674 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
Mischel and Shoda (1995) labeled this ap -
proach the if–then  conceptualization of per -
sonality: An individual is described in terms 
of his or her behavioral reactions to particu -
lar situation. For example: If the person is at a 
party, then that person behaves boisterously; 
however, if the person is in a seminar, then  
that person behaves studiously. The collec -
tion of such patterns reflects an enduring and 
meaningful quality of his or her personality.
Interestingly, this illustrates a way in 
which personality psychology has rediscov -
ered or has at least developed a renewed ap -
preciation for earlier views. In 1937, Gordon 
Allport noted that every individual’s pat -
tern of behavior across contexts is unique 
and that, for this reason, all descriptions of 
individuals in terms of personality traits— 
which tend to assume a more-or-less com -
mon if–then pattern among the people they 
characterize—  are at least a little bit mislead -
ing. For example, someone who is high on 
the trait of friendliness might initiate con -
versation when encountering a stranger. Al -
though this might be true of friendly people, 
in general, a particular otherwise friendly 
person might hesitate to approach someone 
who reminds him of a previous, unpleasant 
encounter—  a reaction that might be idio -
syncratic to him and his personal history.
Going back even further, the classic pre- 
Skinnerian behaviorist John Watson (e.g., 
1930) espoused a stimulus–  response (S-R) 
conceptualization of personality, in which a 
person’s behavioral repertoire was described 
in terms of how he or she responded to the 
various situations—  stimuli—  that he or she 
encountered. This pattern of response was 
held to be a function of his or her unique 
learning history; therefore, it was not pre -
sumed to have any general patterning or 
consistency across situations. Thus, Wat -
son believed personality was manifested in 
an idiosyncratic pattern of S-R pairings. 
However, a fundamental problem with this 
kind of behavioristic approach stems from 
its primary virtue, which is that it is com -
pletely idiographic; that is, there are as many 
S-R or if–then  patterns as there are people 
on earth, each of which was generated by a 
unique learning history. While this may well 
be true, it is analytically daunting.
Fortunately, personality psychology has 
gone beyond a focus on idiosyncratic if–then patterns in at least three ways. First, it has 
demonstrated that a variety of stable and 
meaningful qualities of within-  person be -
havioral variability can be identified, includ -
ing qualities that reflect personality traits 
(e.g., Fleeson & Law, 2015; Moskowitz & 
Zuroff, 2004; Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 
1994). For example, Fleeson and Law (2015) 
examined participants who reported their 
actions and feelings in a wide variety of 
situations. By examining each participant’s 
pattern of, say, extraverted actions/feelings 
across all of his or her reports, Fleeson and 
Law were able to examine various qualities 
of that pattern, including its typical level 
(i.e., whether the person enacted a generally 
high or low level of extraversion) and its vari -
ability (i.e., the degree to which the person’s 
extraversion changes from one situation to 
another). Results revealed that participants’ 
level of behavioral variability was stable 
across time and situations: People whose 
behavior changed dramatically across some 
situations tended to have dramatic changes 
across other situations. Similarly, results 
revealed that participants’ typical levels of 
a given behavior were highly stable across 
time and situations: People who tend to act 
highly extraverted over some days also tend 
to act highly extraverted over other days. 
Importantly, these stabilities were not sim -
ply a function of being in the same situations 
repeatedly, they were properties of people.
Such results are important in several 
ways. First, they demonstrate, once again, 
that people have robust differences in their 
typical behavioral levels (closely akin to a 
trait disposition), as well as robust situation -
al variability. This, again, rejects the com -
petitive view of persons and situations, and 
calls for integrated theoretical models that 
account for both phenomena. Second, these 
results reveal potentially important new 
situationally oriented dispositions. For ex -
ample, previous research has not frequently 
viewed “the degree to which a person tends 
to change his or her behavior from one situa -
tion to another” as a compelling facet of per -
sonality. However, this recent work suggests 
that such tendencies do exist: Some indi -
viduals have a greater tendency to vary their 
behavior than do other individuals, and such 
tendencies are stable. This reflects a way of 
thinking about person–  situation interaction, 