Have trait psychologists been ignorant of context?

Abstract

All behavior takes place within a context. This is in a nutshell the distinctive leading motive of the interactional approach to personality. No behavior can be independent of either biological or social factors. Psychologists in general, and personality psychologists in particular, do not really call these views in question. From the early history of personality psychology, students of personality have sought to describe the characteristic psychological differences between people in terms of how they might be expected to react under particular circumstances. In Freud’s conception the ego deals with reality and the superego represents the internalization of important features of the environment. Adler, Horney and others all explicitly emphasized the contribution of the social world in the development of personality and the production of behavior. Allport’s definition of personality comprises the expression “unique adjustment to the environment”. But also Sheldon, the proponent of constitutional psychology, was well aware of environmental determinants of behavior, witness items from his Temperament scale like ’love of being with others’, ’fear of social involvement’ and ’need of people when troubled’. Moreover, even the ancient prerunners of personality psychology focused on behavior in situ. The 30 characters of Theophrast, for example, without exception consist of striking contextual portrayals of types of people. Cattell and Eysenck, the two pioneers in the factor/trait approach, both strive for the improvement of predictions of what individuals will do in given situations. I believe that the history of personality psychology can be reconstructed as having been consequently aware of the contextual nature of behavior.