several problems embodied in their conjoint influence. Two of these are
problems of emphasis. It is our opinion that there is an overemphasis on (a)
phenomenology and (b) idiosyncracy in the personality field today. A third
problem is the lack of integrated or articulated theory in much of the
current work. We will briefly address each of these problems in turn below.

Phenomenological Bias
As noted in the first two sections of the paper, both the social psychological
and the interactionist approaches have tended to favor a cognitively based
view of personality. Cognitive events, to the present generation of social/
personality psychologists, are generally not viewed in the British empiricist
tradition (i.e., as derivative from and isomorphic with real events) but tend
to be viewed in the Kantian sense (i.e., as primary to a "reality" which is
constructed by the mind of the observer). As we suggested above, this bias
manifests itself in a tendency to view traits and situations as constructions
of observers, each in his of her own solipsistic universe. While social
psychological research has provided ample evidence that observers can be
led to erroneous conclusions about those whom they observe, recent research
(and some not-so-recent research) supports Kenrick and Stringfield's (1980)
contention that such errors occur much more frequently at the impression
formation stage, before adequate information about real consistencies has
been obtained (e.g., Monson, Keel, Stephens, & Genung, 1982; Norman &
Goldberg, 1966). A number of findings are now accumulating to suggest
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 297

that personality coefficients can account for appreciably large components

of variance if observers are sufficiently familiar with the targets they are
rating and if reliable indices are used (Block, 1977; Cheek, 1982; Epstein,
1979; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1980; Hogan, DeSoto, & Solano, 1977; McCrae,
1982).^
It should be noted that although observers who are sufficiently familiar
with a person can agree quite well about that person's characteristics, these
correlations rarely exceed .30 when specific behavioral criteria are inter-
correlated (Mischel & Peake, 1982). While data of the latter variety have
sometimes been used to argue that personality is in the "eye of the beholder"
(e.g., Jones, 1976; Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Mischel, 1968; Ross, 1977;
Shweder, 1975), this argument is critically damaged by the data showing
agreement among observers (e.g., Bem & Allen, 1974; Cheek, 1982; Epstein,
1979; Funder, 1980; Kenrick & Braver, 1981; McCrae, 1982; Mischel &
Peake, 1982; Moskowitz & Schwarz, 1982). Thus, familiar observers are
basing their judgments upon some information in the objective world, and
the way that information is processed is consensually shared in some
important way. Our guess is that the agreement is a function of the fact
that observers are quite good at engaging in complex attributional processes
when they have sufficient experience with a person. Thus, specific behaviors
are differentially weighted depending upon other information such as (a)
the normative pressures in a given situation, (b) the target's mood, (c) other
contemporary events in the target's life, (d) other salient motivations known
to characterize the target, and so on. According to this line of reasoning,
familiar observers are capable of enough of this multivariate processing to
make reasonably useful aggregate predictions about those whom they know
well. Our position is compatible with Mischel's (1968; Mischel & Peake,
1982) argument that traits do not generally manifest themselves as indis-
criminate behavioral consistencies across situations. We are not, however,
agreeing with those who would argue therefrom that traits do not exist. In
fact, we are uncertain whether anyone ever held a position that saw traits
as manifesting themselves indiscriminately (cf. Hogan, 1982b).

2. In some cases (e.g., fraternity brothers), raters in these studies might not be considered
"independent" observers. Therefore, the possibility exists that high obtained correlations were
due to factors other than behavioral consistencies, for example, perhaps fraternity members
discuss each others' personality characteristics, and ratings are based on shared reputation.
This line of reasoning suggests that observers are highly attentive to verbal statements, but
ignore the actual behaviors on which these statements are based. We find this argument to be
somewhat strained. It is also weakened by the fact that similar results are obtained when raters
are independent (e.g.. Block, 1971; Koretzky, Kohn, & Jeger, 1978). In the Kenrick and
Stringfield (1980) study, high parent-peer correlations were obtained even though few of the
parents could have had any contact with a particular subject's peers (since they frequently
lived in remote rural areas several hundred miles away from the university).
298 Kenrick and Dantchik

Overemphasis on Idiosyncracy
The interactionist approach and the move toward more idiographic
approaches share in common a view of personality as idiosyncratically
organized. This is no doubt partially true. If only in keeping with a self-
presentational attempt to show consistency (cf. Kenrick & Stringfield, 1980;
Kenrick & Braver, 1982), we must argue for the advantages of moderator
variable approaches. It is important, however, to guard against taking such
an emphasis too far. As Cronbach (1975) has pointed out,
every second-order interaction is moderated by third order interactions,
which in turn are moderated by higher order interactions. Once we
attend to interactions, we enter a hall of mirrors that extends to infinity.
However far we carry our analysis—to third 'order or fifth order or any
other, untested interactions of still higher order can be envisioned (Cron-
bach, 1975, p. 119).
One indeed gets the impression in reading through much of the interac-
tionist literature that the number of interactions are potentially limitless,
and little attention has thus far been directed at delimiting the number of
environments," the number of "traits" which can interact with those
environments, or the natural associations between environments and per-
sonal characteristics.
In a comment combining the idiosyncratic and the cognitive inclinations,
Mischel (1977a) argues that the number of dimensions of environments is
"almost infinite" (p. 251), and depends "mainly on the purposes and
imagination of the classifiers" (p. 251). In relating this to the analogous
issue in the realm of personality traits, Mischel (1977b) argues that, "To
seek any single 'basic' taxonomy of situations may be as futile as searching
for a final or ultimate taxonomy of traits, we can label situations in at least
as many ways as we can label people" (pp. 237-238).''
We would argue, however, that the task confronting personality or
interactionist researchers is in fact to see beneath the sometimes confusing
complexities in behavior to decipher the underlying structures. Our task is
analogous to that which confronts the biological taxonomer. Although it is
no doubt true that every interaction between a given organism and a given

^ Upon careful examination of Mischels prolific contribution to the field, one finds that he
does not in fact advocate a position that either traits or environments are idiosyncratically
manufactured by the perceiver without any reality testing. For instance, in 1979, he stated
that:
Structure, I believe, exists neither all in the head of the perceiver nor all in the person
perceived; it is instead a function of an interaction between the beliefs of the observers and
the characteristics observed, in the person domain as well as in the common object donnain
. . . Perceivers certainly go beyond the information they are given, but it seems unlikely that
they regularly invent the information itself! (Mischel. 1979, 747-748).
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 299

environment has unique elements, we can nevertheless make meaningful

and powerful distinctions between amphibians and reptiles, swamps and
deserts, and patterns of relationships between given species and differing
habitats.
Pervin (1978) has noted that the history of taxonomy in zoology shows
three levels of progression:
1. Arbitrary "catalogs of convenience" depending upon the immediate
focus of the investigator (that is, animals might be classified into harmful
vs. useful species, land vs. water species, or tree vs. surface species).
2. Taxonomies based upon structural and anatomical similarities.
3. Taxonomies based upon evolutionary theory, in which structural
similarities as well as ancestral relationships are considered.
Pervin (1978) notes that the study of human environments is presently at
the first stage. We would add that the study of personality is not much
further advanced, at least as conducted by most of the current generation
of social/personality researchers.

Unsatisfactory Level of Theory Development

Earlier, we criticized the level of theory development in social psychol-
ogy. It would be unfair to single out social psychologists in this regard. An
emphasis on unconnected minitheories characterizes much of the current
personality literature, even that produced by personality researchers who
were not trained primarily as social psychologists. In fact, in discussing the
whole field of psychology, Royce contends:
. . . The psychological Zeitgeist has been so focused on data that theory
has been neglected. This has resulted in a general level of sophistication
in theory construction which simply has not kept pace with the technical
advances in experimentation and statistical methodological analysis . . .
advancements in theory construction will be necessary in order to move
psychology in the direction of explanatory science (Royce, 1978, p. 262).
Even in so unlikely a forum as the Skinnerian Journal of the Experimental
Analysis of Behavior, Killeen (1976) warns of the dangers of empiricism
which is not firmly grounded in theory. Killeen (1976) lauds the "schema-
piric" view of S. S. Stevens, which
denotes the marriage of formal systems and models-schemata to obser-
vations and tabulations-empirics. This union of the ideal and the real is
found whenever there is progress in science . . . Deviation too far in
either direction—theoretical or empirical—breeds empty verbiage or
pointless experiments (Killeen, 1976, p. 123).
The field of personality has certainly suffered the worst of both extremes.
300 Kenrick and Dantchik

While the great theoreticians such as Freud, Jung, and McDougall were
content to build magnificent metaphysical structures with little empirical
foundation, the modern workers in this area often seem content to carefully
quarry and shape their separate building stones, only to leave them lying
around in disordered piles without an overall architectural plan of assembly.
The three developments we have discussed herein have done little to
advance the state of theory in personality. The moderator variable ap-
proaches have been largely empirical, although they contain an implicit
and important allegiance to the view of persons as accurate observers of
real consistencies in their behavior. The interactionist arguments have been
largely statistical and methodological, providing little basis for deciding
which are the important person variables, which are the important environ-
mental dimensions, and exactly how the twain shall meet. There is, however,
some consensus in favor of a phenomenological view of interactions. The
social psychological approaches have offered a number of minitheories but
have failed to offer the grounds for an integrated and well-articulated theory
of persons.
These developments occurred in a field where many of the "traditional"
researchers had already largely turned away from theory toward the study
of phenomena like "empirically" (vs. "rationally") derived factor-lists, "re-
sponse sets," and so on. Although Cattell (1965) believes that factor analysis
represents the ultimate inductive strategy for revealing structural realities,
this empiricist approach has not been without criticism. Tomkins (1962),
for instance, compared the factor analytic approach for deciphering person-
ality structure to a centrifuge as a means of understanding the human body,
and Allport (1958) argued that many factors "resemble sausage meat that
has failed to pass the pure food and health inspection" (p. 251). Such critics
have generally felt that the choice of which variables to attend to in an
empirical program of research must necessarily follow rather than precede
theoretical development (see also Overall, 1964).
Modern philosophers and historians of science (e.g., Kuhn, 1962; Laudan,
1977; Popper, 1965) have argued strongly against the notion that science
progresses via "blind empiricism." As Popper (1965) points otit:
From Thales to Einstein, from ancient atomism to Descartes' speculation
about matter, from the speculations of Gilbert and Newton and Liebniz
and Boscovic about forces to those of Faraday and Einstein about fields
of forces, metaphysical ideas have shown the way (Popper, 1965, p. 19).

Implications for the Future

In contrast with its status a decade ago, the field of personality is alive
and well. Like the legendary phoenix, it has risen from its funeral pyre
adorned with new and colorful plumage. Although we have been critical of
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 301

certain overemphases, we believe that interactionists, idiographers, and

social psychologists are better regarded as enlivening transfusions than as
residual malignancies. Lest our criticisms be taken as a call for reactionary
divisiveness, let us emphasize some points we do not wish to make, and at
the same time point out what we opine to be some necessary and/or
promising prospective directions.
To begin with, we are explicitly not saying that traditional personality
psychologists are (or were) the "good guys" and would have been better off
conducting business as usual without the meddlesome interference of Mis-
chel, the social psychologists, and the other bad guys (cf. Kenrick & Braver,
1982). Although Mischel (1968) may have been guilty of some degree of
overcorrection in his critique of the current state of the art of assessment, it
would be unfortunate to overlook the very strong case against the misuse of
traditional assessment devices. It hardly seems too much to demand account-
ability when tests of marginal reliability and validity (e.g., projectives) are
being glibly consulted to make important predictions about people's lives.
Several years after Mischel's (1968) critique, the first author of the present
paper was driven to desert clinical psychology after being exposed to such
horrifying spectacles as the use of Rorschach responses to predict whether
a once dangerous psychotic inmate, who was being considered for release
from a state hospital, would commit murder. To this day, projective tests
are being so used by psychologists trained in APA-approved programs,
despite the fact that their reliability and validity are highly questionable
even in the eyes of many traditional psychometricians (cf. Anastasi, 1976).
To argue that poor personality attributions resulting from the use of
unreliable personality measures or inadequate samples of behavior reflects
on the validity of all personality attributions is an error, however, and the
evidence we discussed above suggests that personality is not simply a
projection of the individual "beholder."
Another important point that Mischel's (1968) critique is to be lauded for
is an insistence on "hard" behavioral data as the ultimate proof of cross-
situational consistency. However, it is unfair to insist upon the use of
"specific," minute behavioral criteria in validating global personality di-
mensions, which, as Epstein has repeatedly argued (Epstein, 1979, 1980,
1983) can and should only be used to predict behavior in the aggregate.
Another point we do not wish to advance is that interactions are mean-
ingless or irrelevant. We would simply argue that while some person-
environment interactions are idiosyncratic, we would do better to develop
a taxonomy of the important recurring connections between certain person
characteristics and certain environments. These connections are not profit-
ably viewed as either infinite or random, but will likely be related in some
conceptually meaningful way. One fruitful course may be to apply an
evolutionary framework to understanding such interactions (cf. Buss &
302 Kenrick and Dantchik

Plomin, 1975; Kenrick, Dantchik, & MacFarlane, 1983). Learning theorists

have shown the limits of an "equipotentiality" assumption (i.e., that any
organismic reaction can be conditioned to any environmental stimulus)
(Rozin & Kalat, 1971; Shettleworth, 1972). For instance, in considering the
anxiety literature, it appears that phobic fear responses are much more
likely to be conditioned to certain stimuli than to others. These stimuli
appear to be natural threats that we respond to with an evolutionary
"preparedness" for fear (e.g., heights, wolves, snakes (Seligman & Hager,
1972). Thus there appear to be fundamental connections between orga-
nismic propensities and environmental stimuli.
We are also not arguing for the abandonment of either midrange theories
or of research on component processes such as cognition and learning. We
would simply argue that such endeavors need to be more firmly and self-
consciously grounded within a wider and more comprehensive paradigm.
To the extent that early social learning formulations focused on external
determinants of behavior (cf. Pervin, 1975) they were inadequate, at least
as models for the field of personality. More recent .social learning formula-
tions have considered "internal" determinants such as "cognitive competen-
cies" and "plans for self regulation" (Mischel, 1973, 1979). As we argued
above, however, the cognitive social learning approach has tended to
overemphasize distortion and phenomenology, and thus far underemphasize
affective determinants of behavior. It has also failed to address the extent
to which there is consensual agreement in personality attribution.
We believe that an adequate formulation of learning processes and an
adequate formulation of cognitive processes are both necessary, but not
sufficient, for a complete theory of personality. In our opinion, any theory
that ignores the evidence for the biological underpinnings of human behav-
ior is bound to be an incomplete one. Recent developments in behavior
genetics strongly suggest an important role of biology in human individual
differences (Buss & Plomin, 1975; Cadoret, 1978; Christiansen, 1977; Dixon
& Johnson, 1980; Eysenck, 1963; Hutchings & Mednick, 1977; Rosenthal,
1971; Rowe, 1982; Wells, 1980). Further, learning, cognition, and person-
ality development are all likely to be importantly constrained by biological
adaptations (Lumsden & Wilson, 1981; Seligman & Hager, 1972; Wilson,
1978).
We think that much of the action in psychology during the next decade
will come from integrations of recent psychological findings with recent
revolutionary developments in social biology and anthropology (cf. Eibl-
Eibesfeldt, 1975; Lumsden & Wilson, 1980; Wilson, 1978). We further
believe that the recently rejuvenated field of personality is precisely the
domain within which to develop a truly biosocial interactionist synthesis.
At this point, attempts at such an integration may well raise more
questions that they answer. To those who would therefore he hesitant to
Interactionism, idiographics, invasion 303

venture into such a poorly charted domain, we would point out that the
ultimate explanatory power of an approach integrating current evolutionary
theory with the vast empirical developments from the learning and cognitive
perspectives makes the potential premiums of such a shift well worth the
efforts. We would further justify such an attempt with the words of Gardner
Murphy, who stated: "It is of course the pursuit of what is not understood
that yields the greatest return." (Murphy, 1947.)
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