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Personality, Consistency, and Change: Key Concepts

Traditional View of Personality

  • Personality is defined by stable traits (e.g., quiet, introverted, outspoken, aggressive) consistent over time and across situations.

  • This view suggests a "core" or "essential themness" that endures.

Challenging Personality Consistency

  • Walter Mischel's 1968 book Personality and Assessment challenged the idea of stable, consistent personality traits across situations.

  • Hartshorn and May's study on honesty in children showed children were inconsistent across different cheating/lying situations.

  • Psychological research often dismissed inconsistency, assuming measurement errors rather than flawed assumptions about stability.

The Power of the Situation

  • Lee Ross proposed that apparent consistency in behavior stems from people being in stable situations, not internal personality traits.

  • Stanley Milgram's obedience study demonstrated how situational demands can dramatically alter typical behavior.

  • Situations (jobs, families, roles) constrain behavior, making people predictable due to consistent circumstances, not inherent character.

Mischel's Integrated Model of Change

  • Mischel's model includes personality, situations, and the mind/brain as an intermediary filter.

  • The mind (expectations, beliefs, assumptions, interpretations) influences how situations are perceived and reacted to.

  • Changes in these mental constructs allow people to change their interpretation of situations and themselves, leading to behavioral change.

  • The original Marshmallow Test aimed to show human flexibility and the power of reinterpreting situations (e.g., viewing a marshmallow as a picture, not a real object).

Identity and Change

  • The idea of fixed personality provides comfort and stability, especially in relationships.

  • Experiences, like working with incarcerated individuals, can challenge the belief that "a criminal is always a criminal."

  • David Eagleman (neuroscientist) states that biologically (cells, atoms, memories, DNA) nothing remains truly fixed throughout a lifetime; continuity is an illusion.

  • Exceptions, like the "Fisher Price alphabet magnet effect" on synesthesia (A is red, B is orange, etc.), suggest very early, uncorrupted imprints can persist.