Psychology
2013. Vol.4, No.1, 1-10
Published Online January 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/psych) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/psych.2013.41001
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 1
An Experimental Analysis of the Assessment and Perception of
Behavior Change: How Summary Measures Influence
Sensitivity to Change Processes
Anselma G. Hartley1, Jack C. Wright1, Audrey L. Zakriski2, Anne N. Banducci3
1Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, USA
2Department of Psychology, Connecticut College, New London, USA
3Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Email: Anselma_Hartley@brown.edu
Received October 6th, 2012; revised November 6th, 2012; accepted December 4th, 2012
A series of experiments examined how summary assessment measures influence people’s ability to detect
change in behavior over time and across situations. Two measures that are often used to assess child be-
havior (Teacher Report Form) and adult personality (Five Factor Inventory) were examined. Each instru-
ment led perceivers to focus on the overall frequency of targets’ behavior, even when targets differed both
in how they reacted to social events and in how often they experienced those events in their interactions
with others. Although people adopted an overall frequency perspective when using summary measures,
they detected changes in events and targets’ if then … reactions to events when using alternative con-
text-specific measures. The findings demonstrate how summary trait methods can shift perceivers’ atten-
tion away from situational factors and thereby yield trait scores that are insensitive to context-specific but
potentially important changes in targets’ social behavior.
Keywords: Personality; Social Perception; Assessment; Behavior Change; Social Context
Introduction
A potential conflict exists between the way people think
about personality and how researchers assess it. On the one
hand, researchers often emphasize the breadth and stability of
traits and therefore use personality measures that aggregate
over variability that may occur over time and situations
(Mischel, 2009; Watson, 2004). On the other hand, social cog-
nition research suggests that people incorporate situational
information into their personality impressions (Kammrath,
Mendoza-Denton, & Mischel, 2005; Smith & Collins, 2009).
Despite the widespread use of “summary” trait measures in
both child and adult assessment, little research has explored
how social perceivers use them under laboratory conditions in
which the relevant inputs can be isolated and manipulated. The
present research illustrates how such methods can deepen our
understanding of how summary trait measures influence per-
ceivers’ sensitivity to personality change. In this paradigm, we
create targets who show different patterns of change over time
in their social environments and in how they responded to them.
We examine the possibility that summary trait measures lead
perceivers to focus on overall behavior rates and to de-empha-
size contextual information they might otherwise use. We test
the further implication that this emphasis on overall frequencies
leads raters to report that target behavior is stable over time
even when targets show clear changes in how they respond to
specific social situations.
Summary approaches have a long tradition in child and adult
assessment. On widely used child measures (e.g., Teacher Re-
port Form or TRF, Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), an adult
typically rates how well brief statements describe the child.
Many of these statements focus on the frequency of behaviors
(“teases a lot,” “threatens people”), some include trait adjec-
tives (“stubborn”), and less often they refer to the context in
which the behaviors occur (“disobedient at school”, “defiant,
talks back”). Popular “Big Five” measures used to assess adult
personality (e.g., NEO-PI-R and the NEO-Five Factor Inven-
tory or FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1992) also include behavior fre-
quency statements (e.g., “seldom sad or depressed”), trait ad-
jectives (“is a cheerful, high-spirited person”), and statements
that explicitly refer to behavior in context (“if he doesn’t like
people, he lets them know it”). Although these child and adult
measures vary in how their items were generated and how often
they refer to contexts, they share an essential feature: Both
aggregate into summary scales that do not reveal what these
contexts are, how often they occur, or how responses to them
may vary. Such measures thus focus on mean-level behavior
tendencies, and do not reveal individual differences in how
people respond to specific contexts (Cervone, 2005; Cervone,
Shadel, & Jencius, 2001).
Alternative models incorporate context into personality as-
sessment by examining if then links between events that
occur in a person’s social environment (e.g., if provoked) and
their reactions to them (e.g., then hostile) (Vansteelandt & Van
Mechelen, 1998; Wright & Mischel, 1987). Studies adopting
such approaches have demonstrated that personality is revealed
not simply through overall trait or behavior levels, but through
an individual’s contextualized patterning of trait-relevant be-
havior (Fournier, Moskowitz, & Zuroff, 2008; Hartley, Zakriski,
& Wright, 2011; Hoffenaar & Hoeksma, 2002; Smith, Shoda,
Cumming, & Smoll, 2009). A complementary line of “socially
situated” cognition research proposes that context plays an
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
important role in social perception and judgment (Reeder,
Monroe, & Pryor, 2008; Smith & Collins, 2009). Although
early studies on the “fundamental attribution error” (Ross, 1977)
argued that situational influences are often ignored, subsequent
research found that people do incorporate contextual informa-
tion into their personality judgments, but when and how they do
so depends on several factors (Gilbert & Malone, 1995). For
example, people have difficulty integrating situational influ-
ences into their dispositional judgments when the salience of
the stimuli is low and cognitive load is high (Chun, Speigel, &
Kruglanski, 2002). People’s ability to process behavioral and
situational information also depends on their statistical knowl-
edge and investment in the target (Schaller, 1992), and on their
affective state (Hunsinger, Isbel, & Clore, 2011).
Despite considerable field research using summary measures
(Gresham et al., 2010; Terracciano, McCrae, & Costa, 2009),
little work has examined how perceivers use them under con-
trolled laboratory conditions. Social cognition research has used
experimental methods to study people’s use of situational in-
formation (Chun et al., 2002; Kammrath et al., 2005; Trope &
Gaunt, 2000), yet this work has not examined how summary
trait measures influence what people encode in their ratings.
Some researchers have claimed that summary measures are
implicitly contextualized by the respondent even when items
lack explicit contextual cues (Tellegen, 1991; Wood & Roberts,
2006), and are therefore sensitive to reaction patterns (Denissen
& Penke, 2008). For example, items that contain trait adjectives
(e.g., “thoughtful and considerate”, “is a cheerful, high spirited
person”) might lead the rater to infer the situations that are most
relevant and to judge how the target reacts when those situa-
tions are encountered. However, we are unaware of an experi-
mental test of this idea. Other researchers have speculated that
summary methods lead people to rely on global representations
lacking in specific time or setting cues (Schwarz & Oyserman,
2011). Support for this argument is found in studies showing
that summary measures lead people to ignore conditional if
then links between events and reactions and focus instead on
overall act frequencies (Wright et al., 2001). In the present
study, we test the idea that summary measures—including
popular child behavior measures and adult five-factor meas-
ures—are designed to assess overall behaviors, do this well, but
in doing so miss changes in how people respond to specific
social situations.
We extended past work in several ways. First, rather than
focusing on a single time point, we created targets that changed
over time, both in how often they encountered events (“event
rates”) and in the conditional probability of their responses to
them (“reaction rates”). In Studies 1-2ab, peer provocation and
adult discipline were the focal events and aggression was the
focal reaction, as these are relevant to child assessment (Dirks,
Treat, & Weersing, 2007). This yielded two targets who
showed “converging” changes in event rates and reaction rates
(i.e., both decreased or both increased), and thus their overall
rates of aggression increased or decreased. The two other tar-
gets showed “diverging” changes: One experienced an increase
in aversive events, but became less likely to respond aggres-
sively to them; the other experienced a decrease in aversive
events, but became more likely to respond aggressively. These
targets are especially interesting because they show opposite
changes in event and reaction rates, yet show no change in
overall aggression rates. If summary measures track only over-
all rates, as we have proposed, they should distinguish between
targets whose overall rates differ, but fail to distinguish be-
tween targets who show opposite reaction change but constant
overall behavior rates. If, on the other hand, these measures are
implicitly contextualized as others have suggested, they should
distinguish between targets whose reactions to events changed
over time, even if their overall behavior rates did not.
Second, we used both child and adult targets, and we exam-
ined both popular measures for studying child behavior (TRF;
Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) and adult personality (NEO-FFI;
Costa & McCrae, 1992). In each of our experiments, partici-
pants used the instrument to rate the target at the end of one
period of observation, and then again at the end of a second
period. Studies 1-2ab focused on aggressive behaviors of chil-
dren that are relevant to the TRF, and Study 3 focused on (dis)
agreeable behaviors of adults that are relevant to the agreeable-
ness domain on the FFI. Guided by past theorizing and evi-
dence (Schwarz & Oyserman, 2011; Wright et al., 2001), we
hypothesized that relevant scales on the TRF (aggression) and
FFI (agreeableness) would be sensitive to changes in targets’
overall behavior rates, but insensitive to differences between
the diverging targets whose reactions changed in opposite di-
rections.
Third, we examined whether participants can detect changes
in rates of eliciting events and changes in targets’ conditional
reactions to them, even if this is not evident when they use
summary trait measures. Based on people’s sensitivity to con-
text at a single time point (Chun et al., 2002; Wright et al.,
2001), we predicted that participants’ open-ended descriptions
of targets would refer not only to their overall behavior tenden-
cies, but also to events targets encountered and their event-
specific reactions. We further expected that participants would
differentiate between the diverging targets when explicitly
asked to estimate how often targets encountered events and the
conditional probability of their reactions to those events. Be-
cause people can have difficulty judging conditional probabili-
ties (see Fox & Levav, 2004), we examined how two response
formats—a typical rating format (e.g., Vansteelandt & Van
Mechelen, 1998) versus a frequency-count estimation format
(Gigerenzer, 2008)—influenced their performance. Support for
these hypotheses would indicate that widely used summary
assessment methods divert people’s attention away from situa-
tion-specific changes in behavior they otherwise notice and
thereby yield ratings that reflect only targets’ overall behavior
frequencies.
Study 1
We first examined change over time. Using a 2 (event rate) ×
2 (reaction rate) × 2 (phase) design, we manipulated whether a
target child experienced an increase or decrease in the probabil-
ity of aversive events (“event rates”), and an increase or de-
crease in the conditional probability of aggressive behavior
when those events occurred (“reaction rates”). We hypothesized
that the TRF is primarily sensitive to base-rates, and thus
should be influenced by all factors that contribute to overall
behavior (i.e., events and reactions), and not just by targets’
reaction rates. Thus, the TRF should be unable to distinguish
between the functionally diverging targets even though one
showed an increase in aggressive reactions to aversive events
and one showed a decrease.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
2
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
Method
Participants
Forty-three undergraduates from the pool in an introductory
psychology class participated at Brown University. Three were
removed: two who completed materials out of order, and one
who did not understand the instructions. This yielded a sample
of 40 (20 M, 20 W, Mage = 19.2 years, SD = 1.17). All studies
reported were approved by Brown University’s Institutional
Review Board.
Materials
The experimental stimuli were based on Wright et al. (2001),
but described the target at two points. The target was identified
as a fictitious 11-year-old boy (“Dan”) in a residential summer
program. Participants viewed 32 vignettes that described the
target at the beginning of the summer (Phase 1) and 32 that
described him 9 weeks later (Phase 2). Four targets were cre-
ated. One encountered an increase in aversive events and
showed an increase in aggressive reactions to those events
(E+/R+) (“+” = increase). The second showed a decrease in
both event rates and reaction rates (E/R) (“” = decrease).
The third encountered an increase in aversive events, but
showed a decrease in aggressive reactions (E+/R). The fourth
had the reverse arrangement (E/R+).
Each vignette, presented for 9 seconds on an otherwise blank
computer screen, described the setting and an interaction be-
tween Dan and another person. The setting, agent, agent action,
target name, and response appeared in the same order. Events
consisted of aversive peer events (tease, threaten), aversive
adult events (warn, discipline), nonaversive peer events (proso-
cial talk, ask), and non-aversive adult events (prosocial talk,
ask/instruct). Reactions were aggressive or nonaggressive. An
example of a peer aversive event with an aggressive reaction is:
“In the dining hall a boy says, ‘Shut up and give me your des-
sert.’ Dan replies, ‘No, you shut up. I want it.’” An example of
an adult aversive event with a non-aggressive reaction is: “In
swimming, a counselor says, ‘You better not go past that green
rope.’ Dan says, ‘Okay, I won’t.’”
Table 1 shows the probabilities of aversive events, p(E), the
conditional probabilities of aggressive reactions to those events,
p(R|E), and the corresponding frequencies. The probabilities of
aversive events are obtained by dividing the number of aversive
events per phase by the total number of vignettes per phase (32).
Conditional probabilities of aggressive reactions are obtained
by dividing the number of aggressive behaviors to aversive
events by the number of aversive events encountered. The
overall probability or “base rate” of aggressive behaviors, p(R)
is obtained by p(E)*p(R|E); this is equivalent to the number of
aggressive behaviors per phase divided by the total number of
vignettes per phase. The converging E+/R+ and E/R targets
showed increases (or decreases) both in aversive events and in
aggressive reactions to them, and therefore their base rates of
aggression increased (or decreased) over phases. The diverging
E/R+ and E+/R targets (rows 2 - 3) differed in the condi-
tional probability of their aggressive reactions to aversive
events, but had equal base rates of aggression at each phase.
Dependent Measures
Open-Ended Descriptions. Participants read, “You’ve just
Table 1.
Properties of the four experimental targets for all studies.
Phase 1 Phase 2
Condition p(E) p(R|E) p(R) p(E) p(R|E) p(R)
E/R .75 .75 .56 .25 .25 .06
(24/32)(18/24)(18/32) (8/32) (2/8) (2/32)
E/R+ .75 .25 .19 .25 .75 .19
(24/32)(6/24)(6/32) (8/32) (6/8) (6/32)
E+/R .25 .75 .19 .75 .25 .19
(8/32)(6/8) (6/32) (24/32) (6/24)(6/32)
E+/R+ .25 .25 .06 .75 .75 .56
(8/32)(2/8) (2/32) (24/32) (18/24)(18/32)
Note: p(E) = probability of aversive event; p(R|E) = probability of aggressive
reaction to aversive event; p(R) = base-rate probability of aggressive behavior.
Note that p(R) = p(E)
p(R|E). “+” indicates increase; “” indicates decrease in
event or reaction rate. E = event; R = reaction. Values in parentheses indicate
frequencies on which probabilities and conditional probabilities were based; for
p(E) and p(R), the denominator is always the total number of vignettes per phase
(32), and for p(R|E), the denominator is the number of aversive events per phase.
read about Dan during the first week of June (second week of
August) in the residential summer program. Please describe in a
few sentences what was most important about Dan and the
summer program during that time.”
Teacher Report Form. As in Wright et al. (2001), we used a
subset of the 118 items from the 1993 version of the TRF
(Achenbach, 1993) to avoid fatigue. Specifically, we used the
scale that was most relevant to this study (aggression, 25 items)
and a contrast scale (withdrawal, 9 items), with “school”
changed to “camp” for our stimuli. An example of an aggres-
sion item is “argues a lot”; an example of a withdrawal item is
“unhappy, sad, or depressed.” Items were rated using the TRF’s
0 - 2 scale. Test-retest reliability of the TRF aggression and
withdrawal scales in field studies is reported to be .89 and .85
respectively when the interval is 2 - 3 weeks (Achenbach,
Howell, McConaughy, & Stanger, 1995). The TRF aggression
scale correlates modestly but significantly with classroom ob-
servations of verbal aggression and disruptive behavior (Henry,
2006).
Perceived Overall Change. Participants rated changes in
Dan’s “overall behavior”, “behavior toward peers”, and “be-
havior toward counselors”. These were averaged into an “over-
all target change” scale (α = .96). Next, they rated how peers’
and adults’ overall “behaviors towards Dan changed.” These
were averaged into an “overall social environment change”
scale (α = .96). All items used a 7-point scale (1 = much worse,
7 = much improved).
Behavior, Event, and Reaction Measures. To clarify whether
participants detected overall behavior rates, event rates, and
reaction rates at each phase, these items corresponded as
closely as possible to the stimuli. Participants first rated the
overall frequency of the target’s aggressive and prosocial be-
haviors shown during Phase 1 using 4 items (e.g., “Dan argued
or quarreled”, “talked politely/made friendly requests”). They
then rated how often Dan encountered aversive and non-aver-
sive events at Phase 1, using 4 items (e.g., “peers teased, threa-
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 3
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
tened, or bossed Dan”, “adults complimented/made friendly
requests”). Next, they rated the target’s reactions given that
some event occurred, using 16 items (4 events × 4 reactions).
Participants read, “Indicate how often Dan showed each reac-
tion to the event described.” After each of 4 event prompts (“If
a peer teased, threatened, or bossed Dan ”), the participant
rated how often the target showed a reaction to it (e.g., “he
argued or quarreled”); the wording of the reaction was the same
as the wording of the behaviors noted above. Participants then
rated the behaviors, events, and reactions that were shown dur-
ing Phase 2. All items were rated on a 6-point scale (0 = never,
5 = almost always).
Procedure
Participants were run in groups of 1-4 on separate computers
and were randomly assigned to condition, to which the experi-
menter was blind. Using the dependent measures just described,
participants completed these steps, in order: 1) read 32 vi-
gnettes for Phase 1, each for 9 s; 2) open-ended description and
TRF; 3) 32 vignettes for Phase 2; 4) repeat step 2; 5) overall
perceived change; 6) additional ratings of behavior, events, and
reactions seen at Phase 1 and at Phase 2. To avoid contaminat-
ing the TRF, it was administered before measures that men-
tioned events or reactions.
Preliminary Analyses
Participants’ open-ended responses were coded as follows. 1)
“Overall behavior”: An uncontextualized statement about a
prosocial, neutral, or aggressive behavior or disposition without
a specified eliciting event (e.g., “Dan was friendly”). 2)
“Event”: A statement about a positive, neutral, or aversive
event without a specified response (e.g., “People were nice to
Dan”). 3) “Reaction”: A prosocial, neutral, or aggressive be-
havior in response to a positive, neutral, or aversive event (e.g.,
“Dan was friendly when others were nice to him”). Agreement
between the first author and a coder who was blind to condition
was acceptable (average κ = .80).
Additional analyses examined how perceived overall change
measures (see previous) compared with other measures. The
perceived overall change scale correlated highly with the cal-
culated TRF aggression change (r = .88, p < .001), and the
perceived overall social environment change scale correlated
highly with the calculated event change score (r = .93, p < .001).
To avoid redundancy, perceived overall change analyses are not
presented.
Results and Discussion
Open-Ended Descriptions
Although the open-ended descriptions were not our main fo-
cus, we examined the Phase 1 descriptions to clarify partici-
pants’ perceptions before they were affected by the TRF. Based
on past research (Kammrath et al., 2005), we predicted that
participants would not only describe overall behavior tenden-
cies, but also describe events and conditional reactions to them.
We calculated percentages by dividing the number of state-
ments in each category for each participant by the total number
of codeable statements for that participant. As predicted, par-
ticipants used all statement types, with nonsignificant differ-
ences in their mean relative frequency: uncontextualized be-
havior statements (40%), event statements (32%), and reaction
statements (28%), F(2, 72) = 2.15, p > .1. We also found a
statement type × reaction condition interaction, F(2, 72) = 6.18,
p < .005, η2 = .15. In conditions with low reaction rates at
Phase 1, uncontextualized behavior statements were more fre-
quent (52%) than event statements (26%) or reaction statements
(22%), whereas in conditions with high reaction rates at Phase
1, statement types differed less (28%, 38%, and 34%, respec-
tively). We found a similar pattern when analyses were re-
stricted to statements about aggressive behaviors; details can be
obtained from the first author.
Summary Trait Assessment
We expected that the TRF would detect changes in overall
behavior rates, but not distinguish between the functionally
diverging targets whose overall rates were equal. Specifically,
we predicted that TRF aggression ratings would decrease over
phase for the E/R condition, increase for the E+/R+ condi-
tion, and remain unchanged for the diverging conditions
(E/R+, E+/R).
As shown in Figure 1, the results supported this prediction.
A 2 (event) × 2 (reaction) × 2 (phase) ANOVA, with phase as a
repeated measure, revealed the expected reaction condition x
phase interaction, F(1, 36) = 56.99, p < .001, η2 = .61. Also as
expected, we found an interaction between event condition and
phase, F(1, 36) = 7.24, η2 = .66. (In all repeated-measures
analyses, significance tests were based on Greenhouse-Geisser
adjustments.) We also found a small unexpected effect for
phase, F(1, 36) = 5.52, p < .05, η2 = .13; TRF aggression rat-
ings were slightly higher overall at Phase 1 than Phase 2. No
other effects were expected or found.
To simplify subsequent analyses, we computed change
scores (Phase 2 - Phase 1), which were then submitted to a 2
(event condition) × 2 (reaction condition) ANOVA. Figure 2(A)
presents mean TRF change in standardized form (z-scores); this
was solely to permit graphical comparisons with other measures
with different natural metrics, and otherwise had no effect on
any findings we report. Our predictions and findings necessary-
ily parallel those just explained, though are now expressed as
change scores. We found the expected main effects for event
and reaction condition (Table 2) and the expected Tukey’s
HSD comparisons (Figure 2(A)). As predicted, the TRF was
sensitive to changes in overall behavior, but not to the event or
reaction changes that contributed to those rates. As shown in
Figure 2(A), the diverging conditions (E/R+, E+/R; see
middle bars) with identical overall behavior rates in the stimuli
did not differ for TRF aggression despite the fact that one in-
creased in aggressive reactions and the other decreased.
The preceding analyses used categorical predictors (condi-
tion), and do not fully reveal how participants’ ratings were
predicted by the base-rates of aggressive acts in the stimuli.
Recall that values for p(R) can be derived by multiplying p(E)
and p(R|E) as shown in Table 1. Because this (equal) weighting
yields the base rates, we expected it to best predict the TRF
aggression ratings. It is also possible that participants were
more influenced by the probability of encountering events, or
by the conditional probability of reactions to them. To test this,
we attached weights between .01 - .99 (in increments of .01) to
each component and computed predicted values. With w as the
event weight, and 1 w for the reaction weight, the predicted
values were [(wip(E) + (1 wi)p(R|E)]/2. For each weighted set,
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
4
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 5
Phase
Mean TRF
12
0102030
E- R- *
E- R+
E+ R-
E+ R+ *
Table 2.
F-tests and effect sizes for ANOVAs of Teacher Report Form (TRF)
ratings, event judgments, and reaction judgments, for Studies 1-2ab.
TRF Event Reaction
Study Source F η2 F η2 F η2
1 Reaction 56.99 .61 10.77 .23 126.54.78
Event 70.24 .66 137.38 .79 42.42.54
R × E .32 .01 1.56 .04 1.85 .05
2a Reaction 40.90 .53 12.46 .26 92.89.72
Event 47.02 .57 154.74 .81 25.85.42
R × E 2.39 .06 8.17 .19 1.19 .03
2b Reaction 90.75 .72 8.87 .20 50.78.59
Event 94.78 .73 45.25 .56 .95 .02
R × E .03 .00 .02 .00 .08 .00Figure 1.
Mean Teacher Report Form (TRF) aggression ratings by
phase, for Study 1. Experimental conditions are shown
next to each line. Error bars indicate +/ 1 SEM. Asterisks
indicate significant differences across phase (ps < .001).
Note: R × E = Reaction × Event interaction. Degrees of freedom were (1, 36) for
all studies. All F’s > 7.40 (12.83) were significant at p < .01 (.001); all other F’s
shown were p > .05.
-1.5 -1.0-0.50.00.51.01.5
(A) TRF Means
Mean Difference (z)
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
ab
bc
St udy 1St udy 2aSt udy 2b
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
abb
c
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
ab
bc
-1.5 -1.0-0.50.00.51.01.5
(B) Event Means
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
aa
bc
St udy 1St udy 2aSt udy 2b
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
aa
bc
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
aab
bc cd
-1.5 -1.0-0.50.00.51.01.5
(C) Reaction Means
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
a
b
c
d
St udy 1St udy 2aSt udy 2b
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
a
b
c
d
E
-R-
E
+R-
E
-R+
E
+R+
a
b
a
b
(D) TRF R-Square
W eight ed Cues
R- Squared
00.2 0.40.60.8 1.0
00.2 0.4 0.60.8 1.0
S1
S2a
S2b
AF
(E) Event R-Square
W eight ed C ues
00.2 0.40.60.8 1.0
00.2 0.40.6 0.8 1.0
S1
S2a
S2b
EV
(F) Reaction R-Sq uar e
W eight ed C ues
00.2 0.40.60.8 1.0
00.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
S1
S2a
S2b
RE
Figure 2.
Results for Teacher Report Form (TRF), event, and reaction measures for Studies 1 (S1), 2a (S2a), and 2b (S2b). Top row
(panels A-C) shows mean change scores for each measure (standardized within study). Experimental conditions are on the
abscissa. Bars within a panel that do not share a subscript (a)-(d) are significantly different based on Tukey’s HSD. Error bars
indicate +/ 1 SEM. Bottom row (panels (D)-(F)) shows cue weight analysis results for TRF, event, and reaction judgments,
respectively. A “weighted cue” value of 0 on the abscissa represents a full weighting of events; 1 represents a full weighting
of reactions. The ordinate shows the R2 values for predictions of participants’ ratings for phases 1 and 2 combined. Dotted
lines indicate hypothetical perfect sensitivity to act-frequencies (AF); events (EV), and reactions (RE).
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
we computed scores from these values, used them to predict
participants’ deviation from their mean TRF aggression rating
over the two phases, and computed R2. If participants showed
perfect sensitivity to the base rate of aggression, a peak R2 of
1.0 would occur at equal weighting of events and reactions (.50
on the abscissa; see line “AF” in Figure 2(D)). Perfect sensitiv-
ity to events is shown by line “EV” in Figure 2(E); perfect
sensitivity to reactions is shown by line “RE” in Figure 2(F).
As expected, results for the TRF resembled the theoretically
perfect AF curve in Figure 2(D) (see “S1” for Study 1), and
were best modeled (R2 = .81) when event rates (.55) and reac-
tion rates (.45) were nearly equally weighted.
Event Judgments
We examined participants’ judgments of events using the
same method as for the TRF. We predicted that event judg-
ments would show increases in the E+ conditions and decreases
in the E conditions. As expected, the largest effect was the
main effect for event condition (Table 2), with judged event
change higher on average for the E+ conditions and pairwise
comparisons showing discrimination between the functionally
diverging conditions (Figure 2(B)). We also found a smaller,
unexpected main effect for reaction condition, with judged
event change higher on average for R+ conditions. As shown in
Figure 2(B), the mean change for the E+/R condition, though
in the expected direction, was lower than one would expect if
participants’ event ratings were influenced only by events. As
shown in Figure 2(E), results for participants’ event judgments
resembled the theoretical results (see line “EV”) and were best
modeled (R2 = .80) when the weight was high for event rates (w
= .78) and low for reaction rates (.22).
Reaction Ju dgments
Parallel analyses were performed for judgments of aggres-
sive reactions to aversive events. We expected participants to
be sensitive to changes in target’s reaction rates and for their
ratings to increase in the R+ conditions and decrease in the R
conditions. As expected, the largest effect was the main effect
for reaction condition (see Table 2), with pairwise comparisons
showing discrimination between the diverging conditions (Fig-
ure 2(C)). However, we also found a main effect for event
condition; the marginal mean was higher for E+ conditions. As
shown in Figure 2(C), the mean changes for the diverging
conditions (E/R+, E+/R), were not as large as one would
expect if reaction ratings were influenced only by reaction rates.
As shown in Figure 2(F), reaction ratings were best modeled
(R2 = .82) when the weights were less extreme (w = .63 for
reactions, .37 for events) than was found for event judgments.
Compared to the results for event judgments, these results do
not correspond as closely to the theoretically perfect results (see
line “RE”).
Summary
As expected, the TRF aggression scale was sensitive to
changes in the overall rate of targets’ aggression. It did not
detect differences between targets whose base rates were un-
changed, even though one of them increased in aggressive reac-
tions and the other decreased. Although participants focused on
targets encountered events and their conditional reactions to
those events when context-sensitive measures were used. This
occurred even though they provided these judgments at the end
of the experiment, when memory demands were high. Partici-
pants’ reaction judgments were influenced more than antici-
pated by how often the targets encountered relevant events.
act frequencies when using the TRF, they detected how often
Studies 2a-b
One interpretation oftive difficulty judging
re
Method
Participants. For Studynts (23 W, 17 M, Mage =
21
Studies 2a-b, stimuli were
ne
1993 TRF to determine if the
fi
mat (see Study 1, Method) into a frequency-count format. Par-
participants’ rela
action rates is that the changes they observed violated their
expectations about the stability of behavior over time. For ex-
ample, some studies suggest that temporal stability is high rela-
tive to the cross-situational consistency of behavior (Fleeson,
2001), and that people over-rely on the former when making
judgments about personality (Mischel & Peake, 1982). Study
2a therefore examined whether participants’ judgments would
be more sensitive to reaction changes when targets’ behavior
varied across settings (i.e., classrooms) rather than over time as
in Study 1. A second interpretation is that judging reactions to
events is more complex than judging overall behavior rates or
event rates. Past research demonstrates that people have diffi-
culty interpreting conditional probabilities (Fox & Levav, 2004)
and that formally equivalent tasks may be easier when they are
presented in a frequency-count format (Gigerenzer, 2008). To
address these questions, Study 2b reformatted the event and
reaction dependent measures into a frequency-count format and
asked participants to provide separate estimates of how often
events and relevant reactions to those events occurred.
2a, 40 stude
.22 years, SD = 3.50) participated, and for Study 2b, 40 (21
W, 19 M, Mage = 22.92 years, SD = 3.82) participated. Partici-
pants in both studies were recruited from the Brown University
community through flyers advertising a “psychology study”
and were paid $8 for volunteering.
Materials and procedure. For
arly identical to those in Study 1, but minor revisions were
made to describe cross-situational change rather than temporal
change. Whereas Study 1 described the target’s behavior at two
distinct points in time (June and August) Studies 2a-b described
the target’s behavior in two classroom settings (art and music).
Otherwise, the specific events and reactions described were the
same as those used in Study 1.
Study 1 used items from the
ndings from Wright et al.’s (2001) study of behavior at a sin-
gle time point extended to behavior change. Study 2a-b used
items from the 2001 TRF to determine if our results generalize
to the more recent version of the instrument. The aggression
scales in the two versions are similar, with 19 of the 20 items in
the 2001 version also appearing in the 1993 version (see
Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). The remaining dependent mea-
sures in Study 2a were identical to those used in Study 1, with
minor word changes to ask about cross-situational change. For
example, when participants were asked about the target’s be-
havior at Phase 1, the word “June” was changed to “art class”;
likewise for Phase 2, “August” was changed to “music class.”
Study 2b was identical to Study 2a, except that the behavior,
event, and reaction measures were changed from a rating for-
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
6
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
ticipants were first asked to report the overall frequency of the
target’s behaviors, or n(R), at Phase 1 and Phase 2. The pro-
gram required that participants’ answers be between 0 - 32. The
same format was used for event judgments, n(E). Using the n(E)
estimate provided, the reaction prompt read, “You reported that
peers teased Dan [n(E)] times. Out of those [n(E)] times, how
many times did Dan respond by arguing or quarreling?”; we
refer to this as n(R E), where = the intersection of reac-
tions and events. Answers were required to be between 0 and
n(E) previously estimated. We computed the conditional prob-
ability of a reaction given an event (“computed reaction”) as,
p(R|E) = n(R E)/n(E).
Results and Discussion
As predicted, Studies 2a and
2b were similar pported the hy-
po
es in events. The ex-
pe
d, as was the now familiar, smaller main
ef
reaction change, we expected the
fr
tional
pr
gressive acts, and did
no
dy 3
One might argue that o for the child assessment
method (TRF) do not aply-used adult personality
m
Method
Thirty-nine undergradu6 M, Mage = 19.21 years,
SD = 1.10) from an introdhology pool participated.
St
the results for TRF ratings for
to those in Study 1 and again su
thesis that the TRF would be sensitive to overall behavior
rates, and not detect changes in diverging targets. The main
effects (Table 2), pairwise comparisons (Figure 2(A)), and cue
weighting analyses (Figure 2(D)) were similar to those for
Study 1. As expected, TRF ratings for Studies 2a-b were best
predicted (R2 = .77 and .82, respectively) when weights for
events (w = .50) and reactions (.50) were equal, as would occur
for ideal act frequency sensitivity.
The results for Study 2a again supported the hypothesis that
participants would be sensitive to chang
cted main effect for event condition was obtained, as was a
smaller effect for reaction condition (Table 2). As expected,
participants detected the difference between the events rates for
the E+/R and E/R+ targets, but again they were also some-
what affected by reaction rates. Participants’ event ratings
(Figure 2(E)) were best predicted (R2 = .83) when the weight
was high for events rates (w = .75) and low for reaction rates
(.25), as expected.
For reaction judgments, the expected main effect for reaction
condition was foun
fect for event condition (Table 2). Change for the diverging
conditions (E/R+, E+/R) was differentiated (Figure 2(C)),
but less clearly than one would expect if reaction ratings were
solely influenced by reaction rates. Reaction judgments (Figure
2(F)) were best predicted (r = .78) when the weight was higher
for reaction rates (w = .64) than for event rates (.36). Thus, the
results essentially replicated those in Study 1; the cross-setting
format of Study 2a did not measurably affect participants’ sen-
sitivity to reaction change.
Although the cross-setting format did not seem to increase
participants’ sensitivity to
equency-count format used in Study 2b to increase partici-
pants’ sensitivity to event rates and reaction rates by decoupling
the conditional probability format of the reaction rating task.
For event judgments, we found the expected main effect for
event condition (Table 2), and change scores for the diverging
conditions (E/R+, E+/R) were in the expected direction
(Figure 2(B)). However, mean change was less extreme than
expected for both diverging conditions (E+/R; E/R+), and
participants demonstrated slightly less sensitivity to events
using this response format. Compared to Studies 1-2a, event
judgments were predicted (R2 = .60) by a weighted combination
of events (w = .65) and reactions (.35) (see Figure 2(E)).
In contrast, the frequency-count format did increase partici-
pants’ sensitivity to reaction change. The computed condi
obabilities were uniquely influenced by the actual conditional
probabilities of targets’ reactions (Table 2). As shown in Fig-
ure 2(C), the means for the diverging conditions (E/R+,
E+/R) were different and now comparable to the converging
conditions with corresponding reaction change (E+/R+, E/R).
The cue weight analysis (Figure 2(F)) showed that the reaction
measure was best predicted when the reaction weight was rela-
tively high (w = .88) and the event weight was low (.12). How-
ever, Figure 2(F) also reveals that the means in the converging
conditions were less extreme and the reaction measures more
variable (i.e., standard errors larger) than in previous studies,
resulting in a lower peak R2 value (.59).
Summary. As in Study 1, in Studies 2a-b, TRF ratings were
predicted by the actual base-rates of ag
t distinguish between targets who showed equal overall
change, but opposite changes in aggressive reactions. As in
Study 1, participants’ event judgments were sensitive to actual
event rates, though they were somewhat influenced by reaction
rates. For Study 2b, event judgments were influenced by actual
event rates, but were noisier when the frequency-count format
was used. In contrast, the frequency-count format in Study 2b
improved participants’ sensitivity to reaction change: Condi-
tional probabilities derived from participants’ frequency esti-
mates were influenced solely by changes in the conditional
probabilities of targets’ reactions. These results indicate that
people can assess change in reactions but have some difficulty
under the conditions we created, and improve when the fre-
quency-count format is used.
Stu
ur findings
ply to wide
easures (e.g., NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992). As we have
noted, some researchers have argued that five-factor measures
may emphasize behavior frequencies less and allow observers
to give greater weight to targets’ conditional reactions (see
Wood & Roberts, 2006) and therefore detect reaction patterns
(Denissen & Penke, 2008). If so, the FFI could distinguish be-
tween our functionally diverging, but act-frequency equivalent
targets. We suggest, however, that the majority of the FFI’s
items are act frequency in nature, and we therefore predicted
that the FFI, like the TRF, would be primarily affected by
changes in the frequency of targets’ trait-relevant behaviors.
Study 3 therefore focused on the FFI domain of agreeableness
and created stimuli that were structurally identical to those used
in Studies 1-2ab, but described a college student showing
(dis)agreeable reactions to (non)aversive events. Although
agreeableness (A) was the main interest, all domains were ana-
lyzed. We expected other domains that were relevant to our
stimuli—extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N)—to behave si-
milarly to agreeableness, and not distinguish between function-
ally diverging targets. We made no predictions for openness (O)
and conscientiousness (C), as these behaviors were not the fo-
cus of the study.
ates (23 W, 1
uctory psyc
imuli had the same event and reaction rates as in Study 1, but
described a 19-year-old sophomore, and focused on agreeable-
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 7
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
8
imarily sensitive to changes in act
re 3(A), the three traits most
re
eral Discussion
This research usch to examine the
perception and ase. Three main
fi
ness. Because the target was an adult, interactions involved pants were sensitive to changes in the social events the target
encountered. Third, participants were sensitive, but somewhat
less so, to the conditional probability of targets’ reactions to
those events when explicitly asked to assess them. These results
support the view that popular child and adult summary meas-
ures assess overall behaviors rather than reactions. They also
demonstrate that such measures can show stability even when
changes occur in people’s reactions to events, and illustrate
how people’s perceptions of change may diverge from conclu-
sions based on their own summary trait ratings.
only peers (rather than peers and adults). An example of an
aversive event paired with a disagreeable reaction is: “Dan’s
lab partner says, ‘I don’t want to do the analyses in the way we
agreed.’ Dan replies, ‘Tough. We’re doing it my way and I’m
not changing my mind.’” The dependent measure was the 60-
item NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992).
Results and Discussion
FFI scale scores were pr
frequencies. As shown in Figu We have noted that people might “implicitly contextualize”
items on child behavior checklists and adult personality invent-
tories, even though most items in such measures do not explic-
itly identify the context in which a behavior may occur (see
Denissen & Penke, 2008; Tellegen, 1991; Wood & Roberts,
2006). In this view, the rater infers the situations that are most
relevant and focuses on the target’s conditional responses to
those situations. We predicted, however, that these measures
would primarily assess overall behaviors and show little sensi-
tivity to people’s reaction patterns. Our results supported this
prediction and provided little evidence of implicit contextuali-
zation for either of the measures we studied. The aggression
scale on the child measure (TRF) distinguished between the
targets based on their overall behavior frequencies. However, it
did not distinguish between targets who showed opposite pat-
terns of change in their social environments and how they re-
acted to them. Likewise, domain scores on the adult measure
(FFI) also appeared to be primarily sensitive to overall behavior
and did not distinguish between changes that originated in the
environment versus those that originated in the target’s reac-
tions.
levant to the experiment (A, E, N) showed results that were
similar to those for the TRF in Studies 1 and 2. There were
main effects for reaction condition, F’s(1, 35) > 2.56, ps < .001,
η2’s = .37 (N), .54 (E), and .74 (A), main effects for event con-
dition F’s(1, 35) > 39.36, ps < .001, η2’s = .53 (N), .61 (E), .63
(A), and no significant interactions nor discrimination between
functionally diverging targets. As predicted, participants’ A, E,
and N ratings were best predicted by a weighted combination of
events (.45, .54, .59, respectively) and reactions (.55, .46, .41)
(Figure 3(B)), which were all similar to the ideal act frequency
result. For O, there was a main effect for reaction condition,
F(1, 35) = 19.86, p < .001, η2 = .36, and for C a main effect for
event condition, F(1, 35) = 15.01, p < .001, η2 = .3. Although
the R2 values for O and C were lower than for the other traits, O
ratings were better predicted by reactions (.61) than by events
(.39), whereas the C ratings were better predicted by events (.75)
than by reactions (.25).
Gen
The summary instruments we examined were built on the
assumption that personality is stable and enduring, and there-
fore focus on mean-level behaviors rather than situational influ-
ences (see Cervone et al., 2001). In this regard, our results show
that the TRF and FFI capture precisely what they were designed
to capture: overall behavior. However, our results also highlight
the tradeoffs associated with this emphasis on overall from
changes in the social situations they encounter. Our studies
ed an experimental approa
sessment of behavior chang
ndings emerged. First, two instruments that are widely used in
child and adult assessment enabled raters to detect changes in
overall behavioral tendencies, but did not enable them to dis-
tinguish between targets who showed opposite changes in their
trait-relevant reactions to events. Second, in both temporal
(Study 1) and cross-situational paradigms (Study 2a), partici-
(A) FFI Difference Scores
M
ean
Diff
erence
-20-10 0+1 0+20
E-R-
E+R-
E-R+
E+R+
a
b
b
c
AgreeableExtravertedNeurotic(R)Openness Conscientious
E-R-
E+R-
E-R+
E+R+
ab
bc
E-R-
E+R-
E-R+
E+R+
ab
bc c
E-R-
E+R-
E-R+
E+R+
a
b
ab
bc
E-R-
E+R-
E-R+
E+R+
aab
bb
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.60.8 1.0
(B) FFI R-Squ are
R-Squared
W eight ed C ues
AF
A
E
O
N
.00.25 .50.75 1.0
C
Figure 3.
Results for NEO-FFI for Study 3. Panel A shows mean change scores for agreeableness (A), extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), openness
scientiousness (C). Experimental conditions are on the abscissa. Bars within a panel that do not share a subscript (a)-(c) are (O), and con
significantly different based on Tukey’s HSD. Error bars = +/ 1 SEM. Panel B shows cue weight analysis for FFI judgments for A, E, N, O,
and C. AF = hypothetical perfect sensitivity to act-frequencies
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
als
is
an-
response-
bility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the offi-
cial views of the tal Health or the
Nationa
Vermont.
Achenbach, T. M., Howell, C. T., McConaughy, S. H., & Stanger, C.
(1995). Six-year predational sample of chil-
dren and youth: I. Crs. Journal of the Ame-
o illustrate how summary measures could show that behavior
stable over time or across settings even when an individual
ws clear changes in how they respond to social stim
mate events and conditional reactions at Phases 1 and 2. This
put the retrospective event and reaction ratings at a disadv
sh uli.
These findings suggest that research on change over time and
across settings (see Helson, Jones, & Kwan, 2002; Terracciano
et al., 2009) should not over-rely on summary trait or behavior
measures, but should also incorporate measures that explicitly
examine people’s reaction patterns and the make-up of their
social environments.
Overall, our findings from the event and reaction rating tasks
indicate that, given the right assessment format, participants can
report on events and r
o
eactions when asked. However, they also
indicated that judgments about reactions, p(R|E), may be in-
herently more difficult than overall frequency judgments be-
cause they require the perceiver to encode how often an event
occurred as well as how often a behavior co-occurred with it.
We attempted to improve participants’ performance in Study 2b
by decomposing the task into its two frequency components:
participants first estimated the frequency of aversive events,
n(E), and then estimated the frequency of aggressive acts to
those events, n(R E). We then computed conditional prob-
abilities from these two estimates in the usual fashion, p(R|E) =
n(R E)/n(E). These derived estimates were affected uniquely
by the actual conditional probabilities of targets’ reactions in
the stimuli, and were not influenced by how often targets en-
countered events, as found in Study 1 and 2a. A key challenge
for future research is to determine the task formats that best
enable people to disentangle event rates and reaction rates, but
that are as simple and efficient as possible.
Interpreting participants’ difficulty in judging reactions re-
quires careful attention to our procedure. The reaction measure
in Studies 1-2ab was administered for both Phase 1 and 2 after
participants had filled out the TRFs. Completing the act fre-
quency task first may have framed all subsequent measures in
the experiment and may have influenced participants to think
more as “act frequentists” rather than “contextualists” (see
Schwarz & Oyserman, 2011; Wright et al., 2001). Findings
from the open-ended assessments provide some support for this
interpretation. Participants’ initial descriptions of the targets,
which were provided before they were influenced by other
measures at Phase 1, not only used uncontextualized behavior
statements, but also used simple event statements and condi-
tional if then … statements about event-reaction links.
Limitations of our studies should be noted. First, although
our experimental approach answers questions about how sum-
mary assessments measure change, our manipulations for the
event and reaction change parameters were larger (.25/.75) than
might typically be observed in natural settings. Additional
laboratory studies will be needed to examine how the TRF, FFI,
and other summary measures (e.g., BFI; John, Donahue, &
Kentle, 1991) perform under a wider range of stimulus ma-
nipulations. It will also be important to examine measures that
appear to give greater emphasis to children’s reactions to events
(e.g., SSRS, Gresham & Elliot, 1990) and those that also focus
on features of the social environment (e.g., Fournier et al.,
2008).
Second, because our focus was on the TRF and FFI, other
measures were either brief (e.g., open-ended descriptions) or
were collected after all stimuli were shown. In contrast to other
research on people’s use of contextual information (Chun et al.,
2002; Wright et al., 2001), our studies required subjects to en-
code multiple interactions over two phases, and only then esti-
tage. However, field studies often involve even more challeng-
ing conditions, in which raters’ are asked to summarize more
complex social interactions over much longer time periods.
Clearly, additional research will be needed to answer questions
about how people use information about situations and reac-
tions under a wide range of stimulus complexity and memory
load conditions (see Chun et al., 2002).
Overall, our findings suggest that instruments widely used to
study personality change research are efficient at assessing
overall behavior change, but ill-equipped to capture nuanced,
context-specific dispositional and environmental change proc-
esses. As a result, these measures may have difficulty revealing
whether behavior change stems from changes in the person, the
environment, or both. Given our findings that people are sensi-
tive to changes in the environment and in people’s reactions
(given the proper assessment format), it should be possible to
develop measures that are more consistent with how people
naturally encode behavior in context and that are better suited
to assess the context-specific aspects of personality change. A
major goal of future research in this area should be to deepen
our understanding of the judgment processes that are engaged
(or disengaged) when informants complete an assessment in-
strument, and use that knowledge to help improve the quality of
assessment practices in research and applied settings.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by award number
R15MH076787 and 3R15MH076787-01S1from the National
Institute of Mental Health. The content is solely the
National Institute of Men
l Institutes of Health. We are especially grateful to
David Freestone, whose programming assistance made it possi-
ble to collect the data reported in Study 2b. We also thank Rus-
sell Church and Elena Festa Martino for their comments on
earlier versions of this work.
REFERENCES
Achenbach, T. M. (1993). Empirically based taxonomy: How to use
syndromes and profile types derived from the CBCL/4-18, TRF, &
YSR. Burlington: University of
ictors of problems in a n
oss-informant syndrome
rican Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 34, 336-347.
Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2001). Manual for the ASEBA
school-age forms & profiles. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont.
doi:10.1097/00004583-199503000-00020
Cervone, D., Shadel, W. G., & Jencius, S. (2001). Social-cognitive
theory of personality assessment. Personality and Social Psychology
Review, 5, 33-50. doi:10.1207/S15327957PSPR0501_3
Cervone, D. (2005). Personality architecture: Within-person structures
and processes. Annual Rev iew o f Psychology, 56, 423-452.
doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070133
Chun, W. Y., Spiegel, S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2002). Assimilative
behavior identification can also be resource dependent: The uni-
model perspective on personal-attribution phases. Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology, 83, 542-555.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.83.3.542
osta Jr., P., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R Professional
Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources,
CManual.
Inc.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 9
A. G. HARTLEY ET AL.
Denissen, J. J. A., & Penke, L. (2008). Motivational individual reaction
norms underlying the Five-Factor model of personality: First steps
towards a theory-based conceptual framework. Journal of Research
in Personality, 42, 1285-1302. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2008.04.002
D V. R. (2007). The situation irks, M. A., Treat, T. A., & Weersing,
specificity of youth responses to peer provocation. Journal of Clini-
cal Child & Adolescent Psycho log y, 36, 621-628.
doi:10.1080/15374410701662758
leeson, W. (2001). Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of
personality: Traits as density distributions of states. Journal of Per-
sonality and Social P sychology, 80, 1011-1027.
F
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.1011
ournier, M. A., Moskowitz, D. S., & Zuroff, D. C. (2008). Integrating
dispositions, signatures, and the interpersonal dom
Personality and Social P s y chology,
F
ain. Journal of
94, 531-545.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.94.3.531
ox, C. R., & Levav, J. (2004). Partition-edit-count: Naive extensional
reasoning in judgment of conditional probability.
mental Psychology: General , 133, 626-
FJournal of Experi-
642.
doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.626
igerenzer, G. (2008). Rationality for mortals: How people cope with
uncertainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (199
G
G5). The correspondence bias. Psy-
chological Bulletin, 1 1 7 , 21-38. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.1.21
resham, F. M., Cook, C. R., Collins, T., Rasethwane, K., Dart, E.,
Truelson, E. et al. (2010). Developing a chan
havior rating scale as a progress monitor
G
ge-sensitive brief be-
ing tool for social behavior:
An example using the social skills rating system-teacher form.
School Psychology Revie w, 39, 364-379.
Gresham, F. M., & Elliott, S. N. (1990). Social skills rating system
manual. Circle Pines: American Guidance Service.
Hartley, A. G., Zakriski, A. L., Wright, J. C. (2011). Probing the depths
of informant discrepancies: Contextual influences on divergence and
convergence. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 40,
1-13. doi:10.1080/15374416.2011.533404
elson, R., Jones, C., & Kwan, V. S. Y. (2H002). Personality change
and Social Psy-
over 40 years of adulthood: Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of
two longitudinal samples. Journal of Personality
chology, 83, 752-766. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.83.3.752
enry, D. B. (2006). Associations between peer nominations, teacher
ratings, self-reports, and observations of malicious and disruptive
behavior. Assessment, 1 3, 241-252.
H
doi:10.1177/1073191106287668
offenaar, P. J., & Hoeksma, J. B. (2002). The structure of opposition-
ality: Response dispositions and situational aspects. Journal of Psy-
chology and Psychiatry and Allied Health Disciplines, 4
H
3, 375-385.
pression formation. Personality
Hunsinger, M., Isbell, L. M., & Clore, G. L. (2011). Sometimes happy
people focus on the trees and sad people focus on the forest: Con-
text-dependent effects of mood in im
and Social Psychology Bulletin.
John, O. P., Donahue, E. M., & Kentle, R. L. (1991). The big five in-
ventory—Versions 4a and 54. Berkeley, CA: University of Califor-
nia.
Kammrath, L. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Mischel, W. (2005). Incor-
porating if … then … personality signatures in person perception:
Beyond the person-situation dichotomy. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 88, 605-618.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.4.605
ischel, W. (2009). From personality and assessment (1968) to per-M
ch in Personality, 43, 282-290. sonality science. Journal of Resear
doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.037
Mischel, W., & Peake, P. K. (1982). Beyond déjà vu in the search for
cross-situational consistency. Psychological Review, 89, 730-755.
doi:10.1037/0033-295X.89.6.730
s
f Personality and Social Psychol-
Reeder, G. D., Monroe, A. E., & Pryor, J. B. (2008). Impressions of
Milgram’s obedient teachers: Situational cues inform inference
about motives and traits. Journal o
ogy, 95, 1-17. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.1
oss, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Dis-
tortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in
experimental social psychology (Vol. 10).
R
New York: Academic
S
tereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63,
Press.
challer, M. (1992). In-group favoritism and statistical reasoning in
social inference: Implications for formation and maintenance of
group s
61-74. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.1.61
chwarz, N., & Oyserman, D. (2011). Asking questions about behavior:
Self reports in evaluation research. In Melvin, M., Donaldson, S., &
Campbell, B. (Eds.), Social Psychology
S
and Evaluation. New York:
S
a0015072
Guildford Press.
mith, E. R., & Collins, E. C. (2009). Contextualizing person percep-
tion: Distributed social cognition. Psychological Review, 116, 343-
364. doi:10.1037/
tterns and their interpersonal consequen-
Smith, R. E., Shoda, Y., Cumming, S. P., & Smoll, F. L. (2009). Be-
havioral signatures at the ballpark: Intraindividual consistency of
adults’ situation-behavior pa
ces. Journal of Research in Personalit y, 43, 187-195.
doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.006
ellegen, A. (1991). Personality traits: Issues of definition, evidence
and assessment. In W. Grove, & D. Cicchetti (Eds.), Th
about psychology: Essays in ho
Tinking clearly
nor of Paul Everett Meehl (pp. 10-35).
T
006
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
erracciano, A., McCrae, R. R., & Costa Jr., P. (2009). Intra-individual
change in personality stability and age. Journal of Research in Per-
sonality, 44, 31-37. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2009.09.
14.79.3.344
Trope, Y., & Gaunt, R. (2000). Processing alternative explanations of
behavior: Correction or integration? Journal of Personality and So-
cial Psychology, 79, 344-354. doi:10.1037/0022-35
Vansteelandt, K., & Van Mechlen, I. (1998). Individual differences in
situation-behavior profiles: A triple-typology model. Journal of Per-
sonality and Social P sychology, 75, 751-765.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.751
atson, D. (2004). Stability versus change, dependability versus error:
Issues in the assessment of personality over
search in Personality, 38, 319-350
W
time. Journal of Re-
. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2004.03.001
Wood, D., & Roberts, B. W. (2006). Cross-sectional and longitudinal
tests of the personality and role identity structural model (PRISM).
Journal of Personalit y, 74, 779-810.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00392.x
right, J. C., Lindgren, K. P., & Zakriski, A. L. (2001). Syndromal
versus contextualized personality asse
ronmental and dispositional determinant
W
ssment: Differentiating envi-
s of boys’ aggression. Jour-
nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1176-1189.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.6.1176
right, J. C., & Mischel, W. (1987). A conditional approach to dispo-
sitional constructs: The local predictability of social behavi
nal of Personality and Social Psych
W
or. Jour-
ology, 53, 1159-1177.
doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.6.1159
Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
10