194 Personality
Further, it is difficult to construct any strong explanatory
links between such broad and general terms as “introversion”
or “neuroticism,” on the one hand, and the highly differenti-
ated and specific actions of a Unabomber, a Hitler, or a Jenny,
on the other.
“Synthesizing” the Individual Personality? The most
traditional and widespread criticism of the individual lives
approach to personality is that it does not permit generaliza-
tion (for discussions of several common criticisms, see
Runyan, 1982, 1983, and McAdams and West, 1997). Staub
(1980) put it succinctly: “If we focus on the uniqueness of
every human being, we cannot generalize from one person to
another...[and] the aim of science is to discover laws...
applicable at least to some, if not to all people” (p. 3). Such an
argument can easily be turned on its head, as follows: The ob-
ject of science is to formulate general principles that enable
us to understand concrete examples or instances. However,
the present state of personality psychology is such that we are
not really close to being able to “synthesize” a conception of
a person from knowledge of that person’s scores onanylist of
component personality variables alone. At a minimum, we
need to know how these variables are structured.
Consider the following example (which is hypothetical,
but based on some real people we have known). A factor
analysis can describe how variables are grouped across large
groups of people. Thus, in most five-factor trait models,
“aggressive” and “kindly” might define two opposite poles of
anagreeablenessfactor (and perhaps to some extent also two
poles of an independent surgencyfactor). Nevertheless, while
these two traits are somewhat opposed at the group level, it is
not difficult to imagine individual persons who are both
“kindly” and “aggressive.” Such persons could express this
opposed pair of traits in a variety of quite different ways,
depending on how they are structured within the person. For
example, they could alternatebetween being kindly and ag-
gressive, thereby appearing inconsistent with respect to both
traits. Or they could differentiate as to other people,acting
(consistently) kindly toward some people and (consistently)
aggressive toward others. Or one trait could subsume and
incorporatethe other, so that the person acts “kindly, but in
an aggressive way” or else “aggressive, albeit in a kindly
fashion.” Embodied in real persons, each of these possibili-
ties would lead to strikingly different patterns of behavior
and effects on other people; yet each could be based on the
same two trait scores.
Reconceptualizing the Goals of Personality Psychology.
Another response to the criticism that case studies do not per-
mit generalization is to take seriously Allport’s suggestion
that personality psychology has more than one goal. In
Allport’s view, these goals include not only the discovery of
general laws but also the discovery of laws pertaining to par-
ticular individuals and, more broadly, the understanding of
particular individuals (e.g., G. W. Allport, 1937b, 1962a). Re-
cently, Runyan (1997, p. 44) has proposed a conceptual
framework for personality psychology consisting offour
major objectives: the development of general theories (e.g.,
psychoanalysis), the study of individual and group differ-
ences (e.g., the “Big Five” trait factors), the analysis of
“specific processes and classes of behavior” (e.g., dreams,
motives), and the understanding of individual persons and
lives. Arguing that these four goals are interrelated but at least
partially independent of one another, Runyan suggests, “Work
on all four tasks is necessary, and the fact that inquiry at one
level does not automatically answer questions at the other lev-
els is not a telling criticism” (p. 50).Questioning of “Science.” The Staub quotation cited
above, which is critical of the individual lives approach, is
based upon a particular (rather monolithic) conception of
what science “is,” as well as a high valuation of that concep-
tion. Without entering into the debate about those issues, we
do note that in the last decades of the twentieth century,
“science” as it has traditionally been practiced has come
under intellectual, social, and political criticism from a vari-
ety of perspectives. Postmodernists have argued that the
objectivity of “objective” science is an illusion; followers of
Foucault claim that science is always practiced in the service
of power; and feminists would refine that claim to be “in the
service of male power.” And indeed, from its very beginnings,
mainstream personality psychology has eagerly sought recog-
nition and funding by catering to the interests of the ruling
class: selecting good executives, deselecting poor soldiers,
managing industrial workers, and supplying labels used to
identify and control the behavior of members of less power-
ful, and potentially “troublesome,” groups (see above; also
Danziger, 1990, 1997; Parker, 1991; Winter & Barenbaum,
1999). Thus it was inevitable that the mainstream quantita-
tive, nomothetic approach in personality should be a target for
more general criticisms of science (or at least of “scientism”)
and that an alternative (less “scientific”) approach would be
looked upon more favorably by the critics.
Yet we must not go too far. All personality psychologists
who use the individual lives approach would insist that they
are rigorous scholars; they would also vigorously deny that in
their interpretations “anything goes,” or that, in the derisive
words of Gergen, “The case study simply allows the investi-
gator freedom to locate the facts lending support to...
preformulated convictions” (1977, p. 142). Most would