Biomedical subjects

W Mischel

Publications and source records attributed to W Mischel.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1989

Delay of gratification in children.

To function effectively, individuals must voluntarily postpone immediate gratification and persist in goal-directed behavior for the sake of later outcomes. The present research program analyzed the nature of this type of future-oriented self-control and the psychological processes that underlie it. Enduring individual differences in self-control were found as early as the preschool years. Those 4-year-old children who delayed gratification longer in certain laboratory situations developed into more cognitively and socially competent adolescents, achieving higher scholastic performance and coping better with frustration and stress. Experiments in the same research program also identified specific cognitive and attentional processes that allow effective self-regulation early in the course of development. The experimental results, in turn, specified the particular types of preschool delay situations diagnostic for predicting aspects of cognitive and social competence later in life.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1989

Intuitive interactionism in person perception: effects of situation--behavior relations on dispositional judgments.

To examine the effects of the relationships between behavior and the situation in which it occurs, we manipulated such relations and exposed subjects to them. Impressions were similar when based on the behaviors presented with situations unspecified (e.g., child hits) or when the situations in which they naturally occurred were specified (e.g., child hits when provoked). However, when situations were specified, subjects' impressions more accurately predicted individual differences in the children's actual levels of overall aggressive behavior. When the veridical situation-behavior relations were increasingly altered, the targets were perceived as being less plausible and increasingly maladjusted and odd, and correlations decreased between the perceived level of the children's aggressiveness and their actual aggressive behavior. Thus, both personality impressions and predictive accuracy were influenced by the relations between the target's behaviors and their situational contexts.

Aggression↗

PubMed1989

Cognitive person variables in the delay of gratification of older children at risk.

The components of self-regulation were analyzed, extending the self-imposed delay of gratification paradigm to older children with social adjustment problems. Delay behavior was related to a network of conceptually relevant cognitive person variables, consisting of attention deployment strategies during delay, knowledge of delay rules, and intelligence. A positive relationship was demonstrated between concurrent indexes of intelligence, attention deployment, and actual delay time. Moreover, attention deployment, measured as an individual differences variable during the delay process, had a direct, positive effect on delay behavior. Specifically, as the duration of delay and the frustration of the situation increased, children who spent a higher proportion of the time distracting themselves from the tempting elements of the delay situation were able to delay longer. The effect of attention deployment on delay behavior was significant even when age, intelligence, and delay rule knowledge were controlled. Likewise, delay rule knowledge significantly predicted delay time, even when age, attention deployment, and intelligence were controlled.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1988

The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of gratification.

Delay of gratification, assessed in a series of experiments when the subjects were in preschool, was related to parental personality ratings obtained a decade later for 95 of these children in adolescence. Clear and consistent patterns of correlations between self-imposed delay time in preschool and later ratings were found for both sexes over this time span. Delay behavior predicted a set of cognitive and social competencies and stress tolerance consistent with experimental analyses of the process underlying effective delay in the preschool delay situation. Specifically, children who were able to wait longer at age 4 or 5 became adolescents whose parents rated them as more academically and socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planful, and able to deal well with frustration and stress. Comparisons with related longitudinal research using other delay situations help to clarify the important features of the situations and person variables involved in different aspects of delay of gratification.

Achievement↗

PubMed1988

Conditional hedges and the intuitive psychology of traits.

The view that the intuitive psychologist exaggerates the consistency of personality implies that dispositional constructs are condition-free summary statements about generalized behavioral tendencies. This article considers the alternative view that dispositional constructs summarize specific condition-behavior contingencies. Despite their condition-free appearance, the dispositional constructs used by child and adult observers in their personality descriptions were hedged by modifiers that reflected knowledge of the variability of behavior. Children's descriptions of their aggressive and withdrawn peers included probabilistic hedges that indicated uncertainty about the occurrence of behaviors (person sometimes does x). Adults made dispositional attributions with greater certainty, but more often modified them with conditional statements which identified when dispositionally relevant behaviors might be observed (person does x when y). Content analyses of these conditional statements revealed that adults systematically linked specific categories of conditions (e.g., aversive interpersonal events) to specific categories of social behavior (e.g., aggressive acts). The results help to clarify how people may hedge dispositional terms in ways that reflect their sensitivity to covariation between situations and behaviors.

Adult↗

PubMed1987

A conditional approach to dispositional constructs: the local predictability of social behavior.

A conditional approach to dispositions is developed in which dispositional constructs are viewed as clusters of if-then propositions. These propositions summarize contingencies between categories of conditions and categories of behavior rather than generalized response tendencies. A fundamental unit for investigating dispositions is therefore the conditional frequency of acts that are central to a given behavior category in circumscribed situations, not the overall frequency of behaviors. In an empirical application of the model, we examine how people's dispositional judgments are linked to extensive observations of targets' behavior in a range of natural social situations. We identify categories of these social situations in which targets' behavior may be best predicted from observers' dispositional judgements, focusing on the domains of aggression and withdrawal. One such category consists of subjectively demanding or stressful situations that tax people's performance competencies. As expected, children judged to be aggressive or withdrawn were variable across situations in dispositionally relevant behaviors, but they diverged into relatively predictable aggressive and withdrawn actions in situations that required the social, self-regulatory, and cognitive competencies they lacked. Implications of the conditional approach for personality assessment and person perception research are considered.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1976