The Concept of Dispositional Regulation of Individual Social Behavior

Abstract

After a period of relative neglect by psychologists of issues of social motivation and goal-directed behavior (in favor of attending to the person as a cognizer, or reinforcement-shaped responder), it is clear that the preoccupations of Miller, Galanter, & Pribram (1960) a quarter-century ago have been taken up with renewed interest. Current investigators are of many different persuasions—e.g., cognitively oriented theorists concerned with lay epistemology (Kruglanski & Klar, 1986), personologists interested in person-environment interactions (Little, 1983), psychologists attempting to clarify the structure and components of action (e.g., Brenner, 1980), etc. Readers familiar with the work of Leont'ev (1975) and the translations and discussions of related work (Wertsch, 1979) will know that a concern with goal direction has never been absent from psychology in the USSR.