Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:
Cognitive Social Learning
Theory© The McGraw−Hill^537
Companies, 2009sion of the instruments that measure traits. Some believed that Mischel was trying to
undo the concept of stable personality traits and even deny the existence of person-
ality. Later, Mischel (1979) answered his critics, saying that he was not opposed to
traits as such, but only to generalized traits that negate the individuality and unique-
ness of each person.
Much of Mischel’s research has been a cooperative effort with a number of his
graduate students. In recent years, many of his publications have been collaborations
with Yuichi Shoda, who received his PhD from Columbia in 1990 and is presently at
the University of Washington. Mischel’s most popular book, Introduction to Person-
ality, was published originally in 1971 and underwent a 7th revision in 2004, with
Yuichi Shoda and Ronald D. Smith as coauthors. Mischel has won several awards,
including the Distinguished Scientist award from the clinical division of the Ameri-
can Psychological Association (APA) in 1978 and the APA’s award for Distinguished
Scientific Contribution in 1982.
Background of the Cognitive-Affective
Personality System
Some theorists, such as Hans Eysenck (Chapter 14) and Gordon Allport (Chapter
13), believed that behavior was mostly a product of relatively stable personality
traits. However, Walter Mischel objected to this assumption. His early research (Mis-
chel, 1958, 1961a, 1961b) led him to believe that behavior was largely a function of
the situation.
Consistency Paradox
Mischel saw that both laypersons and professional psychologists seem to intuitively
believe that people’s behavior is relatively consistent, yet empirical evidence sug-
gests much variability in behavior, a situation Mischel called the consistency para-
dox.To many people, it seems self-evident that such global personal dispositions as
aggressiveness, honesty, miserliness, punctuality, and so forth account for much of
our behavior. People elect politicians to office because they see them as having hon-
esty, trustworthiness, decisiveness, and integrity; employers and personnel managers
select workers who are punctual, loyal, cooperative, hardworking, organized, and so-
ciable. One person is generally friendly and gregarious, whereas another is usually
unfriendly and taciturn. Psychologists as well as laypeople have long summarized
people’s behavior by using such descriptive trait names. Thus, many people assume
that global personality traits will be manifested over a period of time and also from
one situation to another. Mischel suggested that, at best, these people are only half
right. He contended that some basic traits do persist over time, but little evidence ex-
ists that they generalize from one situation to another. Mischel strongly objected to
attempts to attribute behavior to these global traits. Any attempt to classify individ-
uals as friendly, extraverted, conscientious, and so forth may be one way of defining
personality, but it is a sterile taxonomy that fails to explain behavior (Mischel, 1990,
1999, 2004; Mischel et al., 2002; Shoda & Mischel, 1998).
For many years, research has failed to support the consistency of personality
traits across situations. Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May, in their classic 1928 study,
Chapter 17 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 531