A Conditional Approach to Dispositions

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1987, Vol. 53, No. 6, 1159-1177

Copyright 1987 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0022-3514/87/J00.75

A Conditional Approach to Dispositional Constructs:The Local Predictability of Social Behavior

Jack C.WrightBrown University

andWediko Children's Services

Walter MischelColumbia University

A conditional approach to dispositions is developed in which dispositional constructs are viewed as

clusters of if-then propositions. These propositions summarize contingencies between categories of

conditions and categories of behavior rather than generalized response tendencies. A fundamental

unit for investigating dispositions is therefore the conditional frequency of acts that are central to a

given behavior category in circumscribed situations, not the overall frequency of behaviors. In an

empirical application of the model, we examine how people's dispositional judgments are linked to

extensive observations of targets' behavior in a range of natural social situations. We identify catego-

ries of these social situations in which targets' behavior may be best predicted from observers' dispo-

sitional judgments, focusing on the domains of aggression and withdrawal. One such category con-

sists of subjectively demanding or stressful situations that tax people's performance competencies.As expected, children judged to be aggressive or withdrawn were variable across situations in disposi-

tionally relevant behaviors, but they diverged into relatively predictable aggressive and withdrawn

actions in situations that required the social, self-regulatory, and cognitive competencies they lacked.

Implications of the conditional approach for personality assessment and person perception research

are considered.

Dispositional constructs occupy a central position in person-ality and social psychology. In the personality literature, consid-erable debate has focused on the utility of formal dispositionalconstructs as operationally defined in personality assessmenttechniques (Buss &Craik, 1983; Epstein & O'Brien, 1985; Mis-chel, 1968; Vernon, 1964). In the social psychological literature,a parallel controversy has focused on the way social observersuse and abuse dispositional terms when they form personalityimpressions, make causal attributions, and try to predict behav-ior (Funder, 1987; Jones, 1979; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Swann,1984; Wright & Mischel, 1987). Unfortunately, these controver-

This research was supported by Grants MH39349 and 39263 from

the National Institute of Health to Walter Mischel and by BiomedicalResearch Support Grant BS603342 from Brown University to Jack C.

Wright.We would like to thank the administration, staff, and children of Wed-

iko Children's Services, whose cooperation made this research possible.We are especially grateful to Hugh Leichtman and Harry Parad, Wed-

iko's directors, for their support. We would also like to thank Yuichi

Shoda for his invaluable assistance at several stages of the research, Jan

Eisenman for her help in preparing the article, Michael Susi for making

his analyses available to us, and several colleagues, including Nancy

Cantor, Monica Rodriguez, and Henri Zukier, for their helpful feedback

on earlier drafts.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jack

C. Wright, Hunter Laboratory of Psychology, Brown University, Provi-

dence, Rhode Island 02912 or to Walter Mischel, Department of Psy-

chology, 309 Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, New York, NewYork 10027.

sies in both areas of psychology have been concerned more withattacking or defending the utility of dispositional constructsthan with clarifying their structure and function. It is this latter,more constructive goal that we pursue in this article.

We begin with a brief survey of the classic, relatively context-free conceptualizations of dispositional constructs that havedominated the literature on personality assessment and personperception. We then examine alternative views of dispositionalconstructs, which are termed conditional because they focuson the conditional if-then contingencies between situations andbehavior, in contrast to models that give little explicit treatmentto contexts. In our proposed conditional or contextual model,dispositional constructs are represented as concepts that linkcategories of acts with categories of conditions in which thoseacts are expected to occur. The model posits that the structureand function of dispositional constructs are best revealed byidentifying the clusters of specific if-then, condition-behaviorcontingencies people display. In the empirical core of this arti-cle, we apply our conditional model to identify how observers'dispositional judgments in two dispositional domains—aggres-sion and withdrawal—are linked to specific condition-behaviorcontingencies in the lives of children with adjustment problems,children we observed extensively during a summer in a campsetting. In this context we identify one category or equivalenceclass of naturally occurring social situations in which we hy-pothesized that targets' behavior may be predicted relativelywell from observers' dispositional judgments. This equivalenceclass consists of subjectively demanding or stressful situationsthat require the social, self-regulatory, and cognitive compe-

1159

1160 JACK C. WRIGHT AND WALTER MISCHEL

Table 1

Alternative Views of Dispositional Constructs

PositionCausalstatus Extension

Typical operationaldefinition

Causal yes Behavioral Cross-situationalconsistency consistency of behavior

(average of pairwisecorrelations)

Summary no Act trend Multiple-act aggregateover a specified periodof observation

Conditional no Condition- Conditional probability ofbehavior a category of behaviorscontingency given a category of

contexts

tencies that are especially difficult for the aggressive and with-

drawn children who were observed. Before turning to our em-

pirical efforts to test this hypothesis, however, we consider the

conceptualization of dispositional constructs themselves, as the

clarification of those constructs and their potential utility is a

principal goal of this article.

Unconditional Conceptualizationsof Dispositional Constructs

Confusion often occurs in theoretical discussions of disposi-

tions, in part because the original statements of the major theo-

ries of personality dispositions were hedged with regard to the

degree of stability and consistency that traits imply (Allport,

1937; Cartel!, 1957; Guilford, 1959). Adding to the confusion

was the fact that this hedging often did not translate into re-

search paradigms and clinical applications. A split developed

between theoretical views of traits, which acknowledged that of

course trait constructs did not imply behavioral consistency

over functionally different situations, and research and clinical

practice, which often proceeded as if they did (as reviewed, e.g.,

by Mischel, 1968; Peterson, 1968; Wiggins, 1973). In many re-

spects, it is not the theoretical positions as stated but rather the

paradigms as practiced that have dominated work on personal-

ity assessment and person perception. It is these practices, not

necessarily the theories underlying them, that our comments

address.

The oldest of these noncontextual paradigms is the causal

view of traits seen in the early consistency literature (Hart-

shorne & May, 1928; Newcomb, 1929) and later criticized ex-

tensively (Mischel, 1968; Peterson, 1968; Vernon, 1964). This

causal view conceptualizes dispositions as indicators of stable,

underlying attributes within the person that have determinative

effects on behavior (see Table 1). For instance, Allport (1937)

argued that behind the confusion of trait terms, the disagree-

ment of judges, and the errors of empirical observation, trait

terms ultimately refer to "bona fide mental structures" (p. 289)

that produce consistencies in behavior over time or across situa-

tions.

The presence of such traits did not require that these consis-

tencies in behavior always be pervasive; traits could also be nar-

row in the sense that the underlying mental structures render

relatively few situations equivalent and give rise to a relatively

small class of responses. Nevertheless, practitioners of trait par-

adigms who were inspired by the causal view posited that many

traits would produce rather broad consistencies in social behav-

ior across situations whose range and limits remained unclear

(Hartshorne & May, 1928; Newcomb, 1929). Trait-relevant be-

havior was expected in each of the many situations that were in

some way relevant to that domain, leading the cross-situational

consistency coefficient (i.e., the average of correlations over

pairs of situations sampled from the domain) to become a pri-

mary measure of personality coherence (Bern & Allen, 1974;

Mischel, 1968). One principal difficulty with this approach was

that the observed cross-situational consistency of behavior was

lower than expected (Hartshorne & May, 1928; Mischel, 1968;

Mischel & Peake, 1982; Peterson, 1968), which suggested that

the "mental structures" had less breadth than was assumed.

Another was that the causal status attributed to trait terms

seemed specious, as many trait attributions were little more

than restatements of observed regularities of behavior (Ban-

dura, 1969).

A second view of dispositional constructs, what might be

termed the summary or act-frequency position, attributes no

causal status to traits but rather conceptualizes them as descrip-

tive summaries of observed behavior (Buss & Craik, 1983;

Hampshire, 1953). In this view, dispositional statements consti-

tute claims about the relative incidence of acts (act frequency),

over a specified period of observation; they are statements of

what tends to happen on the whole (Hampshire, 1953), a gen-

eral trend or tendency in a person's conduct. The extension of

a dispositional term is therefore a high base-rate probability

(relative to other people) that a behavior or category of behav-

iors will occur over some period of observation (see Table 1).

On purely actuarial grounds, such attributions carry the im-

plication that similar behavioral frequencies will be observed in

the future, but they remain causally neutral and do not refer to

underlying psychic properties of the person.

The summary view does not require cross-situational consis-

tencies in social behavior (Hampshire, 1953) and is therefore

not embarrassed by the evidence of low consistency coefficients

(Epstein & O'Brien, 1985; Buss & Craik, 1983). It also avoids

the reification problem by insisting that dispositional state-

ments are powerless and do not serve an explanatory function

(Buss & Craik, 1983). Nevertheless, there is a key problem any

context-free conception of dispositions, whether causal or sum-

mary, must face (Brandt, 1970): Many dispositional statements

about objects as well as people do not seem to be claims about

generalized response tendencies; rather, they imply a tendency

to display particular behaviors under relatively well-defined

conditions. For example, the dispositional construct soluble ap-

pears not to summarize a general act trend over a specified pe-

riod of observation but rather a specific set of condition-action

contingencies (e.g., dissolving when submerged).

Conditional Views of Dispositional Constructs

Despite the dominance of causal and summary views in the

personality literature, there is a history of philosophical discus-

DISPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCTS 1161

sion of an alternative conceptualization of dispositional con-

structs that might be termed the conditional or subjunctive view

(see Table 1). The essential common feature of these views (Al-

ston, 1975; Hirschberg, 1978;Quine, 1960; Ryle, 1949) is that

they represent dispositional statements as hypothetical proposi-

tions that express probable if-then relations between situations

and behavior. For example, an attribution of brittleness is not a

summary statement about a generalized tendency to shatter or

break; rather, it expresses a set of subjunctive if-then proposi-

tions about how the object would respond to certain situations

(e.g., cracking or shattering when physically stressed). Similarly,

an attribution of a personality disposition (e.g., aggressive) is an

implicit subjunctive statement about what a person would be

likely to do under appropriate conditions (e.g., when frustrated,

when aversively stimulated), not necessarily what he or she will

do on average. The fundamental unit of a disposition is there-

fore not the unconditional probability of trait-relevant behav-

iors, p(B), as in a summary view; rather, it is the conditional

probability of a certain behavior or category of behaviors given

a certain condition or set of conditions has occurred, p(B \ C).

Naturally, the base-rate frequency of dispositionally relevant

behavior, p(B), may be correlated with the conditional fre-

quency, p(B\C), most obviously when base-rate estimates are

based on behaviors drawn in part from relevant conditions (C).

Nevertheless, within a conditional framework, the extension of

a dispositional construct is taken to be a set of context-behavior

conditional probabilities, not the base-rate probabilities with

which they may be correlated.

The conditional view's focus on if-then linkages between

contexts and behaviors has two general implications. In the

study of personality, the conditional model shifts personality as-

sessment from the use of average cross-situational consistency

coefficients and cross-situational act trends to an assessment of

the clusters of context-behavior regularities that people display

under specified conditions (e.g., Mischel, 1973). Similarly, the

conditional model shifts research on person perception from

analyzing people's inferences about the co-occurrence of trait

adjectives (Asch, 1946; Schneider, 1973) to analyzing the im-

plicit contextual structure of dispositional statements and their

linkages to specific, local predictability or consistency in behav-

ior (Wright & Mischel, 1987).

Our approach to dispositions extends the conditional view by

integrating it with recent work on category structure (Cantor

& Mischel, 1979; Cantor, Mischel, & Schwartz, 1982; Rosch,

Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976) and by further

specifying the nature of the condition-behavior linking rules.

In general, a dispositional construct can be represented as a

concept that consists of two category structures joined by an if-

then linking proposition (see Figure 1). The first component of

a dispositional construct consists of a category of acts or behav-

iors (cf. Buss & Craik, 1983; Cantor & Mischel, 1979). For ex-

ample, a category of aggressive acts might include physical (hit,

push, object struggle) and verbal (threat, provoke, boss) acts as

its members. The second component of a dispositional con-

struct is the set of contexts or conditions that is correlated with

the occurrence of behaviors falling within the behavior cate-

gory. For example, conditions correlated with the occurrence

of aggressive acts might include antecedent determinants (when

frustrated, when aversively stimulated) and consequent deter-

minants (when reinforced). The third component of a disposi-

tional construct is the proposition that expresses the nature of

the if-then link between the condition category and the behav-

ior category (e.g., if frustrated, then aggressive). In sum, the ex-

act nature of a dispositional construct will depend on the struc-

ture of the condition and behavior categories and the type of

rule linking them.

Structurally, both condition and behavior categories vary in

the degree to which they are well denned or fuzzy (see Cantor,

Smith, French, & Mezzich, 1980). Like many object categories

(Rosch et al., 1976), many behavior categories (e.g., aggressive

acts) appear to be fuzzy—they lack necessary and sufficient cri-

teria and instead have features that are merely correlated with

membership in the category. The boundaries of such a behavior

category are poorly defined and specific acts may vary in their

centrality to it, from those that are highly typical (e.g., hit for

the category of aggressive acts) to those that are peripheral (e.g.,

tease). Many condition categories (e.g., stressful events) appear

to be similarly fuzzy or probabilistic. Specific contexts therefore

could vary in their prototypicality to such categories, from

those that are highly typical of stressful events (e.g., complete

interference with task performance when the consequences for

failure are severe) to those that are more peripheral (e.g., partial

interference when the consequences for failure are mild). Fi-

nally, the if-then propositions that link members of the condi-

tion category (C) to members of the behavior category (B) also

vary in the degree to which they are necessary and sufficient

versus probabilistic (Magnusson, 1980). For example, neces-

sary and sufficient linking rules would specify that if and only

if C, then B (e.g., if and only if frustrated, then aggressive). In

contrast, probabilistic linking propositions indicate that mem-

bers of a condition category are neither necessary nor sufficient

but rather have only an imperfect, probabilistic relation with a

behavior, thus taking the form if C then B with probability p

(e.g., if frustrated, then sometimes aggressive).

A wide range of condition category/linking rule/behavior cat-

egory combinations are possible, each leading to different oper-

ations for determining whether a person is a member of a dispo-

sitional category (e.g., an aggressive child, a withdrawn child).

In this research, we pursue one variant of dispositional con-

structs that we believe to be particularly relevant to personality

and social psychology. In this variant, a dispositional statement

(e.g., "He is aggressive," "He is withdrawn") is a concept that

consists of a fuzzy condition category linked to a fuzzy behavior

category with probabilistic linking propositions. The behavior

categories are taken to be only loosely defined, consisting of

multiple acts that may vary in their centrality to the category.

Likewise, the condition category is only loosely defined, consist-

ing of events or contexts that vary from central or good exam-

ples of the condition category to peripheral or poor instances

of the category. Also, the linking propositions are taken to be

probabilistic, indicating only an imperfect correlation between

contexts and behavior.

This fuzzy-probabilistic variant implies that people who are

members of a dispositional category differ from nonmembers

in that they display a tendency to respond with one or more acts

falling in a behavior category when one or more contexts falling

1162 JACK C WRK3HT AND WALTER MISCHEL

{Condition Category} {Behavior Category}

{Internal States}

Feels AngryFeels Frustrated

{Interpersonal Events)

ThreatenedCriticized

Linking

Rule

{Physical}

HitsImpulsive

{Verbal}

ThreatsYells

Figure 1. Illustration of a dispositional construct (aggressive) as an if-thenlinkage between a category of conditions and a category of behaviors.

in a condition category occur. For example, the dispositionalattribution that child is aggressive refers to a cluster of condi-tion-behavior contingencies such as //"(frustrated or threatenedor punished) then sometimes (physically aggressive or verballyabusive or impulsive), or more generally //(C 1 or C2 or C3) then(Bl or B2 or B3) with probability p. Furthermore, we assumethat the probabilistic condition-behavior links are not uniformover specific condition-behavior pairs; rather, some condition-behavior finks are stronger than others. For example, for chil-dren judged to be aggressive, central aggressive acts (e.g., physi-cal aggression) might be relatively likely in certain conditions(e.g., highly frustrating situations) but extremely unlikely to oc-cur in other situations. Such acts are thus highly contingent onconditions. However, peripheral aggressive acts (e.g., impulsiv-ity) might be less contingent on specific conditions, occurringwith more uniform likelihood over contexts.

Identifying Psychologically Equivalent Conditions

Conditional models of dispositions complement interaction-ist approaches to personality that view person and situationvariables as joint determinants of social behavior (e.g., Dworkin& Kihlstrom, 1978; Ekehammar, 1974; Endler & Magnusson,1976; Magnusson, 1980; Magnusson & Endler, 1977). Never-theless, the conditional approach to dispositions distinguishesitself from most versions of interactionism in an important way.Conceptually, rather than characterizing dispositions as personvariables and evaluating their impact relative to situation vari-ables, the conditional approach does not invite a partitioningof causes into dispositional versus situational. The conditionalview instead posits that a disposition is itself a set of condition-behavior relations, thus diffusing debate over the relative powerof situations versus persons.

Although interactionist and conditional approaches to dispo-sitions diverge in the way they conceptualize dispositions, theyshare certain empirical challenges. For more thaji a decade, in-

teractionist approaches have emphasized that personality as-sessment requires a parallel assessment of situations (Bern &Allen, 1974) and have attempted to identify the relation be-tween functional equivalence classes of situations and catego-ries of behavior (e.g., Bern & Funder, 1978; Cantor & Kihl-strom, 1987; Dodge, 1983; Magnusson, 1980; Magnusson &Ekehammar, 1978; Monson, Hesley, & Chemick, 1982; Moos,1973; Patterson, 1982; Price & Bouffard, 1974). Indeed, one ofthe greatest challenges both for interactionist research and forthe conditional approach is to identify the categories of condi-tions or equivalence classes of situations most relevant to a givenbehavioral domain. Historically, empirical studies of interac-tionism have often found it easier to categorize types of peopleto whom dispositional statements might apply (Bern & Allen,1974; Chaplin & Goldberg, i 984; Mischei & Peake, ! 982) thanto specify the categories of situations in which predictable indi-vidual differences are most likely to be observed. Unless suchequivalence classes of situations are identified in advance, appli-cations of conditional models run the same risk as certain previ-ous applications of interactionism, namely the risk of produc-ing very large numbers of specific condition-behavior contin-gencies or higher order interactions whose psychologicalsignificance is unknown and that are merely found post hocrather than predicted (cf. Cronbach, 1975; Meehl, 1973).

Thus, in a conditional approach, a key task is to identify thecategories of conditions in which predictable behaviors relevantto some dispositional domain are most likely to be observed.One way to address this problem is to examine the conditionsthat social observers themselves consider relevant to the dispo-sitional constructs they use. Consider, for example, the types ofconditions people consider relevant to two dispositional do-mains we have studied in the past and on which we continue tofocus in this research: aggression and withdrawal- When weasked adults to describe real children they had rated as rela-tively aggressive or withdrawn, adults spontaneously linked ag-


gressive and withdrawn acts to specific contexts in which thoseacts might be observed (Wright & Mischel, 1987). Content anal-yses of these contingency statements revealed two major condi-tion categories most often used in conjunction with aggressiveand withdrawn acts. One category, comprising 21% of observ-ers' conditional statements, consisted of aversive interpersonalevents (e.g., when threatened, teased, warned, criticized,blamed, hit, punished, ordered). A second, comprising 20% oftheir conditional statements, consisted of aversive subjective ex-periences or lack of performance competence (e.g., when frus-trated, feels angry, feels upset, lacks ability to perform, feelsanxious). Most of the remaining conditional statements re-ferred to particular persons, specific occasions, or physical loca-tions in which the behaviors occur.

People's theories about ideal examples of aggressive childrenalso include condition-behavior contingencies similar to thosewe found in their descriptions of real children. For example, inresearch (Wright & Dawson, 1987), adults were asked to imag-ine hypothetical prototypic aggressive children, then to identifythe contexts in which these ideally aggressive children would bemost and least likely to display aggressive acts. The 10 contextsjudged least likely to elicit aggression were those that involvedphysical quickness, gross motor coordination, physicalstrength, powerful rewards for positive behavior, tangible evi-dence of success, taking physical risks, speaking in public, talk-ing about self, remembering information, and inventiveness.The 10 contexts judged most likely to elicit aggressive behaviorin ideally aggressive children were those that involved frustra-tion, anxiety, anger, tedium, sadness, controlling impulses, de-laying gratification, peer conflicts, adult conflicts, and structur-ing time. Other investigators have also observed that the situa-tions people identify as most problematic for aggressivechildren are those in which they are likely to lack the necessarysocial and self-regulatory competencies, such as when teacherexpectations about performance are high or when threatenedby peers (Dodge, 1986).

A range of empirical evidence is consistent with observers'informal theory that difficult, demanding, or stressful situationsare likely to elicit stable individual differences in these and otherdomains (Mischel, 1986). Although there is little support forthe strong version of the frustration-aggression hypothesis orthe hydraulic notions with which it is sometimes linked, thereis evidence that individual differences in aggressive responsesare particularly clear in situations that involve frustration (Mis-chel, 1986). More generally, research reveals related effects inother behavioral domains. Consider, for example, situationsvariously termed frustrating (Bandura & Walters, 1963), stress-ful (Lazarus, 1974), or subjectively demanding (McGrath,1976), which are similar in that the behaviors they require taxor exceed people's actual or perceived competence. In general,such situations often increase the variability of responses byimproving the performances of some individuals and interfer-ing with the performance of others (Lazarus, 1974; Mandler& Sarason, 1952; Sarason, 1957). Furthermore, this variabilitymay reflect meaningful individual differences in the availabilityof coping strategies, prior preferences, and biases (Eriksen &Wechsler, 1955; Spence, 1960). For instance, individual differ-ences between repressers and sensitizers in attention deploy-

ment (i.e., attending to information about their personal liabili-ties) are greatest following failure experiences and least follow-ing success (Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1973). Individualdifferences between low-anxious and high-anxious people areenhanced on difficult tasks relative to easy ones (Korchin &Levine, 1957). Type A individuals display higher levels of hos-tile aggression than do Type Bs following frustration (i.e., whenunable to complete a difficult puzzle), but the two groups aresimilar when not frustrated (Strube, Turner, Cerro, Stephens,& Hinchey, 1984). And individual differences between goodand poor experienced parachutists in respiration rate are great-est at the moment of performing the demanding task, the jump(Fenz, 1964).

Competency-Demand Hypothesis

Observers' informal theories about context-behavior contin-gencies and relevant personality research seem to converge onwhat we term a competency-demand hypothesis (Mischel,1985; Wright, 1983). According to this hypothesis, psychologi-cally demanding situations constitute one category of condi-tions in which individual differences in certain domains (e.g.,aggressiveness, withdrawal) may be observed with particularclarity (Mischel, 1985; Wright, 1983). When individuals aremotivated to meet situation requirements, and have the requi-site competencies available, their actions are likely to be appro-priate to the situation and more predictable from knowledge ofsituation variables than from individual differences. In con-trast, situations that involve high competency requirementsand are demanding or stressful may be more informative of pos-sible differences between individuals in their "preferred" or"available" coping styles. These preferred styles are coping pat-terns that have been well learned, that have previously been re-inforced, and about which the person has relatively generalizedperformance and behavior-outcome expectancies (Mischel,1973). To the degree that demanding situations require compe-tencies not readily available, they may activate these more gen-eralized or rigid coping styles and thus provide conditions underwhich individual differences in coping behavior may be morepredictable from dispositional judgments.

This competency-demand hypothesis represents one way ofoperationalizing a conditional model of dispositions: Peoplejudged to be aggressive as opposed to withdrawn are expectedto display few dispositionally relevant behaviors (i.e., aggressiveor withdrawn acts) in contexts that are poor instances of highcompetency-requirement situations (i.e., contexts that makerelatively few competency demands). But they are expected todisplay higher rates of dispositionally relevant behavior in con-texts that are good examples of high competency-requirementsituations (i.e., contexts that make many competency de-mands). We further posit that the condition-behavior contin-gencies will be clearest for acts that are most central to the be-havioral categories in question. For example, for aggressive chil-dren, highly central aggressive acts (e.g., physical aggression)should be highly contingent on the type of situation in whichthe child is observed (low vs. high demand). In contrast, moreperipheral, less central aggressive acts (e.g., impulsivity) shouldbe less contingent on the type of situation.


Present Study

To examine the utility of the contextual approach, we re-

quired observers who were highly familiar with a sample of ac-

tors so that we could study well-formed impressions that were

based on extensive interpersonal interactions. Second, we

needed extensive observations of these actors' behavior over

time and across a range of natural social situations. Third, we

required a population that included actors who were good ex-

amples of some psychologically important dispositional catego-

ries. These requirements could be satisfied in Wediko Chil-

dren's Services summer facility for troubled children, where we

have conducted related research. The children are character-

ized as having significant behavior problems and are often de-

scribed as aggressive and withdrawn (Horowitz, Wright, Low-

enstein, & Parad, 1981; Murphy & Wright, 1984; Wright, Gi-

ammarino, & Parad, 1986; Wright & Mischel, 1987). In this

setting, we were able to observe children repeatedly in a wide

range of situations that varied in the degree to which they re-

quired cognitive and self-regulatory skills relevant to our com-

petency-demand hypothesis. Our general procedure for form-

ing condition categories is to assess the demand level of these

nominal camp situations (e.g., art, music, canoeing, athletics,

academic tutoring, crafts, swimming), then to group these nom-

inal contexts into functional equivalence classes on the basis of

their level of competency demand. Our procedure also carefully

controls for the number of observations obtained in each cate-

gory of situations, thus allowing us to partial out the effect of

aggregation over occasions and to separate that from the effects

of situation demand.

Consistent with the competency-demand hypothesis, we ex-

pected that one class of conditions in which social behavior may

be predicted from dispositional judgments of aggression and

withdrawal consists of psychologically demanding situations. In

such stressful situations, children characterized as aggressive

should display relatively predictable levels of aggression; those

characterized as withdrawn should display relatively predict-

able levels of withdrawal. Although we also assessed prosocial

behaviors, because our population did not include good exem-

plars of socially competent children, we did not expect in-

creased predictability as a function of situation-competency re-

quirements in this domain.

Summary

The conditional view of dispositions specifies that a funda-

mental unit of dispositional assessment is the conditional prob-

ability of a category of behaviors given that some set of condi-

tions is satisfied. Dispositional judgments will therefore be most

closely linked to the local predictability of key or prototypic

social behaviors that occur in situations that are relevant to the

disposition. Instead of searching for context-free dispositions or

aggregating over acts or situations, this approach seeks to iden-

tify the specific condition-behavior contingencies that are most

closely linked to observers' dispositional judgments. One class

of conditions in which social behavior may be predicted rela-

tively well from dispositional judgments of aggression and with-

drawal consists of psychologically demanding situations. In

these situations, children judged as aggressive rather than with-

drawn should diverge into relatively stable aggressive rather

than withdrawn coping patterns, but in nondemanding situa-

tions the children's behavior will be relatively difficult to predict

from observers' dispositional judgments.

Method

Overview of Field Setting

At Wediko Children's Services summer facility in Hillsborough, NewHampshire, approximately 150 children live each summer in a camp

setting. The children live in groups of 8 to 10 same-sex peers and canbe observed in a wide range of situations: daily activities such as art,archery, canoeing, drama, music, trampoline, and woodworking. Be-cause the children attend these activities regularly over a period of 6.5

weeks, it was possible to obtain repeated measures of each child in each

situation. Each child lives in a group with 7 to 9 children and 4 to 5adult staff who interact with them throughout most of each day, makingit possible to obtain both adults' and children's dispositional judgments

that were based on extensive interpersonal interactions.

Subjects

The children are referred to the summer program by school counsel-on, by their parents, and by other agencies for significant social adjust-

ment problems they experience at school or in the home environment.All of the children (and many of their families) have had special counsel-ing at school, have received some form of individual or group therapy,

or both. The majority of the youths are from low-income families in theBoston area; they are of average or above-average intelligence and arenot physically handicapped (for details, see Parad, 1983). The subjectsin our study were the 89 children (aged 7-14 years) who resided full-time in the setting and therefore could be observed fully. Two of thesecases were subsequently dropped because of incomplete data, produc-ing a sample of 65 boys (M = 9.43 years, SD = 2.73) and 22 girls (M =

10.25 years, SD = 2.86) in the sample.

Dispositional Judgments

Adults'dispositional judgments. Previous research had identified the40 features adults commonly use in describing the typically aggressive,

withdrawn, and well-adjusted child (Horowitz et al., 1981; Murphy &Wright, 1984; Wright, Giammarion,& Parad, 1986). Examples of thesefeatures include verbally abusive, distractible, impulsive, restless, inter-

ested and involved in activities, untalkative, hostile, angry, quiet, andfights. Using these features, adult observers rated target children by us-ing scales ranging from 0 to 6, where 0 indicated the feature was not atall descriptive of Ms child and 6 indicated highly descriptive of this

child. Each adult (4-6 per group) assessed only those children in thecabin group (of 8-10 children) to which that adult was assigned. Theseadults interacted with the children in their group throughout each dayof the program and therefore could be considered as having very well-

formed impressions of them. Dispositional judgments were obtainedon four occasions: Days 12,26,38, and 48(2 days after the children had

departed the setting). On each occasion, each adult assessed 3 to 4 ofthe children in his or her group that were randomly assigned to him orher. This generated a minimum of two independent sets of ratings foreach child on each occasion.

Reliability of dispositional judgments. Because two to three indepen-dent raters made dispositional judgments of each child on each occa-sion, it was possible to assess interrater reliabilities for each of the 40items adults used in making their judgments. The raw interrater reli-

DISPOSIT1ONAL CONSTRUCTS 1165

abilities (alpha coefficients) ranged between .11 (.27) and .70 (.87), with

a median of .47 (.73). Before proceeding with further analyses, all items

with reliabilities below .38 (.62) were removed, producing a set of 30

items with median reliabilities of .53 (.77).

Ratings of features' relevance to dispositional categories. To evaluatehow central each of these 40 features was to the three dispositional cate-

gories, a separate group of staff (n = 30) not involved in the primarydata collection for this study rated how well each of the 40 items charac-

terized the ideally aggressive, withdrawn, or prosocial child. The ratings

were made on scales of 0 to 6 on which 0 indicated not at all descriptive

and 6 indicated highly descriptive. Each subject rated only one type ofchild, resulting in 10 sets of ratings for each type. To assess the degree

to which subjects agreed in their prototvpicality judgments, the ratings

within each group of raters (i.e., those who rated the ideally aggressive,

withdrawn, and prosocial child) were correlated. The average interrater

correlations and alpha coefficients were, for aggressive, 0.67 (0.96); for

withdrawn, 0.81 (0.97); and for prosocial, 0.60 (0.93).

Identifying central features. Oat analyses required features that were

good criteria for determining whether a particular child was aggressive

or withdrawn. A criterion is good in this respect if it is considered highly

descriptive for one dispositional category (e.g., the ideally aggressive

child) and nondescriptive with respect to contrast categories (e.g., the

ideally withdrawn or ideally prosocial child). Therefore, each feature's

centrality to a dispositional category was computed by taking thedifference between the rating of how well it described one dispositional

category (e.g., the aggressive child) and the ratings of how well it de-

scribed the contrast categories (the ideally withdrawn and prosocia!

child). Because we wanted features that were very good criteria for de-termining whether a child was aggressive, withdrawn, or prosocial, we

used only the 4 (of 30, or 13%) criteria that were most central to each

category: aggressive (verbally abusive, is hostile, fights, threatens oth-

ers), withdrawn (untalkauve. low activity level, quiet, unassertive), and

prasoa'a/Smakes friends, cooperative, communicates well, considerate).

Reliability of dispositional constructs. Adults' dispositional judg-

ments of the children were assessed by averaging over their judgmentson those features that were the best indicators for each dispositional

category. For example, adults' judgments of each real child's aggressive-

ness were computed by averaging over their ratings on the degree to

which the four best criteria of aggressiveness described that child. To

assess the reliability of these multiple-act constructs, a child's score on

each of these categories was computed separately for each of the inde-

pendent adult raters. The median raw interrater correlations and alpha

coefficients (over all three raters) were, for aggressive, .83 (.94); for with-

drawn, .70 (.88); and for prosocial, .68 (.86). Subsequent analyses aver-

aged over all adults who provided dispositional judgments and over alloccasions on which they provided them. We address issues concerning

adults' initial judgments in a subsequent section.

Assignment to dispositional categories. A real child was a good exam-

ple of an aggressive child if the ratings he or she received for aggressivefeatures were high and the ratings he or she received for withdrawal and

prosocial were low. Therefore, each real child's judged aggressiveness

was computed by taking the difference between his or her mean aggres-

siveness ratings and his or her mean withdrawal and prosocial ratings.

With this measure, four groups (quartiles) of children were identified

with respect to judged aggressiveness. The same procedure was used

to identify quartiles of withdrawn children and quartiles of prosocial

children.

Hourly Behavioral Observations

Situation sampling. Children were observed in naturally occurring

daily activity periods in which all children participated. Within the pro-

gram, these situations were labeled as follows: bedtime, cabin meeting,

learning lime (academic exercises), adventure (hiking, ropes course),

archery, art, athletics, canoeing, clay, crafts, drama, fishing, magic,

movement, music, nature, photo, think city (academic tutoring), tram-

poline, waterfront, and woodworking. The first 3 of these activities were

located in the cabin; for these activities, hourly observations were pro-

vided by cabin staff and own group activity staff on a rotating basis.

The remaining 18 activities were located at activity sites throughout the

setting; for these activities hourly observations were provided by other

group activity staff.

Hourly observers. Of the 110 counselors in the program, 72(31 men,41 women) participated in assessing children's behavior in specific situ-

ations. These staff, all undergraduates or recent college graduates, knew

that the research was designed to improve our understanding of chil-

dren's behavior, but they were not informed of its specific goals. There

were three categories of observers, best understood from the perspective

of a single typical child. A given child interacted with his or her cabin

staff(2-l adults) throughout the day, with the exception of the two after-

noon activity periods during which such staff had time off, and in all of

the 21 sampled activities (see later description). The child interacted

with own group activity staff (2-3 adults) throughout the day, with the

exception of the two morning and two afternoon activity periods during

which such staff were running their activities, and in only 4 of the 21

sampled activities (that staff's own activity, bedtime, cabin meeting, and

learning time). The child interacted with other group activity staff (42

adults) in only one of the morning or afternoon activity periods that that

particular activity staff supervised and ran each day (e.g., art, music).

Behavior observation system. The observational system included

three behavior codes for each of three behavior categories of interest.

These categories were derived from descriptions of children provided by

staff in previous summers (see Horowitz et al., 1981; Murphy & Wright,

1984). The codes for each category were aggression ("was physically

aggressive; hit, pushed, acted out against others physically"; "was ver-

bally aggressive; threatened, bullied, teased; was verbally abusive"; and

"acted impulsively, could not wait; could not stay put"), withdrawal

("was untalkative; verbally withholding, refused to talk"; "withdrew,

isolated self; avoided contact with others"; and "was inactive, slow mov-

ing; had low activity level"), and prosocial ("was considerate and

thoughtful of others; helpful and cooperative"; "was interested and in-

volved in activity; self-motivated; effort was high"; and "performance

was age appropriate; demonstrated competence at task"). The ratings

were made on 7-point scales on which 0 represented not at all character-

istic of the child's behavior during this period and 6 represented Highlycharacteristic.

Observational procedure. All observers were instructed to evaluate

children's behavior only during the particular activity itself. Separate

tracking sheets were provided for each situation; on each sheet appeared

the complete wording of each behavior code and the names of the chil-

dren to be tracked. Immediately following a given period, the observercompleted a behavior tracking sheet for that period. Typically, 8 to 10

children were assessed during each period. Completing a single tracking

sheet required approximately 10 min. The behavior tracking sheets for

all situations were collected daily.

Situation Assessments

Assessing situation-competency requirements. We selected items to

assess situation-competency requirements guided by previous research

and theorizing on person assessment (Block & Block, 1980; Mischel,

1973), by a consideration of the probable competence deficits of aggres-

sive and withdrawn children (Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982; Dodge,

1986; Spivack & Shure, 1974), and by a consideration of the structure

of the situations in the activity program. In particular, the initial 60-item pool was designed to evaluate cognitive, self-regulatory, and social


competencies that are both central within a social learning framework

(Mischel, 1973) and of the greatest relevance for our sample of children

and situations (see Dodge, 1986). In addition to these competency areas,

the inventory also included measures designed to assess physical com-

petencies.

Items in the inventory were phrased (see Block & Block, 1981) to

assess the degree to which a given situation required a particular compe-

tency in order to perform well in that situation (e.g., "this situation

requires the ability to " or "this situation requires "). Ex-

amples of the items designed to assess the competence areas are, for

cognitive, think rationally, short-term memory, high intelligence, andextensive knowledge; for self-regulatory, tolerate frustration and delay

gratification; for social, resolve conflict with peers and resolve conflict

with adults; and for physical, physical strength and gross motor coordi-

nation. Adults rated the degree to which a given competence require-

ment described a situation by using a 7-point scale on which 0 repre-

sented not at all and 6 represented highly.

Only cabin staff who had participated in each of the situations over

the course of the summer provided assessments of the situations. Each

of the raters was assigned 4 of the 21 situations in the sample, generating

three independent assessments of each situation. All assessments were

provided after the children had departed at the end of the summer ses-

sion.

Determining reliability. Interrater reliabilities of the competency as-

sessments were obtained by computing the correlations over the threepairs of independent raters. These individual item reliabilities and cor-

responding alpha coefficients ranged between —. 12 (—.52) and .90 (.95),

with a median of .35 (.62). Before proceeding with further analyses,

items with reliabilities lower than .32 (.58) were removed, producing a

set of 32 items with a median of .57 (.80). Next, the ratings on these

reliable items were submitted to a hierarchical cluster analysis (diame-

ter method; Johnson, 1974). The solution was pruned by cutting all

branches except those whose weakest association was in the upper third

of associations for the entire solution (i.e., this removed items that were

not closely related to one another, such as "must be orderly"). This pro-

cedure produced four clusters of items, which we label as follows; cogni-tive (think rationally, short-term memory, high intelligence, knowledge,

deal with intellectual challenges, attend to detail), self-regulatory (toler-

ate frustration, focus in the face of distraction, delay gratification), so-

cial (communicate with words, deal with peer conflict, speak in front of

others, deal with adult conflict, express personal feelings to others, try

new situations, introspect), and physical (physical strength, gross motor

control, physical quickness, physical toughness).

A situation's score on each of these competence categories was com-

puted by averaging over the items within a category separately for each

of the independent adult raters. These mean (category) ratings were cor-

related over the pairs of raters to assess interrater reliabilities. The me-

dian raw interrater correlations and alpha coefficients were as follows:

cognitive, .82 (.90); self-regulatory, .73 (.86); social, .70 (.85); and physi-cal, .95 (.97). These category scores were intercorrelated as follows: cog-

nitive-regulatory, .61; cognitive-social, .53; cognitive-physical, —.28;

regulatory-social, .50; regulatory-physical, -.12; and social-physical,

—.35. Because the cognitive, self-regulatory, and social categories were

positively correlated with one another and because each was negativelycorrelated with physical competencies, the cognitive, self-regulatory,

and social competency-requirement categories were summed to form a

single measure, our basic index of situations-competency require-

ments.

Validation of Situation Assessments

Independent adult assessments of situations. As part of a larger inves-

tigation, Susi (1986) obtained independent assessments of the situa-

tions. This procedure took advantage of activity reports written by Wed-

iko counselors at the end of the summer session at the request of Wed-

iko's administration. These reports were not originally intended for

research purposes; rather, they simply summarized each activity for the

benefit of future activity counselors. Each report was approximately 2

to 4 pages in length. Reports for nine of the original situations (three

each from the low-, medium-, and high-demand categories) were typed

verbatim into a standard format. Fifteen Columbia undergraduates

then read the reports for three specific situations (one each from the

low-, medium-, and high-demand sets), then provided ratings on the 20

most reliable of the original items used to assess situation-competencyrequirements. This generated five independent sets of ratings for each

of nine situations.

The internal reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) were computed for each

of the 20 items used in their assessments. One item was unreliable

(-.01), and the remaining items had reliabilities ranging from .47 to

.95, with a median reliability of .86. Next, cognitive, self-regulatory,

social, and physical demand scores were computed by using the same

clusters of items described earlier. Scores were obtained for each of the

nine situations on each of these categories by averaging over the items in

that category. These mean scores were then correlated with the original

ratings provided by Wediko's counselors. The correlations between the

two independent groups of raters were, for cognitive, .98; for self-regula-

tory, .70; for social, .92; and for physical, .79. Finally, a composite cogni-

tive, social, and self-regulatory measure was computed and correlated

with the corresponding composite based on Wediko counselors' ratings.

The correlation was .93. All of these correlations are significant (p <

.02). Thus, the assessments of situations in this study are closely related

to independent assessments of situation demand provided by under-

graduates who had not observed the behavior of children in those situa-tions.

Independent child assessments of situations. Susi (1986) also ob-

tained information concerning children's perceptions of the situations,

using children who attended Wediko's program in a subsequent sum-mer. During the fifth week of their residence at Wediko, children com-

pleted an activity nomination inventory. In individual sessions, each

child was asked a series of questions designed to assess her or his prefer-

ences for the activities ("Which activities do you really like/not like?"),

their performance abilities ("Which activities are you best/worst at?"),

social support ("Which activities do people say the most/least nice

things to you?"), negative outcome expectancies ("Which activities do

you get into the most/least trouble in if you don't follow counselors'

instructions?"), and personal control ("Which activities do you get to

decide what you want to do?"). Children responded by selecting the five

activities that best fit each question, using color photographs of each

activity and its activity counselors).

The mean number of times each activity was nominated for each of

the questions was computed, then correlated with a composite cogni-

tive, social, and self-regulatory measure based on adults' assessments

of the activities (as described). The correlations between each of the

children's items and adults' assessments of demand were as follows: for

preference, -.70 (p < .002); for performance ability, -.44 (p < .08); for

social support, -.55 (p < .03); for negative outcome expectancies, .47

(p < .06); and for personal control, -.61 (p < .02). Thus, children's

perceptions of the activities were related to adults' assessments of situa-

tion demand.

Situation-Equivalence Classes and Behavior Sampling

Situation-equivalence classes. Situation-equivalence classes were

identified by using the aggregate index of cognitive, self-regulatory, and

social competency requirements—competencies we expected behavior-

problem children such as Wediko's most likely to lack (Dodge, 1986).

DISPOSIT1ONAL CONSTRUCTS 1167

This procedure was based on Wediko counselors' assessments (not peerassessments). From the total sample of 21 nominal situations in whichhourly observations were obtained, three equivalence classes of situa-

tions were formed. These were the five situations lowest, five highest,and five nearest the median of the situation-competency-requirement

scores. The situations were low competency (art, fishing, movement,trampoline, and waterfront), medium competency (adventure, drama,magic, music, and nature), and high competency (academic tutoring,cabin meeting, crafts, learning time, and wood-working).

Behavioral criteria. To assess children's behavior in the three catego-ries of situations, we drew a random sample (without replacement) of15 observations from each of the categories of situations (low, medium,

and high competency requirements). (Although the total number of ob-servations available for many children was greater than 45, this proce-

dure was used to ensure that equal numbers of observations were drawnfor each child from each of the situation categories.) We computed eachchild's mean over these samples of observations for each of the behavior

codes (see earlier description).Hourly behavioral observations. To simplify certain analyses, sum-

mary measures were formed by aggregating each of the three behaviorcodes within a given category. For example, aggression is the aggregate

of a child's score on physical agpession, verbal aggression, and impul-sivity. Children's mean scores on these measures (over all of the hourlyobservations) were highly correlated; for example, the correlation be-tween physical aggression and verbal aggression was .86, the correlationbetween physical aggression and impulsivity was .80, and the correla-tion between verbal aggression and impulsivity was .74. For each of thebehavior categories, intracategory correlations were high, whereas in-

tercategory correlations were low. The mean intracategory correlations(over the three behaviors within each category) were, for prosocial, .76;for aggression, .80; and for withdrawal, .84. (Average correlations re-

ported here and in all subsequent analyses were computed by usingFisher's r-to-r transformations.) The mean intercategory correlations(between measures within one category and those within another) were,for prosocial-aggression, -.45; for prosocial-withdrawal, -.45; and for

aggression-withdrawal, -.22.

Results

Our analyses are organized as follows. First, we establish that

our categories of low, medium, and high competency-demand

situations were indeed functionally different, a prerequisite for

testing our demand hypothesis. We do this by demonstrating

that the consistency of behavior within our categories of situa-

tions is higher than the consistency between different categories.

Second, we test the main prediction that aggressive and with-

drawn children diverge into their preferred coping strategies

(i.e., aggression, withdrawal) in high-demand situations. In or-

der to clarify these analyses, we test the claim that behaviors

that are central to a behavior category are more contingent on

the type of situation than are more peripheral behaviors. Third,

we test the hypothesis that observers' dispositional judgments

should be more predictive of dispositionally relevant behavior

in high-demand than in low-demand situations. Finally, we

demonstrate that these specific condition-behavior contingen-

cies can be detected only when membership in a dispositional

category (i.e., aggressive, withdrawn) is based on criteria that

are highly diagnostic of membership in those categories.

A prerequisite for testing the demand hypothesis is that the

categories of low-, medium-, and high-demand situations were

indeed functionally different. If they were not different (e.g., if

children behaved similarly in each category of situations), then

one would conclude that we simply failed to assess important

situation properties. For this purpose we compared the consis-

tency of children's behavior within categories of situations (e.g.,

within high-demand situations) with the consistency of their be-

havior between those situations (e.g., between low and high de-

mand). To assess the consistency of behavior within the three

categories of situations (low, medium, and high demand), we

correlated the mean behavior over five randomly sampled occa-

sions from a given situation category (e.g., low demand) with the

mean behavior over the five other occasions from that situation

category. The mean within-situation coefficients were as fol-

lows: for prosocial, .56; for aggression, .60; and for withdrawal,

.65. (We also examined the within-situational consistency of be-

havior within each category of situation demand separately.

There were no significant differences between the coefficients

from the low-, medium-, and high-demand situations for any of

the behavior categories.)

Next, we computed the mean consistency between the three

situation categories by correlating mean behavior (over five ran-

domly sampled occasions) in one category of situations (e.g.,

low demand) with the mean behavior (over another random

sample of five occasions) in the other categories of situations

(e.g., medium and high demand). This was repeated for each

pair of situation categories and each specific behavior. The re-

sults indicated that the mean consistency coefficients between

situations were lower than the within-situation coefficients even

at the same levels of aggregation. The mean consistency coeffi-

cients between situations were, for prosocial, .31; for aggression,

.35; and for withdrawal, .33. Each of these between-situation

coefficients was lower than its within-situation counterpart

(zs>2.00,/*<.05).

In sum, as expected, the predictability of behavior was higher

among nominal situations at a similar level of competence de-

mand than between nominal situations at a different level of com-

petence demand. Also, the cross-situational consistency measures

themselves (i.e., the between-situation coefficients) are compara-

ble to those previously reported in the literature (Hartshorne &

May, 1928;Mischel&Peake, 1982; Newcomb, 1929).

Interactions Between Dispositional Categories and

Situation Demand

We next test the main hypothesis that children judged to be

aggressive or withdrawn will display stable, predictable individ-

ual differences in dispositionally relevant behavior in situations

with high competency requirements. For each dispositional do-

main (i.e., aggression, withdrawal, prosocial), all children were

placed into quartiles based on adults' dispositional judgments

(see Method). We then performed 3 (level of situation

demand) x 4 (dispositional category) repeated measures analy-

ses of variance (ANOVAS). The dependent variables were each

of the observed behaviors relevant to the dispositional category

of interest, as follows: aggression (verbal aggression, physical

aggression, impulsivity); withdrawal (untalkative, isolates self,

low activity); and prosocial (cooperative, involvement in activ-

ity, performance in activity).

1168 JACK C. WRIGHT AND WALTER M1SCHEL

Aggression. Physical aggression, the best or most central ex-ample of an aggressive act (see Method), increased over thequartiles of judged aggressiveness, F(l, 83) = 19.53, p < .001,and as a function of situation demand level, F(2, 166) = 33.65,p < .001 (see Figure 2). As competency requirements increased,physical aggression increased more sharply for the childrenjudged to be aggressive than for nonaggressive children, as re-flected in the Demand X Dispositional Category interaction,F(6, 166) = 6.45, p < .001. Similar results were observed forthe verbal aggression measure, the next most central aggressiveact (see Method): There was a significant effect for dispositionalcategory, 7=1(3,83) = 30.31, p < .001; for situation demand, F(2,166) = 45.76, p < .001; and for the Demand X DispositionalCategory interaction, F(6,166) = 4.72, p < .001 (see Figure 2).However, for the least central aggressive act (impulsivity), therewas no interaction between judged dispositional category andsituation demand, f\6,166) = .59, p < .74 (see Figure 2).

Withdrawal. Similar analyses were performed for the with-drawal category, this time recategorizing all children into quar-tiles based on adults' judgments of withdrawal. As expected,each of the behaviors most central to the withdrawal category(untalkative, isolates self, moves slowly) varied as a function ofjudged dispositional category, Fs(3, 83) > 7.38, ps < .001, andas a function of situation demand level, Fs(2, 166)> 5.91,ps <.01. Because all three of the withdrawn behaviors assessed inthe hourly observation system were comparable in judged cen-trality to withdrawal (see Method), we did not expect these be-haviors to vary in the degree to which they were contingent onsituations. Indeed, there was a significant interaction betweensituation demand level and judged dispositional category foreach of these behaviors, Fs(6, 166) > 4.08, ps < .001.

Prosocial. Finally, these analyses were repeated for the proso-cial category, again recategorizing children into quartiles basedon adults'judgments of the prosocial construct. As in the previ-ous analyses, there were significant main effects for judged dis-positional category, Fs(3, 83) > 4.07, ps < .01, and for situationdemand level, Fs(2, 166) > 5.49, ps < .01. However, there wereno interactions between situation demand level and judged dis-positional category, Fs(6, 166) < 1.60, ps > .15. This lack ofinteractions was as expected, given the previously noted ab-sence of good exemplars of prosocial behavior in the populationwe studied.

Cross-Sitnational Variability of Behavior

These obtained interactions between dispositional categoryand situation demand (see Figure 2) imply that children judgedto be highly aggressive vary over situations in the frequency ofaggressive behaviors but are relatively consistent across situa-tions in the frequency of withdrawn behaviors (almost neverdisplaying such behavior). Conversely, children judged to behighly withdrawn vary over situations in the frequency of with-drawn behaviors but are relatively consistent across situationsin the frequency of aggressive acts (almost never displayingthem). Essentially, when targets were absolutely consistentacross situations, it was in behaviors most relevant to contrast-ing dispositional categories: The best examples of aggressivechildren displayed almost uniformly low rates of withdrawn be-

1.5

1.0

.5

(a) Highly central: physical aggression

Ql HighlyAggressive

Q2 ModeratelyAggressiveQ3 SlightlyAggressive

Q4 Non-Aggressive

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

.5

Low Medium High

(b) Moderately central: verbal aggression

Ql HighlyAggressive

Q2 ModeratelyAggressive

Q3 SlightlyAggressive

Q4 Non-Aggressive

Low Medium High

(c) Peripheral: impulsivity

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

.5

Ql HighlyAggressive

Q2 ModeratelyAggressiveQ3 SlightlyAggressive

Q4 Non-Aggressive

Low Medium High

Situation Competency Demand

Figure 2. Mean aggressive behaviors as a function of targets' judged ag-gressiveness and level of situation-competency demand. (Q4 = the chil-dren below the 25th percentile in the distribution of adults'judgmentsof children's aggressiveness; Ql = the children above the 75th percentile[see Method],)


haviors, whereas the best examples of withdrawn children dis-played almost uniformly low rates of aggressive behaviors. Nat-urally, this could be viewed as simply another way of describingthe previous results, as it expresses the fact that means and vari-ances are related. Yet what is psychometrically obvious never-theless is important in understanding observers' dispositionaljudgments.

One way to illustrate this interaction further (which of coursefollows from the interactions reported in Figure 2) is to com-pute a single index of how variable each child's behavior wasacross the situations (low, medium, and high demand). For ex-ample, for the aggression measure, we computed the variance ofeach of the individual aggression measures (physical aggression,verbal aggression, impulsivity) over the three levels of situationdemand (low, medium, high). Similar variability measures werecomputed for the withdrawal and prosocial measures. Becausethese variability indexes produced skewed distributions, weperformed analyses on logarithmic transforms, which yieldedapproximately normal distributions. The log of these variabil-ity measures for all three sets of behavioral measures (aggres-sion, withdrawal, prosocial) were then used to predict adults'dispositional judgments via multiple regressions.

The multiple regression indicated the following significant re-sults. Children judged to be more aggressive displayed greatercross-situational variability of aggressive behavior, b = .70,((83) = 8.72, p < .001, and less cross-situational variability inwithdrawn behavior, b = -.28, ((83) = -2.50, p < .05. Con-versely, children judged to be more withdrawn displayed highercross-situational variability of withdrawn behavior, b = .38,((83) = 3.56, p < .05, and less cross-situational variability ofaggressive behavior, * = .44, ((83) = -4.70, p < .01. As ex-pected, neither judgments of the children's aggression nor oftheir withdrawal were related to the variability of their prosocialbehavior.

Predictability of Behavior From Dispositional

Judgments as a Function of Situation Demand

Our analyses of the relation between dispositional judgmentsand situation demand suggest that observers' dispositional judg-ments should be relatively more predictive of individual differ-ences in children's social behavior in high-demand situationsthan in low-demand situations (see Figure 2). Note that our AN-ov AS did not directly demonstrate this difference in the predict-ability of behavior as a function of situation demand. For exam-ple, although there is relatively little absolute variability inphysical aggression in low-demand situations (see Figure 2), it isstill possible that observers' dispositional judgments are highlycorrelated with the variability in physical aggression that didexist in those situations, however little there was in absoluteterms. The correlation coefficient—long the coin of the realmin assessing the predictive utility of dispositional measures inthe personality literature—reflects only the degree to whichvariance in one measure (e.g., level of physical aggression inlow-demand situations) can be accounted for by the variance inanother (e.g., observers' dispositional judgments), regardless ofthe total amount of variance in each. Therefore, it was essentialto perform correlational analyses to test directly whether the

relative predictability of behavior (from observers' disposi-tional judgments) varied as a function of situation demand.

In testing this hypothesis, we also wanted to ensure that ourresults could be compared with the results of other investiga-tions in which different numbers of behavioral observationswere used (e.g., Hartshome & May, 1928; Mischel & Peake,1982; Newcomb, 1929). Thus, whereas the ANOVAS reportedhere all involved maximum numbers of occasions drawn fromeach situation (15 hourly observations per child), in the presentanalyses we systematically varied the number of occasions usedto estimate children's behavioral tendencies in low-, medium-,and high-demand situations. Of course, results for smaller num-bers of hourly observations could be statistically estimated fromthe results based on larger numbers (e.g., according to Spear-man-Brown), but such estimation would require assumptionsthat we wished to avoid. Consequently, we examined the effectsof frequency of observations directly by computing multiple be-havioral criteria, each based on different sample sizes (i.e., thenumber of observations drawn from low, medium, and high sit-uation demand).

To ensure that the results would be representative of the un-derlying relation in the data, we bootstrapped our analyses.That is, we repeated the entire sampling process on multiple,independent trials, averaging over the outcomes to produce afinal, more stable estimate of the relation between dispositionaljudgments and behavior. Specifically, the bootstrapping pro-ceeded as follows: (a) Draw a random sample of behavioral ob-servations (without replacement) of size n from a given categoryof situations for each child; (b) take the mean for each child overthe n observations (obviously, only when n > 1); (c) computethe correlation between adults' dispositional judgments on thecentral features for that category (already noted) and the esti-mate obtained in (b); (d) repeat (a) through (c) a total of fivetimes for each level of density n, thereby producing five correla-tion coefficients, each representing an estimate of the relationbetween judgment and behavior for that density level; (e) com-pute the mean (after r-z transformation) of the five correlationcoefficients obtained in (d). Seven levels of sample size wereused: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 15. To simplify the presentation ofthe results, we formed one measure of hourly aggressive behav-ior by averaging over the three behaviors in the category (physi-cal aggression, verbal aggression, impulsivity). Similarly, weformed one measure for the withdrawal and prosocial catego-ries by averaging over the three behaviors falling in each cate-gory. (The full analyses for each of the individual behaviors areavailable from Jack C. Wright.) The results of this analysis forthe aggression construct are presented in Figure 3.

As expected, the correlations between judgment and behaviorincreased as a function of situation category and as a functionof the number of occasions drawn from each situation category.For example, when only one occasion was drawn from each sit-uation category, the correlation between adults' dispositionaljudgments and the behavioral criterion was .21 in low-demandsituations and .41 in high-demand situations. When five occa-sions were drawn from each situation category, the correlationbetween judgment and behavior was .41 for low-demand situa-tions; the coefficients increased to .47 for medium-demand and.61 for high-demand situations.


.5

.4

.3

/•-squared

.2

.1

.0

HighDemand

MediumDemand

LowDemand

.7

.6

.5

.4

.3

.2

.1

1 2 3 4 5 1 0 1 5Number of observations per situation category

Figure 3. Mean correlations between adults' dispositional judgments of aggressiveness and children's aggres-sive behaviors as a function of situation-competency demand and number of observations.

Similar results were obtained for the withdrawal category,with the exception that correlations in the medium-demand sit-uations were slightly lower than in their low-demand counter-parts at each level of temporal aggregation. For example, for thewithdrawal domain, when only one occasion was drawn fromeach situation category, the correlation between adults' disposi-tional judgments and the behavioral criterion was .26 for low-demand situations and .30 for high demand. When 15 occasionswere drawn from each situation, the coefficients increased to.46 for low-demand situations and .65 for high demand. In eachcase, the coefficient for medium-demand situations was slightlylower than the coefficient for low demand (e.g., .19 for 1 occa-sion and .32 for 15 occasions). Overall, the results for the proso-cial domain were less clear. For 1 occasion criterion, the coeffi-cients were. 16 and .22 for low-demand and high-demand situa-tions, respectively; for 15 occasion criteria, the coefficients were.34 and .53, respectively.

One interpretation of the linkages between observers' judg-ments and children's behavior is that the observers learnedabout the children gradually over the 6 weeks of living withthem. To address this possibility, we repeated these analyses byusing the dispositional judgments adults made on each of the 4weeks in which they made their judgments. Note that the initialdispositional judgments (Week 1) were based on a relativelysmall amount of contact with the children (1 week of living withthem), yet these judgments were no less related to the hourlyobservational measures. For the aggression category, the corre-lations between adults' dispositional judgments (for each of the4 weeks separately) and children's aggressive behavior (maxi-mum number of occasions) were .65, .62, .57, and .60; for thewithdrawal category, the corresponding correlations were .56,

.58, .60, .48; for the prosocial category, the correlations were

.44, .36, .41, and .39. Thus, there is no evidence that the linkagebetween adults' judgments and children's behavior increasedover the weeks of their interaction with the children.

Effects qfCentrality in the Identification of Aggressiveand Withdrawn Targets

The preceding correlational analyses provide clear evidencethat observers' dispositional judgments could predict individ-ual differences in children's social behavior in circumscribedsituations. However, it is important to recognize that these re-sults are based on procedures that ensured a close match be-tween observers' dispositional judgments and the specific be-haviors assessed during the hourly observations. For example,children were assigned to quartiles of judged aggressiveness onthe basis of observers' judgments of the four features identifiedas most centra) to the aggression domain (i.e., fights, threatensothers, is hostile, and is verbally abusive). As the criteria usedto judge a child's aggressiveness become less central to the do-main, one would expect two related outcomes. First, one wouldexpect generally lower correlations between observers' disposi-tional judgments and children's social behavior. For example, ifwe used features judged less descriptive of the ideally aggressivechild (e.g., yells, restless) to identify children's dispositionallevel of aggressiveness, linkages to their observed aggressive actsshould be moderated. Second, as criteria for dispositional judg-ments of aggressiveness become looser, one would expect linksto become diluted or more homogenous over categories of situa-tions. For example, children judged to be loosely aggressive (us-ing peripheral aggressive features) would not display the kind


Table 2

Correlations Between Judgments of the Children and Their

Social Behavior as a Function of Feature Centrality in the

Judgment and Level of Situation-Competency Demand

Centrality offeatures

1 Low234 High

Situation demand level

Sample feature

Aggression

DistractibleFeels angryActs impulsivelyThreatens others

Low

.35

.42

.49

.45

Medium

.28

.51

.54

.57

High

.34

.59

.65

.67

Withdrawal

1 Low234 High

CriesUnusual movementsFeels sadUnassertive

.19

.42

.41

.46

.30

.32

.33

.32

.22

.44

.52

.65

Note. The coefficients are the correlations between adults'judgments ofhow well the features at each level of Centrality described the childrenand the mean of the hourly observations of the relevant dispositionalbehavior in each type of situation. For example, when judgments ofchildren's aggressiveness are based on the most central features, theypredict the mean of children's aggressive behavior in high competency-demand situations with a correlation of .67.

of local or specific predictability in high-demand situations that

we observed for children judged to be really aggressive (using

central aggressive features).

To test these expectations, we formed four categories of fea-

tures used to determine whether a child was identified as aggres-

sive or withdrawn. The first consisted of the same four most

central features used in previous analyses. The second category

consisted of the four features next most central to the category.

A similar procedure was used to identify the third and fourth

Centrality categories and to classify the features with respect to

withdrawal (prosocial was omitted because the previous analy-

ses revealed little evidence of specific context-behavior links for

that category). As in all of the previous analyses, adults' judg-

ments of the children, using these features, were computed by

averaging over their ratings on the features within each central-

ity category. These multiple-act dispositional judgments were

then used to predict the aggressive, withdrawn, and prosocial

behavioral measures in each level of situation demand.

As shown in Table 2, the correlations between adults' judg-

ments (e.g., aggressiveness) and the corresponding behavior cri-

terion (e.g., aggregate measure of aggression) increased as a

function of the judged Centrality of the features used to assess

children's dispositions (aggressiveness, withdrawal). For exam-

ple, judgments based on the features least central to the aggres-

sion category correlated .34 with aggressive behavior in high-

demand situations; judgments based on the next most central

features correlated .59 with behavior; and judgments based on

the most central features correlated .67 with behavior. A similar

pattern was obtained for the withdrawal category.

Table 2 also shows that the increments in the predictive utility

of the dispositional judgments occurred only when features that

were central to a category were used to determine a child's ag-

gressiveness or withdrawal. For example, for the features least

central to the aggressive category, the correlation with aggres-

sive behaviors in low-demand situations was .35, and the corre-

lation with behavior in the high-demand situations was .34. A

similar pattern may be observed for the withdrawal category. In

short, the magnitude of the linkage between adults' disposi-

tional judgments and children's social behavior was a joint

function of the Centrality of the features on which their judg-

ments were based and the demand level of the situations from

which observations of children's behavior were drawn.

Discussion

In developing a conditional approach to two dispositional

constructs—aggressive and withdrawn—we observed that chil-

dren judged by adults to be aggressive or withdrawn varied con-

siderably across situations in their dispositionally relevant be-

havior. Children judged to be aggressive varied across situations

in aggressive behaviors; children judged to be withdrawn varied

across situations in withdrawn behaviors. But although mem-

bers of each dispositional category (even very good members)

were cross-situationally variable, the pattern of this variability

could be predicted with some success on the basis of an analysis

of situation-competency requirements. Consider first the cate-

gory of situations that made relatively few competency de-

mands on children, as assessed by the degree to which they re-

quired skills that were cognitive (e.g., thinking rationally, at-

tending to detail), self-regulatory (e.g., tolerating frustration,

focusing in the face of distraction), and social (e.g., dealing with

peer and adult conflict). In this category of easy situations,

which included nominal camp situations such as fishing, water-

front, and movement, children judged to be aggressive displayed

relatively little physical aggression. Indeed, children judged

most aggressive (i.e., those in the upper quartile of observers'

dispositional judgments) displayed levels of physical aggression

that were virtually identical to the levels displayed by less ag-

gressive children falling in the third quartile of observers' dispo-

sitional judgments. But children judged to be aggressive dis-

played sharp increases in physical aggression as situation-com-

petency requirements increased. In the category of situations

that made the highest number of competency requirements,

which included nominal camp situations such as academic tu-

toring, cabin meeting, and woodworking, children judged to be

most aggressive displayed significantly higher levels of physical

aggression than did their nonaggressive counterparts.

Similarly, children judged to be withdrawn displayed rela-

tively low levels of withdrawn behavior in low competency-re-

quirement situations but displayed relatively higher levels of

dispositionally relevant behavior as competency requirements

increased. In short, aggressive children displayed a specific con-

dition-behavior contingency: As competency requirements in-

creased, so did the level of aggressive acts. And withdrawn chil-

dren displayed a similar, if opposite, pattern: As competency

requirements increased, so did the level of withdrawn acts. In

other words, children judged to be good examples of two dispo-

sitional categories—aggressive and withdrawn—diverged into

what might be characterized as relatively stable aggressive ver-

1172 JACK. C. WRIGHT AND WALTER MISCHEL

sus withdrawn coping strategies in those situations that were

sufficiently demanding of cognitive, self-regulatory, and social

skills.

Beyond this general pattern of condition-behavior contin-

gencies, we observed that behaviors varied in the degree to

which they were sensitive to or contingent on situation demand

as a function of their degree of centrality to the dispositional

category. This variability in condition-behavior linkages was

most apparent for the aggressive behaviors we assessed. Thus,

physical aggression, the behavior most centra] to the category

of aggressive acts, was highly contingent on the level of situation

demand, varying from extremely low levels in low-demand situ-

ations (even for the most aggressive children) to relative higher

levels in high-demand situations (see Figure 2). In contrast, im-

pulsivity, a behavior more peripheral to the category of aggres-

sive acts, was less contingent on the level of situation demand.

Indeed, we observed no interaction between children's judged

aggressiveness and situation demand for this more peripheral

behavior. In short, the condition-behavior contingencies we ob-

served for the aggression domain were highly circumscribed.

From the perspective of the conditional approach, these re-

sults suggest that the dispositional construct aggressive might

best be characterized as a relatively specific cluster of if-then

condition-behavior relations. Condition-behavior contingen-

cies appear to be most discriminating for central aggressive acts

and more homogenous for peripheral aggressive acts. Clearly,

additional work, involving much more fine-grained functional

analyses of molecular behavior (e.g., Patterson, 1982; Wright &

Dawson, 1987), will be required to determine more precisely

the nature of these and other condition-behavior linkages for

aggressive and withdrawn children. Additional work also will

be required to explore further observers' ability to predict these

specific condition-behavior contingencies as well as their ability

to understand and recognize them in their perceptions of

people.

Role of Competency Demand in the Predictability

of Behavior

Our predictability analyses revealed another set of effects that

is related to but not synonomous with these interactions be-

tween dispositional judgments and situation-competency re-

quirements. Observers' dispositional judgments varied in the

degree to which they predicted (i.e., were correlated with) dis-

positionally relevant behavior as a function of the situation cat-

egory from which those behaviors were sampled. For example,

observers' judgments of children's aggressiveness predicted

children's aggressive behaviors moderately well in low-demand

situations (r = .45, r2 = .20). Observers' dispositional judg-

ments of children's aggressiveness were more predictive of chil-

dren's behavior in high-competency-requirements situations

(r = .67, r2 = .45). Thus, in addition to the spread effect illus-

trated in Figure 2 and tested in our ANOVAS, these correlational

results indicate that, as predicted, the rank ordering of observ-

ers' dispositional judgments better captured the rank ordering

of children's aggressive behavior in high-demand situations.

These correlational analyses also illustrate that the usefulness

of aggregation was mediated by the competency-demand level

of the situations from which multiple occasions were drawn.

For example, as the number of occasions sampled from low-

demand situations increased from 1 to 15, the predictability

coefficient (i.e., the correlation between observers' dispositional

judgments and targets' behavior) increased from .21 to .45. For

high-demand situations, as the number of occasions increased

from 1 to 15, the predictability coefficients increased from .41

to .67. On the basis of the coefficients obtained using the maxi-

mum available observations, one could estimate what level of

predictability to be expected if we had obtained even larger

numbers of observations (e.g., using the Spearman-Brown for-

mula). For example, if we had obtained 30 observations per sit-

uation category, the predictability coefficient (for aggression)

for low-demand situations would increase to .62 (r2 = .38), and

the coefficient for high-demand situations would increase to .80

(r2 = .64). Clearly, the local predictability effect should not be

overstated. Our results do not indicate that none of the variance

in children's social behavior in low-demand situations could be

predicted from observers' dispositional judgments. Rather, the

correlational analyses indicate that observers' dispositional

judgments accounted for more of the variance in children's so-

cial behavior in high competency-demand situations than in

low-demand situations, even when the number of occasions ag-

gregated is fully controlled (Epstein, 1979). Clearly, any conclu-

sion about the scope of this finding and the competency-de-

mand hypothesis more generally await further research. At this

juncture we can generalize safely neither about other disposi-

tions nor about other subject populations.

Implications for Person Perception and Social Judgment

The critique of traditional trait and state assessments called

attention to the role of observers' theories and constructs and

to the many possible sources of bias and oversimplification in

the judgment process (e.g., Mischel, 1968; Peterson, 1968). It

emphasized that dispositional categories may reflect in part the

constructs of the perceivers and not necessarily the actual orga-

nization of the actors' behavior. Extensive research on attribu-

tion biases and other shortcomings of social judgment further

strengthened the view that people's implicit personality theories

could overwhelm their observations of behavior (Nisbett &

Ross, 1980). Unfortunately, the recognition that traits are con-

structs generated by perceivers lent itself to the misinterpreta-

tion that they were merely cognitive illusions. Furthermore, the

focus in recent years on conditions that produce inferential er-

rors has distracted research efforts from examining the comple-

mentary conditions under which the linkages between observ-

er's constructs and actors' behavior might be found.

Our results indicate that under certain conditions the link-

ages between people's dispositional j udgments and actors' social

behavior may be quite good. For example, the correlation be-

tween adults' dispositional judgments of children's aggressive-

ness and the behavioral measures of aggression in high-demand

situations was .67. These findings and related work (e.g., Buss

& Craik, 1983; Funder, 1987; Swann, 1984; Wright & Dawson,

1987; Wright & Mischel, 1987) suggest the need to reassess cer-

tain conclusions about the shortcomings of the social judge

(e.g., Nisbett & Ross, 1980). We hasten to point out, however,


that several important boundary conditions apply to our find-

ings and that they therefore should not be overgeneralized, as

we consider next.

Similarity between judgment and criterion. The predictive

utility of dispositional judgments depends heavily on the simi-

larity or inferential closeness between the behavioral features

that are judged and those that constitute the behavioral criteria.

Our results indicate that social judgments can and do link to

the actor's behavior, but it is important to recognize that these

links were relatively direct and specific: The criterion behaviors

we sampled were closely matched to the judgments (e.g., spe-

cific features of aggression). Our perceivers were not asked to

extrapolate extensively from fragmentary behavioral indicators

to new situations or new types of behavior, nor to generate indi-

rect clinical inferences (e.g., from brittle ego inferred from Ror-

schach responses to diverse coping behaviors as an engineer in

the Peace Corps). Rather, the results obtained suggest that the

layperson's characterizations of a well-known other person with

such behavioral features as "threatens others" are linked to the

occurrence of closely related aggressive acts (i.e., threatening

behaviors in demanding situations) in the same general setting

(camp). Our findings do not suggest the potential utility of

broader extrapolations from observations (e.g., from camp to

school) or the value of inferences to behavior that is not sampled

from the same domain. On the contrary, behavioral features

that seem less central to the dispositional category (e.g., impul-

sive to aggressive) appear to have less discriminative predictive

value (i.e., in relation to demand level).

Communication and judgment goals. Communication be-

tween observers can influence both the information on which

dispositional judgments are based and the process by which

they are made (Hoffman, Mischel, & Baer, 1984). Whereas

much experimental work on person perception is concerned

with the inference process of a single perceiver (Jones, 1979),

the conditions in this field study ensured communication be-

tween observers. Such communication among our subjects un-

doubtedly affected their knowledge base of actors' behaviors

(e.g., through anecdotes of a child's actions) as well as the types

of dispositional categories they entertained (e.g., through shar-

ing of impressions once they had been formed). The field setting

thus did not provide complete independence between the ob-

servers in their judgments of the children and in the assessments

of their behavior. Indeed, the treatment goals of Wediko's pro-

gram ensured that communication would be frequent, that the

quality of this communication would be relatively high, and

that such communication (at least between adults) would be

used for the purpose of improving judgment accuracy (e.g.,

identifying which children are really aggressive and when they

are most aggressive).

Propinquity, frequency, and breadth of interaction. Probably

some of the most powerful constraints on the accuracy of social

judgment include propinquity, frequency, and range of interac-

tion. Frequency of exposure to actors' behavior sets upper lim-

its on the number and diversity of acts one may witness and the

number and diversity of contexts in which they may be ob-

served. In this research, the frequency of interaction between

observers and targets was high, providing repeated exposure to

targets' behavior over substantial periods of time and indeed

across a broad range of situations. Even during the first week of

their residence in the program, each adult had some 70 to 80

hr of contact with the children in his or her living group across

many activities. Thus, our findings of linkages between disposi-

tional judgments and actors' behavior do not necessarily con-

tradict previous findings of attributional biases or other judg-

ment flaws in the earlier stages of impression formation (e.g.,

Jones, 1979). Judgment competencies adequate for encoding

and summarizing robust behavioral tendencies under condi-

tions of frequent and diverse interaction may be inadequate for

dealing with minimal stimulus information (cf. Jones, 1979;

McArthur & Baron, 1983; Swann, 1984). Our results do indi-

cate the need to complement laboratory research on the early

stages of impression formation with field paradigms that exam-

ine how impressions form, change, and are linked to targets'

behavior over the course of long-term relationships in natural

settings.

Alternative Interpretations

Clinical expertise. Beyond these boundary conditions, cer-

tain alternative interpretations of the results deserve mention.

One is that adults' sensitivity to children's behavior could be

attributed to their formal or informal training as counselors,

training that could lead them to be more observant of children's

aggressive and withdrawn acts. A related interpretation is that

adults' sensitivity was the result of mere practice with the hourly

observation system, which required that they record certain

child behaviors. Although we believe that clinical expertise may

well play a role in certain aspects of person perception (Murphy

& Wright, 1984), there is little reason to believe that the kind

of results reported in this investigation are due to the clinical

expertise of our observers or to mere practice with behavior

codes. In other work (e.g., Wright, 1983; Wright, Giammarino,

& Parad, 1986) we have examined children's dispositional judg-

ments of their peers' aggressiveness by using peer nomination

techniques. The linkages between children's dispositional judg-

ments of aggressiveness and their peers' aggressive behavior

were similar to those we obtained for adult observers despite

considerable differences in their perspectives and the methodol-

ogies used.

Opportunity for social interaction. A second interpretation

attempts to account for differences between low and high com-

petency-requirement situations in terms of the sheer opportuni-

ties those situations offered children for interpersonal interac-

tion. In this view, low competency-requirement situations (e.g.,

fishing, movement, waterfront) simply presented fewer oppor-

tunities for children to interact with one another or with adults

than did high competency-requirements situations (e.g., wood-

working, cabin meeting, academic tutoring). It is obviously true

that low- and high-demand situations differed in the types of

interpersonal interactions they allowed and required. Indeed,

"dealing with peer conflict" and "dealing with adult conflict"

were two of the competency-requirement measures used to dis-

criminate between low and high competency-requirement situ-

ations. But there is little reason to believe that the low compet-

ency-requirement situations simply offered little opportunity

for interpersonal interaction in general. All of the nominal


camp activities falling in the low-demand category involved

considerable social interaction between children and between

children and staff. For example, the activity waterfront (a low-

demand activity) involves sitting on the beach as a group before

being allowed in the water, sharing waterfront equipment, a

wide range of social contact while in the water and on the float-

ing docks, and congregating on the beach at the end of the activ-

ity period before leaving the activity site. Similarly, woodwork-

ing (a high-demand situation) involves sitting together before

the beginning of the activity to receive instructions, sharing

woodworking tools and supplies, a wide range of social contact

while working on an individual or group project, and congregat-

ing at the end of the activity period before leaving the activity

site. In general, interpersonal interaction seemed to be a com-

mon element in all nominal activities, thus affording children

ample opportunity to be aggressive with peers or with adults.

In assessing the competency-requirement measure used to

form categories of nominal situations, recall that three groups

of observers (adult counselors at Wediko, children at Wediko,

and an independent group of college undergraduates unfamiliar

with the Wediko environment) had converging perceptions of

situation-competency requirements (Susi, 1986). Indeed, the

convergence was quite good; for example, the correlation be-

tween Wediko counselors' assessments of competency require-

ments and college undergraduates' assessments (based on writ-

ten descriptions of the activities) was .93. The field paradigm

we used makes it impossible to rule out factors that covaried

with competency demand; for that, fine-grained experiments

would be required. Obviously, our investigation shares the ad-

vantages as well as the disadvantages of all correlational field

research. Nevertheless, we suggest that competency require-

ments represent one potentially important dimension along

which these social situations varied.

Post hoc psychometric view. A more sweeping criticism of the

results is to say they merely illustrate psychometric principles

that are obvious but all too often ignored in the study of person-

ality. For example, it is psychometrically obvious that disposi-

tional judgments cannot possibly predict targets' behavior in

situations in which all people behave similarly. Given the im-

possibility of predicting individual differences in social behav-

ior in such situations, it is not surprising that developers of psy-

chological tests avoid them, deliberately omitting test items on

which uniform responses are obtained from all people. Accord-

ing to this test analogy, our low-demand situations are compara-

ble to bad items on a paper-and-pencil test of individual differ-

ences in the sense that they produced few individual differences

in behavior. Thus, on purely psychometric grounds and without

any information about competency requirements, one could ar-

gue that we should have eliminated these bad items (i.e., the

nominal situations in which the base rates of aggressive and

withdrawn behavior were low) before proceeding to examine

the linkages between behavior and observers' dispositional

judgments.

We do not wish to suggest that a purely psychometric ap-

proach to the data might not have yielded impressive corre-

lations between observers' dispositional judgments and the

available behavioral criteria. Indeed, for some purposes other

than ours (e.g., to predict children's academic success at school

from their behavior at Wediko), such a psychometric approach

to the data might be necessary and desirable. Our objection is

to abusing general psychometric principles, as occurs when one

attempts to explain a phenomenon in ad hoc fashion simply by

giving it an appropriate psychometric name. It is one thing, for

example, to acknowledge that camp situations surely affect

children's aggressive behavior and that behavior is obviously

easier to predict in some situations than in others and then sim-

ply to identify good or predictable situations or items post hoc.

It is another thing to predict the situations or categories of situa-

tions in which social behavior should be most closely related to

people's dispositional judgments, as we have attempted to do in

this research. Such a priori rather than post hoc identification

of the locus of predictability is a primary challenge for research

seeking to identify both the nature of coherences in personality

and the potential utility of social judgments about personality

dispositions.

Social Judgment Linked to Molecular Behavior

Although we attempted to obtain extensive behavioral data,

our methodology involved memory-based assessments of chil-

dren's behavior at the end of each hourly observation period.

Such assessments, even when made in response to specific ques-

tions within a limited time frame, remain subject to a variety of

possible judgment biases (e.g., Shweder, 1977). Thus memory-

based assessments, even in hourly units with clearly specified

behaviors as used in this effort, do not substitute for more fine-

grained observational techniques. It is therefore important to

consider whether observations at the level of hourly observa-

tions of the sort we collected are indeed linked to more molecu-

lar measures of the children's behavior in our setting (Mischel,

1984; Wright, 1983; Wright, Giammarino, & Parad, 1986;

Wright & Mischel, 1987). For example, in one investigation

conducted in the Wediko setting in a subsequent summer

(Wright & Mischel, 1987), we assessed the frequencies of chil-

dren's social behaviors by using a fine-grained observational

system modeled closely after Patterson's (1982). Thirty-two

molecular acts were recorded at 6-s intervals for 5 min of con-

tinuous observation on 15 separate occasions. This produced a

total of 75 min of observation for each of 64 children. The code

categories included aggressive acts (e.g., hit, threat, tease, boss),

withdrawn acts (e.g., submit, isolate self, play alone), and proso-

cial acts (e.g., help, share, talk prosocially). To assess how cen-

tral each of the 32 acts was to the categories of interest, an inde-

pendent panel of judges rated how often the ideal aggressive,

withdrawn, and prosocial child would exhibit each act.

The primary result of interest here concerns the linkage be-

tween observers' dispositional judgments (the same as those

used in this present study) and the frequency of relevant 6-s

behaviors. For example, observers'judgments of children's ten-

dency to display verbal aggression were correlated with specific

6-s act codes that were central to aggression. The correlation

between observers' dispositional judgments and the single most

central aggressive 6-s act code (provoke) was .68. After correct-

ing for disattenuation due to the unreliability of observers' judg-

ments, this coefficient increased to .85. The correlations (with

disattenuated coefficients in parentheses) between observers'


dispositional judgments and the remaining four act codes rele-

vant to aggression were yell, .35 (.61); boss, .16 (.35); disrupt,

.41 (.67); and noncomply, .37 (.64). These correlations indicate

that observers' dispositional judgments of aggression were

clearly linked to specific aggressive acts even when those behav-

iors were measured with techniques that are resistant to system-

atic distortion effects or other rater biases.

Challenges to Conditional Views of Dispositions

Both personality and social psychologists have recognized in-

creasingly the interactive nature of social behavior and the limi-

tations of focusing exclusively on either persons or situations.

As we noted in the introduction, for more than a decade there

has been a growing interest in interactional conceptions of per-

sons and situations (e.g., Magnusson, 1980; Magnusson & En-

dler, 1977). In spite of this recognition, conditional approaches

to dispositions have been slow to emerge, and relatively context-

free models of dispositions have continued to dominate both

personality assessment and personality research. Our study, al-

though indicating the potential utility of conditional ap-

proaches in investigating dispositional constructs, also illus-

trates why the development of conditional approaches to per-

sonality dispositions has been slow and why unconditional

models of dispositions retain their popularity.

An explicitly conditional approach presents conceptual chal-

lenges and complexities not encountered in models of disposi-

tions in which the role of contexts remains implicit and is

addressed only in ad hoc fashion. In a conditional view, dis-

positional constructs involve the conjunction of three compo-

nents—a behavior category, a condition category, and a set of

linking propositions—each of which must be considered in re-

search attempting to validate the construct. A conditional ap-

proach also presents difficult empirical challenges because it

requires explicit assessment of the situation properties that in-

fluence disposilionally relevant behavior, in contrast to uncon-

ditional approaches, which try to minimize the role of situa-

tions. As our research illustrates, this problem of identifying

relevant situational properties becomes especially difficult when

dealing with naturally occurring social situations whose nomi-

nal labels (e.g., meal times, bedtime, canoeing, swimming) may

reveal nothing about their important psychological properties.

We have attempted to deal with the conceptual and empirical

challenges by focusing on two constructs—aggression and with-

drawal—and on one fuzzy category of situations that emerged

from analyses of observers' dispositional statements and from

the personality literature: the category of competency demand.

We have thus begun to examine only one variant of disposi-

tional constructs within a conditional view, and we anticipate

considerable challenges in the effort to clarify others. Subse-

quent research also will be needed to examine just how compe-

tency demands and related psychological conditions such as

stress, frustrativeness, aversiveness, or difficulty affect the pre-

dictability of individual differences in particular dispositional

domains. Such research, particularly if conducted in an experi-

mental paradigm, could identify more precisely the types of if-

then context-behavior contingencies we have tried to illustrate

as potentially fundamental units for a conditional approach to

dispositional constructs.

Summary and Conclusions

Taken collectively, our results help to develop a model of dis-

positional constructs that does not anchor the coherence of per-

sonality in high levels of cross-situational consistency. The

findings also help to develop a framework for studying how the

organization of behavior relates to the dispositional constructs

of the social observer. Rather than requiring that dispositional

constructs be rooted in high levels of cross-situational consis-

tency for many behaviors, the conditional approach links these

constructs to temporally stable behaviors that some people may

display reliably but contingent on particular conditions. Such

an approach recognizes both the coherence of personality and

the variability of behavior across situations, focusing on the

identification of local predictability. Though the results of this

study allow alternative interpretations, they clearly indicate the

need for models of person perception that address both the in-

ferential flaws and the judgment competencies of the social ob-

server. They also indicate the need for research that considers

the potential uses, and not only the abuses, of dispositional con-

structs under appropriately circumscribed conditions.

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A Conditional Approach to Dispositions

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