Personality and situation

An experiment was conducted to demonstrate the effect of situational constraint
as a moderator of the predictive validity of trait constructs
and of the cross-situational consistency of behavior. Subjects were
administered the extraversion scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory,
and their social behavior in a waiting-room situation and in a role-played
job interview was observed under conditions of either low (neutral condition)
or high (forced-introversion condition) situational constraint.
The hypothesis that, under high constraint, restriction of range on the
dependent variables would attenuate validity and consistency correlations
was only partially confirmed. The strongest finding was that judges'
ratings of subjects' talkativeness, overall exhibited behavior, and
inferred dispositional extraversion yielded significantly higher correlations
for the more subjective and broader measures than for the more
objective, narrow ones. The utility of these types of data and their
place in the consistency-specificity debate are discussed.

A gender self-socialization model was conceptualized, wherein gender identity and idiographic gender stereotypes conjointly influence children's adoption of gendered behavior (i.e., gender typing). Further, children differ in their beliefs of sex differences as immutable versus fluid (entity vs. incremental theory); and it was hypothesized that entity beliefs would moderate the self-socialization process. Children (N=305, M age 10.8 years) responded to gender identity, gender stereotype, and self-efficacy measures. Two kinds of gender typing were computed. Personal gender typing was the correlation between personal stereotypes and self-efficacy; consensus gender typing was the correlation between the same-sex peer stereotypes and self-efficacy. Results indicated that gender typicality and gender contentedness were associated with personal gender typing, and felt pressure against other-gender behavior was related to consensus gender typing. Entity theory strengthened the relation between gender identity and gender typing. Results support the self-socialization model.