Dana Scully Characterization What was Dana's character like? her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone,
What are some personality traits?
What are some of X-Files character Dana Scully's personality traits?
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal. Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs. Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace, given to her by her mother as a Christmas present when she was fifteen. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, D.C. hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her. The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith -- Mulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests. However, because of Scully's skepticism, she believes she was kidnapped by men and subjected to tests, not aliens. She believes she could have been brought there by Barry, and she began to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster. This psychological re-victimization continued after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill him, or "something else." Sometime after her recovery from cancer, Scully began to regularly attend Mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. After Scully discovered the girl was part of a set of quadruplets and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to Washington D.C., she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death. In confession she regretted her decision of letting the girl go. This suggests Scully had doubts about her faith. In the sixth season episode "Milagro", Agent Scully's vulnerability is exposed. In this episode, the murderer takes the victim's heart out. The suspect, a writer named Phillip Padgett, has a particular interest in Scully and is fascinated by her beauty and personality. When she goes to a church to observe a painting, the writer is there and talks to her about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the conversation he says she visits the church because she likes art, but not as place of worship. Scully doesn't say otherwise and later she says to Agent Mulder the writer told her her life story. All this suggests that Scully isn't a devout Roman Catholic, although she attempted to approach again the Catholic community and the Catholic faith to which she was devout in her youth, after handling the strange case presented in "Revelations" and also after dealing with life-threatening cancer during the fourth season. CANNOTANSWER
rigid skepticism of the paranormal.
Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character in the Fox science-fiction, supernatural television series The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson. Scully is an Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent and a medical doctor (MD), partnered with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder for seasons one to seven and seasons 10 and 11,  and with John Doggett in the eighth and ninth seasons. In the television series, they work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files". In 2002, Scully left government employment, and in 2008 she began working as a surgeon in Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital – where she stayed for seven years, until rejoining the FBI. In contrast to Mulder's credulous "believer" character, Scully is the skeptic for the first seven seasons, choosing to base her beliefs on what science can prove. She later on becomes a "believer" after Mulder's abduction at the end of season seven.

Scully has appeared in all but five episodes of The X-Files, and in the 20th Century Fox films The X-Files, released in 1998, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released 10 years later. The episodes in which she does not appear are "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects," "Travelers," and "The Gift" (excluding archive footage). The 11th season marked Anderson's final time portraying the character.

Background
Dr. Dana Katherine Scully was born on February 23, 1964, in Annapolis, Maryland, to William (Don S. Davis) and Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken), into a close-knit Catholic family with Irish ancestry. She has an older brother, Bill Jr., an older sister, Melissa, and a younger brother, Charles, who is never seen on the show except in flashbacks. Scully's father was a navy captain, who died of a heart attack in early January 1994. Dana Scully grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and later in San Diego, California. As a young girl, Scully's favorite book was Moby-Dick and she came to nickname her father "Ahab" from the book, and in return, he called her "Starbuck". Due to this, she named her dog Queequeg.

Scully attended the University of Maryland, and in 1986 received a bachelor of science degree in physics. Her undergraduate thesis was titled Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. Just out of medical school at Stanford University, she was recruited by the FBI; she accepted the agency's offer of employment because she felt she could distinguish herself there. After two years in the bureau, Section Chief Scott Blevins assigned her to work with agent Fox Mulder.

Storylines

Upon being partnered with Mulder, Scully maintained her medical skills by acting as a forensic pathologist, often performing or consulting on autopsies of victims on X-Files cases.

In season two, Scully was kidnapped by an ex-FBI agent turned mental patient named Duane Barry, and then taken from Barry by a military covert operation that was working with the alien conspirators, but was later returned. In season three she found out that a super hi-tech microchip has been implanted in the back of her neck. After having it removed, she developed cancer in the fourth season and was hospitalized after the cancer became terminal. She was saved after Mulder broke into the Department of Defense to retrieve another chip to be implanted back into her neck. At the time, Scully was also undergoing experimental medical treatments and was having a dramatic renewal of her faith.

Scully was pronounced infertile during the fifth season. In the season-five episode "Emily", Scully discovers that she unknowingly mothered a daughter during her abduction (in season two). Her daughter Emily was adopted by another family. Emily died shortly afterwards, and they were unable to further investigate after Emily's body went missing. In the seventh-season finale, "Requiem", Scully mysteriously became pregnant. The child, named William, after her own father, as well as Mulder's father, was born at the end of the eighth season. The show did not initially reveal the cause of Scully's pregnancy, but later episodes and movies would see Mulder and Scully call William "our son"; the pair had unsuccessfully tried for a child through in vitro fertilization. Around this time, Mulder was fired from the FBI by Deputy Director Alvin Kersh, and Scully left the field to teach forensics at Quantico. William was given up for adoption during the end of the ninth season after Scully felt she could no longer provide the safety that William needed. William was a "miracle child", of some importance to the alien conspirators. He demonstrated extraordinary powers, including telekinesis.

In The X-Files: I Want to Believe, she is shown working as a medical doctor at the Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital in Virginia. Early on in the film, Scully is contacted by the FBI, who are looking for Fox Mulder in the hope that he will assist them with the investigation of a missing FBI agent. In exchange for his help, the charges against him will be dropped. Unlike Mulder, Scully was apparently not considered a fugitive by the FBI. However, she did continue to maintain her romantic relationship with Mulder throughout the six years that he was on the run from the American government. In the movie, they are shown to be living together in a secluded house.

In the first episode of season 10, "My Struggle" (2016), Scully is still working as a doctor for Our Lady of Sorrows hospital, now performing surgeries on children with severe birth defects. She has extraterrestrial DNA, as the test that she performs on herself confirms. After the FBI reopens the X-Files, 14 years after their closure, she rejoins the bureau. In "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", Scully jokes that she often enters dangerous situations alone due to the immortality she seemingly obtained during the events of the episode "Tithonus". At the end of "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", Scully steals a dog from an animal control center, named Daggoo, which is named after yet another character from Moby-Dick. In "Home Again" Dana's mother, Margaret Scully, dies after suffering a heart attack. In the show's 10th-season finale, "My Struggle II", Scully is in a race against time to save humankind, creating a vaccine from her own extraterrestrial DNA.

Characterization
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal.  Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing, but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs.

Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace. Two conflicting stories exist of how Scully received the necklace. After Scully's abduction in season two, Scully's mother told Fox Mulder she gave Scully the necklace as a birthday present. In season five, Scully recalls receiving the necklace as a Christmas present. Scully's sister, Melissa, also receives a similar necklace on that occasion. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, DC, hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her.

The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith — Mulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests. Because of Scully's skepticism, though, she believes she was kidnapped by men, not aliens, and subjected to tests. She believes she could have been brought there by Barry, and she began to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster. This psychological re-victimization continued after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill him, or "something else".

Sometime after her recovery from cancer, Scully began to regularly attend mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. After Scully discovered the girl was a quadruplet and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to Washington, DC, she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death. In confession, she regretted her decision of letting the girl go. This suggests Scully had doubts about her faith.

In the sixth-season episode "Milagro", Agent Scully's vulnerability is exposed. In this episode, the murderer takes the victim's heart out. The suspect, a writer named Phillip Padgett, has a particular interest in Scully and is fascinated by her beauty and personality. When she goes to a church to observe a painting, the writer is there and talks to her about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the conversation he says she visits the church because she likes art, but not as place of worship. Scully doesn't say otherwise and later she says to Agent Mulder the writer told her her life story. All this suggests that Scully isn't a devout Roman Catholic, although she attempted to approach again the Catholic community and the Catholic faith to which she was devout in her youth, after handling the strange case presented in "Revelations" and also after dealing with life-threatening cancer during the fourth season.

Relationships
While in medical school, she carried on an affair with her married instructor, Dr. Daniel Waterston, who may have been the "college boyfriend" mentioned in "Trust No 1". In the show, whether or not the relationship became sexual is never indicated. According to Anderson in the episode's audio commentary, Scully came very close to having an affair with the married Waterston, but left before she could break up his marriage. The end of her relationship with Waterston came about following her decision to go into the FBI. After her entrance to the FBI's Academy at Quantico, Scully began a year-long relationship with her Academy instructor, Jack Willis, with whom she shared a birthday.

Towards the end of the series, her previously platonic friendship with partner Fox Mulder developed into a romantic relationship. When Mulder was injured in a boat crash, he awakened in a hospital and told Scully that he loved her. In the season six episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", a ghost that seems to know the inner workings of Scully's mind suggests that her source of intimacy for Mulder comes from her desire to always prove him wrong. By the end of the sixth season, Mulder and Scully were increasingly shown enjoying more light-hearted activities together, such as practicing baseball, using FBI funds for a "night out" during a movie premiere, and watching a movie at Mulder's apartment. In the season seven episode "all things", Scully is shown getting dressed in Mulder's bathroom, while Mulder sleeps, apparently naked, in the bedroom. In "Trust No 1" a man reveals to Scully that he works for a "new" Syndicate like-organization, and his job requires him and a few other colleagues to spy on her around the clock. Due to this he knows intimate details of Scully's personal life, right down to her "natural hair color" (Titian, as later confirmed by Chris Carter). It is suggested by this man that Scully ultimately initiated a sexual relationship with Mulder, as he remarked that he was very surprised when she invited Mulder "into her bed". The last scene of the series finale featured Mulder and Scully holding each other on a bed, facing an uncertain future together in love.

In the film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which takes place six years later, Mulder and Scully are still in a relationship. Scully was concerned that Mulder's continuing pursuit of the unknown was taking its toll on their relationship, and they could not be together if he could not "escape the darkness". However, the film ends with the couple sharing a passionate kiss, and in the "secret ending" after the majority of the credits, a happily smiling Scully is seen in a small rowboat with Mulder, both clad in swimwear, in a tropical sea, having taken him up on his offer to run away together. In the 10th season, Scully and Mulder are no longer a couple, as she chose to leave him. At the end of the season, Scully gets a vision, which is revealed to have come from her son, William,at the beginning of season 11. Over the course of season 11, Scully and Mulder search for William. Skinner learns from the Smoking Man that the Smoking Man, who is Mulder's father, also artificially impregnated Scully, thus is William's father, as well. In the third episode of the 11th season, "Plus One", Scully and Mulder are intimate again. In the season-11 finale, "My Struggle IV", she reveals to Mulder that she is pregnant with his child.

Conceptual history

Chris Carter named Scully after his favorite sportscaster, Vin Scully of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John Doggett was likewise named after Vin Scully's longtime broadcasting partner, Jerry Doggett. Scully's character was also inspired by Jodie Foster's portrayal of Clarice Starling in the film The Silence of the Lambs. Scully was a known name in UFO lore. In 1950 the less than credible Behind the Flying Saucers was published, written by Variety columnist Frank Scully. The name Scully was also used in 1976 film All the President's Men, an obvious inspiration for the show, in a list of names who work for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President.

The casting for Scully caused a conflict between Carter and the Fox network. Carter had chosen 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, whom Carter felt was perfect for the role. Of her audition, Carter said, "she came in and read the part with a seriousness and intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have and I knew [...] she was the right person for the part". However, Fox executives had wanted a more glamorous "bombshell" for the part (in a 2008 interview Anderson stated that Pamela Anderson had actually been the network's first choice), hoping that this would lead to the series involving a romantic element. This led Carter to insist that he did not want the roles of Mulder and Scully to become romantically involved. Carter decided Scully would be the skeptic to play against established stereotypes; typically on television the quality was attributed to a male. Because Duchovny was much taller than Anderson, during scenes where Mulder and Scully stand or walk next to each other Anderson stood on "the Gilly-Board", an apple box named after her.

Scully appears in every episode of the 10-season series with the exceptions of "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects", and "Travelers". She has appeared outside The X-Files on numerous occasions, the most notable being in the Millennium (also created by Chris Carter) episode "Lamentation", in which the main character, Frank Black, visits the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and Mulder and Scully are briefly seen descending a stairway. In fact, they are Duchovny and Anderson's stand-ins.

An animated version of Scully, which featured the voice acting of Anderson, appeared on season eight of The Simpsons, in the episode "The Springfield Files", as well as Canadian animated series Eek! The Cat, on the episode "Eek Space 9". The animated television series ReBoot featured characters Fax Modem and Data Nully, obvious spoofs of Mulder and Scully, in the episode "Trust No One". Anderson provided her voice work for the episode, but co-star Duchovny declined.

Reception

Anderson won many awards for her portrayal of Special Agent Scully during the ten seasons of The X-Files, including an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1997, a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series in 1997, two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996 and 1997 and a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 1997. In total, Anderson received for the role, four Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, nine SAG nominations and eight Saturn nominations.

Film critic Scott Mendelson, writing in The Huffington Post, cited Scully as an example of strong female characters on television, calling her "one of the most iconic characters in the science-fiction genre". Radio Times Laura Pledger also named her as a strong TV woman, placing her at No. 1. Rebecca Traister of Salon.com opined that Scully had a better character arc than Mulder. She wrote, "The very fact that her character was such a hard sell made her repeated brushes with the supernatural all the more powerful. Mulder's desire to believe was so expansive, his credulity so flexible, that it's not as though he was ever going to have either shaken from him. But Scully's surety was solid, stable, rigid; every time she saw something she thought she'd never see, we saw it crack, sparks fly from it. She was forced to question herself, grow, change". She praised her for being more "rational, resilient, [and] mature" than her partner and for their mature relationship. In a review of "Irresistible", Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that it was a cliché to put Scully in danger, as "Scully is [the show's] heart, and any time she's in danger, it feels like the show itself is about to be stabbed through the heart".

The character of Scully has become something of a sci-fi heroine due to her intelligence and resilience, frequently appearing on lists of important female science fiction characters, such as Total Sci-Fi Onlines list of The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi, where she came in fourth. TV Squad named her the thirteenth greatest woman on television, while the site also listed her among the most memorable female science fiction television characters. She is also often cited as being an unlikely sex symbol, frequently being included in lists of sexy TV characters. She was listed in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters. The pairing Mulder/Scully was ranked number 15 on Sleuth Channel's poll of America's Top Sleuths.

Angelica Jade Bastién of Vulture emphasized the importance of Scully's character in popular culture by listing all the strong female characters she inspired or may have influenced in some aspects, including: Temperance "Bones" Brennan of Bones, Peggy Carter of Agent Carter, Veronica Mars of Veronica Mars, Olivia Moore of iZombie, Dr. Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles, Olivia Benson of Law and Order: SVU, Joan Watson of Elementary, Sydney Bristow of Alias, Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow, Zoë Washburne of Firefly, Stella Gibson (another character portrayed by Anderson) of The Fall and Olivia Dunham of Fringe. Jade Bastién wrote: "Do all the characters Scully has influenced live up to her? Definitely not. Gillian Anderson's performance and her chemistry with David Duchovny aren't exactly elements that can be replicated. But these characters prove that Scully isn't only the heart of The X-Files, but also the character who had the most profound influence on popular culture".

Indiewire's Liz Shannon Miller ranked Scully as the No. 1 most important character of The X-Files, writing: "Scully's legacy is so important in so many ways, from giving us the gift of Gillian Anderson's acting, to inspiring an entire generation of young women to pursue careers in STEM. Intelligent, loyal, flawed and brave, Scully was the show's beating heart and saving grace even in its lowest years. As Chris Carter himself has said: 'It's Scully's show'."

"The Scully Effect"
The character is believed to have initiated a phenomenon referred to as "The Scully Effect", as the character's role as a medical doctor and FBI Special Agent inspired many young women to pursue careers in science, medicine, engineering, and law enforcement, and as a result brought a perceptible increase in the number of women in those fields. At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International, Anderson noted that she has long been aware of "The Scully Effect" and stated: "We got a lot of letters all the time, and I was told quite frequently by girls who were going into the medical world or the science world or the FBI world or other worlds that I reigned, that they were pursuing those pursuits because of the character of Scully. And I said, 'Yay!'" Anne Simon, a biology professor and a science adviser for the series recalls: "I asked my Intro Bio class back then how many of them were influenced by the character of Scully on The X-Files to go into science and half of the hands in the room went up. That's huge! That was saying that the show was really having an effect." "The Scully Effect" remains a subject of academic inquiry.

References

Bibliography

External links
 Dana Scully on IMDb
The Scully Effect on Fanlore

The X-Files characters
American female characters in television
Female characters in television
Fictional characters with cancer
Fictional characters from Maryland
Television characters introduced in 1993
Fictional special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fictional female detectives
Fictional female doctors
Fictional feminists and women's rights activists
Fictional forensic scientists
Fictional paranormal investigators
Fictional American physicians
Fictional surgeons
Fictional female scientists

de:Akte X – Die unheimlichen Fälle des FBI#Hauptdarsteller
sv:Lista över figurer i Arkiv X#Dana Scully
The person–situation debate in personality psychology refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that a person's personality is relatively consistent across situations. Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits. The debate is also an important discussion when studying social psychology, as both topics address the various ways a person could react to a given situation.

Background

Interest in determining whether there were any generalities in behavior began in the 1920s and 30s. Gordon Allport and Henry Murray both supported the idea of a consistent personality with occasional situational influences. Allport noted that "traits become predictable to the extent that identities in stimulus situations are predictable." Others like Edward Thorndike viewed behavior as a composition of responses an individual has to situations.

In 1968, Walter Mischel published a book called Personality and Assessment claiming that behavior is too cross-situationally inconsistent to be classified with personality traits. He stated:

"...with the possible exception of intelligence, highly generalised behavioral consistencies have not been demonstrated, and the concept of personality traits as broad dispositions is thus untenable"

His book was a non-systematic meta-analysis of some of the research on the relationship between behavioral and personality traits (assessed by either self-report or peer-report). The book also assessed studies regarding measurements of behavior from one situation to another. This book generated a formidable dispute between social psychologists and trait theorists because trait questionnaires had been used to measure personality for many decades.  Behaviorism had dominated the field of psychology up until this time, making Mischel's claim devastating to the mainstream consensus amongst personality psychologists and causing many psychologists to question and doubt whether personality exists.

According to David C. Funder, Mischel's book posed three main questions: 
Is personality consistent and does it overcome situational influences? 
Are people's intuitions about each other's personalities generally flawed or generally correct?
If personality is really that consistent, why are psychologists continuing to argue about this issue?

More recently, Mischel has retracted some of his original claims, protesting that some psychologists misinterpreted his argument to mean he believes personality does not exist.

One of the largest critiques of the person-situation debate is that it does not follow "modern science", as it studies specific people in specific situations and is difficult to replicate and generalize results.

Situationist argument

Situationists had a number of arguments, but they can be generally summarized into four:

 Low correlations between measures of behavior and personality: In psychological research, whether relationships between variables exist are compared by the correlation coefficient.  Mischel argued that in his literature review of personality research, the correlation between personality and behavior, or behavior across situations, rarely exceeded .30-.40. Because the correlations are close to zero, Mischel concluded that personality traits have little to no relationship to shaping behavior. This claim was especially detrimental to personality psychology and continues to haunt many fields of psychology research today.
 The validity of self-report measures and clinical assessment procedures: Most of the studies that Mischel reviewed had taken place in laboratory settings. Rarely was behavior analyzed in natural settings. The claim was that trait psychologists did not adequately combat issues of method variance, social desirability and response sets, and construct validity when they constructed their measures of traits. The practical utility of trait measurements in predicting behavior was also questioned. Even when observation studies were conducted, there was observer bias (that is, traits are in the eye of the beholder).
 The type of behavioral assessment and treatment procedures that were becoming popular at the time: These treatments and behavioral assessment methods focused on the situational influences on behavior, rather than personality traits.
 Stability: behavior is not cross-situationally consistent, and any stability can be attributed to the consistency of the situation, not the person. Situationists questioned whether personality traits exist when behaviors are not consistent across situations; after all, why spend time studying a construct that has no validity?

Because of the aforementioned points, situationists argued that the predictive ability of personality traits is severely lacking. Opponents of the trait approach claimed that the idea of personality traits is fundamentally flawed and that behavior would be better understood through conditioning and learning processes.

Responses
Over time, personality psychologists have formed rebuttals to Mischel's criticisms. According to Funder, Mischel's analysis was quite short (only 16 pages), and therefore was not comprehensive of the personality literature available at the time. With a fair review of the literature, the predictability of behavior from traits may be larger than what researchers previously assumed.

Improved research methods can increase the predictability. The situationist argument was formed based on research studies that were conducted in laboratory situations, and therefore did not reflect behavior in real life. When studying behaviors in a more natural setting, personality is likely to influence behavior. According to Allport, personality will be more likely to exhibit greater apparent effects in real situations that are important and influential to the individual being observed.

Predictability can also be influenced depending on what is being measured, and some behaviors may be more consistent than others. For example, the amount a person gestures or the volume of a person's voice are more likely to be consistent across situations than goal-directed behaviors, such as when a person is trying to impress another person.

It may also be that on average, individuals act consistently, and therefore personality research may be more telling as general behavioral trends than specific instances. This is evident in when people are interested in personalities of others, they are more interested in how others will generally act, not one specific behavior at a specific time.

A correlation of .40 is not that small of a correlation and can explain more variance than most people think. Correlation  coefficients of the effects found in studies of personality variables cannot be comparable with effects found in studies of situational variables because the two styles of research do not employ a common metric.  After converting the statistics that social psychologists use in analyzing situation variables and behavior into correlations used by personality psychologists in analyzing trait variables and behavior, Funder and Daniel J. Ozer found that the correlations between situations and behaviors are also around the .30–.40 range. After conversion, it was found that even well-respected studies, like the one conducted by Stanley Milgram on obedience that used fake electric shocks to study how people react to being asked to cause harm to others (Milgram Experiment), found correlations of situations and behaviors to be around .40. Moreover, survey studies that compare the effects of situational variables on behavior show that the correlation between situation and behavior are also around the .30–.40 range. Seymour Epstein found that if the behaviors were aggregated over time, the cross situational consistency of behaviors is much higher. Even in highly controlled studies, cross-situational consistency is around the .40 range.

Personality traits are important because personality traits exist. The field of personality psychology gained attention when Allport had his assistant, Henry Odbert, counted how many different words in the English dictionary could be used to describe differences in personality. Odbert reported 17, 953. With such a large number of words that are related to personality trait differences, Allport and Odbert proposed the Lexical hypothesis, or the theory that traits are obviously an important part of how people think and talk about each other, or else it would not be a part of the language. Words that make people more sensitive to individual differences are continuing to be created and formed today.

Current directions
Mischel's book raised important questions about trait concepts and measures in psychological research. Researchers like Douglas Kenrick and Funder note that controversy is beneficial to scientific research because it helps narrow down competing hypotheses.

Most personality researchers have now concluded that both the person and the situation contribute to behavior. Specifically, situational variables are more conclusive when it comes to predicting behavior in specific situations, while traits are more descriptive of patterns of behavior that influence behavior across situations. Some researchers have suggested the possibility of situational factors (like social roles) eliciting situation-specific goals which then influence the development of personality traits. On the other hand, recent research has found that person-specific traits (like achievement emotions), which are developed by personality traits, may contribute to how someone perceives and then acts in a situation.

Some believe that the person-situation debate came to a resolution in the 1970s, though it is still widely discussed as if the debate as not ended. One possible reason the debate is still discussed is because it criticizes foundational personality psychology ideas from Franz Boas and John B. Watson that date back to the early 20th century.

Interactionism
The interactionism perspective recognizes that the effect of personality depends on the situation and that situations are affected by the personalities of the people who are present. Interactionism also recognizes that people often choose situations that reflect their personalities. One of the many interactionism researchers, Allan R. Buss, introduced the idea that persons and situations interact in three different ways: 
The effect of personality on behavior depends on the situation and vice versa
Certain people typically find themselves in certain situations, depending on their personality
People change situations by how they act and what they do in these situations.

A commonly used example of person-situation interaction is the Stanford prison experiment, where college students participated in a study that simulated a prison setting with some students acting as guards and others as prisoners. The study was terminated when the guards became even more abusive than anticipated. While Philip Zimbardo concluded that the study shows evidence of the effect of the situation transcending personality traits, more recent studies show that these students were drawn to participate in a study of "prison life" because of their personality characteristics.

Synthesis
Personality psychologists William Fleeson and Erik Noftle have suggested that the person-situation debate ended in a synthesis. According to them, there is more than one type of behavior consistency. Traits are not robustly predictive of cross-situational consistency, but rather, predictive of consistency for a wide distribution of behaviors over time. Personality is not by itself a strong predictor of behavior but a better predictor can be ascertained from an average of behavior in environments. This will lead to a better model called density distributions. These models track how strongly a participant reacts in given situations. Fleeson posited that an individual has an anchor mean level of a trait, but the individual's behavior can vary around this mean depending on situations. Therefore, this distribution could account for the low cross-situational consistency of single acts of behavior while also explaining the high consistency of behaviors over time.

See also
 Attitudinal fix
 Structural fix
 Trait activation theory

References

Personality The Work Personality Index is a psychometric assessment that measures personality traits.  It was designed by Dr. Donald Macnab and Shawn Bakker.  The questionnaire is designed to identify personality traits that relate to work performance; it usually takes between 15 and 20 minutes to complete. It was created for the applications of selecting job candidates, guiding career choices and improving team functionality.  The Work Personality Index assesses 17 primary scales that measure aspects of work personality to make links between an individual’s preferences and their work behavior. These 17 scales are categorized into five groups that provide a view of work personality.

The Work Personality Index measures personality traits immediately applicable to work settings. The test items revolve around typical work experiences, and for people to respond to them correctly they need to be able to relate to the situations presented in each item. For this reason, the Work Personality Index is appropriate for people in the working population. Younger adults may not have enough work experience to respond to the items in a valid way. Therefore, it is recommended that the Work Personality Index be used with people who are older than seventeen years of age.

The Work Personality Index measures personality traits for the normal adult population and does not examine clinical or mental health related issues. As a result, low scores on the scales are not indicative of pathology, but rather, different preferences and motivations for working. These different preferences and motivations influence the type of work people are successful at and what they enjoy doing.

Conceptualization
The Work Personality Index model is built upon the personality traits identified in the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) developed by the U.S. Department of Labor. This model is not based upon a theoretical view of human personality, but is a combination and ordering of personality traits that predict job performance. The model was formulated by examining two main sources. First, many research studies have been conducted that link different personality traits to effective job performance. Commonly known as predictive or concurrent validity studies, this research provides important evidence of the traits that can be measured effectively and that predict job performance. Examining these studies lead to the identification of a number of personality traits that consistently relate to effectiveness on the job. Second, existing taxonomies that are used in personal development and personnel selection were reviewed. To examine these taxonomies, the personality measures that operationalize them were analyzed, and their research critiqued. These personality measures included: the California Psychological Inventory, by Harrison Gough, the Hogan Personality Inventory, by R. Hogan and J. Hogan, and the NEO PI-R, by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae. Reviewing these personality assessments led to the identification of other personality traits that are closely tied to work preferences and motivations.

By examining these two main sources, 17 primary scales were identified, which the O*NET researchers grouped into 7 global scales. However, factor analysis of the trial Work Personality Index data indicated that a 5 factor solution  provided a better fit. Therefore, the Work Personality Index contains 17 primary scales that are categorized into 5 global constructs. The 5 groups are labeled Achievement Orientation, Conscientiousness, Social Orientation, Practical Intelligence and Adjustment. These groups closely mirror the global traits identified in the Five-Factor Model of Personality Big Five personality traits. The 17 primary scales represent a finer grained assessment of the 5 constructs. For example, Achievement Orientation contains the following primary scales: Ambition, Initiative, Flexibility, Energy, and Leadership.

Constructs and traits
 Achievement Orientation - Achievement Orientation involves working hard and wanting to get ahead, persisting in the face of obstacles, and striving for career success.
Primary scales: Ambition, Initiative, Flexibility, Energy and Leadership.
 Conscientiousness - Conscientiousness involves being planful, careful, dependable and disciplined.
Primary scales: Persistence, Attention to Detail, Rule-Following and Dependability.
 Social Orientation - Social Orientation is represented by sensitivity to the needs of others, a willingness to work cooperatively rather than independently, and a preference for working with others and establishing personal relationships.
Primary scales: Teamwork, Concern for Others, Outgoing and Democratic.
 Practical Intelligence - Practical Intelligence involves characteristics such as insight, imagination, originality, being open to new ideas and maintaining a thoughtful approach to work.
Primary scales; Innovation and Analytical Thinking.
 Adjustment - The Adjustment composite found in the Work Personality Index closely resembles the Neuroticism composite found in the Five-Factor Model. Representing the tendency to remain calm, composed and free from worry in stressful situations, other common labels for this construct include Emotional Stability, Negative Emotionality and Worrying.
Primary scales: Self-Control and Stress Tolerance.

Norming
The Work Personality Index was standardized on a large sample of over 8000 people. From this group a matched sample of 3000 males and 3000 females were selected to create North American norms. The large number of participants involved in the norm sample ensures that the Work Personality Index results effectively measure and identify differences in personality traits.

See also
Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

References

External links 
 

 Personality tests