Reassessing the History of Ambivalence toward the Study of Individual Lives 195maintain that they are practicing science, and many would
argue for the possibility of (in Allport’s words) “a science
treating individuals” (G. W. Allport, 1937b, p. 21). And in
fact, some of the critics of mainstream personality psychol-
ogy are really friendly critics, trying to improve the true sci-
entific credentials by taking account of these alternative
perspectives (see, e.g., Stewart, 1993, on how feminist theo-
ries can improve personality research).
Thus, personality psychology is not immune to intellec-
tual trends and fashions (albeit perhaps somewhat sluggish
and belated in its responsiveness). Currently, approaches that
involve narrative and other qualitative methods, as reflected
in the existence and importance of the Handbook of Qualita-
tive Research(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), are enjoying rela-
tively high prestige in the academic community, particularly
in many social science fields. (For example, sociology has
seen a revival of interest in case studies and personal docu-
ments; see Platt, 1992, 1996; Plummer, 1983.) Thus, it is only
natural that such trends should give impetus to a renewed
focus on the individual lives approach (e.g., McAdams,
Josselson, & Lieblich, 2001), particularly when they can be
combined with quantitative methods (see, e.g., J. M. Healy &
Stewart, 1991).
Importance of Social Context. A final reason for the re-
newed interest in the individual lives approach to personality
is a recognition of the importance of people’s social contexts
in shaping and channeling their personality characteristics
and dynamics. Psychologists have long recognized the pow-
erful effects of immediate situations or microcontexts; for
example, things that can be manipulated in laboratory exper-
iments. Even more striking in their effects, however, are
macrocontexts, or enduring features of social structure and
culture—gender, age, social class, culture,andhistory. For
example, consider such personality variables as power moti-
vation, optimistic explanatory style, extraversion, and consci-
entiousness. Each is clearly defined. Each has considerable
construct validity, which means that it is associated with a
recognized and characteristic set of observable behaviors. Yet
imagine how differently each would have been expressed
on the morning of June 6, 1944, by the following two people,
in the following two situations: (1) a white 20-year-old
American man storming Utah Beach during the World War II
invasion of Normandy in France, and (2) a middle-aged
Japanese American woman in an internment camp set up in
the Utah desert at the beginning of the war by the U.S. gov-
ernment for citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry. Tak-
ing account of the enormous context differences, we could
probably recognize abstract similarities in the expression of
power motivation, optimistic explanatory style, extraversion,
and conscientiousness across the two situations. And within
each situation, we could recognize differences between peo-
ple who were high versus low in power motivation, conscien-
tiousness, and so forth.
When we consider the many different features of people’s
social contexts, each interacting with all the others, it is im-
mediately apparent that taken together, they transform and
channel the expression of nomothetic “standardized” person-
ality variables in an indefinitely large number of ways. (Of
course, the different personality variables interact with and
thereby transform each other, as well.) As a result, the con-
cepts of “personality variables” and even “personality” are
most appropriately understood not as autonomous, free-
floating entities located “within” people but rather as “bun-
dles” of potentialities, expressed in many and varied (but still
recognizable) ways in combination with features of the social
micro- and macrocontexts. The study and assessment of per-
sonality, then, become the much broader study and assess-
ment of personality-in-contexts;this, in turn, means the study
and assessment of individual lives. In other words, recogni-
tion of the importance of social context facilitates recognition
of the value of the individual lives approach.Context and Complexity in Personality PsychologySome psychologists have recognized, at least in principle, the
importance of context in the expression of personality. Kurt
Lewin (1935) long ago articulated the principle that behavior
is a joint function of the personality (P) and the environment
(E); in formulaic terms: Bf(P, E). This principle is often
expressed by including a person-situation interaction term in
an ANOVA or regression. However, Lewin’s simple formula
and these interaction terms are really little more than program-
matic methodological aspirations or statements of faith; as
they stand, they are of little use in the full analysis of complex
person-environment transactions in the real world. From our
perspective, Lewin’s formula is misleadingly simple: Person-
ality itself is also a function of complex and differentiated en-
vironments, past and present, as well as immediate situations.
For example, might Jenny’s personality have been different if
she had been more financially secure (M. B. Allport, 1965)?
Atkinson (1957) developed a model for relating motiva-
tion and behavior by considering the effects of context-
related variables such as expectancy and incentive as they
interacted with approach and avoidance motives. While the
model was usefully applied to the analysis of certain situa-
tions, mostly involving the achievement motive (Atkinson &
Feather, 1966; McClelland, 1985; McClelland & Winter,
1969, pp. 15–19), it, too, remained a largely programmatic
model.