 28. Self‑Regulation and Personality  617
ational affordances and barriers), on which 
plans are based. Those plans account for 
the likely effect of personality traits on the 
intended behavior. As such, behavior is not 
an expression of personality. Rather, it is a 
product of the particular personality traits 
that are relevant for the pursuit of a particu -
lar goal for which the behavior is relevant. 
Specific combinations of temperamental 
dispositions, forms of agency, and stages in 
cybernetic processing are evident in the Big 
Five factors. For example, the combination 
of a tendency to respond to rewards (tem -
perament) and actively pursue goals (agency) 
through behavior (cybernetic) underlies Big 
Five extraversion (see also, Depue & Col -
lins, 1999). The combination of a tendency 
to respond to threat and respond emotional -
ly to failure, with a focus on failure to meet 
standards, underlies neuroticism. The re -
mainder of the Big Five can be understood in 
similar terms, resulting in a comprehensive 
integration of cybernetic processes involved 
in self-  regulation and basic dimensions of 
personality.
A related model combines features of cy -
bernetic systems with the notion of charac -
teristic adaptations as outlined in five-  factor 
theory. Cybernetic Big Five Theory (CB5T) 
is built on the assumption that any adequate 
model of personality process must draw on 
principles of cybernetic systems (De  Young, 
2015). A distinctive feature of the theory 
is its characterization of personality traits 
not as fixed but rather as probabilistic de -
scriptions of people. Thus, although people 
might, on average, behave in ways consistent 
with their standing on a particular trait, 
their behavior is responsive to situated stim -
uli and therefore likely to vary around some 
typical value (Fleeson, 2001). The assump -
tion that trait-  reflective behavior is sensitive 
to situated stimuli is critical for characteriz -
ing personality as a dynamic, self-  regulating 
system. CB5T situates traits in a causal sys -
tem in which genes, environments, and their 
interaction lead to relatively stable param -
eters of cybernetic mechanisms that lead to 
personality traits, which influence outcomes 
and characteristic adaptations (e.g., goals 
and strategies that characterize the person’s 
general pattern of responding to particular 
situations). Critically, characteristic adapta -
tions feed back to potentially alter the pa -rameters of the cybernetic mechanisms and 
environmental factors that influence them. 
CBT5 offers a process-  oriented explanation 
for individual differences in personality at 
the domain level, as well as a level above 
and below it, in the personality hierarchy. 
For each personality dimension, the theory 
specifies connections between features of 
the dimension and stages of the cybernetic 
cycle, thereby integrating self-  regulation and 
personality.
Cognitive–Affective Personality  System
The integration of self-  regulation and 
personality is complete in the cognitive– 
affective personality system (CAPS) per -
spective on personality (Mischel & Shoda, 
1995). The CAPS perspective offers an ac -
count of personality that accommodates the 
seemingly contradictory observations that 
dispositions and traits are invariant, yet 
behavior varies across situations. This ap -
parent contradiction is resolved through the 
mechanism of if–then situation–  behavior re -
lations, the pattern linking specific features 
of situations to the enactment of specific 
behaviors for a given person. The array of 
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associ -
ated with specific if–then relations char -
acterizes people and, when evident across 
people, personality types (Mischel, 2004). 
At the individual level, they constitute self- 
signatures (Mischel & Morf, 2003). To the 
extent particular self-  signatures are evident 
across people, as signatures of personality, 
they offer insight into the self-  regulatory 
processes associated with specific dimen -
sions of personality.
With its focus on process, self- 
construction, and consistency in contex -
tualized behavior, CAPS theory offers the 
ultimate integration of self-  regulation and 
personality. The theory draws attention to 
trigger situations that activate internalized 
cognitive–  affective units that link thoughts, 
feelings, goals, and behaviors. Self-  regulation 
is evident in the dynamic interplay of triggers 
and if–then relations encoded in cognitive– 
affective units (Morf & Horvath, 2010). 
With experience, particular goals become 
chronically active, nonconsciously motivat -
ing goal pursuit. Others, though part of the 
self- system, are active only in the presence 