Acts, Dispositions, and Personality

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview on the act frequency approach and discusses the empirical and conceptual issues. Dispositional concepts have been viewed from three basic perspectives. The first and most prevalent is the purposive–cognitive concept of disposition, in which needs, beliefs, or desires constitute the focal attributes. A second concept of disposition is a hypothetical proposition, which invokes situational specifications in the explication of dispositions. The third basic form of dispositional concept is as a categorical summary statement. The act frequency approach modifies and extends the summary view of dispositions and fashions a general research program for personality psychology. The frequency analysis of dispositional constructs focuses on specifying the occurrence of acts within circumscribed categories over specified periods of observation. From a frequency perspective, no single act serves as a measure or index from which dispositional inferences can be drawn. Instead, multiple-act criteria consisting of composites of observed acts within each dispositional category over a specified period of observation, serve as the fundamental measures of an individual's dispositions. A fundamental division occurs in personality psychology in regard to the explanatory status of dispositions. Relations among three elements have been considered in philosophical treatments of this issue: (1) the disposition, (2) manifestations of the disposition, and (3) a causal account of dispositional manifestations.