Walter Mischel

Personality and assessment

Contents: Introduction. Consistency and Specificity in Behavior. Traits and States as Constructs. Personality Correlates. Utility. Principles of Social Behavior. Behavior Change. Assessment for Behavior Change. Personality and Prediction.

A COGNITIVE-AFFECTIVE SYSTEM THEORY OF PERSONALITY: RECONCEPTUALIZING SITUATIONS, DISPOSITIONS, DYNAMICS, AND INVARIANCE IN PERSONALITY STRUCTURE

A theory was proposed to reconcile paradoxical findings on the invariance of personality and the variability of behavior across situations. For this purpose, individuals were assumed to differ in (a) the accessibility of cognitive-affective mediating units (such as encodings, expectancies and beliefs, affects, and goals) and (b) the organization of relationships through which these units interact with each other and with psychological features of situations. The theory accounts for individual differences in predictable patterns of variability across situations (e.g., if A then she X, but if B then she Y), as well as for overall average levels of behavior, as essential expressions or behavioral signatures of the same underlying personality system. Situations, personality dispositions, dynamics, and structure were reconceptualized from this perspective.

Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification : identifying diagnostic conditions

Variations of the self-imposed delay-of-gratification situation in preschool were compared to determine when individual differences in this situation may predict aspects of cognitive and self-regulatory competence and coping in adolescence.

Prototypes in Person Perception1

Publisher Summary The chapter provides a brief glimpse on the various theoretical and empirical approaches taken to study person categories and categorization. The chapter provides a comprehensive and representative survey of the literature on person perception and social cognition emerging from other laboratories. Interest in the issues of category accessibility has been renewed recently as cognitive-social psychologists attempt to understand the person categorization process. The chapter discusses the nature of categories at different level of abstractions. The prototype approach, prototypicality rules (full view and the restricted view), and from prototype to social behavior is also discussed. Knowledge about person prototypes not only makes information processing easier, it also helps the perceiver to plan behavior in social interactions . It is easier to process information about characters that fit well with and are, therefore, prototypical of shared beliefs about various personality types. Character prototypicality was manipulated in a free-recall and personality impression paradigm through variations in the consistency of a characters identification with preexisting beliefs about two personality-type categories-extraversion and introversion. The chapter discusses the purpose, the goals and functions of person categorization, the nature of categories at different levels of abstraction, and determining prototypicality in detail.

The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of gratification.

Delay of gratification, assessed in a series of experiments when the subjects were in preschool, was related to parental personality ratings obtained a decade later for 95 of these children in adolescence. Clear and consistent patterns of correlations between self-imposed delay time in preschool and later ratings were found for both sexes over this time span. Delay behavior predicted a set of cognitive and social competencies and stress tolerance consistent with experimental analyses of the process underlying effective delay in the preschool delay situation. Specifically, children who were able to wait longer at age 4 or 5 became adolescents whose parents rated them as more academically and socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and able to deal well with frustration and stress. Comparisons with related longitudinal research using other delay situations help to clarify the important features of the situations and person variables involved in different aspects of delay of gratification.

Processes in Delay of Gratification

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of research on choice preferences for delayed, larger versus immediate, smaller gratifications. In spite of the widespread recognition of the important role of delay of gratification in human affairs, previous experimental research on the topic has been limited. At the empirical level, extensive experimental work has been done on delay of reward in animals. Surprisingly, although voluntary delay behavior has been assumed to be a critical component of such concepts as “ego strength,” “impulse control,” and “internalization,” prior to the present research program relatively little systematic attention had been devoted to it in empirical work on human social behavior. The chapter presents, in greater detail, selected studies that focus on the role of cognitive processes during self-imposed delay. Many theorists have paid tribute abstractly to the importance of cognition for the phenomena of personality in general and for self-regulatory processes in particular. These tributes have been accompanied by some correlational research that explores, for example, the links between intelligence, self-control, cognitive styles, and other dispositional. The chapter offers a further theoretical analysis of the determinants of delay behavior.

Prefrontal–striatal pathway underlies cognitive regulation of craving

The ability to control craving for substances that offer immediate rewards but whose long-term consumption may pose serious risks lies at the root of substance use disorders and is critical for mental and physical health. Despite its importance, the neural systems supporting this ability remain unclear. Here, we investigated this issue using functional imaging to examine neural activity in cigarette smokers, the most prevalent substance-dependent population in the United States, as they used cognitive strategies to regulate craving for cigarettes and food. We found that the cognitive down-regulation of craving was associated with (i) activity in regions previously associated with regulating emotion in particular and cognitive control in general, including dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, and (ii) decreased activity in regions previously associated with craving, including the ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate, amygdala, and ventral tegmental area. Decreases in craving correlated with decreases in ventral striatum activity and increases in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity, with ventral striatal activity fully mediating the relationship between lateral prefrontal cortex and reported craving. These results provide insight into the mechanisms that enable cognitive strategies to effectively regulate craving, suggesting that it involves neural dynamics parallel to those involved in regulating other emotions. In so doing, this study provides a methodological tool and conceptual foundation for studying this ability across substance using populations and developing more effective treatments for substance use disorders.

Regulating the Interpersonal Self: Strategic Self-Regulation for Coping With Rejection Sensitivity

People high in rejection sensitivity (RS) anxiously expect rejection and are at risk for interpersonal and personal distress. Two studies examined the role of self-regulation through strategic attention deployment in moderating the link between RS and maladaptive outcomes. Self-regulation was assessed by the delay of gratification (DG) paradigm in childhood. In Study 1, preschoolers from the Stanford University community who participated in the DG paradigm were assessed 20 years later. Study 2 assessed low-income, minority middle school children on comparable measures. DG ability buffered high-RS people from interpersonal difficulties (aggression, peer rejection) and diminished well-being (e.g., low self-worth, higher drug use). The protective effect of DG ability on high-RS childrens self-worth is explained by reduced interpersonal problems. Attentional mechanisms underlying the interaction between RS and strategic self-regulation are discussed.

When Asking “Why” Does Not Hurt Distinguishing Rumination From Reflective Processing of Negative Emotions

Two experiments examined the psychological operations that enable individuals to process negative emotions and experiences without increasing negative affect. In Study 1, type of self-perspective (self-immersed vs. self-distanced) and type of emotional focus (what vs. why) were experimentally manipulated following the recall of an anger-eliciting interpersonal experience. A why focus on emotions from a self-distanced perspective (distanced-why strategy) was expected to enable “cool,” reflective processing of emotions, in which individuals can focus on their experience without reactivating excessive “hot” negative affect. Findings were consistent with this hypothesis. Study 2 replicated these findings and furthermore demonstrated that (a) the degree to which individuals construe their recalled experience in abstract versus concrete terms mediates the effect of the distanced-why strategy and (b) the status of the recalled experience (resolved vs. unresolved) does not moderate the effectiveness of the distanced-why strategy. These findings help disentangle the mechanisms that may allow adaptive working through from those that lead to rumination.

The Development of Children's Knowledge of Self-Control Strategies.

MISCHEL, HABBIET NERLOVE, and MISCHEL, WALTER The Devdopment of Childrens Knowledge of Sdf-Contrd Strategies Cmu) DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 603-619 2 studies traced the development of metacognibons about self-control m chddren through grade 6 The results indicated that chddren hegin to understand 2 basic rules for effecbve delay of gratificabon hy about the end of their fifUi year cover rather than expose the rewards, and engage in taskonented rather than in ccmsummatory ideation whde waiting By grade 6, chddren significantly indicated that abstract ideation would help delay more than coosummatoiy ideation. In the delay paradigm, young 4-yaar-olds seem to create self-defeatmg ddemmas for themselves hy choosmg (or even creatmg) a temptmg environment without adequately anbcipabng that they wdl he unable to execute strategies to overcome the temptation tliis preference for the delaydefeatmg strategy (exposme the rewards) waned toward the end of the fourth year and was rq>laced by a growmg preference for the delay-facditatmg strategy (covenng the rewards) l^eoretical reasons for this developmental course were discussed