The End of The Person-Situation Debate: An Emerging Synthesis in The Answer To The Consistency Question

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1667–1684, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00122.
The End of the Person–Situation Debate:

An Emerging Synthesis in the Answer to
the Consistency Question
William Fleeson* and Erik Noftle*
Wake Forest University
Abstract
We review the history and current status of the person–situation debate. We
propose that the person–situation debate (1) is over and (2) that it ended in
a ‘Hegelian’ synthesis. Specifically, we propose the following synthesis resolution:
There are multiple types of consistency; behavior is consistent for some of those
types and not for others; and personality and traits exist in the forms that produce
the consistent behaviors. Incorporating both personality processes and trait structures
in research will move personality research forward. In this article, we summarize
the advances that the two perspectives have generated by working in opposition;
we explain why both sides will suffer from continuing to work independently;
and we anticipate several future directions that synthesis-informed personality
research can and should take.
The Hegelian description of the progression of ideas begins with a thesis,

which automatically and inevitably produces its opposite, an antithesis.
These two positions struggle against each other, until eventually a new
idea emerges – a synthesis that is both a new, single idea and that is
inclusive of both the former thesis and the former antithesis within it. We
believe that this progression accurately characterizes the progression of the
person–situation debate, one of the hardest fought and longest lasting
battles in the young history of psychology, persisting for most of the 20th
and into the 21st century.
This fundamental debate concerned a deep philosophical question,
whether differences between individuals’ personalities are significant enough
to have meaningful influences on actual behavior. In particular, the question
was whether traits exist and whether they influence behavior enough to
make them worth studying. For most of the debate, the popular, but
counter-intuitive, position was that differences between people are not
significant enough to bother with. We have three purposes in this paper:
(1) we will overview the person–situation debate and how we got to the
current position; (2) we will propose that the debate has ended in a synthesis
© 2008 The Authors
Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1668 A Person–Situation Debate Synthesis
that incorporates both positions; and (3) we will describe the ways in
which the synthesis enhances both the former thesis and the antithesis
positions, laying out future ‘synthetic’ directions of research.
Coming to a consensus that the person–situation debate is over and
adopting some form of a synthesis is important for at least three reasons.
First, the person–situation debate has posed a question that psychologists
have tried to answer for many decades: does personality matter? The
resolution to the debate finally answers the question. Second, resolving
the debate will allow personality psychologists to move beyond whether
personality exists to the important question of how it works. For example,
the recognition that personality differs between people at least enough to
predict important outcomes (Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2006) will allow
psychologists to now turn their attention toward identifying the underlying
mechanisms of those predictions. Third, and perhaps most importantly,
both the trait and the social–cognitive camps may have been limited in
their ability to move forward because they have neglected insights from
the opposing camp – the synthesis cross-fertilizes the two camps in ways
that may jumpstart their theorizing, research, and applications. Similarly,
a synthetic view of traits that incorporates both process and structure may
be very fruitful for new explanations of personality disorders and other
mental health concerns.
The Person–Situation Debate: Progress to Date

The core question in the debate was whether traits exist in strong enough
form to have meaningful influences on behavior. The core issue around
which the debate revolved was whether behavior is consistent. That is,
whether multiple behaviors of the same individual are typically similar to
each other (and different from other individuals’ behaviors). For example,
if an individual acts in an extraverted manner once, does that mean he or
she usually acts in an extraverted manner? If so, then the way that person
behaves is consistent and can be described and summarized with specific
personality traits. (Behavior is meant here in the broad sense, to include
specific actions, cognitions such as beliefs and expectancies, motivations,
and emotions.) If, conversely, an individual’s behaviors are not very similar
to each other and not very different from other individuals’ behaviors,
then behavior is not consistent and there is not much point in describing
or studying differences between individuals. In fact, personality could
hardly be said to even exist.
The first position in the debate was the compelling lay view that traits
do exist, because behaviors are consistent. Because it seemed self-evident
that people do behave similarly to themselves and differently from others, it
was assumed that there must be underlying traits that cause those differences.
This was the thesis. Building on the lay view, Allport (1937) theorized that
traits exist, they operate based on neuropsychological mechanisms, they
© 2008 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1667–1684, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00122.x
A Person–Situation Debate Synthesis 1669
have common, as well as individual, structures, they are relatively stable

across time, people can perceive them accurately, and they predict important
outcomes.
Introducing the antithesis

The thesis raises the possibility of its opposite, that individuals may not
have traits, because their behaviors may not be consistently different
from others’ behaviors. This antithesis position appeared in Thorndike
(1903) and in Hartshorne, May, Maller and Shuttleworth (1928) and was
developed in the writing of those such as Vernon (1964), Hunt (1965),
and Mischel (1968). The antithesis can be stated as follows: The behavior of
an individual is relatively inconsistent across time and situations; therefore,
folk notions of traits are wrong; people do not have broad traits that are
good predictors of behavior. Thus, traits do not exist: they are largely
illusions (or stereotypes) in the eye of the beholder, how one behaves is
more due to situational influences than dispositional ones, and traits are
weak predictors of behavior at best. The antithesis rested on two primary
types of evidence.
The first type of evidence involved cross-situational correlations.
Cross-situational correlations reveal how much individual differences
in one situation are repeated in a new, different situation. For example, a
high cross-situational correlation would mean that those individuals who
were the most assertive at a banquet would be the most assertive at a
sporting event. A perfect cross-situational correlation, 1.00, would mean
that each person’s relative degree of assertiveness, compared with others,
was exactly the same in the two situations. Reviews of the literature found
that such correlations were typically far from 1.00, typically between 0.20
and 0.30 and almost never above 0.40 (e.g., Hunt, 1965; Mischel, 1968;
Vernon, 1964; Wallace, 1966). Thus, the assertive individuals in one situation
can be the passive individuals in the next situation. This suggests that
individuals may not have a strongly consistent way of acting, and thus that
traits are not powerful if they can really be said to exist at all.
The second type of evidence included several studies showing that
mental biases lead people to believe in personality when it may be unwar-
ranted. Researchers found that perceivers tend to blame people for their
actions, when actually the situation may have been responsible. For example,
if a person trips on the street other people are likely to think he or
she is clumsy, although he or she may actually have tripped because the
sidewalk was unexpectedly uneven (Bem & Allen, 1974; Jones & Nisbett,
1971). Furthermore, individuals may persist with their initial impressions,
even when they are inaccurate, and even create a self-fulfilling prophecy
in which they elicit the expected behavior in individuals. Finally, most
importantly, it became clear that most people know each other much less
than they realize. People observe others, even spouses, in only limited
situations, and furthermore are always present when observing others;

their own presence is probably affecting the person’s behavior in ways that
aren’t occurring at other times. This conclusion was also bolstered by the
burgeoning field of social psychology, which was documenting powerful
and pervasive effects of situations on people’s behavior. For example, Ross
and Nisbett (1991), in their book The Person and the Situation, summarized
the many counterintuitive and robust ways in which situations had effects
on behavior. These arguments were very persuasive, so much so that many
psychology departments stopped hiring personality psychologists (Swann
& Seyle, 2005).
The purpose of the antithesis was not only to argue against traits. It
was also to promote a different way of considering personality (Mischel,
1973). The implication of the inconsistency in behavior may not be that
personality does not exist, but rather that people are discriminative and
flexible in their behavior. Mischel (1973) and others argued that individuals
interpret (or construe) situations in personally meaningful ways, and then
base their behavior on those interpretations. Thus, they argued, personality
psychologists should focus their attention on the processes involved in
interpreting and reacting to situations, rather than on individual differences
in behavior. However, the antithesis grew in many psychologists’
understanding to be primarily an attack on personality’s value at all.
Strengthening of the thesis

In response to the antithesis, personality psychologists went about
accumulating a mass of empirical evidence for the existence and usefulness
of trait concepts. By 1966, Allport was already applauding early contem-
poraneous attempts to develop ‘a satisfactory taxonomy of personality and
its hierarchical structure’ (pp. 2–3). Forty years later, there is considerable
consensus about the general structure and hierarchical format of individual
differences in traits, across several cultures (Goldberg, 1993; but see Ashton
& Lee, 2007; Benet & Waller, 1995; Clark & Watson, 1999, for other
structures). Second, traits have found to be relatively stable across time
(Block, 1971; Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000), meaning that the personality
an individual has at age 30 can predict with some accuracy his or her
personality at age 60. Third, several biological contributions to personality
have been elucidated, from the perspectives of behavioral and molecular
genetics, as well as neuroscience. Behavioral genetics studies have shown
that broad personality traits have a genetic component (Krueger et al.,
forthcoming). Current research has identified single genes that may have
an influence on phenotypic personality traits, although evidence has been
somewhat mixed and inconsistent so far (Benjamin, Ebstein, & Belmaker,
2002; Martin, Boomsma, & Machin, 1997). To examine the possible
neuroarchitecture of personality, recent studies have delved into neuro-
anatomy and neural function (Beer & Lombardo, 2007; Pickering & Gray,
1999), building on personality research that predated high temporal and

spatial resolution capacities for examining brain function (Eysenck &
Eysenck, 1985). Fourth, personality is not just in the eye of the beholder
– people can accurately judge their own and others’ personalities (Kenrick
& Funder, 1988) – and there is good evidence for target–observer agreement
in judgments of personality (Funder, 1995; Funder & Colvin, 1991), and
that people have some accuracy in predicting how their own personalities
have changed over time (Robins, Noftle, Trzesniewski, & Roberts, 2005).
Fifth, personality traits have been shown to be robust and consistent
predictors of important outcomes (Noftle & Robins, 2007; Ozer & Benet-
Martinez, 2006). Traits have been shown to have replicated predictions of
academic achievement, job performance, marital quality, mental health,
and even length of life, among many other important outcomes. Finally,
Epstein’s (1979, 1983) groundbreaking work demonstrated that aggregating
behaviors increases the consistency of individual differences to very
respectable levels, as high as 0.90 (see also Fleeson, 2001; Moskowitz, 1982).
Backing up this evidence, Funder and Ozer (1983) made a very compelling
point that 0.30 is not a small effect, and is all that can be expected,
because people’s behavior is so complex and determined by so many joint
factors. They pointed out that situational effects, even the most powerful
ones, are also limited to 0.30 or 0.40. Although they nicely illustrated the
comparable magnitude to which person and situation factors could predict
behavior at an upper bound, its empirical insight did not solidly catch on.
Stalemate
Despite this powerful and strong evidence for the thesis, which seemed to
provide undeniable evidence for the existence of traits, the debate could
not be brought to an end. We believe the reason for this was that although
the evidence strengthened the conclusion in favor of traits, the evidence
did not directly address cross-situational consistency. Researchers needed
to know how to reconcile the two seemingly opposing, but strong positions.
Without reconciliation, the debate was left as an unanswered question.
Scientific debates have three common ways of reaching resolution. One
type of resolution is a victory for one side and a defeat for the other.
If the person–situation debate were to end this way, the conclusion would
be either that behavior is consistent and traits exist, or that behavior is not
consistent and traits do not exist. Clearly, both sides have some support,
so such a resolution is not a possibility, although many are tempted to
think so. A second type of resolution is the compromise. In the compromise,
some part of each position is accepted as correct, but no new conceptu-
alization is offered. For example, the nature–nurture debate ended with
the conclusion that 30% to 50% of the variance in trait scores is attributable
to genes, and about 50% to 70% is attributable to the environment
(although Krueger et al., forthcoming, are offering a potential synthesis to
the nature–nurture debate). If the person–situation debate were to end

with a compromise, the resolution would be that variance in behavior is
some percentage consistent and some percentage inconsistent. A compromise
resolution seems natural for the person–situation debate, but we believe it
is ultimately not satisfying because there is more than one answer for
dividing the percentage: the powerful evidence for lack of consistency
seems to imply a low percentage for consistency, but the powerful evidence
for the validity of traits seems to imply a high percentage for consistency.
Ending the debate: Building a synthesis

A synthesis resolution to a debate occurs when a new, single idea is
discovered that incorporates and reconciles both the thesis and the antithesis.
It is different from the victory/defeat ending in that both positions are
integrated into the synthesis. It is also different from a compromise ending
in that the synthesis is a new idea that incorporates both former ideas,
rather than a compromise that is made up of two partial ideas. A synthesis
becomes a new thesis. A synthesis was needed to resolve this debate,
because researchers needed a way to reconcile the strong evidence for the
existence of traits, on the one hand, with the low levels of cross-situational
consistency on the other. It was not clear how both could be true.
We believe the debate was indeed resolved with a synthesis. The
debate-resolving synthesis is the discovery that there is not only one type
of consistency, but rather that there are multiple types of consistency.
Behavior is not strongly consistent in some of those ways, and thus traits
are not powerful or do not exist in the ways that would produce those
types of consistency. However, behavior is strongly consistent in other
ways, and traits exist and are powerful in the ways that produce those
types of consistency. The reconciliation between the evidence for traits
and the apparently low levels of cross-situational consistency was that traits
exist in a form that does not produce strong cross-situational consistency
of single behaviors, but that does produce other kinds of consistency of
behavior.
The components of this synthesis were already being assembled in
the late 1970s and 1980s (Hogan, DeSoto, & Solano, 1977; Ozer, 1986);
Epstein’s papers of 1979 and 1982, when combined, reveal an early
version of the synthesis. This and other work led to a slow acceptance of
the synthesis over the intervening decades, although there was not an
explicit identification or articulation of the resolution as a synthesis, and
its acceptance was not widespread. The purpose of this paper is to explicitly
identify it and thereby solidify it as a synthesis, and to draw out the
implications of it being a synthesis for the mutual benefit of the two
approaches.
Fleeson (2001), building upon the work of Epstein (1979) and Mischel
(1968), among others, offered a concrete and articulated version of the
Figure 1 This distribution shows one individual’s assertiveness level across a week of behavior.
As can be seen, the typical individual sometimes acts very assertively and sometimes not at all
assertively, suggesting that behavior is inconsistent. At the same time, each individual has a
mean around which his or her distribution is anchored. These means differ for different
individuals, but each individual’s personal mean stays in about the same place from week to
week. Thus, the means show high consistency in behavior.
synthesis. Fleeson proposed that traits are conceived best not as single ways
of acting, but rather as entire (and wide) distributions of behaviors. These
distributions can be described as stable means plus variability around those
means. For example, Figure 1 shows a distribution of a typical individual’s
assertiveness. This individual has a mean assertiveness of 4.67, but he or
she varies around this mean level quite a bit. Thus, his or her behavior is
highly variable from moment to moment (i.e., inconsistent), suggesting
no trait of assertiveness. However, it turns out that his or her mean level
of assertiveness is anchored from week to week at about the same 4.67
spot, meaning that his or her mean level is highly consistent. A stable
distribution like this would give rise to low cross-situational consistency
of single behaviors, explaining the antithesis position, and also to high
week-to-week consistency of average behaviors, explaining the thesis
position.
Fleeson’s synthesis builds upon, but also differs from Epstein’s (1979)
earlier version in at least two respects. First, it included an assessment of
the actual amount of variability in behavior. This allowed a determination
of how much the typical individual acts similarly or differently across
occasions, by direct, empirical observation rather than from inference, and
it showed the surprisingly large degree to which people routinely change
their behaviors. Second, it started by obtaining comprehensive assessments
of behavior and proposed the concept of a distribution to put the two
types of consistency together in one, new, single idea of a stable distribution.

This new way of thinking about traits – one that incorporates both
inconsistency and reactions to situations into the basic nature of traits –
allows both positions to be integrated, and thus joined as a synthesis.
Fleeson and Noftle (forthcoming) have extended this synthesis
further by arguing that there are actually not two, but rather 36 different
types of consistency. Much research on these types still needs to be done,
but it is expected that behavior will turn out to be strongly consistent in
many of those ways and not as consistent in others of those ways. For
example, beyond consistency of single behaviors and that of aggregates, a
third type of consistency is consistency of contingency (Fleeson, 2007;
Mischel & Shoda, 1998). In this type of consistency, people change their
behavior in ways that are consistently different from the ways others
change their behavior. That is, the way they respond to changing situations
is highly consistent.
This synthesis means that new conceptualizations of traits will be
needed. New trait concepts are going to be needed that explain the
combination of consistency and inconsistency in behavior. We expect that
some of these trait concepts are going to have to include within them
specific processes of interpreting and reacting to situations, as was
intended by the antithesis. At the very least, trait conceptualizations are
going to have to incorporate and explain the large amounts of variability
in behavior.
We believe that the prolonged effort to push consistency has created a
blind spot among trait theories about the positive opportunities available
by incorporating the inconsistency of behavior. Embracing the synthesis
will get trait theories past the blind spot and into new theoretical
advances. The situation side may have a similar blind spot: dismissal of the
Big Five and other trait systems. By embracing the synthesis, the situation
side may be able to incorporate insights discovered by the Big Five trait
approach and its comprehensive coverage of behavior.
The second component of our proposed synthesis is that situations are
incorporated into the definition and study of traits. This is because the
ways behavior is inconsistent includes being reactive to situations, and
because those inconsistencies are considered part of the trait definition. As
long as situation effects on trait-expressive behavior are not only additive,
but interactive – as is evident in recent findings that Fleeson (2007)
presented – then individual differences in how people react to situations
may be required as part of the definition of traits.
Our proposed synthesis is similar in some respects to a resolution to
the person–situation debate offered by Mischel and Shoda (1995). We
propose, in agreement, that momentary variability gives rise to long-term
stability. We also agree with the proposal that the consistent behavior of
personality comes at least in part from stable interpretations and reactions
to situations. However, our synthesis is different from that of Mischel and
Shoda’s in a couple of key respects. First, we accept the Big Five as central
dimensions of personality. Furthermore, we believe the Big Five provide
not only the content and structure of traits, but also the content and
structure of behavior. We believe the Big Five (and other trait concepts)
are worth studying as constructs, and that averages may exist partially
independently of reactions to situations. For example, average trait levels
may exist due to differences between individuals in resources such as energy
or self-control, or due to differences between individuals in stabilizing
forces, such as homeostatic forces (Fleeson & Jolley, 2006). Most importantly,
although we are not certain of Mischel’s position on this point, we expect
to find that traits are broad constructs. We expect that patterns of reactions
to situations will be grouped together in large and psychologically inter-
esting groups, rather than remaining as thousands of isolated, specific
contingencies (also see Epstein, 1982, for another similar synthesis).
Directions of Synthesis-Based Research

Next, we lay out a few different directions that we believe future personality
research could take. These research directions each reflect the synthesis,
incorporating both thesis and antithesis approaches into the same research
program. Several new avenues of research have already benefited from
what we argue is a synthesis position and have yielded preliminary, but
promising findings. Many other areas of research may have stalled, in part,
from researchers taking an approach too exclusive to either the thesis
or the antithesis positions. Because of the long-running conflict, some
researchers have undervalued the insights discovered by the other position.
The synthesis should allow researchers from both groups to join both sets
of insights together, accelerating both types of research. We will present
several future research directions that unify the former thesis and antithesis
positions. While discussing each research direction, we will indicate how
insights from one position may benefit the other position. In line with
Funder (2006), we present examples of research areas within three broad
domains: personality traits, situations, and behaviors.
Synthesis-based research on the nature of traits

We believe that knowledge about, theories of, and research on personality
traits will benefit from the synthesis, by incorporating the process-focused
approach that has historically been typically associated with the antithesis
position.
First, although Allport (1937) conceptualized traits as neuropsychological
mechanisms, there is still little knowledge of where traits come from
and how they operate. That is, there is very little knowledge about how
traits produce behavior, and what internal elements and operations, such
as cognitions or affects, play a role in that process. One exception, from
a biological approach, is early research investigating the neurophysiological

elements underlying personality traits such as Openness (e.g., DeYoung,
Peterson, & Higgins, 2005). Knowledge about both the biological and the
psychological processes underlying traits is essential to a mature science for
it to be able to go beyond description and begin to explain phenomena.
For example, it is important to move beyond describing some individuals
as more extraverted than others, to explaining why they are more extraverted.
Such explanations of trait processes should also be capable of explaining
behavioral inconsistency and the transactions that occur between a person
and his or her environment (Buss, 1987; Caspi & Roberts, 2001), including
the motivational, affective, and cognitive mediating variables (e.g., Mischel
& Shoda, 1995). For example, accounts of traits should be able to explain
why extraverted individuals act introverted on some occasions, how
situations, affects, and goals combine (or interact) with trait-level extraversion
to produce the level of extraversion in behavior at any given moment,
and how individuals maintain stable mean levels of extraversion despite
substantial variability (for an example of a fruitful application of this type
of approach in attachment research, see Gillath & Shaver, 2007). Accepting
inconsistency of behavior and the power of situations should enhance
research into process, because the inconsistency itself can serve as the
variability needed to test predictive models. For example, the occasions
on which an individual acts extraverted can be compared with the occasions
on which the same individual acts introverted, in order to identify the key
factors that differ between those two occasions and lead to extraverted or
introverted behavior.
In addition to identifying the processes internal to traits, it will be
important to identify the structures internal to traits. One direction this
inquiry should take is an empirically-based identification of personality
facets, or subcomponents, for each of the Big Five. Such an exhaustive
mapping has already been accomplished for conscientiousness (Roberts,
Bogg, Walton, Chernyshenko, & Stark, 2004), but not for the other four
traits. Another direction this inquiry should take is an identification of the
basic ingredients of traits. Pytlik Zillig, Hemenover, and Dienstbier (2002)
have done initial work in this regard, identifying the degree of behavioral,
affective, and cognitive content in questionnaire assessments of each of the
Big Five traits. For example, they showed that extraversion has more
behavioral content and less cognitive content than does openness. Identi-
fying these ingredients requires the antithesis’ insights about the internal
dynamics among the ingredients.
Finally, an exciting future line of research would be identifying personality
structures on the level of the individual. Although Allport (1937) argued
for focusing at the level of the individual, most trait psychologists who
followed him focused on differences between individuals. Thus, trait
structure such as the Big Five describes how individual differences are
organized, but not how traits within individuals are organized. Such
research will also be aided by the synthesis, because varying processes

internal to the individual will likely be the means for identifying these
structures, and because different kinds of consistency imply different kinds
of internal structures. That is, the complex internal structures that may
exist may only be revealed in complex types of consistency, which cannot
be identified by focusing only on averaged mean behaviors (Fleeson &
Noftle, forthcoming; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Aside from a few exceptions
(e.g., Bem & Allen, 1974; Nesselroade, 1991), current trait psychology
still has that focus on between-person, to the detriment of within-person,
trait structure (Pervin, 1994). We believe, like Feldman’s (1995) work on
the structure of affect in individuals, trait researchers could benefit from a
perspective that returns to the level of the individual while not abandoning
the level of individual differences either (e.g., Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1998).
Because the above lines of research focus on traits, they naturally
involve the former thesis position being advanced by incorporating
insights from the former antithesis position. We are excited by those
possibilities. However, the above lines of research should also enhance the
former antithesis position, for at least two reasons. First, they provide a
starting set of traits to try to explain with the processes. Although there
has been much theoretical process on describing what sorts of processes
may underlie personality variables (e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1998), there
has been less empirical progress, partly due to uncertainty about which
personality variables to explain. There is no reason not to start with the
Big Five, and in fact doing so would allow incorporating the extensive
empirical knowledge about those traits. Second, assuming that traits have
some degree of breadth to them may speed up research on processes. This
is because assumed breadth orients the researcher towards searching out
commonalities amongst different processes, rather than studying each
process on its own. Conversely, studying each reaction to each situation
as an isolated variable would lead to slow progress on identifying processes.
Synthesis-based research on the nature of situations

Research on situations will be important for future personality work
(Funder, 2001; Shoda & LeeTiernan, 2002). Research on situations has
historically been associated with the antithesis, and thus situations have
been viewed as opposed to traits (although see Buss, 1987, and Snyder &
Ickes, 1985, who saw situations as partially a consequence of traits). We
believe, in contrast, that research on situations may be accelerated by
incorporating insights from research on traits.
A first step is defining situations and their relevant properties. The
definition of a situation has been difficult to come by. For a long time,
situations were thought of as categorical, defined by their dominant activity
(e.g., work vs. socializing). Building from the work of Price and Bouffard
(1974) and Diener, Larsen and Emmons (1984), a more current conception
is that situations have multiple properties that vary continuously from low
to high – the properties that are relevant are known as psychologically
active characteristics (e.g., Fleeson, 2007; Shoda, Mischel, & Wright,
1994; Shoda & LeeTiernan, 2002). Wagerman and Funder (forthcoming)
argue that there are three levels to situations: the physical situation (the
location), the social situation (the consensual meaning), and the intra-
psychic situation (one’s interpretation of what is going on – and one’s
self-involvement). There have been several interesting recent attempts to
build taxonomies around different classification strategies by both personality
and social psychologists alike: organization around interpersonal dynamics
(Kelley, Holmes, Kerr, Reis, Rusbult, & Van Lange, 2003), classification
by individuals’ abilities to handle the situation (Ten Berge & De Raad,
2002), representation in the lexicon (Saucier, Bel-Bahar, & Fernandez,
2007), or conceptualization of how the situation affords an opportunity
for expression of various personality traits (Fleeson, 2007; Wagerman &
Funder, forthcoming).
A synthesis-based approach to defining situations would incorporate at
least two insights from the thesis position. First, it would explore the
usefulness of a taxonomic approach to situations, trying to determine the
universe of situation properties and the structural relations among them.
Part of this approach should examine the frequency distribution of situation
properties in daily life in order to understand their impact in everyday life.
Second, one route for identifying situation properties may be in terms of
their influence on trait-expressive behavior. For example, situations could
be defined by the degree to which they encourage extraverted vs. introverted
behavior.
Another line of research on situations may be to investigate whether
they differ in diagnosticity for traits. Building on the classic notion of the
degree of constraint of the situation (Price & Bouffard, 1974; Snyder &
Ickes, 1985), researchers could investigate whether some types of situations
allow expression of specific traits but not others, or provide opportunities
for some types of traits to be revealed.
Synthesis-based research on the nature of behavior

Behavior is a core feature of traits, it is prominent in most conceptual
definitions of traits, and a central controversy in personality psychology
has been precisely whether traits are reliably manifest in behavior. Despite
behavior’s importance, personality psychology has generated very little
knowledge about how personality is present in behavior and about what
behaviors are relevant to personality (Funder, 2001). We believe the synthesis
may accelerate research to close this knowledge gap.
One conceptualization of behavior recently revived is that of the
personality state (Fleeson, 2001). The personality state is just like a personality
trait, except that it applies to the person for the moment rather than for
a longer period of time. In this approach, participants describe their

current behavior with descriptive adjectives for each of the Big Five. For
example, they may describe how talkative, friendly, lazy, insecure, and
creative they are being at each moment. Personality states include the
same content as personality traits. Therefore, we also call personality states
‘ACME states’, to include the Actions, Cognitions, Motivations and
Emotions that are part of a state (Fleeson & Noftle, forthcoming). Although
these are self-reports, they are self-reports of actual behavior, that is, of
behaviors individuals actually enacted in real situations and with real
consequences, rather than imagined or retrospected behaviors. This approach
is synthesis-based, because it uses the Big Five to characterize behavior,
in studying the processes underlying inconsistency in behavior.
Traditionally, however, behavior has been defined by concrete actions.
Examples of behavior range from molecular behaviors such as blinking,
lever-pressing, and scratching one’s knee, to molar behaviors such as going
grocery-shopping, being polite despite another’s rudeness, and studying
for an exam. Partly because of the difficulty in specifying the level at
which behavior should be studied, researchers have not made extensive
progress in identifying personality-relevant behaviors. One productive
approach was that of Buss and Craik (1983), who focused on personality
traits as act dispositions, and identified prototypical behaviors for each of
the dispositions within the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins, 1979).
Another approach to identifying behavior was that of Funder, Furr, and
Colvin (2000), who created a behavioral Q-sort to identify interesting and
important behaviors that were likely to occur in videotaped laboratory
interactions. More work on concrete actions will be valuable for personality.
Synthesis-based research on behavioral consistency

The synthesis also opens up new questions about behavior and personality.
In particular, because the synthesis claims that there are multiple types of
consistency, it opens up questions about the nature, extent, and implications
of the different types of consistency.
Until recently, only a few types of consistency had been proposed in
response to the debates over personality consistency: cross-situational con-
sistency of single behaviors (Hartshorne et al., 1928), relative-position
consistency, consistency of aggregated averages (Epstein, 1979), personality
coherence, etc. (Ozer, 1986).
Building on these important distinctions between types of consistency,
Fleeson and Noftle (forthcoming) have proposed a ‘supermatrix’ of con-
sistency concepts, organizing the current set of about seven types and
allowing for 29 additional types. The full set of 36 types of consistency is
formed on the basis of crossing three different dimensions relevant to the
definition of consistency. The first way consistency concepts differ from
each other is in the competing determinant of behavior that the consistency
is across: time, situation content, or behavior content. The second way

consistency concepts differ from each other is in the definition of behavior
enactment: single enactment, aggregate enactment, contingent enactment,
or patterned enactment. When these two dimensions are crossed with a
third dimension – definition of similarity (absolute, relative-position, or
ipsative) – they create a super-matrix of 36 consistency concepts.
Inconsistency or consistency is possible in each of the 36 cells of our
super-matrix, and most cells have not been tested. Here, we will briefly
mention two cells that have been explored and one that has not. One cell
that has received a lot of empirical attention shows low to moderate
consistency: relative-position similarity of single enactment of behaviors
across situations (e.g., Hartshorne et al., 1928). It was evidence for incon-
sistency in this cell that set in motion the person–situation debate (Hunt,
1965; Mischel, 1968; Vernon, 1964; Wallace, 1966). A different cell, on
the other hand, shows fairly high consistency: relative position–similarity
of aggregate enactment of behavior over time (Epstein, 1979; Roberts &
DelVecchio, 2000). Just as those two cells have generated many interesting
insights about personality, we believe that empirical evidence about the
extent of consistency in the other cells will also generate interesting
insights. Take for example the notion of whether single enactments of
behavior by the same person remain in the same relative position to
enactments by other individuals (relative–position similarity) across variations
in behavioral content. This is the fundamental question of the breadth of
response classes, not yet explored in actual behavior. For example, if a
person is more gregarious on average at the moment, is he or she also
more assertive and active at the moment? Now compare this notion to an
idiographic conception of personality facets. This would comprise exam-
ining the patterned enactments of behavior by the same person in relation
to his or her other enactments (ipsative similarity) across variations in
behavioral content. This would test the hypothesis of individual, as opposed
to common, traits (Allport, 1937).
Conclusion
Scientific debates end in different ways. We believe the person–situation
debate is a debate that ended in the manner of the Hegelian synthesis. A
synthesis is a new idea that includes both of the two previously warring
ideas within it, reconciling their apparently irreconcilable disagreements.
The synthesis for the person–situation debate was that there is more than
one type of consistency, that behavior is consistent for some of those types
and not consistent for others of those types, and that personality exists in
the ways that produce the types of consistency that do exist. For example,
individual differences in behavior may consist of individual differences
in wide distributions of behavior, which are anchored at stable means.
This synthesis incorporates the insights from the antithesis position of
discrimination, construal, functionality, and alternativism; it also

incorporates insights from the thesis position of stability, structuring of
individual differences, and importance of average behavior to long-term
outcomes. This synthesis has the potential to foster multiple new lines of
productive research on the nature of traits, situations, behaviors, and
consistency itself.
Short Biographies
William Fleeson has received training in personality, social, cognitive, and
lifespan developmental psychology in his efforts to understand the whole
person. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1992
and postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Human Devel-
opment in Berlin, and is now an Associate Professor in the Department of
Psychology at Wake Forest University. His research interests include person-
ality, self-regulation, adult development, and psychological well-being. Some
current research focuses on computational microbehavioral psychological
health; other current research focuses on distinguishing between those
human efforts that lead to successful, satisfying lives and those that lead to
dead ends, frustrated hopes, and wasted resources. His work on distributions
of behavior and their implications for the nature of personality won the
Society of Personality and Social Psychology’s Theoretical Innovation Prize.
Erik Noftle’s research is located at the intersection of personality, social,
and developmental psychology. The common thread that links his research
is an aim to understand both the underlying structures and the dynamic
processes characterizing emotions, personality traits, and attachment styles.
Dr. Noftle’s research examines structures and processes at both intrapsychic
and interpersonal levels of analysis, charts how they change and develop
over time, and demonstrates how emotions, traits, and attachment influence
important life outcomes. For example, he has conducted research on
the links between discrete emotions and behavior from a functionalist
approach, personality trait change and development over time, personality
prediction of life outcomes, and attachment style dynamics within romantic
relationships. Dr. Noftle has authored or co-authored papers in these areas
for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Personality, Journal
of Research in Personality, and The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research.
He holds a BA in Psychology from Grinnell College and a PhD in Social-
Personality Psychology from the University of California, Davis. He is
currently a post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Fleeson at Wake Forest
University.
Acknowledgement
Preparation of this chapter was supported by National Institute of Mental
Health Grant R01 MH70571.
Endnote
* Correspondence address: Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem,
NC 27109, USA. Email: fleesonw@wfu.edu; eenoftle@wfu.edu
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Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/4 (2008): 1667–1684, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00122.

The End of the Person–Situation Debate:

The Hegelian description of the progression of ideas begins with a thesis,

The Person–Situation Debate: Progress to Date

have common, as well as individual, structures, they are relatively stable

Introducing the antithesis

situations, and furthermore are always present when observing others;

Strengthening of the thesis

1999), building on personality research that predated high temporal and

the nature–nurture debate). If the person–situation debate were to end

Ending the debate: Building a synthesis

types of consistency together in one, new, single idea of a stable distribution.

Directions of Synthesis-Based Research

Synthesis-based research on the nature of traits

a biological approach, is early research investigating the neurophysiological

research will also be aided by the synthesis, because varying processes

Synthesis-based research on the nature of situations

Synthesis-based research on the nature of behavior

a longer period of time. In this approach, participants describe their

Synthesis-based research on behavioral consistency

is across: time, situation content, or behavior content. The second way

discrimination, construal, functionality, and alternativism; it also

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