Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 Module 
41 
Trait, Learning, Biological and Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality 
453
HOW MUCH CONSISTENCY EXISTS IN PERSONALITY? 
Another social cognitive theorist, Walter Mischel, takes a different approach to per-
sonality from that of Albert Bandura. He rejects the view that personality consists of 
broad traits that lead to substantial consistencies in behavior across different situa-
tions. Instead, he sees personality as considerably more variable from one situation 
to another (Mischel, 2009). 
In this view, particular situations give rise to particular kinds of behavior. Some 
situations are especially infl uential (think of a movie theater, where everyone dis-
plays pretty much the same behavior by sitting quietly and watching the fi lm). Other 
situations permit much variability in behavior (think of a party, for example, where 
some people may be dancing, while others are eating and drinking). 
From this perspective, personality cannot be considered without taking the par-
ticular context of the situation into account—a view known as situationism. In his 
cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS) 
theory, Mischel argues that people’s 
thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view, 
and then react, in particular situations. Personality is thus seen as a refl ection of how 
people’s prior experiences in different situations affect their behavior (Shoda & 
Mischel, 2006; Mischel & Shoda, 2008).
SELF-ESTEEM 
Our behavior also refl ects the view we have of ourselves and the way we value the 
various parts of our personalities. Self-esteem is the component of personality that 
encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations. Unlike self-effi cacy, which 
focuses on our views of whether we are able to carry out a task, self-esteem relates 
to how we feel about ourselves. 
Although people have a general level of self-esteem, it is not unidimensional. 
We may see ourselves positively in one domain but negatively in others. For exam-
ple, a good student may have high self-esteem in academic domains but lower self-
esteem in sports (Swann, Chang-Schneider, & Larsen McClarty, 2007; Salmela-Aro & 
Nurmi, 2007; Gentile et al., 2009). 
Self-esteem has strong cultural components. For example, having high relation-
ship harmony —a sense of success in forming close bonds with other people—is more 
important to self-esteem in Asian cultures than it is in more individualistic Western 
societies (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004; Lun & Bond, 2006; Cheng & Kwan, 2008). 
Although almost everyone goes through periods of low self-esteem (for instance, 
after an undeniable failure), some people are chronically low in self-esteem. For them, 
failure seems to be an inevitable part of life. In fact, low self-esteem may lead to a 
cycle of failure in which past failure breeds future failure. 
For example, consider students with low self-esteem who are studying for a test. 
Because of their low self-esteem, they expect to do poorly on the test. In turn, this 
belief raises their anxiety level, which makes it increasingly diffi cult to study and 
perhaps even leading them not to work as hard. Because of these attitudes, they do, 
in fact, ultimately perform badly on the test. Ultimately, the failure reinforces their 
low self-esteem, and the cycle is perpetuated as illustrated in Figure 3. In short, low 
self-esteem can lead to a self-destructive cycle of failure.