why certain people treat you the way they do or you don ’t know how to be-
have in certain situations, you probably feel confused, disoriented, and anxi-
ous. Relationship problems are particularly unsettling when you don’ t know
why things are going poorly and have no idea how to put the relationship
back on track.
The problem is that construct systems are never perfect. For a variety of
reasons, our constructs occasionally fail us. Most of the time, we simply gener-
ate a new construct to replace the inadequate one. If you anticipate that a con-versation with Anna is going to be boring but then find it interesting, you will
probably alter your expectations for future encounters with Anna. But failure
to consider this new information lessens your ability to predict what will hap-pen the next time you interact with Anna. You may have experienced this frus-
tration when you said to someone, “Ij u s td o n ’t understand you anymore. ”
COGNITIVE PERSONALITY VARIABLES
In the early days of behaviorism (Chapter 13), psychologists sometimes used
a“black box ”metaphor to describe the relationship between stimuli and re-
sponses. In this model, features in the environment (e.g., a loud noise) causebehaviors (e.g., running away). But what happens inside the organism be-
tween the stimulus and response is unknown and unknowable, i.e., the black
box. In contrast, it is exactly the elements between stimulus and response that
are of greatest interest to cognitive personality psychologists. In recent years,these psychologists have introduced a large number of cognitive variables to
account for individual differences (Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 2008; Shoda,
Tiernan, & Mischel, 2002). Some of these cognitive variables, sometimescalled cognitive-affective units, are shown in Table 15.1.
TABLE 15.1
Cognitive-Affective Units
Encodings Categories (constructs) for encoding informa-
tion about one ’s self, other people, events, and
situations
Expectations and Beliefs Expectations for what will happen in certain
situations, for outcomes for certain behaviors,
and for one ’s personal efficacy
Affects Feelings, emotions, and emotional responses
Goals and Values Individual goals and values, and life projects
Competencies and Self-RegulatoryPlansPerceived abilities, plans, and strategies forchanging and maintaining one ’s behavior and
internal states
Source: From Kelly, George, A. A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs . Copyright
© 1955, 1963 by George A. Kelly, renewed 1983, 1991 by Gladys Kelly. Used by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.Cognitive Personality Variables 415