Why do we have so many trait terms and feel so comfortable navigating the language of traits if actual correlations between traits and individual actions (typically <0.30, as Mischel 1968 persuasively argues)1 are undetectable without the use of sophisticated statistical methodologies (Jennings et al. 1982)?
1 See also Mischel and Peake (1982). Epstein (1983), a personality psychologist, admits that predicting particular behaviors on the basis of trait variables is “usually hopeless.” Fleeson (2001, p. 1013), an interactionist, likewise endorses the 0.30 ceiling.
To answer this question, situationists invoke a veritable pantheon of gods of ignorance and error. Some, like the fundamental attribution error, the false consensus effect, and the power of construal, pertain directly to trait attributions. Others are more general cognitive heuristics and biases, whose relevance to trait attributions requires explanation. These more general heuristics and biases can be classed under the headings of input heuristics and biases and processing heuristics and biases. Input heuristics and biases include selection bias, availability bias, availability cascade, and anchoring. Processing heuristics and biases include disregard of base rates, disregard of regression to the mean, and confirmation bias.
According to Jones and Nisbett
(1971, p. 93), the unique breakdown of the fundamental attribution error occurs when we explain what we ourselves have done: instead of underemphasizing the influence of environmental factors, we overemphasize them. Especially when the outcome is negative, we attribute our actions to external factors. This bias seems to tell against situationism, since it suggests that we can recognize the power of situations at least in some cases. However, the existence of such an actor-observer bias has recently come in for trenchant criticism from Malle (2006), whose meta-analysis of three decades worth of data fails to demonstrate a consistent actor-observer asymmetry.2 Malle’s meta-analysis only strengthens the case for the fundamental attribution error. Whereas Jones & Nisbett had argued that it admitted of certain exceptions at least in first-personal cases, Malle shows their exceptionalism to be ungrounded.
In one variation of the [Milgram] obedience experiment, a second experimenter played the role of the victim and begged to be released from the electrodes. Participants in this version of the study had to disagree with one of the experimenters, so a desire to avoid embarrassment and save face would give them no preference for obedience to one experimenter over the other. Nevertheless, in this condition 65% of the participants were maximally obedient to the experimenter in authority, shocking the other experimenter with what they took to be 450 volts three times in a row while he slumped over unconscious (Milgram, p. 95).
When people use the availability heuristic, they take the first few examples of a type that come to mind as emblematic of the whole population. This process can lead to surprisingly accurate conclusions (Gigerenzer 2007, p. 28), but it can also lead to preposterously inaccurate guesses (Tversky and Kahnemann 1973, p. 241). We remember the one time Maria acted benevolently and forget all the times when she failed to show supererogatory kindness, leading us to infer that she must be a benevolent person. Since extremely virtuous and vicious actions are more memorable than ordinary actions, they will typically be the ones we remember when we consider whether someone possesses a trait, leading to over-attribution of both virtues and vices.
In her defense of virtue ethics, Kupperman (2001, p. 243) mentions word-of-mouth testimony that “the one student who, when the Milgram experiment was performed at Princeton, walked out at the start was also the person who in Viet Nam blew the whistle on the My Lai massacre.” Such tales are comforting: perhaps a few people really are compassionate in all kinds of circumstances, whether the battlefield or the lab. But while anecdotes about character may be soothing, it should be clear that anecdotal evidence is at best skewed and biased, as well as prone to misinterpretation. We should focus on the fact that most experimental subjects are easily swayed by
normatively irrelevant factors, not the fact that one person might be virtuous.
The existence of these biases does not prove that no one has traits, nor does it demonstrate that no arguments could warrant the conclusion that people have traits. What it instead shows it that regardless of whether people have traits, folk intuitions would lead us to attribute traits to them.
It should be noted here that many of psychologists, such as Fleeson (2001), do believe in traits, and not merely on the basis of folk intuitions. It is beyond the scope of this article to assess the success of their arguments and the extent to which those arguments apply to virtues (which are a distinctive subspecies of traits individuated not merely causally but by their characteristic reasons).
Why do we have so many trait terms and feel so comfortable navigating the language of traits if actual correlations between traits and individual actions (typically <0.30, as Mischel 1968 persuasively argues)1 are undetectable without the use of sophisticated statistical methodologies (Jennings et al. 1982)?
I get the impression I can predict specific bad behavior pretty reliably, implying that folk wisdom can achieve markedly higher correlations that psychometric traits.
I get the impression I can predict specific bad behavior pretty reliably, implying that folk wisdom can achieve markedly higher correlations that psychometric traits.
I find it amusing that I can quote a paper on how 5-10 cognitive biases lead us to think that there are stable predictable ‘character traits’ in people with major correlations, and then the first reply is someone saying that they think they see such traits.
Such papers come from a field of science whose claims to be scientific, whose claims to be a field of science, are far from universally accepted
Since its claims to be scientific are weak, any contradiction between its claims and common sense should be interpreted to its disfavor, and in favor of common sense.
Some excerpts:
I get the impression I can predict specific bad behavior pretty reliably, implying that folk wisdom can achieve markedly higher correlations that psychometric traits.
I find it amusing that I can quote a paper on how 5-10 cognitive biases lead us to think that there are stable predictable ‘character traits’ in people with major correlations, and then the first reply is someone saying that they think they see such traits.
I see.
Such papers come from a field of science whose claims to be scientific, whose claims to be a field of science, are far from universally accepted
Since its claims to be scientific are weak, any contradiction between its claims and common sense should be interpreted to its disfavor, and in favor of common sense.