 411
As a construct, the existence of personal -
ity is contingent on the assumption that the 
qualities that distinguish one person from 
another are consistent across time and situ -
ations. Yet both common intuition and em -
pirical data demonstrate that although mean 
levels of behavior across situations tend to be 
relatively stable over time, people’s behavior 
nevertheless changes quite a bit from one 
situation to the other (e.g., Mischel, 1968; 
Mischel & Peake, 1982; Mischel & Shoda, 
1995; Smith, Shoda, Cumming, & Smoll, 
2009). For example, even a generally caring 
and generous person might pass up opportu -
nities to help the homeless or be insensitive 
to someone else’s needs or plague. In fact, 
recent studies support examples like this and 
have shown that within-  person variability in 
behavior is as large as, if not larger than, 
between-  person variability (e.g., McCabe & 
Fleeson, 2016; Fleeson & Law, 2015; Flee -
son & Jayawickreme, 2015).
Given this seeming inconsistency, should 
we ignore intraindividual variability across 
situations by treating it as random noise or 
take it seriously by examining the possibil -
ity that it may serve as an additional source 
of consistency and coherence to personality? 
The cognitive–  affective processing system (CAPS, Mischel & Shoda, 1995) approach 
represents an effort to do the latter. As such, 
it provides an alternative (but not mutually 
exclusive) framework to trait theories in its 
conceptualization of personality, which in 
turn has implications in the study of person -
ality dispositions, particularly for the kinds 
of assessment tools one might need and the 
types of research questions one might ask.
Although the CAPS approach has been ap -
plied to the domains of prejudice (Mendoza- 
Denton & Goldman-  Flythe, 2009), stigma 
(Mendoza-  Denton & Worrell, 2019), health 
(Mendoza-  Denton & Leitner, 2017), and 
relationships (Mendoza-  Denton & Ayduk, 
2014), the fact that this is a metatheory 
may make it difficult for researchers to 
easily see how its principles and tenets can 
be systematically applied to a personality- 
oriented program of research. Therefore, in 
this chapter, our goal is to use the rejection 
sensitivity (RS; Downey & Feldman, 1996) 
model as an illustration of how a personality 
disposition can be fruitfully studied within 
the CAPS framework, highlighting the con -
ceptual and methodological aspects that are 
guided by the CAPS model, as well as the 
findings that inform and support the model 
in return.CHAPTER 19
A Cognitive–Affective Processing System 
Approach to  Personality Dispositions
Rejection Sensitivity as an Illustrative Case Study
Özlem  Ayduk  
Rodolfo Mendoza -Denton