Personality and AssessmentAfter many "out-of-print" years, this volume has been reissued in response to an increasing demand for copies. This reflects that the fundamental questions that motivated this book thirty years ago are still being asked. But more important, the answers -- or at least their outlines -- now seem to be in sight. In 1968, this book stood as an expression of a paradigm crisis in its critique of the state of personality psychology. The last three decades have been filled with controversy and debate about the dilemmas raised here, and then with renewal and fresh discoveries. It therefore seems especially timely to revisit the pages which posed the challenges. Mischel outlined the need to encompass the situation in the study of personality, but with a focus on the acquired meaning of stimuli and on the situation as perceived, viewing the individual as a cognitive-affective being who construes, interprets, and transforms the stimulus in a dynamic reciprocal interaction with the social world. He focused on the idiographic analysis of personality that had originally motivated the field, and the complexity, discriminative facility, and uniqueness of the individual, and sought to connect the expressions of personality to the individual's behavior -- that is, to what people do and not just what they say. Even the intrinsically contextualized "if...then..." expressions of the personality system -- its essential behavioral signatures -- were foreshadowed in this book that fired the opening salvo in a search for "a truly dynamic personality psychology." |
Contents
| 1 | |
2 CONSISTENCY AND SPECIFICITY IN BEHAVIOR | 13 |
3 TRAITS AND STATES AS CONSTRUCTS | 41 |
4 PERSONALITY CORRELATES | 73 |
5 UTILITY | 103 |
6 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR | 149 |
7 BEHAVIOR CHANGE | 193 |
8 ASSESSMENT FOR BEHAVIOR CHANGE | 235 |
9 PERSONALITY AND PREDICTION | 281 |
REFERENCES | 303 |
| 339 | |
| 347 | |
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Abnorm accuracy achievement aggressive anxiety associations attitudes aversive Bandura basic behavior change Brack Burwen California Psychological Inventory Chapter child classical conditioning client clinical clinicians cognitive conditioned stimuli consequences consistency construct validity constructs contingencies correlations counterconditioning criterion depend descriptions desensitization diagnostic dimensions discriminate diverse effects elicit emotional reactions evidence evoke example experimental factor analysis factors fear havior indices individual differences individual's inferences interpretations judgments labels learning measures ment mental Mischel MMPI modification observational learning observed obtained patients performance personality personality psychology personality tests predictions problems procedures programs psychiatric psychodynamic Psychol psychological psychometric psychotherapy questionnaires reinforcement relations reliability response patterns rewards role Rorschach sample scales scores self-reports sexual similar situations social behavior theory specific sponse stable stimulus conditions subjects superego systematic desensitization techniques tend therapist therapy tions trait theories trait-state treatment underlying validity variables verbal vicarious reinforcement Wolpe