These then are the limits of studying personality and social behavior by clas- sifying people within global trait taxonomies and computing person effects: The approach (a) yields no understanding of the processes through which personal attributes infl uence social behavior, (b) is an unsure guide in the search for such processes because any single person effect, computed across multiple persons and settings, could refl ect a multiplicity of such processes, and (c) does not enable one even to conclude that the personality attribute is a unitary quality at the level of the individual. On this last point, decisive data are available. Consider the two most prominent global trait variables: neuroticism and extraversion. Anxiety, a central feature of neuroticism, is not biologically unitary; instead, different brain regions are involved in anxious arousal during a task versus anticipatory anxiety, or worry- ing, prior to a task (Heller et al., 2002; Hoffman et al., 2005). Positive emotion, a central feature of the between-person construct of extraversion, is found to have at least two components—anticipatory versus consummatory pleasure—that are psy- chometrically distinct (Gard, Gard, Kring, & John, 2006) and may be subserved by different brain systems (Berridge & Robinson, 2003).
There can be little doubt that if one (a) classifi es people according to any tax- onomy of global individual differences, (b) correlates the classifi cations with a psy- chological outcome, and (c) calls the correlation a person effect, one will obtain person effects that are non-zero. The challenge for personality science is not to demonstrate this repeatedly until society closes us down (see Mischel, 2005) but to advance the science of personality and social behavior by gaining an understanding of the specifi c psychological capacities through which people interpret, infl uence, and act within the social world. This requires that one investigate the structure and dynamics of intra-individual personality architecture. In the remainder of this chapter, we illustrate how this can be done in two specifi c domains of study.
contribute to people’s enduring personal knowledge. Specifi cally, people develop relational representations, that is, knowledge structures that represent the rela- tionship between themselves and signifi cant others. In social interaction, rela- tional representations contribute to people’s perceptions of others (Andersen
& Miranda, 2000, Andersen et al., chapter this volume), attributions regarding others’ intentions (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Downey, Mougios, Ozlem, Lon- don, & Shoda, 2004), and thoughts about themselves (Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996;
Park, Crocker, & Mikelson, 2004). The self-regulation of action and affective experience is determined, in part, by contextualized representations of relations between oneself and others (Higgins, 1987; Mikulincer, Shaver, & Pereg, 2003;
Shah, 2003).
Relational Schemas
Baldwin (1992, 1999) has made particularly signifi cant contributions to the study of relational representations. The basic premise of his work is that, through social interaction, people form complex, integrated mental representations that incor- porate beliefs about both self and others. They form, in other words, relational schemas (Baldwin, 1992). These schematic knowledge structures include beliefs about interaction goals and expectations about others’ behavior, as well as repre- sentations of typical affective responses in the given relationship.
Baldwin’s notion of relational schemas exemplifi es a central theme of our pres- ent chapter, namely, that one can make progress in the understanding of personality and social behavior through analyses in which persons are embedded in situa- tions rather than separated from them. The positing of relational representations immediately moves one beyond a “person versus situation” discourse. It undoes the artifi cial separation of persons and situations by indicating that a central feature of persons is their enduring mental representations of a key situational context:
interpersonal relations. The self, in this view, is not an entity that is isolated from the social world. Instead, it is recognized that the self often is experienced as a self- with-others. Developmentally, self-with-other representations also are situation- ally embedded in that they stem from past interactions (Baldwin, 1992).
Empirical evidence reveals that the functioning of relational representations is revealed in situationally contingent if…then… patterns of the sort highlighted by Mischel and Shoda’s (1995) CAPS model of cognitive-affective personality dynam- ics. Relational schemas do not exert global or trans-situational effects on social out- comes. Instead, the knowledge structures become active if the person experiences particular social contexts. Research has demonstrated that information that acti- vates the if part of a contingency primes the then half. Baldwin & Sinclair (1996) used a sequential priming paradigm to test whether people with low self-esteem hold if…then structured relational schemas in which their self-worth is dependent on how they are perceived by others. To vary the if part of the contingency, partici- pants were exposed to a word associated with success (e.g., competent) or failure.
To assess the then part, participants identifi ed target words associated either with acceptance or rejection. Compared with people who scored high on self-esteem, people who were low in self-esteem were relatively faster at identifying positive
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relational outcome words (e.g., cherished) when trials were preceded by a success word as well as faster at identifying negative relational outcome words when trials were preceded by a failure word. Results indicate that failure/success feedback is more likely to activate socially contingent aspects of self-concept among individu- als classifi ed as low in self-esteem.
The activation of relational representations also has been shown to infl uence feelings of self-worth. The presentation of rejection- and acceptance-related words activates mental representations of self-with-others and thereby infl uences feel- ings of self-esteem (Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996) and self evaluative and affective reactions (Baldwin, 1994; Baldwin & Main, 2001). The study of relational expec- tancies, then, may inform the emergence of enduring individual differences in perceived self-worth.
The activation of relational schemas can be understood within the framework of general principles of knowledge accessibility (Higgins, 1996). Chronic and cued accessibility infl uence whether relational expectancies come to mind (Baldwin, Carrell, & Lopez, 1990; Baldwin & Meunier, 1999; Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996).
Relational representations can be activated automatically, outside of conscious awareness or without the need for consciously controlled search processes (Bald- win, Baccus, & Fitzsimons, 2004; Glassman & Andersen, 1999; Shah, 2003). These general relational expectancies can be transferred from one context to another via paired association (classical conditioning; Baldwin & Main, 2001; Baldwin &
Meunier, 1999).
Applications of the Relational Representations Construct
Advances in the study of relational representations have extended our understand- ing of the range of cognitive, affective and behavioral patterns elicited by activa- tion of relational representations. One implication of these advances is theoretical;
they reconceptualize constructs historically of importance to personality and social psychology, such as expectancies, self-concept, goals, or standards, so that the constructs capture the socially contextualized nature of these representations.
A second implication is applied; an exciting application of basic research on rela- tional expectancies is devising ways to modify them.
Changing Interpersonal Expectancies. Since some relational expectancies (e.g., pinning one’s self-worth on others’ approval or mistaking others behaviors as acts of rejection) can be deleterious, investigators have developed training proce- dures to change relational representations. For example, work by Baldwin and col- leagues (Baccus, Baldwin, & Packer, 2004) has employed a classical conditioning manipulation in which participant’s own self-related information is paired repeat- edly with positive social feedback (a smiling face). The manipulation increases implicit self- esteem as assessed by the IAT. In a second study, Dandeneau &
Baldwin (2004) successfully trained people to inhibit social rejection information;
participants with chronic low self-esteem who were repeatedly asked to identify smiling faces in a matrix of frowning faces were later found to be better at inhibit- ing rejection words on a Stroop task compared to controls.
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Downey and colleagues have developed strategies for helping people to over- come maladaptive interpersonal expectations involving ‘rejection sensitivity,’ or the tendency to construe ambiguous behavior by close others as rejecting or hos- tile and to maintain a state of hypervigilance for rejection (e.g., Downey & Feld- man, 1996; Downey, Mougios, Ozlem, London, & Shoda, 2004). Self-regulatory skills (assessed via success in a delay of gratifi cation task during childhood) can mitigate the negative interpersonal consequences of rejection sensitivity (Ayduk et al., 2000). Applying this fi nding, Ayduk, Mischel, and Downey (2002) demon- strated that when people engaged in a delay of gratifi cation task—keeping atten- tion focused on ‘cool’ features of an imagined rejection interaction rather than how they would have felt (‘hot’ features)—they felt less angry, expressed less anger and hurt, and were slower to identify hostility-related words in a lexical decision task.
These applications reveal a major advantage to construing personality in terms of interpersonal dynamics rather than inter-individual taxonomies. Unlike work on taxonomic classifi cations, analyses of intra-individual personality architecture yield information about psychological systems that can be the targets of change in interventions.
Relationships, Self-Regulation, and Health Behavior
Although we generally feel personally responsible for our actions and for our futures, others also play important roles in shaping our goals and determining whether we are able to achieve them. In close relationships, the actions, thoughts, and feelings that are key to self-regulation are shaped by reciprocal interactions with others. Yet until very recently the role of close relationships has received insuffi cient attention in basic self-regulation research (cf. Baumeister & Vohs, 2004).
There are a number of ways in which understanding the relational context of goals helps detect coherent patterns in goal striving. Relational outcomes can motivate behavior choices. People primed with the goal of being socially accepted are more likely to choose to interact with persons who view them as more likable rather than people who view them as less likeable but competent (Baldwin & Bac- cus, 2003). Goals that we perceive others to hold for us can infl uence our behav- ior (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003; Shah, 2003). Participants subliminally exposed to their mothers’ names reported increased commitment to goals they perceived as being valued by their mothers, and individuals who were close to their fathers, who perceived that their fathers would want them to succeed on particular tasks, and who were primed with their fathers’ names were more persistent and performed better on the tasks than others (Shah, 2003). Importantly, in this work goal acces- sibility mediated the effects of priming on motivation and behavior.
Future research ought further to explore the real-life implications of rela- tional goals. We know, for example that self-regulatory skills and close, supportive relationships both have a major impact on a person’s health. The importance of our capacity to set goals and direct our behavior toward achieving these goals is dramatically illustrated by the gains in health and longevity people can achieve by making health behavior changes (e.g., Knoops et al., 2004; Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerding, 2004). There is considerable evidence that close emotional ties
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or lack thereof have profound effects on health (Berkman & Syme, 1979; House, Robbins, & Metzner, 1982; Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001; Ross, Mirowsky, &
Goldsteen, 1990). While no single mechanism has been implicated, evidence sug- gests that close others, including family members, infl uence health behavior (e.g., Cohen & Lichtenstein, 1990; DiMatteo, 2004; Franks, Pienta, & Wray, 2002; Gal- lant, 2003; Umberson, 1987).
Recent research highlights the importance of relational health goals. In one study (Orom, 2006) college-aged smokers who varied in their motivation to quit smoking were asked the extent to which they were motivated to quit smoking for the sake of an important close other and the extent to which they believed this person wanted them to quit. Motivation to quit smoking was correlated, modestly but highly signifi cantly, with both wanting to quit for this person and perceiving this other person as wanting one to quit (Orom, 2006). These correlations may underestimate the potential strength of concordance between wanting to quit and wanting to quit for a close other, given that in this study the close other was also required to be another smoker. An interesting prospect is that relational motives might vary in importance across different points in the quit process. When cor- relations were computed separately for smokers who were highly motivated to quit smoking (to the least they intended to quit within 30 days) and those who were less motivated (intended to quit within six months or longer), we found that these correlations were even stronger for those who were less motivated, but nonsignifi - cant for those who were already more motivated to quit, suggesting that relational motives might be associated with starting to contemplate quitting but might not have a large impact on motivating actual behavior change.