James T. Lamiell

Individuals and the Differences between Them

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses individual differences research. The case against individual differences research as a framework for the advancement of personality psychologys theoretical concerns is logically quite straightforward. Any theory of personality is a conceptual framework designed to provide explanations for and hence an understanding of individual psychological functioning. The reliability and validity co-efficients and other statistical indices generated by studies of individual differences variables, bear no legitimate interpretation of any kind whatsoever at the individual level. Individual differences research is fundamentally and irremediably ill-suited to the task of advancing theories of individual psychological functioning. The discipline of personality psychology is therefore in need of a viable alternative research paradigm. The psychological differences among individuals are relevant to and must therefore be incorporated into explanations for their respective actions. The coherence—that such individual differences research explanations can, in principle, ever offer—requires that the discussion be limited to the differences between individuals and that it never be permitted to lapse over into a discussion about individuals. It is necessarily the case that individual differences variables do not exist for individuals. Hence, no discussion of individual differences variables can be a discussion of individuals.

On Sustaining Critical Discourse with Mainstream Personality Investigators Problems and Prospects

In an American Psychologist article published in 1981, the author of the present contribution began a critique of the epistemic tenets of the traditional individual differences framework for personality research, which has long dominated the field. Though at first that article and others published soon thereafter generated some needed critical discourse within the discipline, mainstream investigative practices remain now just as they have long been, and, in the meantime, the critical discourse itself has largely ceased. In the present contribution, the author relates his attempts to understand these developments through historical research into the roots of mainstream thinking. Given the nature and depth of these roots, the continuing resistance to change within the mainstream is more readily understood. Nevertheless, it is argued, the need for such change remains, and it is observed that in the prevailing intellectual climate of the discipline, such change still does not appear imminent.

Explanation in the Psychology of Personality

During an informal presentation given for interested departmental colleagues several years ago, I characterized personality psychology as a discipline concerned to provide theoretically based explanations for and hence an understanding of the behavior/psychological functioning of individuals. Immediately, a colleague with scholarly interests in the area of sensation/perception challenged the adequacy of my circumscription of the field on the grounds that, in the final analysis, it would fail to differentiate the study of personality from various other subdisciplines of psychology. Conceding that he was probably correct on this point, I hastened to add that, for reasons once well put by Gordon Allport, that prospect did not particularly trouble me: Every mental function is embedded in personal life. In no concrete sense is there such a thing as intelligence, space perception, color discrimination, or choice reaction; there are only people who are capable of performing such activities and of having such experiences (Allport, 1937, p. 18).

In the Light of a Star An Introduction to William Stern's Critical Personalism

This article briefly discusses the historical context and main currents of William Stems (1871-1938) important but to date little-known contributions to the discourse of theoretical psychology. The sketch of Stems critical personalism offered here is intended to provide the reader with a conceptual background for the various contributions to the Special Issue.

Personality measurement and intuitive personality judgments from an idiothetic point of view

Abstract This article begins with a reiteration of the need for a viable alternative to what has long passed as a “nomothetic” paradigm for the study of personality. This is followed by a discussion and illustration of the interactive model for psychological measurement proposed by Lamiell (1981) as an alternative to the normative model on which the traditional paradigm has been based. We then describe the rationale for and methodology of an ongoing program of research on the subjective personality judgments framed by “naive” college sophomores. Contrary to a critical but heretofore untested assumption on which virtually all prior research in this domain has been based, our findings indicate that the intuitive judgment process is modeled with much greater fidelity by the logic of interactive measurement than by the logic of normative measurement. Consistent with the “idiothetic” point of view, this evidence suggests that subjective conceptions of personality may be rooted not in normative considerations whereby individuals are differentiated from one another, but rather in essentially dialectical considerations whereby each individual is differentiated from the person s/he is not but might otherwise be. We conclude by pointing to the implications of this line of inquiry for future efforts to understand the apparent “inadequacies” of clinical judgment.

Reviving Person-Centered Inquiry in Psychology: Why it's Erstwhile Dormancy?

Just a few short years ago one of the co-editors of this volume published an article in the journal Measurement under the title: “A Manifesto on Psychology as Idiographic Science: Bringing the Person Back Into Scientific Psychology, This Time Forever” (Molenaar, 2004). To one who himself has long advocated just such a development, this bold manifesto was most welcome indeed. But the very claim to lately be bringing the person back into scientific psychology begs the questions: why has this proved necessary? and: where had the person been for all of those previous years?

Let’s Be Careful Out There: Reply to Commentaries

My overall reaction to the foregoing commentaries is that they make clear the need for an elaboration and clarification of various aspects of my argument.

Valuation theory, the self-confrontation method, and scientific personality psychology

This article presents an invited commentary on the two previous articles by Hermans and Bonarius (1991) and by Hermans (1991). Primary focus is placed on certain enduring confusions regarding the historic ‘nomothetic vs. idiographic’ controversy in personality psychology, the traces of those confusions in the writings of Hermans and Bonarius, and the importance of eliminating those confusions if the full potential of valuation theory and the self‐confrontation method is to be realized, not only as a means of gaining idiographic knowledge and clinically helpful insights, but also as a means of gaining genuinely nomothetic knowledge in the domain of personality.

Some Philosophical and Historical Considerations Relevant to William Stern’s Contributions to Developmental Psychology

During the first third of the 20th century, William Stern (1871–1938) was a prominent contributor to the literature of developmental psychology. Many of his most important contributions, some of which were made in collaboration with his wife Clara Stern, were based on diary observations of the three Stern children; observations that the Sterns accumulated over 18 years. Even as these contributions were materializing, William Stern was formulating and articulating an overarching system of thought, a Weltanschauung or worldview, that he called “critical personalism.” This brief article highlights certain aspects of that system of thought that were of particular relevance to Stern’s contributions to developmental psychology. The article also contrasts the pre-World War II reception of Stern’s ideas among developmental psychologists and differential psychologists, and, within developmental psychology, the reception of those ideas before as compared with after World War II.

On the concepts of character and personality: Correctly interpreting the statistical evidence putatively relevant to the disposition–situation debate:

Complementing Banicki’s (2017) recent discussion of the conceptual and historical aspects of the distinction between theoretical notions of “character” and “personality,” the present commentary is intended as a corrective to the long-standing misinterpretation of empirical findings generated by research psychologists putatively bearing on the theoretical assumption of temporal and trans-situational stability in individuals’ behavioral manifestations of their personal attributes, whether conceived as features of character or as traits of personality. It is hoped that this corrective can facilitate more fruitful future discussions of the issues that Banicki has raised.