Then A Miracle Occurs

Then a Miracle Occurs
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Then a Miracle Occurs
Focusing on Behavior in Social
Psychological Theory and Research
Purdue Symposium on Psychological Sciences
Edited by
Christopher R. Agnew
Donal E. Carlston
William G. Graziano
Janice R. Kelly
1
2010
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Then a miracle occurs : focusing on behavior in social psychological
theory and research / edited by Christopher R. Agnew . . . [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-19-537779-8
1. Interbehavioral psychology. 2. Social psychology. I. Agnew,
Christopher Rolfe.
BF200.T44 2009
150—dc22
2009008642
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book emerged as the result of the inaugural Purdue Symposium on

Psychological Sciences (PSPS), a two-day gathering held on the West
Lafayette, Indiana campus of Purdue University in May of 2008. We are
indebted to a number of individuals for helping to make this book a
reality. Purdue alumnus James Bradley provided a generous donation to
our department, making PSPS financially possible. Our department head,
Howard Weiss, spearheaded the creation of PSPS and encouraged our
efforts to pursue a broad yet ‘‘hot’’ topic. Erica Wilson handled many of
the arrangements for our symposium participants, who traveled from far
and wide to attend. Lori Handelman at Oxford has been a supportive and
cheerful presence throughout the process. Finally, we wish to thank our
Purdue colleagues (faculty and graduate students), particularly those in
the social psychology program, who help to make our academic home a
happy and productive one.
Donal E. Carlston
William G. Graziano
Janice R. Kelly
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors x
I. Behavior in Social Psychological Theory and Research 1
1. Behavior and Miracles 3

Christopher R. Agnew, Donal E. Carlston,
William G. Graziano, and Janice R. Kelly
2. Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements:

Whatever Happened to Actual Behavior? 12
Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, and David C. Funder
3. Behavioral Assessment Practices Among Social Psychologists

Who Study Small Groups 28
Richard L. Moreland, Joshua D. Fetterman,
Jeffrey J. Flagg, and Kristina L. Swanenburg
II. Behavior and Intra-Individual Processes 55
4. Individuals, Behavior, and What Lies Between the Two 57

Donal E. Carlston and William G. Graziano
viii CONTENTS
5. Habit: From Overt Action to Mental Events 68

Bas Verplanken
6. Unconscious Behavioral Guidance Systems 89

John A. Bargh and Ezequiel Morsella
7. Does Emotion Cause Behavior (Apart from Making People

Do Stupid, Destructive Things)? 119
Roy F. Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, Kathleen D. Vohs, and
Jessica L. Alquist
8. How to Maximize Implementation Intention Effects 137

Peter M. Gollwitzer, Frank Wieber, Andrea L. Myers, and
Sean M. McCrea
9. Distinguishing Between Prediction and Influence: Multiple

Processes Underlying Attitude-Behavior Consistency 162
Leandre R. Fabrigar, Duane T. Wegener, and Tara K. MacDonald
10. Personality as Manifest in Behavior: Direct Behavioral Observation

Using the Revised Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort (RBQ-3.0) 186
R. Michael Furr, Seth A. Wagerman, and David C. Funder
11. Personality, Demographics, and Self-Reported Behavioral Acts:

The Development of Avocational Interest Scales from Estimates of
the Amount of Time Spent in Interest-Related Activities 205
Lewis R. Goldberg
12. Measuring Self-Enhancement: From Self-Report to

Concrete Behavior 227
Delroy L. Paulhus and Ronald R. Holden
13. Developing an Ecological Framework for Establishing Connections

Among Dispositions, Behaviors, and Environments:
From Affordances to Behavior Settings 247
Reuben M. Baron
III. Behavior and Inter-Individual Processes 273
14. Behavior Between People: Emphasizing the ‘‘Act’’

in Interaction 275
Christopher R. Agnew and Janice R. Kelly
CONTENTS ix
15. Behavior, the Brain, and the Social Psychology of Close

Relationships 283
Arthur Aron
16. The Relationship Context of Social Behavior 299

Harry T. Reis
17. The Atlas of Interpersonal Situations: A Theory-Driven Approach

to Behavioral Signatures 321
John G. Holmes and Justin V. Cavallo
18. Mind–Behavior Relations in Attachment Theory and Research 342

Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer
19. Grounding Social Psychology in Behavior in Daily Life: The Case of

Conflict and Distress in Couples 368
Niall Bolger, Gertraud Stadler, Christine Paprocki,
and Anita DeLongis
20. Communication, Coordinated Action, and Focal Points in Groups:

From Dating Couples to Emergency Responders 391
Andrea B. Hollingshead
21. Nonverbal Behavior in Social Psychology Research:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 412
Judith A. Hall
Index 438
CONTRIBUTORS
Christopher R. Agnew Roy F. Baumeister

Department of Psychological Department of Psychology
Sciences Florida State University
Purdue University Tallahassee, Florida
West Lafayette, Indiana
Niall Bolger
Jessica L. Alquist Department of Psychology
Department of Psychology Columbia University
Florida State University New York, New York
Tallahassee, Florida Donal E. Carlston
Department of Psychological Sciences
Arthur Aron
Purdue University
Department of Psychology
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York Justin V. Cavallo,
John A. Bargh University of Waterloo
Department of Psychology Waterloo Ontario
Yale University Canada
New Haven, Connecticut
Anita DeLongis
Reuben M. Baron Department of Psychology
Department of Psychology University of British Columbia
University of Connecticut Vancouver, British Columbia
Storrs, Connecticut Canada
CONTRIBUTORS xi
C. Nathan DeWall Judith A. Hall

Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
University of Kentucky Northeastern University
Lexington, Kentucky Boston, Massachusetts
Leandre R. Fabrigar Ronald R. Holden

Queen’s University Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Joshua D. Fetterman
School of Communication
University of Pittsburgh
University of Southern California
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Los Angeles, California
Jeffrey J. Flagg
Department of Psychology John G. Holmes
University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychology
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
David C. Funder
Department of Psychology Janice R. Kelly
University of California at Riverside Department of Psychological Sciences
Riverside, California Purdue University
R. Michael Furr
Department of Psychology Tara K. MacDonald
Wake Forest University Department of Psychology
Winston-Salem, North Carolina Queen’s University
Lewis R. Goldberg Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Oregon Research Institute
Sean M. McCrea
Eugene, Oregon
Peter M. Gollwitzer University of Konstanz
Department of Psychology Germany
New York University
New York, USA and Mario Mikulincer
Department of Psychology New School of Psychology
University of Konstanz, Germany Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzliya, Israel
William G. Graziano
Department of Psychological Richard L. Moreland
Sciences Department of Psychology
Purdue University University of Pittsburgh
West Lafayette, Indiana Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
xii CONTRIBUTORS
Ezequiel Morsella Gertraud Stadler

San Francisco State University and Columbia University
Department of Neurology New York, New York
UC San Francisco
San Francisco, California Kristina L. Swanenburg
Andrea L. Myers University of Pittsburgh
Department of Psychology Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
University of Konstanz
Germany Bas Verplanken
Christine Paprocki University of Bath
Department of Psychology Bath, United Kingdom
Columbia University
New York, New York Kathleen D. Vohs
Department of Marketing
Delroy L. Paulhus University of Minnesota
Department of Psychology Minneapolis, Minnesota
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia Seth A. Wagerman
Canada Department of Psychology
California Lutheran University
Harry T. Reis Thousand Oaks, California
Department of Clinical and Social
Sciences in Psychology Duane T. Wegener
University of Rochester Department of Psychological Sciences
Rochester, New York Purdue University
Phillip R. Shaver
Department of Psychology Frank Wieber
University of California Department of Psychology
at Davis University of Konstanz
Davis, California Konstanz, Germany
I
Behavior in Social
Psychological Theory
and Research
1 Behavior and Miracles
Donal E. Carlston
William G. Graziano
Janice R. Kelly
In the Spring of 2007, the social psychology faculty at Purdue University

met over lunch to plan the inaugural Purdue Symposium on
Psychological Sciences (PSPS), to be held on the West Lafayette
campus in Spring of 2008. How the social faculty came to be responsible
for such an event is a long story, beginning with a generous donation to the
psychological sciences department by Purdue alumnus James Bradley,
mediated by an allocation and a directive from department head
Howard Weiss, and culminating with the luncheon meeting described
here. We had, at that point, everything needed to initiate planning for the
symposium—except a topic. And finding one that all of the social faculty
could get behind was seemingly going to take a miracle.
The Purdue social psychology faculty encompassed a diverse set of
subfields: attitudes, close relationships, group processes, prosocial beha-
vior, social cognition, social influence, and stereotyping and prejudice.
Of course, any of these could have served as an attractive domain in which
to target our symposium, at least in the eyes of some subset of our faculty.
But none offered the kind of broad, overarching ‘‘hot topic’’ that might
capture the interest of a majority of our area, to say nothing of our
department, or of social psychologists in general.
We chewed on a number of ideas, along with our lunches, until
someone (named Don) cried out ‘‘How about behavior?’’ As we were
then seven years into the American Psychological Association’s ‘‘Decade
of Behavior,’’ this inspiration fell somewhat short of divine. However, its
4 THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS
status grew as those attending the meeting chimed in with their own
perspectives on the topic. Someone mentioned the attitude–behavior
relationship, someone else, interpersonal behaviors. In quick succession,
automaticity, behavioral synchrony, and behavioral coding and measure-
ment were added to the list. As we digested the suggestions, the menu of
possible topics grew until it became clear to all that we had identified a
general (albeit broad) topic of common interest across subfields.
At some point, someone (named Bill) mentioned the famous Sidney
Harris cartoon shown as the frontispiece for this book. The carton shows a
scientist drawing an elaborate formula on the blackboard, in which he has
embedded the comment, ‘‘Then a Miracle Occurs.’’ Some of those pre-
sent may have felt that the miracle was the manna from heaven that was
to finance our little shindig; others that it lay in our ability to find an idea
we could all feed on; and still others, thinking more scientifically, that it
characterized the theoretical hand waving that so often occurs in science
when one or more links in a causal chain haven’t been fully specified.
Whether this last interpretation is a fair description of the science of
behavior is one of many issues debated, at least implicitly, in this
volume. In any case, as we finished our discussion and our sandwiches,
sentiment converged on using ‘‘Then a Miracle Occurs’’ as the catch-
phrase for our symposium.
CARTOON AS RORSCHACH: DIVINING THE FOCUS ON

BEHAVIOR
Clearly, the Harris cartoon is open to interpretation. Indeed, it appears to

act as a kind of projective test: When presented with it, different scholars
focus on different aspects of the cartoon itself or the caption underneath.
In that caption, a colleague addresses the scientist who apparently gener-
ated the miraculous formula: ‘‘I think you should be more explicit here in
step two.’’ Some social psychologists have emphasized a mediational
interpretation, seeing the miracle as reflecting on theories of processing
between stimulus and behavior. Others see the miraculous hand waving
as more typical of theoretical treatments of situational and contextual
precursors of behavior, and still others, as characteristic of the field’s
treatment of behavior itself. Still other scholars have highlighted the
colleagues’ advice in the caption, arguing for greater precision in our
theoretical constructions, measurements, and empirical tests. Finally, at
least a few cynics have found it a ‘‘miracle’’ that social psychologists would
focus on behavior at all! You will find these interpretations, and more, in
the chapters in this volume.
BEHAVIOR AND MIRACLES 5
Whether miraculous or not, we firmly believe that focusing attention

on issues surrounding the study of behavior is timely and important.
Some scholars believe that, across various subdisciplines of the field,
social psychology actually has contributed a great deal to our under-
standing of behavior and its antecedents. From this perspective, there is
considerable utility in drawing together such work in one place. Other
scholars suggest that though there has been great progress elucidating the
internal cognitive, affective, and motivational underpinnings of behavior,
much less research focuses on external behavior itself. From this perspec-
tive, it is important to identify the theoretical gaps, the empirical needs,
and the focal issues that still demand attention. This and a number of
other controversies enlivened the symposium that eventually materia-
lized on the Purdue campus. In what follows, we try to summarize some
of these key issues that emerged and that are examined in greater detail in
the pages of this volume.
ISSUES REGARDING BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologists commonly partition the behavioral chain into three parts

that can be roughly characterized as the stimulus environment, mediating
processes, and behavioral response. We attempted in our symposium, and
in this volume, to ensure that all three of these were well represented by
scholars studying each. It is therefore sensible for us to organize the issues
facing behavior-related theory and research in much the same way.
What Do We Know About the Stimulus Environment (and Why

Don’t We Know More)?
At the root of most social psychological examinations of the causal

sequence of action is the stimulus environment. People, more often
than not, react to what they perceive around them, so knowledge about
such stimuli to behavior would seem to be of critical importance to social
psychologists. Not only do environmental elements elicit conscious
activity, but they can also at times automatically determine behavior
(see Bargh & Morsella, Chapter 6). Moreover, from an affordance per-
spective (see Baron, Chapter 13), objects in the physical and social
environment give rise to certain actions; they ‘‘afford’’ it. Given what
we know (or at least what our theories tell us), it is more than a little
surprising that social psychologists have not focused greater attention on
the stimulus environment, often termed ‘‘the situation.’’
Chemistry has its periodic table. Biology has its taxonomic ranks.
But what of social psychology? In a field where behavior is held to be a
function of the person and the situation, what progress have we made
in classifying situations? Personality psychologists have made great
strides in delineating basic dimensions of personality (cf. John &
Srivastava, 1999), but can the same be said with respect to delin-
eating the basic dimensions of situations? Interdependence theorists
(including Harry Reis in Chapter 16 and John Holmes and Justin
Cavallo in Chapter 17) have begun the difficult yet necessary work to
outline such dimensions. Building on the pioneering theoretical work
of Thibaut and Kelley (1959; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Kelley, 1983),
Reis, Holmes, and Cavallo describe key dimensions of social situations,
including the degree of outcome interdependence between actors, the
bases of control (exchange versus coordination), and the extent to
which actors’ outcomes are correspondent (cf. Kelley, Holmes, Kerr,
Reis, Rusbult, & Van Lange, 2003). Such painstaking theoretical work
is necessary for efforts by the field to truly understand the situational
roots of behavior.
Why Don’t We Study Real Behaviors (or at Least Important

Ones)?
Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007) succinctly captured one major

perspective on behavior in a recent article titled, ‘‘Psychology as the
Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements: Whatever Happened to
Actual Behavior?’’ We were so taken with this article that we have
reprinted it in this volume as Chapter 2. It reflects a view that is
common, though not universal, in the field of social psychology today.
The chapter and the Moreland, Fetterman, Flagg, & Swanenburg chapter
that follows argue that behavior has garnered progressively less interest
over the years, both in social psychology at large and in those specific areas
of the discipline (e.g., group processes) where one would expect to find
more of an emphasis on behavior.
A number of factors have seemingly contributed to this trend. For
one, explicit behavioral assessment can be costly and time consuming.
In an era when journals typically require packages of multiple studies,
more efficient means of assessment (e.g., self-reports) are more practical
than more laborious ones. Responses to rating scales are easily collected,
easily coded, and easily analyzed, allowing researchers to get on with
Studies 2 and 3 (and 4 . . .) while their behaviorally oriented colleagues
are still coding videotapes from their initial experiment.
A second factor, according to many, was the emergence of social

cognition around 1980, and the prevalence of the social cognition
perspective thereafter. One aspect of this new approach was a focus
on internal cognitive states that might precede or underlie behavior,
without much attention to behavior itself. Eventually, affective and
motivational concerns, which social cognitionists were initially accused
of ignoring, were brought into the fold, but still with an emphasis on
the mediators rather than on the behavioral responses they were
thought to mediate.
The social cognition fixation on mental mediation arguably had yet
another consequence, as researchers were ‘‘encouraged’’ to add mea-
sures to their studies to assess states and processes that served as
precursors to the phenomena of interest. This inevitably led to more
complex studies involving self-report measures, button presses, and the
other ‘‘nonbehavioral’’ assessments about which Baumeister et al. com-
plain. Sometimes something had to give, and too often, what gave was
the final, behavioral outcome measure that might complete the causal
chain.
And so, according to Baumeister et al., the field degenerated into a
science of self-reports and finger movements. Of course, not everyone
agrees with this assessment. Some of those self-reports were proxies for
behavioral observations, with respondents reporting, summarizing, or
predicting their own behavior. Whether such self-reports are a valid
source of data about extraexperimental behavior is, of course, an
empirical question. As for finger movements, the author of the paragraph
you are reading right now would note that such movements represent the
only behavior through which he communicated to you the ideas that you
are now considering. Add in thumb movements and you may actually
have the principal means of communication for an entire generation of
young text messagers. Which leads us to the next issue:
What, Exactly, Counts as Behavior Anyway?
When critics of social psychology lament the field’s lack of emphasis on

real behavior, they often decline to spell out exactly what they mean by
‘‘real behavior.’’ One gets the sense sometimes that they mean behaviors
that are dramatic, meaningful, and important. One gets the further sense
that most behaviors enacted in research laboratory settings probably don’t
qualify, making laboratory research more or less passé by definition.
Perhaps the prototypic real behaviors are acts of aggression, like punching
somebody, or acts of altruism, like saving someone’s life. Certainly such
acts can be dramatic, meaningful, and important. And though creative
social psychologists have provoked such responses in the lab, they are
probably even more dramatic, meaningful, and important when they
occur elsewhere.
But if the goal of social psychology is to understand ‘‘everyday
behavior,’’ then it should be noted that most everyday behaviors
wouldn’t qualify as real by this definition. Verplanken notes in
Chapter 5 that 45% of all behaviors are enacted in pretty much the
same place every day. So much for being dramatic. Verbal behaviors,
which probably encompass the vast majority of those studied in the lab,
are also probably the most common to occur outside of the lab (see
Hollingshead, Chapter 20, in this volume). In fact, our guess would be
that more people are regularly affected, in meaningful and important
ways, by the words, ‘‘I love you,’’ and/or ‘‘I’m leaving you,’’ than are
punched (though the latter two may sometimes co-occur). Nonverbal
behaviors are also meaningful and important, as Hall reminds us in
Chapter 21. One conference participant even suggested at the sympo-
sium that neural events might qualify as behavior, though that is
undoubtedly an extreme view.
It may be more productive to specify what kinds of behaviors are
being neglected than to quibble about what constitutes behavior and
what does not. Chapters in this volume range from those that detail
such neglect to those that emphasize the kinds of behavior that are not
being neglected in social psychology. As already noted, Baumeister et al.
and Moreland et al. provide the strongest exemplars of the former (see
also Furr, Wagerman, & Funder, Chapter 10). The latter include
Verplanken’s chapter on habits, Goldberg’s on avocational pursuits
(Chapter 11), Bolger, Stadler, Paprocki, and DeLongis’s on relationship
behaviors (Chapter 19), and Hall’s chapter on nonverbal behaviors,
among others. Many other chapters deal with difficult issues regarding
theories or measures of behavior, especially in terms of possible
mediators.
What Kinds of Processes Mediate Behavior?
A main, take-home message of Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) theory of

reasoned action was that intention is the most proximal predictor of
action. Several meta-analyses (e.g., Sheppard, Hartwick, & Warshaw,
1988) and decades of research later, we now know that intention accounts
for about 50% of the variance in behavior. Accordingly, the march is on to
better understand behavioral intentions and how they do what they do.
Gollwitzer, Wieber, Myers, and McCrea (Chapter 8) describe a particu-
larly thoughtful approach to understanding parameters of the intention–
behavior relationship. By making important theoretical distinctions

among different kinds of intentions, and empirically examining the effec-
tiveness of each, Gollwitzer has helped to contribute to our under-
standing of this particularly proximal precursor to action.
On the other hand, it would appear that at least 50% of the
variance in behavior is not accounted for by intention. In fact, in their
chapter, Bargh and Morsella (Chapter 6) suggest that the majority of
human behaviors probably occur unintentionally, though all such
claims depend quite a bit on how one defines behavior. Bargh and
Morsella describe four unconscious behavior production systems and
detail evidence regarding the existence and effects of each. Their ana-
lysis suggests that unconscious behaviors can be studied as systemati-
cally as conscious ones can.
A number of other chapters deal with specific mediators of behavior
that fall at various points along the unconscious–intentional continuum.
Among these are habit (Chapter 5 by Verplanken), emotion (Chapter 7
by Baumeister, DeWall, Vohs, and Alquist), and personality
(Chapters 10–13). These chapters hardly exhaust the field’s repertoire
of possible mediators, but they do raise a number of important, and more
general, issues about the nature of mediation. And of course one such
issue is how mediators and behaviors are measured.
What Gets Measured, How, and Why?
There are many ways to measure behavior. Perhaps the most obvious is
through direct inspection of the overt actions of others by observers.
Naturalistic observation is the example that comes to mind easily. Hall
(see Chapter 21) also talks about the direct coding of nonverbal beha-
vior, but notes that one of the problems with the research on nonverbal
behavior is the atheoretical nature of such investigations. Observer-
report data (O-data) has several advantages relative to other forms of
behavioral assessment. Often observers have access to information that
the actor her/himself may not have. For example, actors may not have
as clear a picture of their own standing within a group as do observers,
especially in aggregation. Furthermore, an observer can evaluate more
than one actor. With multiple observers evaluating multiple actors,
research can begin to separate variations and potential biases due to
observers from those associated with the observed (Kenny, Kashy, &
Cook, 2006). Of course, some observers may be better evaluators of
behaviors than others. Just as expert diagnosticians may be more skilled
at reading an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) than
garden-variety physicians, knowledgeable informants such as spouses
may have special expertise and privileged information, which could

give them a predictive edge compared to people who do not know the
actor as well.
Another way to measure behavior is through the use of standardized
tests (T-data). Examples of T-data include EEG (electroencephalo-
graphy), EMG (electromyography), and fMRI. A third way to measure
behavior is through its residues in the life course. People marry, divorce,
receive speeding tickets, and die of heart attacks. These residues can be
assessed with L-data. Webb and colleagues (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz,
Sechrest, & Grove, 1981) describe the utility of trace measures and
archival data—where the residue of actual behavior has been stored for
reasons other than research—for assessing behavior in a nonreactive
manner. Unfortunately, these measures do not exist for many of the
research questions that we are interested in addressing.
By far the most common way of measuring behavior used in social and
personality psychology is through self-report (S-data). As Paulhus and
Holden (Chapter 12; Paulhus & Vazire, 2007) note, there are good
reasons for collecting S-data. For example, Bolger and colleagues (see
Chapter 19) describe how S-data can be strengthened by using daily
diary methods for assessing everyday behavior, with such advantages as
the mitigation of problems associated with biased retrospective reporting.
People have access to a wealth of information that is not available to
anyone else. But, as stated in the limitation section of many published
articles, S-data is not a perfect assessment method, especially when used
without converging data from other sources. S-data is subject to a host of
biases, including biases associated with retrospective reports of behavior
and with issues of motivated self-presentation (see Chapter 12 by Paulhus
and Holden). Retrospective self-reports of behavior may be skewed
because of memory loss, whether due to decay or impaired encoding of
the behavioral event, or to reconstructive processes, that might emphasize
what we think we should or could have done, rather than what actually
occurred.
Many of these issues are considered in detail in the chapters that follow.
PSPS gathered leading thinkers in social psychology to consider theoretical
and empirical issues relevant to behavior, across the field and with respect
to various subfields of social psychological inquiry. Each contributor high-
lights theoretical and/or measurement issues about behavior, including
how behavior is treated in current social psychological theory and research.
We divide our coverage of behavior into two overarching sections:
(1) Behavior and Intra-Individual Processes, including social cognition
and individual differences, and (2) Behavior and Inter-Individual
Processes, including close relationships and group dynamics. Despite
the imposed sections, you will find significant overlap in issues examined
across sections. Considering a wide variety of behavior-related topics
within one volume has been its own sort of miracle, one that we are
pleased to share with you.
REFERENCES
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History,
measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.),
Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). New York:
Guilford Press.
Kelley, H. H. (1983). The situational origins of human tendencies: A further reason
for the formal analysis of structures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
9, 8–36.
Kelley, H. H., Holmes, J. G., Kerr, N., Reis, H., Rusbult, C., & Van Lange, P. A.
(2003). An atlas of interpersonal situations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Press.
Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of
interdependence. New York: Wiley.
Kenny, D., Kashy, D., & Cook, W. (2006). Dyadic data analysis. New York: Guilford.
Paulhus, D. L., & Vazire, S. (2007). The self-report method. In R.W. Robins,
R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in
personality psychology (pp. 224–239). New York: Guilford.
Sheppard, B. H., Hartwick, J., & Warshaw, P. R. (1988). The theory of reasoned
action: a meta-analysis of past research with recommendations for modifications
and future research. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 325–343.
Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York:
Wiley.
Webb, E. J., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D., Sechrest, L., & Grove, J. B. (1981).
Nonreactive measures in the social sciences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
2 Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports
and Finger Movements: Whatever
Happened to Actual Behavior?*
Roy F. Baumeister
Kathleen D. Vohs
David C. Funder
For decades now psychology students have been taught, from the first day
of class, that psychology is the science of behavior, and that its ultimate goal
is to describe and explain what people do. Is that a fair description? The
answer varies with the specific area of psychology. Neuroscience and
cognitive psychology have never had much to say about the meaningful
activities people perform in their daily lives, nor have they really intended
to. These fields are more interested in understanding the internal workings
of the mind and brain rather than behavioral outcomes. In contrast, animal
learning and developmental psychology (perhaps because participants
studied by these fields generally cannot fill out questionnaires or read
prompts on a computer screen) have consistently focused on behavior at
various levels ranging from increases in bar pressing as a function of rewards
to behavioral coordination between small children and their parents.
The fields of social and personality psychology, however, offer a
special and discouraging case. Both of these related fields have a mandate
to study the important social behaviors that comprise the very texture of
* Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Funder, D. C. (2007). Psychology as the science of self-reports and
finger movements: Whatever happened to actual behavior? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2,
396–403. Copyright Ó 2007 Association for Psychological Science. Reproduced with permission of
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
PSYCHOLOGY AS THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REPORTS 13
human life, with personality focusing on individual differences in those

behaviors, and social psychology exploring situational influences. But
personality psychology has long relied heavily on questionnaires in lieu
of behavioral observation, a state of affairs that has begun to change only
recently and ever so slowly at that. Even worse, social psychology has
actually moved in the opposite direction. At one time focused on direct
observations of behaviors that were both fascinating and important—a
focus that attracted many researchers to the field in the first place—social
psychology has turned in recent years to the study of reaction times and
questionnaire responses. These techniques, which promised to help to
explain behavior, appear instead to have largely supplanted it. The result
is that current research in social and personality psychology pays remark-
ably little attention to the important things that people do.
The 1990s were named the ‘‘Decade of the Brain.’’ This widely
advertised rubric, promoted heavily by the American Psychological
Association (APA), focused attention on the importance of and advances
in research on brain processes. It was wildly successful, to the extent that
many funding agencies jettisoned many other research priorities as they
poured money into expensive brain research, and articles and conference
sessions on brain studies proliferated. Brain researchers have always been
more interested in brain and nervous system functioning than in beha-
vioral implications. Ironically, however, their research has benefited
hugely from the conviction by funding agencies and the public at large
that anything a neuron does must be behaviorally important. Such rele-
vance has been demonstrated once in a great while (e.g., in the work by
Damasio, 1994, and his colleagues on the interaction between emotional
and cognitive systems in decision making), but more often it has merely
been taken on faith. Meanwhile, the increase in study of the brain has
helped erode interest in actually observing behavior.
It seemed an extremely wise move, therefore, when, impressed by the
success of the brain decade, APA came up with the idea of making the
first decade of the new century ‘‘The Decade of Behavior.’’ The goal was
to focus attention on the contributions of psychology toward under-
standing and affecting important behaviors and consequent life outcomes,
thereby adding relevance, credibility, and (one hoped) big research bud-
gets to the enterprise. This emphasis was—or at least should have been—
especially welcome to social and personality psychologists, whose
research programs would seem to be in a position to benefit greatly
from a renewed recognition of the importance of behavior.
It is now past halfway through the putative Decade of Behavior and
therefore a fair time to ask: How’s it going? In particular, how are social
and personality psychologists doing? To anticipate our answer, we think
they are doing fine in many respects—but not in studying behavior.
LOOKING FOR BEHAVIOR
With that question in mind, we picked up a recent (January 2006) issue of

the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, by consensus the premier
journal in our subdisciplines (we are all social and personality psycholo-
gists). It is undeniably a fine issue, offering important advances in the
topics the articles address. The methods are rigorous and the discussions
thoughtful. The editors, reviewers, and authors did their jobs well.
But behavior is hard to find. Or if it is there, it is rather different than
what we had imagined it to be. If this issue offers a representative sample,
then human behavior is almost always performed in a seated position—
usually seated in front of a computer. Finger movements, as in keystrokes
and pencil marks, constitute the vast majority of human action.
In fact, a remarkable amount of ‘‘behavior’’ turns out to be really just
marks on a self-report questionnaire. Sometimes these questionnaires ask
people to report what they have done, will do, or would do. More often,
they ask people to report what they think, how they feel, or why they do
what they do. In other words, most personality and social psychological
studies gather self-reports of inner states.
Nisbett and Wilson (1977) thought they had discredited introspection
back in the 1970s, when they reported a series of clever demonstrations
that the factors that drive behavior are often invisible to the people who
perform it. As their title expressed, most introspective reporting involves
‘‘telling more than we can know.’’ Although aspects of this research became
controversial, it is abundantly clear from their studies, other research, and
everyday observation that people have not always done what they say they
have done, will not always do what they say they will do, and often do not
even know the real causes of the things they do do. These discrepancies
mean that self-reports of past behaviors, hypothetical future behaviors, or
causes of behavior are not necessarily accurate1.
Nonetheless, self-report appears to have all but crowded out all other
forms of behavior. Behavioral science today, at least as represented in
JPSP, mostly involves asking people to report on their thoughts, feelings,
memories, and attitudes. Occasionally they are asked to report on recent
or hypothetical actions. Or, somewhat differently (and more rarely),
reaction times, implicit associations, or memory recall might be assessed,
in the service of illuminating a cognitive process. But that’s as close as
most research gets. Direct observation of meaningful behavior is appar-
ently passé.
1
This does not mean they are never accurate, but rather that there is no way without direct observa-
tion of behavior to know whether they are accurate or not.
This is certainly quite an ironic turnabout from Nisbett and Wilson’s

(1977) critical stance. In fact, Wilson’s more recent work (2002) has shown
that when people introspect to analyze the reasons for their actions, they
often mislead themselves. In a choice rhetorical flourish, he advises people
who seek self-knowledge to eschew direct inspection and instead consult
books on social psychology. Yet the books on social psychology are increas-
ingly based on research that itself is heavily based on introspection.
The move from behavior to an emphasis on introspective self-report and
hypothetical responses to imagined events is potentially a hugely important
shift in the very nature of psychology. Psychological science started out in
the 1800s with introspection (e.g., Wundt, 1894). One major development
of the twentieth century was the shift from introspection to direct observa-
tion of behavior, widely regarded as an advance in the development of
scientific methodology. Did someone, somewhere, decide that that had
been a mistake, and that we should all now go back to introspection?
Let’s take a closer look at this recent issue of JPSP, which was chosen
just for convenience and is presumably representative. It contained 11
articles reporting 38 studies. The closest thing to behavior in the depen-
dent measures was making a choice. That is, one study asked participants
to choose between two stimulus persons (who were made known to
participants via photographs) to give them the postexperimental inter-
view. Apart from that borderline case, not a single one of those 38 studies
contained direct observation of behavior. The dependent measures con-
sisted entirely of ratings, either on paper questionnaires or computer-
administered stimuli. The ratings were mainly introspective self-reports.
Some of the procedures included hints of behavior along the way. One
study had participants read a fictional police report about a violent act and
express a (nonbinding) opinion as to the appropriate prison sentence for the
perpetrator. (So at least they read about someone else’s behavior, albeit
fictional behavior.) Four studies had participants take tests, one for the
purpose of legitimizing bogus feedback, the other three as a basis for asses-
sing the accuracy of self-ratings of performance. Some of the questionnaires
asked people to report on their past behaviors. Several asked people to read
things, such as descriptions of hypothetical behavior. One study had parti-
cipants cross out all instances of the letter e in a page of printed text.
So that is behavior today in the leading journal of social and person-
ality psychology. Ratings, and more ratings. Occasionally making a
choice. Reading and taking a test. And crossing out the letter e.
Behavior fared only slightly better in the previous issue: Out of 38
studies in 13 articles, there was one that measured negotiation moves
(Bowles, Babcock, & McGinn, 2005) and one that studied ‘‘how an indivi-
dual actually behaves during an induced conflict’’ (quoted from Knee,
Lonsbary, Canevello, & Patrick, 2005). Note the authors’ use of the term
‘‘actually,’’ which illustrates their awareness of how unusual it was to observe

behavior directly2. That study induced and videotaped a disagreement
between romantic partners and then coded for understanding versus defen-
sive behaviors (mainly speech acts) (Knee et al., 2005). Those two studies
are about real behavior, but again they are only 2 out of 38 studies. One
additional study included a behavioral independent variable, sort of, con-
sisting of having people read their e-mail message aloud before sending it (as
opposed to just sending it; Kruger, Epley, Parker, & Ng, 2005). And there
was one that used a questionnaire for self-report of behavior.
We do not doubt that other surveys would yield similar numbers.
Social and personality psychologists do not report much actual behavior
in their premier journal, or elsewhere.
WAS IT ALWAYS THUS?
Our impression is that this has been building for a while. In what psy-
chologists from the baby boom generation may remember as a golden age,
social psychology for a time was characterized by studies that directly
observed important behaviors in vividly evocative contexts (see Aronson,
Brewer, & Carlsmith, 1985). We suspect that more than one social
psychologist was inspired onto his or her career by an undergraduate
class lecture on John Darley’s and Bibb Latane’s studies of bystander
intervention (e.g., Darley & Latané, 1968), or Stanley Milgram’s (1975)
obedience studies, which put real people into emotionally powerful
situations and then watched what they did. Even many classic studies of
inner variables such as attitudes and guilt contained dramatic behavioral
experiences prior to the self-reporting of inner states (e.g., Aronson &
Mills, 1959; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Studies like this faded from
view, however, when the field embraced the cognitive revolution in the
1980s, and the success (and apparent rigor and prestige, see Rozin, 2001)
of cognitively framed studies may have encouraged many researchers to
concentrate on the self-report measures that were appropriate for those
studies, rather than struggle for difficult and expensive behavioral obser-
vation. The impressively successful Decade of the Brain, as we have
already noted, also demonstrated to researchers the success, prestige,
and funding that could accrue to studies exploring inner psychological
2
Since we wrote this, we have noticed the increasing frequency with which behavior is called ‘‘actual
behavior,’’ presumably to distinguish from the other, more commonly studied kinds, or perhaps just to
dramatize its rarity.
processes while postponing, perhaps indefinitely, examination of the

behavioral results of these processes.
In personality, meanwhile, the interest in behavior in some ways was
weaker all along, especially given the core emphasis on measurement of
traits, for which self-report has long been the prominent method. Although
sophisticated psychometric methods have been developed, the primary
method for validating a personality questionnaire is still to demonstrate
how it correlates with other questionnaires (Funder, 2001). Hundreds of
studies of the ‘‘structure of personality’’ seek that structure amongst the
correlations between questionnaires. One major recent project that aimed to
compare the utility of several major personality inventories in their ability to
predict behavior did so by seeing how well each one predicted self-reports of
behavior; in other words, yet another questionnaire. Even personality psy-
chologists who evince skepticism about personality traits are not immune;
their research, too, is based almost exclusively on self-reports or hypothetical
predictions, with only rare (and therefore highly notable) exceptions (e.g.,
Wright & Mischel, 1987). In recent years, a few personality psychologists
have begun to look again at behavior in the laboratory (e.g., Borkenau
Riemann, Angleitner, & Spinath, 2001), assess ‘‘behavioral residue’’ (e.g.,
the condition of a student’s dorm room or a worker’s office cubicle; e.g.,
Gosling et al., 2002), and develop methods to code directly observed beha-
vior along meaningful dimensions (e.g., the Riverside Behavioral Q-sort,
Funder, Furr, & Colvin, 2000). These efforts remain rare, however, and so
far have not been particularly influential. The dominant method throughout
personality psychology, to this day, is the questionnaire (Funder, 2001).
We were moved by these questions and reflections, as well as some
prodding by reviewers, to take a slightly more systematic and quantified
look at behavior in JPSP over the decades. Two of the authors went to
libraries and selected issues from 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006 for
coding. We used our birth months (March and May) for each year, and we
coded all studies reported in the issue as to whether they included any
direct observation of behavior. Coding was deliberately liberal, so that a
study qualified as having behavior if any element involved behavior, that
is, any manipulation, any dependent measure, or even using behavior as
the conduit for manipulating the independent variable (e.g., taking a test
and getting feedback on it). Self-reports of general past behaviors or of
hypothetical behaviors did not count. Using archival behavioral data (e.g.,
crime statistics) qualified. Reading about someone else’s behavior was not
coded as behavior. The two issues for each same year furnished quite
similar numbers except for 1966, in which the very young journal had
several peculiar features (including mostly one-study papers and some
short reports, one of which oddly reported four brief and very similar
studies that were ultimately counted as one), and so we coded two
80
70
Percentage of Studies with Behavior
60
50
40
30
20
10
1966 1976 1986 1996 2006

Year of publication
Figure 2.1. Percentage of Studies from the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology that Included Behavior, 1966–2006.
additional issues for that year to furnish a broader base); one of the
originally coded issues was lost because of catastrophic computer failure.
Comment and theory articles were not included. In all, we coded 304
studies across the 11 issues of the journal.
Figure 2.1 shows the results of these codings. Back in 1966, when
most articles contained only a single study, about half of these involved
actual behavior. The study of behavior increased its share of the journal
into the 1970s. But it dropped sharply in 1986, and the subsequent
decades have seen a continued downward trend. Apparently, then, beha-
vior has been in a steady decline since the early 1980s.
CAVEAT
We want to be very clear that we see nothing wrong with what social and
personality psychologists are doing, as far as it goes. Self-reports of beha-
vior, emotion, intention, and thoughts are often illuminating, may be the
method of choice for certain topics (e.g., studies of attitudes or emotional
experience), and sometimes are all that is possible. Such measures can and
do lead to important and interesting knowledge that will advance theory.
But the restriction of methods also serves to constrain the topics that are
addressed in the first place (Rozin, 2001). In other words, our complaint
is with what social and personality psychologists, and perhaps others in

the field, are not doing.
Surely some important behavior involves standing up? Or actually
talking to another live person, even beyond getting instructions about
how to sign a consent form and activate the computer program?
Whatever happened to helping, hurting, playing, working, taking,
eating, risking, waiting, flirting, goofing off, showing off, giving up,
screwing up, compromising, selling, persevering, pleading, tricking, out-
hustling, sandbagging, refusing, and the rest? Can’t psychology find ways
to observe and explain these acts, at least once in a while?
WONDERING WHY
There are probably many reasons for the sorry state of behavioral study
during this possibly last-gasp Decade of Behavior. For example, sometimes
direct behavioral observations are unethical, unfeasible, or impossible. For
the foreseeable future, most studies of everyday behaviors ranging from
eating to sexual behavior, exercise habits to drug use, will have to rely
primarily on self-report despite the obvious disadvantages. Moreover, if
one wants to know what a participant is thinking or feeling, there is little
alternative but to ask. And even under the best of circumstances, observing
actual social behavior is more difficult, challenging, and inconvenient than
just asking for ratings or sitting a participant in front of a computer screen
and measuring his or her keystrokes or reaction times. The field is compe-
titive, and the top journals require multiple studies, so struggling with trying
to observe behavior, even when it would be possible, may well make it
harder to crank out the high volume of data that academic success now
requires. Moreover, the sad fact is that many studies fail to show meaningful
significant differences. A failed behavioral study is an expensive failure, and
could even be a major career setback. Last, and perhaps most important,
journals do not seem to give extra points or consideration to studies that
observe behavior instead of just getting ratings, so why bother?3
Our data on JPSP across the years points to the early 1980s as a
turning point, specifically a hugely downward turning for behavior.
Several things had changed in the journal between 1976 and 1986.
First, the journal had been split into three sections, and they were allo-
cated in ways that might be taken as at best indifferent to behavior.
3
One author of this paper, in his previous capacities as associate editor of one personality journal and
as editor of another, did follow an (unadvertised) policy of trying extra hard to find a way to accept any
article that included any direct measurement of behavior, but he received very few such submissions.
Second, editorial policy changed toward explicitly favoring articles with

multiple studies, and as we have suggested, it is far easier to do many
studies by seating groups in front of computers or questionnaires than to
measure behavior over and over. To be sure, other trends in the field at
that time may also have contributed. These would include the cognitive
revolution (itself a strong push to focus on inner process and downplay so-
called ‘‘actual’’ behavior) and the steady increase in restrictive IRBs.
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) may be more likely to raise objec-
tions to behavioral measures than to ratings. From an IRB perspective, it
seems far less intrusive to ask someone what she would eat than to
observe how much she actually eats4. The problem is, of course, that
hypothetical behavioral responses may be wildly inaccurate—and, in any
case, there is no way to know unless actual behavior is also measured. In a
similar vein, it may seem less intrusive to measure ‘‘prejudice’’ as indi-
cated by speed of key presses in response to prompts on a computer
screen than by actually seeing how a person interacts with a person against
whom he or she might or might not be biased. And it is certainly easier.
But, as psychologists bow to pressure from the IRBs to avoid anything that
might have the remotest chance of slightly upsetting their research parti-
cipants, and to competitive pressures to produce lots of studies per paper,
they sacrifice the scientific quality of the discipline. Not to mention
abandoning its original goal of being the science of behavior.
Ratings, reaction times, and similar measures are surely necessary.
The maturation of the field has required a great rise of interest in inner
process. In the 1960s, a researcher could manipulate independent vari-
ables, measure behavior, and simply speculate about the internal med-
iating process. Now the researcher is required to demonstrate the inner
process, too. Adding ratings surely made for better science. But in prin-
ciple the ratings and self-reports were supposed to shed light on the
behavior—not to replace it.
To put it another way: Once upon a time, perhaps, psychologists
observed behavior and reported what they saw, along with their theories
about why it happened. The emergence of competing theories and there-
fore competing explanations led psychologists to push each other to show
what happened inside the person to produce the behavior. Gradually
the focus shifted on these debates about inner processes, and journals
started publishing studies that made significant contributions about
4
One of us spent part of her career studying how much ice cream dieters and nondieters would eat
under different conditions. One university’s IRB feared that measuring eating behavior—namely,
having to admit to participants that their eating was being recorded—might cause dieters to go into a
tailspin and develop disordered eating habits.
demonstrating inner processes. Somewhere along the way, it became

acceptable to publish data on inner processes without any real behavior
included at all. And then it became the norm.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
One might say, is there anything wrong with learning about the inner
process? We think not. But behavior matters, too. It cannot be blithely
assumed that responding to questionnaires is enough to tell us all we need
to know about actual life. It is necessary to study actual behavior some-
times. For example, West and Brown (1975) conducted the same experi-
ment two different ways—once asking people what they would do in this
situation, and once by actually staging the event. The experiment
involved an ostensible accident victim standing on the street, asking
passersby for money to help pay for medical care at a nearby clinic.
Actual and hypothetical behavior differed in two major ways. First, the
levels of help were dramatically different. Asked how they would react to
such a request, participants said they would give fairly generously, but
when the experiment was conducted live, actual donations averaged
barely over ten cents in some conditions.
The other difference is even more important for psychology’s goal of
building sound theories about behavior. The victim’s attractiveness did
not have a significant effect on hypothetical donations, but it did have a
significant effect on real donations. This occurred despite the lower
overall generosity in actual behavior (hence overcoming any possible
floor effect). A researcher who followed the common contemporary
method of relying solely on hypothetical behavior would draw a false
conclusion that would omit an important and significant contributor to
actual behavior.
In recent years the reasons for doubting self-reports and the resulting
need to observe actual behavior have increased. Affective forecasting
studies show systematically how inaccurate are people’s predictions of
how they will react and feel (e.g., Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). Studies on
judgment and decision making have likewise shown that people’s predic-
tions are inaccurate and that hypothetical decisions do not reliably match
actual ones. For example, in hypothetical decisions, people are moder-
ately risk averse regardless of the amount at stake, but when actual money
is used, people become dramatically more risk averse as amounts increase
(Holt & Laury, 2002).
This issue has arisen before. During the 1960s and 1970s, both
personality traits and attitudes came under vigorous attack on precisely
these grounds. Mischel (1968) wrote a famous and influential critique

that argued personality trait measures seldom have appreciable correla-
tions with measures of actual behavior. Wicker (1969) went so far as to
suggest that attitudes, which had been touted by Gordon Allport as social
psychology’s most important concept, should be abandoned. The fields
responded with impressive programs designed to show that, yes, one
could predict some of the people’s behavior some of the time from
attitudes and trait scales (e.g., Kenrick & Funder, 1988; Ajzen, 2000;
Glasman & Albarracı́n, 2006).
The issues remain today, and indeed the questions of attitude–beha-
vior consistency and behavioral predictability remain important research
topics. But in a recent class devoted to examining articles published in
JPSP, the students were surprised to find that the latest article on atti-
tude–behavior consistency did not bother measuring behavior. (It asked
participants to imagine what they might do in hypothetical situations.)
Similarly, we have already mentioned how at least one study has sought to
assess the predictive validity of personality trait questionnaires via their
correlations with a measure of behavior that was itself a questionnaire.
This hardly seems fair. Social psychologists cannot claim that attitudes or
personality predict behavior if by behavior they do not really mean
behavior.
The problem goes even deeper. While self-reports, reaction times,
implicit associations, and the like are good and even ideal methods for
examining certain topics, we believe that psychology has tilted toward
examining precisely those topics for which these methods are appro-
priate, and away from everything else (Rozin, 2001). Which leads us to
wonder: In our rush to test competing theories of internal processes, as we
move away from the description of important behavioral phenomena,
what are we missing? What questions are we forgetting to even ask? A
partial list is not difficult to generate:
• How do people with different levels of a personality trait behave

differently?
• How do situational variables—physical aspects, social
relationships, cultural structures—affect what people do?
• How do prejudiced individuals actually treat the objects of their
prejudice? How do the discriminated-against respond—
behaviorally?
• How and when do women and men act differently in situations
ranging from the first date to chairing a meeting?
The reader is invited to make his or her own additions to this list. It is
not difficult to do. Again, our point is not that topics like these are never
addressed (e.g., see Nisbett & Cohen, 1996, for fascinating studies of the
relationship between culture and aggressive behavior), but that they are
neglected, relative to the study of cognitive process, and certainly relative
to their intrinsic importance. This is why for social and personality
psychology, the fields that should benefit the most from this initiative,
APA’s ‘‘Decade of Behavior’’ risks becoming a laughingstock.
Very possibly, too, the abandonment of behavior could be seriously
detrimental to the field’s goals and its broad influence. A recent president
of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology articulated in the
society newsletter that those fields are suffering from failing to get their
message across to outsiders. They are seen as not making much interesting
progress, even though insiders know that the conferences and journals are
filled with exciting new work. But perhaps scholars in other fields, and
even undergraduates, find it harder to appreciate the excitement of our
work when it rests on correlations among questionnaire items or signifi-
cant differences in reaction times. The dramatic behaviors of the early
years of social psychology experiments are still featured in the textbooks,
and probably for good reason.
TODAY’S DILEMMA
Perhaps ironically, psychologists who study behavior today find them-

selves at a disadvantage. Probably everyone would agree that the ideal
paper would report both direct observation of behavior and measurement
of inner processes that mediate and produce those behaviors. But if you
only have one without the other, preferences are lopsided. Data on
behavior without inner process are regarded as unpublishable at the
best and even the medium journals. Grant reviewers often behave simi-
larly. One of the present authors submitted a grant proposal for a beha-
vioral study that a reviewer criticized on the grounds that it did not
include ‘‘psychological variables,’’ apparently meaning internal process
measures5. By this definition, behavior is not even a psychological vari-
able! Behavior by itself is regarded as only a beginning, an unsolved
puzzle. Meanwhile, however, a study of inner process without behavior
is acceptable.
Confronted with a study reporting behavior but no inner process,
reviewers will immediately ask, why did this happen? You need to show
what goes on inside. But confronted with a paper reporting inner process
5
This is not just sour grapes: the study was funded despite a negative review—itself an unusual
outcome.
but no overt behavior, reviewers almost never ask, would this actually
alter behavior? Inner process is considered interesting and important in
its own right, without any proof that it has any implications for what
people do.
Given those unequal contingencies, it is not surprising that
researchers have turned away from behavior. It is apparently more
trouble than it is worth. Ratings are the keys to success, and they are
publishable with or without behavior. Behavior, meanwhile, is not
publishable by itself without ratings, and moreover, behavior often has
a nasty way of complicating the cleaner, more elegant picture that one can
get from ratings alone.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR ACTION?
We wish to suggest, gently and respectfully6, that social and personality

try to put a bit more behavior back into the science of behavior (as
psychology still advertises itself). There is no need to stop asking for
ratings or analyzing reaction times, but perhaps psychologists could all
push themselves to include an occasional study that includes direct
observation of what Knee et al. (2005) poignantly called ‘‘actual beha-
vior.’’ To be sure, behavioral observation is not always ethical or feasible,
as we have mentioned. But when it is, why not include it? Researchers
could put a bit more effort into developing methods for observing beha-
vior directly (e.g., Furr & Funder, 2007). We could do more to build on
efforts such as those by Jack and Jeanne Block to design behavioral
batteries for personality assessment (Block, 1993), the behavior-sampling
technologies pioneered by Matthias Mehl and his colleagues (Mehl,
Gosling, & Pennebaker, 2006), behavioral observations in real life such
as used by James Dabbs, Chris Fraley, and their colleagues (Dabbs,
Hargrove, & Heusel, 1996; Fraley & Shaver, 1998), and speech-sampling
methods such as those developed by Lisa Feldman-Barrett, James
Pennebaker, Lisa Fast, and their colleagues (Feldman-Barrett, Williams,
& Fong, 2002; Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003; Fast & Funder,
2008). Not to mention social psychology’s long tradition of studying
laboratory behavior that involves moving more than fingers.
Perhaps reviewers, editors, and granting agencies could even give a
little extra preference to studies that contain behavior, in the spirit of
affirmative action for the promotion of methodological diversity. If
6
Any attentive reader can tell by now that we are nothing if not gentle and respectful.
others share our view that the current system subtly discourages scientists
from observing behavior, then perhaps more vigorous changes might be
called for to redress that imbalance. Possibly a new section of JPSP could be
earmarked for studies of behavior. Or perhaps one of the new journals that
APS is introducing might be devoted to behavioral studies. Having such a
devoted outlet would reduce the (apparently crippling) demand that beha-
vioral studies must compete for space with the easier-to-do and therefore
correspondingly more rigorous and plentiful studies that use only ratings.
Let us stress that we are not criticizing APA’s initiative on the
‘‘Decade of Behavior.’’ We support the goal wholeheartedly. But if
social and personality psychology has given up on behavior, how can the
field expect society as a whole to embrace it? In fact, even if society (or
funding agencies at least) were to embrace the Decade of Behavior idea,
would that benefit the field? The saddest outcome would be for the
powerful and fund-granting authorities to decide that behavior is impor-
tant after all and then to use that as a reason to disrespect our field. They
might say, and not without reason: ‘‘We want to support the study of
human behavior, but personality and social psychologists don’t study
behavior.’’
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3 Behavioral Assessment Practices Among
Social Psychologists Who Study Small
Groups
Richard L. Moreland
Joshua D. Fetterman
Jeffrey J. Flagg
Kristina L. Swanenburg
A recent article on publication trends in social psychology, published by

Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder in 2007 and reprinted in this book (see
Chapter 2), caught the attention of many people, including us. Baumeister
and his colleagues were intrigued by a trend among social psychological
researchers, who seem to have moved away from measuring actual beha-
vior (e.g., people talking together, working with one another on a task,
displaying or reacting to emotions), toward more trivial (and less social)
activities (e.g., ratings of the self and/or others on questionnaires, keyboard
strokes in response to artificial stimuli presented on computer monitors).
We are social psychologists whose research focuses on small groups.
Although such research is a small portion of all the work done by social
psychologists, that portion has been growing. And researchers from dif-
ferent disciplines who study small groups have become more collaborative
lately, forming INGROUP, an international association (www.msu.edu/
~gwittenb/ingroup.html) that hopes to generate even more research of
this sort. So, when we read the paper by Baumeister and his colleagues,
our thoughts naturally turned to its possible implications for research on
small groups. Traditionally, the assessment of behavior has been a key
feature of such research. People who study groups have thus developed a
variety of methods for assessing behavior (see, for example, Beck & Lewis,
BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT PRACTICES FOR SMALL GROUPS 29
2002; Dabbs & Ruback, 1987; McGrath & Altermatt, 2001), and resources
are available to help those who must analyze data on the behavior of group
members (see, for example, Kenny, Mannetti, Pierro, Luvi, & Kashy, 2002).
Surely, we thought, the trend that Baumeister and his colleagues observed
would not be found in articles describing research on small groups. And if
that trend were observed there, then group researchers should be made
aware of it and led to consider its implications. Is the trend problematic?
If so, then how serious a problem is it and what can be done about it?
OUR DATA SET
One of us (Moreland) has been involved for many years with a special data set
that contains information about articles describing research on small groups.
The data set involves articles published in the Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology (JESP), the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), and
the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB). These journals were
chosen because of their prominence in social psychology. The original data set
(Moreland, Hogg, & Hains, 1994) contained all of the articles that appeared
in those journals between 1975 and 1993. The articles were first evaluated to
determine whether they described research on small groups. Articles that met
that criterion were then evaluated further for a variety of characteristics,
including (a) length (number of pages); (b) number of studies reported;
(c) primary research methodology; (d) primary substantive focus (group
phenomenon); and (e) whether the work was influenced by European and/
or social cognition approaches to groups.
This data set was created with two broad goals in mind. One goal was
to provide some descriptive data on small group research. Several
interesting, and occasionally worrisome, findings emerged from the data.
For example, about 75% of all small group studies involved laboratory
experimentation, rather than other methodologies, and this obsession
changed little over the years (cf. Haslam & McGarty, 2001). Another
interesting finding was that some phenomena, especially those involving
intergroup relations, were quite popular among researchers, whereas other
phenomena, especially those involving intragroup phenomena, were not.
There was, in fact, a general trend over time away from research on
intragroup relations and toward research on intergroup relations.1
1
Sanna and Parks (1997) later found just the opposite trend, using a data set that contained articles
from major organizational psychology journals published over the same period. It would be interesting
to investigate levels of behavioral assessment, and changes in those levels over time, among those
articles and contrast the findings with the ones reported here.
But there was another goal as well, namely to test some predictions
made by Steiner (see Steiner 1974, 1983, 1986) about trends in the
overall popularity of research on groups over time. To examine those
trends, a simple yearly index was created by first counting all of the pages
describing group research that were published by the three journals, then
dividing that number by the total number of journal pages published on
all topics. The resulting proportion represented how interested social
psychologists were in studying small groups that year. Statistical analyses
of changes in the index scores over time were then carried out to test
Steiner’s predictions.
As it turned out, few of Steiner’s predictions were confirmed. Yet
there were clear changes over time in the index scores. That index started,
in 1975, at around 15%, and then fell steadily for several years, reaching a
low in the early 1980s of around 8%. But then it began to rise steadily, a
trend that continued until 1994, when the index reached a high of about
23%. At that point, the future looked bright for small group research.
What caused the surge of interest in studying groups during the early
1980s and the 1990s? Moreland and his colleagues identified two possible
factors. One factor was the growing influence during that period of
European approaches to studying groups. For example, Tajfel’s work on
the role of social categorization in intergroup relations (see Tajfel, 1981,
1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) influenced such American social psycholo-
gists as Brewer (1979) and Wilder (1981, 1986; Wilder & Cooper, 1981).
And many other American social psychologists, such as Levine (1980),
Nemeth (1986), and others (e.g., Latane & Wolf, 1981; Maass & Clark,
1984; Tanford & Penrod, 1984) became interested around the same time
in minority influence because of Moscovici’s work on that topic (see
Moscovici, 1976; 1980).
Another factor was enthusiasm among social psychologists for the-
ories and research methods associated with social cognition. Consider, for
example, Hamilton’s (1981) book on cognitive processes in stereotyping,
which demonstrated the potential value of cognitive analyses of groups.
Other examples of people who took a cognitive approach to groups
during this period include Jones (e.g., Jones, Wood, & Quattrone, 1981;
Linville & Jones, 1980), who studied perceptions of the variability among
group members, and Rothbart (e.g., Howard & Rothbart, 1980;
Rothbart, Evans, & Fulero, 1979; Rothbart, Fulero, Jensen, Howard, &
Burrell, 1978), who studied the encoding and recall of information about
group members. Mullen’s (1983) work on group composition and self-
awareness also began at about this time.
Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994) tested their ideas about the
impact of these factors in two ways. First, they showed that articles on
groups that were influenced by European and/or social cognition
approaches did indeed appear initially in the early 1980s and then became
increasingly common as time passed. Second, when those articles were
removed from the data set, leaving only articles that described research
not influenced by either European or social cognition approaches, the
surge of interest (from the early 1980s onward) in studying groups more
or less disappeared.
Wittenbaum and Moreland (2008) later expanded the original data
set by adding articles on group research published between 1996 and
2006. These new articles were evaluated in exactly the same ways as the
articles studied by Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994), and many of the
same analyses were done, often with similar results. One important
difference, however, involved changes over time in the index scores.
The good news was that research on groups continued to gain popularity,
with the scores reaching a high of around 30% in 2003. The bad news was
that those scores stabilized for a couple of years afterward, and then
actually began to drop. Why? Were social psychologists starting to lose
interest in groups? Maybe, but the drop could also have been artifactual.
Over the last few years, new journals devoted entirely to group research
(e.g., Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Group Dynamics: Theory,
Research, and Practice) have appeared, and Small Group Research, an
older journal devoted to such work, has been revitalized. Maybe articles
describing group research that once would have been submitted to more
mainstream journals are now appearing in these specialized journals
instead. If so, then the recent decline in the popularity of group research
may be misleading—if a broader set of journals were examined, then
interest among social psychologists in studying small groups might
prove to be stronger than ever (cf. Randsley de Moura, Leader,
Pelletier, & Abrams, 2008).
For this chapter, we decided to expand the data set yet again and to
perform some analyses that explored levels of behavioral assessment
among small group researchers. One small change that we made was to
incorporate articles on group research published in the three target jour-
nals during 2007. These new articles were evaluated exactly as before, and
by someone (Moreland) who carried out evaluations of the articles in
earlier versions of the data set.
The data set now contains a total of 1,995 articles (398 from JESP,
968 from JPSP, 560 from PSPB) describing 4,067 studies. Index scores
were computed in the same way as before. A summary of these scores
across the years can be found in Figure 3.1. There are two lines in that
figure. The solid line shows the actual index scores, and the dashed line
shows the predicted scores derived from a regression analysis. Similar
figures will appear later in this chapter, so it’s worthwhile to pause now
and describe briefly the analyses that generated them.
40%
35%
30%
Interest in Groups
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.1. Interest in Studying Small Groups, as Indicated by Articles in JESP,

JPSP, and PSPB from 1975 to 2007.
In every case, a set of polynomial regressions was done, where the

linear, quadratic, and cubic effects of publication year were used to
predict some aspect of the articles. We seldom found significant curvi-
linear effects, so unless noted otherwise, all of the predicted values in our
figures come from simple linear regressions.
Note that these analyses were unusual, because the scores being
predicted in each case represented repeated measures (from one year to
the next) of the same journals. Thus, possible interdependence among the
scores had to be considered. We dealt with this problem using the
same statistical procedures that Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994)
used. In every analysis, we examined the Durbin-Watson statistic,
which measures the level of serial correlation. In most of our analyses,
the Durbin-Watson statistic was about 1.5, which indicated a mild level
of positive serial correlation. When serial correlation is worse, the pro-
blem can be explored by performing another analysis involving first-order
autoregressive correction procedures. Using these procedures, serial cor-
relation can be included as a factor in the original regression analysis, so
that its significance can be tested and its effects on other predictors can be
gauged. When we had to conduct such analyses (a rare occurrence), serial
correlation never proved to be a significant factor, nor did its inclusion in
the regression analyses have much impact on the results associated with
other predictors.
The results shown in Figure 3.1 are generally similar to those reported
by Wittenbaum and Moreland (2008). Polynomial regressions showed
significant linear, quadratic, and cubic effects of publication year on index
scores. The overall regression, which included all three predictors, was
significant, F (3,29) ¼ 81.06%, p < .001, and accounted for about 89% of
the variance. The Durbin-Watson statistic was 1.46. The main difference
between our results and those of Wittenbaum and Moreland involves
articles published in 2007. The index score for 2007 was even lower than
the score for 2006, providing further evidence that social psychologists
are losing interest in small groups (or that more specialized journals are
becoming more popular).
Many other characteristics of the articles in the current data set are
worth reporting as well. For example, the number of studies per article
ranged from 0 to 9 (some articles, such as those offering literature reviews
or commentaries, contained no studies at all). There were 1,926 articles
that described at least one study. In those articles, the mean number of
studies was 2.11, with a standard deviation of 1.29. What methodologies
were used in those studies, and which phenomena did they investigate?
Laboratory experimentation remained the most popular methodology by
far (76.53%), followed by surveys (15.73%). Other methodologies, such
as field studies and experiments, archival analyses, and computer simula-
tions, were rare. As for the phenomena that were studied, more than half
of the articles (57.58%) described research on various aspects of inter-
group relations, such as social identity, conflict between groups, and
stereotypes. Less popular, though still studied often, were various aspects
of conflict within groups (14.13%), such as social dilemmas, bargaining
and coalition formation, majority/minority influence, or power, and var-
ious aspects of group performance (13.03%), such as leadership, produc-
tivity, descriptive work on group decision making, and prescriptive work
on group decision making. Other phenomena that occur in small groups
were hardly studied at all. For example, only 5.71% of the articles
described research on group structure, 4.72% described research on the
ecology of groups, and 3.74% described research on group composition.
This brief summary raises doubts about the health of group research,
regardless of how many papers are being published. Experts often advise
researchers to use a variety of methodologies, so that the strengths of one
methodology can compensate for the weaknesses of another. Yet social
psychologists who study small groups have apparently ignored this advice,
putting ‘‘all their eggs in one basket’’ by nearly always doing laboratory
experiments. And although small groups are complex, displaying a wide
variety of intriguing phenomena, people who study groups have focused
heavily on intergroup relations, without showing much interest (especially
recently) in anything else. These are clearly problems that ought to be
considered carefully, with an eye toward possible solutions. But our focus
in this paper is on another issue, namely whether group researchers (like
other social psychologists) have drifted away from assessing behavior.
To explore this issue, three of us (all graduate students in social

psychology who do group research themselves) reviewed all 4,067 studies
in the data set and evaluated in each case whether behavior was measured
or not, and if so, then how that was done. As Baumeister and his collea-
gues (2007) noted, the first judgment seems simple, but is actually com-
plex. After some discussion, we chose to be conservative in our
evaluations, requiring that group-related behavior be included among
the dependent measures in a study. In other words, it was less important
to us whether participants interacted (or exhibited other behavior) during
a study than whether some behavior of theirs was measured and later
predicted. Like Baumeister and his colleagues, we did not count as
‘‘behavioral’’ any study in which participants merely rated themselves or
others on a questionnaire.
When group behavior was measured in a study, judging how it was
measured turned out to be complicated as well. We devised several cate-
gories of measurement. These included (a) the direct observation of group
interaction; (b) biological measurements, such as heart-rate, GSR, or brain-
wave recordings of group members; (c) archival data about groups or their
members; (d) self-reports by group members about their past or current
behavior; (e) reports by others (e.g., friends) about the past or current
behavior of group members; (f) fictional behavior, as when group members
describe how they might act in some hypothetical situation; and (g) mea-
sures of information processing by group members, such as listings of their
thoughts, their memory for information (often about hypothetical others)
shown to them by researchers, the time they spend looking at such infor-
mation, how quickly they made whatever judgments researchers require
from them, and so on. Finally, there was a large, miscellaneous category (h)
that included a variety of methods, each used in just a few studies.
Can specific examples of group research be assigned reliably to these
categories? After discussing the categories, three of us (the same persons
who coded whether behavioral assessment occured at all or not) indepen-
dently evaluated 100 articles from the data set. These articles represented
all three journals and every publication year. For each study in an article, a
coder first decided whether group behavior was measured at all. If not, then
the study was assigned a special coding category (i) reserved for that
purpose. But if group behavior was measured, then a further decision
was made about which of the eight measurement techniques [(a) through
(h)] described above was used.2
2
In some studies, more than one type of behavioral measurement was used. When that happened,
just one coding category was chosen, based on which measurement technique the researcher(s) seemed
to emphasize.
Because the number of studies varied from one article to the next,
only decisions that coders made about the first study in each article were
compared for reliability. Following advice from King (2004), we calcu-
lated a generalized kappa statistic that compared all three coders’ deci-
sions simultaneously (rather than comparing those decisions one pair of
coders at a time and then averaging the results across pairs). The general-
ized kappa was .72, which was significant (p < .01), indicating that studies
were reliably assigned to the assessment categories.
In our opinion, however, the clearest example of behavioral assess-
ment was (a), the direct observation of group interaction. The other
categories varied in plausibility and some seemed arguable. Moreover,
across the entire data set, direct observation was used more often than any
other single form of behavioral assessment. A conservative decision was
thus made to focus on behavioral assessments of this type. For each
article, we thus created an index score by counting how many times
such observations were made, and then dividing that number by the
total number of studies in the article. The resulting score indicated the
proportion of studies within an article that involved the direct observa-
tion of group behavior.3
These index scores were modest in size, with an overall mean of .36
and a standard deviation of .46. Among the 4,067 studies in the data set,
1,175 studies involved direct observations of behavior, 1,260 studies
involved behavioral assessment of some other type, and 1,632 studies
involved no behavioral assessment at all. Have there been any changes in
levels of behavioral assessment over time, as Baumeister and his collea-
gues (2007) suggested? The answer can be found in Figure 3.2. The solid
line there shows the actual behavioral assessment index scores and the
dashed line shows predicted index scores. Polynomial regression analyses
showed only linear effects of publication year on the index scores. The
regression was significant, F (1,31) ¼ 81.70, p < .001, accounting for
about 73% of the variance. The Durbin-Watson statistic was 1.45. The
figure shows that behavioral assessment has indeed become less popular
over time among group researchers.
We also investigated whether levels of behavioral assessment varied
significantly by journal or by group phenomenon. An analysis of variance
that compared behavioral assessment index scores across the three jour-
nals was indeed significant, F (2,1923) ¼ 16.68, p < .01. Behavioral
assessment was more likely to be found in articles from the Journal of
3
A more focused reliability check was done by comparing how many studies containing direct
behavioral observation were found in the first study from each of the 100 articles. The resulting
intraclass correlation was .71, which was significant (p < .05), indicating adequate reliability.
90%
80%
70%
Behavioral Assessment
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.2. Changes over the Years in Behavioral Assessment among Researchers
who Study Small Groups.
Experimental Social Psychology (M ¼ .43, SD ¼ .48) or the Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology (M ¼ .38, SD ¼ .47), rather than the
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (M ¼ .27, SD ¼ .43). A second
analysis of variance, one that compared behavioral assessment index
scores across the six broad topic areas mentioned earlier (intergroup
relations, conflict within groups, group performance, group composition,
group structure, and the ecology of groups), was significant as well,
F (5, 1899) ¼ 83.85, p < .01. Behavioral assessment was more likely to
be found in articles about group performance (M ¼ .70, SD ¼ .45), conflict
in groups (M ¼ .64, SD ¼ .46), or group composition (M ¼ .61, SD ¼ .47),
than in articles about group structure (M ¼ .40, SD ¼ .48) or the ecology of
groups (M ¼ .32, SD ¼ .45). Behavioral assessment was least likely to be
found in articles about intergroup relations (M ¼ .20, SD ¼ .38).
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Baumeister and his colleagues (2007) offered several explanations for the
decline of behavioral assessment in social psychology. One explanation
involved the ‘‘cognitive revolution’’ in social psychology. That revolution,
which began in the 1960s and has grown stronger since, has led many
social psychologists to focus on cognitive structure and cognitive pro-
cesses as the ultimate causes for behavior. As a result, they have naturally
tried to measure such things (in addition to, and often even instead of,
behavior itself) in their research. There has also been more pressure on
researchers, from both reviewers and journal editors, to measure cogni-
tive factors in their work, rather than only speculating about such factors.
Another explanation offered by Baumeister and his colleagues
involves an emphasis in the major journals on articles that contain mul-
tiple studies. Behavioral assessment can be difficult and time-consuming,
so if a researcher’s goal were to publish as many articles as possible, then
he or she might prefer dependent variables that can be measured quickly
and easily. Behavior is seldom such a variable.
Finally, Baumeister and his colleagues noted that Institutional Review
Boards (IRBs), which have become stronger in recent years, are often
more cautious about research that involves behavioral rather than other
measures. To resolve difficult negotiations with IRBs, or even to avoid
IRB problems altogether, some researchers may thus have abandoned the
assessment of behavior and come to rely instead on measurement tech-
niques that raise fewer ethical concerns.4
Our focus in this chapter, however, is small groups. Why have social
psychologists who study such groups moved away from assessing beha-
vior? Three explanations, which overlap somewhat with those offered by
Baumeister and his colleagues (2007), seem plausible to us. Our explana-
tions involve (a) the growing influence of European approaches to
studying groups, especially work involving social identity and self-cate-
gorization; (b) the growing influence of social cognition approaches to
studying groups; and (c) an increasing pressure on authors to produce
journal articles containing multiple studies.
As we noted earlier, all of the articles in our data set were evaluated for
the influence of both European and social cognition approaches to studying
groups. Why should these influences have anything to do with researchers’
decisions about measuring group behavior? Let’s begin with European
influences, which are strongest in research on intergroup relations. This
research often features social identity or social categorization theory.
Social identity theory (see Tajfel & Turner, 1979, for an overview),
which was developed to explain conflict between groups, argues that
people possess both personal and social identities. Personal identities
involve the individual qualities (e.g., physical attractiveness, intelligence)
that make every person unique, whereas social identities involve group
4
We are skeptical about this explanation, primarily because there is no evidence that the timing of
changes in IRB strength matches the timing of changes in behavioral assessment in social psychological
research. The latter changes seemed to begin long before the former ones—our own department
evaluated much of its own research (the unfunded studies, at least) for ethical concerns until the
1990s, with little input from our university’s IRB. Yet the decline in behavioral assessment that
Baumeister et al. (2007) identified seemed to begin in the 1960s.
memberships (e.g., gender, religion, ethnicity) that can unite people or

separate them from one another. There is considerable evidence from
research on self-esteem that people value positive personal identities (see
Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004; Yamaguchi
et al., 2007). Social identity theory argues that people value positive social
identities as well, and that conflicts between groups often reflect efforts to
protect or improve the social identities of the people involved.
Self-categorization theory (see Turner Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, &
Wetherell, 1987, for an overview) resembles social identity theory in
several ways, but focuses more on the social categorization processes
through which people come to associate themselves and others with various
groups. And uncertainty reduction, rather than self-esteem enhancement, is
the primary motive in self-categorization theory (see Hogg, 2001).
Both of these theories have been enormously influential, not just in
social psychology, but also in other fields, such as organizational psy-
chology. And in recent years, these theories have been used to explain
intragroup relations, as well as intergroup relations (see, for example,
Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003).
For our purposes, a critical feature of both theories is their claim that
face-to-face contact is unnecessary for group phenomena to occur.
Turner, for example, claims that a psychological group arises, and can
influence its members, whenever a set of people simultaneously cate-
gorize themselves as members of the same group. Although this may
occur more often when people are doing something together, in the same
place and at the same time, all of that is unnecessary. People need not
interact at all for a ‘‘group’’ to exist. In fact, face-to-face interaction does
not guarantee the existence of a group—a shared categorization of the self
as a group member is what actually matters. All this has implications for
research on small groups. Maybe there is no need to study groups by
gathering research participants together and making them interact in
some way. Instead, the essential step is to lead participants (who could
be studied individually, even at different times and places) to think about
themselves as members of the same group, and then observe how they
react. Behavioral assessment (observing how research participants act
toward one another) is unnecessary.
Let us turn now to social cognition influences on group research. As
many observers have noted (e.g., Markus & Zajonc, 1985), the impact of
cognitive psychology on social psychology has been widespread and
powerful. Cognitive theories are discussed and cognitive research
methods used in nearly every area of social psychology, even minor
areas like groups. What does that have to do with behavioral assessment?
For our purposes, a critical feature of the cognitive approach to social
psychology is the claim (dating back to Lewin, 1936; Murray, 1938; and
others) that behavior depends less on what is actually happening to

someone than on what that person thinks is happening. In other words,
events are less important than meanings for predicting behavior. Again,
this has implications for research on small groups. To do research on
conformity, for example, why is it necessary to observe actual groups,
in which people that agree or disagree with one another about an issue
express their opinions openly? The same or similar social pressures could
be created by simply leading people to believe that their own views are
similar or dissimilar to those held by other group members, who need not
be present. Once again, behavioral assessment is unnecessary.
To explore these ideas, we went back to the data set and performed
analyses guided initially by two questions. First, how often did European
and social cognition influences actually occur, and did those influences
become stronger over the years? Second, was behavioral assessment
indeed less likely to be found in articles displaying either form of
influence?
Among the 1,926 articles in the data set that contained at least one
study, about 35% were influenced by European approaches to groups, and
about 61% were influenced by approaches associated with social cognition.
The two forms of influence were not independent, as indicated by a chi-
square analysis, X2 (1) ¼ 117.04, p < .01. Articles influenced by European
approaches to groups were more likely than not to show a social cognition
influence as well (n ¼ 519 vs. n ¼ 147). Articles without European
influence displayed a similar, but weaker trend (n ¼ 664 vs. n ¼ 596).
We analyzed the impact of European and social cognition influences
(separately and together) on changes over time in levels of behavioral
assessment. Social cognition influences proved to have a stronger impact;
that impact was indeed negative and it has grown.5 But rather than
describe the results from those analyses in detail, we will focus here
(because of space constraints) on analyses involving the related impact
on behavioral assessment practices of studying intergroup relations.
Articles influenced by European or social cognition approaches to
groups often seemed to focus on intergroup relations. Could this explain
the decline in behavioral assessment among group researchers? Research
on intergroup relations has surged in recent years (see Abrams & Hogg,
1998; Wittenbaum & Moreland, 2008), and as we noted earlier, when
describing our data set, articles about intergroup relations are less likely
than articles about any other group phenomena to involve behavioral
assessment.
5
Details about these analyses are available on request.
Are European and social cognition influences indeed stronger in

articles describing research on intergroup relations? To find out, we first
assigned new topic codes to all the articles in the data set. Articles
describing research on social identity, conflict between groups, and
stereotyping were classified as work on intergroup relations, whereas
articles describing research on group composition, group structure, con-
flict in groups, and group performance were classified as work on
intragroup relations. Articles about research on the ecology of groups or
miscellaneous topics did not clearly involve intergroup or intragroup
relations, so they were set aside. Next, chi-square analyses were carried
out to see whether there were significant relationships between (a) the
topic of an article (intergroup or intragroup relations) and (b) any
European or social cognition influences on that article. The chi-square
values, each with a single degree of freedom, were both significant
(European X2 ¼ 81.69; Social Cognition X2 ¼ 426.39), p < .01. As
expected, articles influenced by European approaches to groups were
more likely to focus on intergroup (n ¼ 488) than intragroup relations
(n ¼ 163). Articles without such influence also tended to focus on inter-
group relations (n ¼ 621 vs. n ¼ 542), but to a smaller degree. Articles
influenced by social cognition approaches to groups were also more likely
to focus on intergroup (n ¼ 903) than intragroup relations (n ¼ 235),
again as we expected. Articles without such influence, in contrast, actu-
ally tended to focus on intragroup (n ¼ 470), rather than intergroup
relations (n ¼ 206).
Research on intergroup relations, therefore, seems to embody both
European and social cognition approaches to groups. But has such
research indeed become more popular over the years? To check, we
computed a yearly popularity index for intergroup relations research by
adding all of the pages in articles associated with research on that topic,
then dividing that number by the number of pages in the group articles.
Polynomial regression analyses of this popularity index, using year of
publication as a predictor, revealed significant linear and quadratic trends.
The overall analysis was significant, F (2, 30) ¼ 74.91, p < .01, and
accounted for about 86% of the variance. The Durbin-Watson statistic
was 2.20. Raw popularity scores (solid line), and the predicted scores
(dotted line) generated by the analysis, are shown in Figure 3.3. The
popularity of research on intergroup relations has indeed been growing,
although that growth seems to have slowed in recent years.6
6
We also calculated similar popularity scores for research on intragroup relations, but they were so
highly correlated with the intergroup relations popularity scores (r ¼ .93, p < .01) that there was little
point in analyzing how they too changed over time.
90%
80%
70%
60%
Popularity
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.3. Changes over the Years in the Popularity of Intergroup Relations as a
Research Topic.
The relationship between behavioral assessment and studying inter-

group relations or intragroup relations was investigated through two
separate sets of polynomial regression analyses. In both cases, attempts
were made to predict behavioral assessment index scores over time.
There was a linear effect of publication year on the scores for articles
about intragroup relations. The overall regression was significant,
F (1, 31) ¼ 18.06, p < .01, and accounted for about 37% of the variance.
The Durbin-Watson statistic was 2.05. The analysis of index scores for
articles about intergroup relations produced less clear results. There was
evidence of linear, quadratic, and cubic effects of publication year, but the
overall analysis was only marginally significant, F (3, 29) ¼ 2.33, p < .10,
and accounted for just 19% of the variance.
Predicted behavioral assessment index scores from the two analyses
are shown in Figure 3.4 (actual scores are not shown, in order to simplify
the figure). The line for research on intragroup relations research is much
higher than the line for intergroup relations research, indicating again that
behavioral assessment is less common in the latter type of research.
Among articles on intergroup relations, there was a complex pattern of
predicted index scores across years—those scores fell at first, then rose
gradually for many years, and finally fell again in recent years. But given
the weak results of the analysis that generated these scores, they must be
interpreted cautiously. Among articles on intragroup relations, the pat-
tern was clearer—the predicted index scores fell steadily over time. This
suggests that studying intergroup relations was not the only reason for the
decline in behavioral assessment. Even researchers who study intragroup
80%
70%
Intragroup
60%
50%
40%
30%
Intergroup
20%
10%
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.4. Changes over the Years in Predicted Levels of Behavioral Assessment
among Articles on Intergroup versus Intragroup Relations.
relations have gradually abandoned such assessment. Something else,

then, must have contributed to the decline as well.
We suggested earlier that another reason for that decline is the
growing pressure on all social psychologists to submit articles containing
multiple studies. Wegner (1992) and others (e.g., Webster, 2007) have
noted this trend, discussed its probable causes, and lamented some of its
effects. One likely effect of such pressure on researchers who study
groups is to limit the number of articles that are published (by those
who measure behavior in their work), and to make it less likely that
behavioral assessment will be part of any articles that are published.
Assessing group behavior, especially through the direct observation of
group members, can be very difficult, requiring considerable time,
energy, and money (Weingart, 1997). It may thus be viewed by some
researchers as a kind of ‘‘luxury’’ that they cannot afford, if their major
goal is to complete multiple studies and thereby publish more articles.
Have group researchers, like other social psychologists, also increased
the number of studies contained in their articles? And is the number of
studies in an article about groups related to the assessment of behavior in
those studies? To answer these questions, we computed the mean number
of studies in the articles published each year. Polynomial regression ana-
lyses were again used to detect any temporal trends in the data, and a linear
effect of publication year was indeed found. The overall analysis was
significant, F (1, 31) ¼ 199.13, p < .01, and accounted for about 87% of
the variance. The Durbin-Watson statistic was 1.61. Figure 3.5 shows the
mean number of studies actually published in articles over the years (solid
3.0
2.5
Studies per Article
2.0
1.5
1.0
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.5. Changes over the Years in the Mean Number of Studies Contained in
Articles about Small Groups.
line), as well as the predicted number of studies in those articles (dashed

line). The trend was remarkably strong—the mean number of studies per
article nearly tripled between 1975 and 2007!
To see whether the number of studies in an article was related to the
assessment of behavior, we carried out a one-way analysis of variance that
compared the behavioral assessment index scores for articles with one
study (n ¼ 810), two studies (n ¼ 525), three studies (n ¼ 326), four
studies (n ¼ 156), and five or more studies (n ¼ 109). The analysis was
significant, F (4, 1921) ¼ 35.83, p < .01, and showed a general decrease in
the assessment of behavior as the number of studies contained in an article
increased. Behavioral assessment was least likely in articles with five or
more studies (M ¼ .25, SD ¼ .24) followed by articles with four studies
(M ¼ .34, SD ¼ .34), and then articles with three studies (M ¼ .42, SD ¼ .42).
Levels of behavioral assessment were lower (unexpectedly) in articles
with two studies (M ¼ .33, SD ¼ .44) but then rose again (and reached
their highest levels) in articles with just one study (M ¼ .49, SD ¼ .50).
Is this enough to explain the results shown in Figure 3.2? To explore
that issue, we did some counterfactual thinking. What if the number of
studies contained in an article had stayed the same over the years, maybe
at a low level that would have discouraged few group researchers? With
this in mind, we removed from the data set all articles that contained
more than one study, and then re-examined trends in behavioral assess-
ment among the articles that remained. Would the decline in behavioral
assessment among social psychologists who study groups have occurred if
multistudy articles were not the norm?
A set of polynomial regression analyses was again performed, and

significant linear, quadratic, and cubic trends of publication year on
behavioral assessment index scores were found. The overall analysis was
significant, F (3,29) ¼ 17.19, p < .01, accounting for about 64% of the
variance. The Durbin-Watson statistic was 2.04. A summary of the
results can be found in Figure 3.6. The solid line in the figure represents
actual behavioral assessment index scores, whereas the dashed line repre-
sents predicted scores. The latter scores rose at first, then fell for many
years, only to rise again near the end. This pattern indicates that levels of
behavioral assessment in research on groups still might have declined over
the years, even if authors had felt no pressure to include multiple studies
in their articles. And so, behavioral assessment by group researchers must
be affected by other factors as well, such as the popularity of intergroup
relations as a topic area.
It should not be surprising, given what we’ve said already, that a focus
on intergroup versus intragroup relations, and the pressure to include
more studies in each article, are related to one another. Indeed, articles on
intergroup relations (M ¼ 2.34, SD ¼ 1.32) contained significantly more
studies, t (1812) ¼ 9.68, p < .01, than did articles on intragroup relations
(M ¼ 1.76, SD ¼ 1.14). So, did behavioral assessment depend on the
topic that a researcher was studying, the number of studies in the article
that he or she wrote, or both? To find out, we regressed the behavioral
assessment index scores on three variables, namely topic area (intergroup
or intragroup relations), article size (number of studies), and their inter-
action. All of these predictors were significant (p < .01), as was the overall
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Years (1975 to 2007)
Figure 3.6. Changes in Behavioral Assessment over the Years among Articles in
Which Just One Study Appeared.
75%
Intergroup Intragroup
60%
45%
30%
15%
0%
1 2 3 4 5+
Number of Studies
Figure 3.7. The Relationship between the Mean Number of Studies and Levels of
Behavioral Assessment in Articles about Intergroup versus Intragroup Relations.
regression, F (3, 1810) ¼ 177.29, p < .01, which accounted for about 23%
of the variance. The two main effects were just as described earlier (less
behavioral assessment in research on intergroup relations and in articles
containing more studies). The fact that topic area and article size each had
a significant effect, when the effects of the other variable were controlled,
implies that both variables are important factors in the choices that
researchers make about behavioral assessment. To interpret the interac-
tion effect, we regressed behavioral assessment index scores on article size
separately for articles about each topic. Both analyses were significant
overall (p < .01), but stronger effects were found in the analysis for
articles about intragroup relations, where 6% (versus 2%) of the variance
was explained.7 This difference is illustrated in Figure 3.7.
WHAT’S THE HARM?
We have shown that behavioral assessment is becoming less common

among social psychologists who study small groups. But is this a serious
problem? What harm is done when behavior is neglected in this way?
We would not argue that behavioral assessment is essential for
research on groups. Nevertheless, it seems to us that much can be lost
7
Both of these effects were somewhat weak, probably because of range restrictions in the number of
studies per article when only one topic area was considered.
when behavior is not assessed. One drawback, discussed by Baumeister

and his colleagues (2007), is that researchers who rely too much on
participants’ self-reports are sometimes misled. After all, people may
have limited access to their thoughts and feelings, so they can either say
little about such things, or they describe instead how someone ‘‘ought’’ to
think and feel in a given situation (cf. Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Even
when participants can tell researchers about their thoughts or feelings,
they may decide not to, because of social desirability concerns about
themselves and/or their groups. Self-reports can also be influenced by
moods and other irrelevant factors (Schwarz, 1999). These may not be
salient to participants, so their effects go unnoticed (and are thus unlikely
to be controlled) by participants.
Another drawback of neglecting to measure behavior is that certain
phenomena may be ignored or misunderstood. Consider, for example,
group emotions. There has been much interest in this topic recently (see
Kelly & Barsade, 2001). Do group emotions exist (apart from individual
emotions), and if so, then how do they affect groups and their members?
Such questions are important, but they may be difficult or even impos-
sible to answer if behavior is not measured, because people often have
trouble describing their emotions. Other group phenomena that may
require behavioral assessment to be understood include implicit coordi-
nation (Rico, Sanchez-Manzanares, Gil, & Gibson, 2008; Wittenbaum,
Vaughan, & Stasser, 1998), group cultures (Levine & Moreland, 1991),
transactive memory (Moreland, 1999), and implicit learning in groups
(Wilson, Goodman, & Cronin, 2007). All these phenomena can have a
significant impact on groups, yet group members seem to have little
awareness of them. Only by observing actual group behavior can phe-
nomena like these be detected and related to other aspects of group life.
Finally, moving away from the ‘‘earthy’’ world of actual group beha-
vior, into the more ‘‘ethereal’’ world of thoughts about groups and their
members, can sometimes drain the life out of a phenomenon, making it
less interesting. As a result, fewer researchers are motivated to study the
phenomenon, which retards understanding of it. A case in point is
minority influence, a phenomenon brought to everyone’s attention by
Moscovici in the 1970s. Moscovici was intrigued by examples of real-
world groups containing minorities that were influential, despite their
small size and limited power. How is such influence possible? What social
psychological processes are involved? A 2001 paper by Levine and Kaarbo
described those processes (in the context of political groups), and they are
intriguing. But to study such processes, one would probably have to
create (or gain access to) actual groups that contain majorities and mino-
rities, and then observe the behavior of group members carefully over
time (perhaps collecting other kinds of data too).
Does anyone do such research? Sadly, they do not. Instead, research

of quite a different sort is done. Participants in that research (who are
often isolated from one another and/or forbidden to interact) are given
false information about the opinions of a group to which they belong
(usually a large social category, in fact, rather than a small group). Some
issue is identified, and participants are told that X% of group members
think one way about it, whereas Y% of group members think another
way. Persuasive messages (also false) from people on each side of the issue
are given to participants, who read the messages, describe their reactions
to them, and finally report their own opinions about the issue. Of special
interest is how the cognitive processing of the messages interacts with the
majority/minority status of their authors to produce attitude change
among the participants.
Is this sort of research interesting? Some social psychologists would
say so. But the ‘‘proof is in the pudding’’ — minority influence, as a topic
area, appears to be dying, in the sense that less research on it is published
every year. Other group phenomena, such as group polarization, have
already suffered a similar fate. Would interest in phenomena like these be
any stronger if researchers had measured actual behavior, rather than just
collecting self-reports? We think so.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Behavioral assessment is gradually disappearing from research on groups.

If the current trends continue, less than one in four articles about groups
that are published in the next few years will feature such assessment. We
have identified some negative consequences of this trend when it comes
to understanding groups. What can be done to solve this problem?
Baumeister and his colleagues (2007) offered a few solutions, and we
have some ideas of our own as well . . .
One solution may be to do little more than warn researchers about
the problem and then sit back to see what happens. Perhaps the
Baumeister et al. (2007) paper, in combination with our chapter (and
the other chapters in this book), will lead researchers to be more
thoughtful about their methodological options, and to assess behavior
more often as a result. This would certainly be consistent with
Moscovici’s (1980) theory, and later research (Maass, West, & Cialdini,
1987), on minority influence. Work in that area suggests that a minority
(researchers who favor behavioral assessment) ought to state its position
forcibly and consistently, then stand back and wait while that message
works its way through the minds of the majority (researchers who have
abandoned behavioral assessment), eventually changing at least some of

the majority’s behavior. We would also note a few results from our
analyses that suggest things may be improving already. In recent years,
for example, fewer articles describing research on intergroup relations
have appeared (Figure 3.3). As we have shown, such articles are less likely
to feature behavioral assessment, so overall levels of behavioral assess-
ment may soon rise as result. There is no evidence of that as yet (see
Figure 3.2), but perhaps the change will take awhile to occur. It is also
worth noting that the era of multistudy papers may be ending, according
to analyses and arguments offered by Webster (2007). As we have shown,
articles containing more studies are less likely to feature behavioral assess-
ment, so once again, overall levels of behavioral assessment may soon rise
as a result. We found no evidence in our own data that the preference for
more studies per article is weakening (Figure 3.5), but that may be
because Webster analyzed articles on many topics from journals
throughout psychology, whereas we focused on articles about small
groups that appeared in social psychological journals. We saw no evidence
that overall levels of behavioral assessment in these articles are rising yet,
but that may also take awhile to occur.
Although it is certainly easier to simply publish a few papers about this
problem, and then sit back for awhile and hope for the best, a more active
approach may be needed. One tactic, suggested by Baumeister and his
colleagues (2007), is to make it easier for researchers to include behavioral
assessment in their research. This tactic has at least two major components,
one educational and the other technological. The educational component
involves the lack of training in behavioral assessment among younger social
psychologists. Assessing behavior (especially in small groups), and then
performing the complex data analyses associated with such assessment,
requires skills and knowledge that may no longer be a part of many graduate
students’ training. And given that journal articles are becoming less likely to
feature behavioral assessment as time goes by, the chances that graduate
students in years to come will be taught what they need to know seem weak
as well. What can be done about this? Several possible solutions come to
mind, including (a) including more material about behavioral assessment
in the research methods courses taught to graduate students in social
psychology; (b) publishing more articles in major social psychological
journals that describe how behavioral assessment is done, or describe
research projects that feature behavioral assessment, along with material
annotating the specific procedures involved; (c) presenting workshops,
during conventions or as independent events, where behavioral assessment
techniques are taught, preferably in ‘‘hands-on’’ manner.
The technological component of this tactic (making behavioral
assessment easier) involves the development of (a) better devices for
recording and then editing records of participants’ behavior during

research projects, and (b) better software for performing some of the
more onerous tasks associated with transcribing behavior and then coding
transcripts for content. Although some progress has been made along
these lines (see Carley, 1997; Ottoni, 2000), more is needed. The tech-
nology that is already available must reach more researchers (some of the
devices and software are expensive, priced beyond the budgets of many
researchers), and often suffers from thorny problems (e.g., certain aspects
of oral behavior, such as irony, are too subtle to be detected by anything
other than highly trained human coders).
Even if more researchers become capable of assessing behavior, they
must still be motivated to do so. Why go to the trouble of assessing behavior
if it is not really helpful, and may even be harmful, when it comes to
publishing one’s work? Where can articles that feature behavioral assessment
be submitted, and what are their chances of actually being published there?
Baumeister and his colleagues (2007) suggested that journal editors
and reviewers be encouraged to perform a kind of ‘‘affirmative action’’
when it comes to articles that feature behavioral assessment. The people
who decide what will be published in the journals should be urged
(without sacrificing quality) to look for more articles describing research
in which behavior was assessed, even if those articles contain fewer
studies or focus on topics that are less popular. We support this tactic,
although we are skeptical about the chances of persuading all editors and
reviewers to behave in this way, and the tactic might work best if it is
implemented quietly, because research on affirmative action programs in
other contexts shows that beneficiaries of those programs are often
viewed (by others, and even by themselves), as less competent (see
Heilman & Haynes, 2006).
Another tactic that might help is to foster a norm favoring research
in which behavior is assessed. This could be done by increasing the
prominence of journal articles that feature behavioral assessment, say
by making them the ‘‘lead’’ articles in journal issues, or by moving them
to a special section of the journal. An even stronger version of this same
tactic might be to create and/or encourage journals devoted entirely to
research in which behavior is assessed. This tactic has our support as
well, although two dangers should be kept in mind. First, researchers
who do not assess behavior in their own work may not be interested
enough in work that features such assessment to read even a special
section of their favorite journal, let alone read some separate journal.
[Moreover, recall our finding that articles contain fewer studies when
they feature behavioral assessment, along with Webster’s (2007)
finding that journals are less prestigious when their articles contain
fewer studies]. If articles that feature behavioral assessment are avoided
by readers, then the impact of such articles would obviously be limited.

A second danger is that the appearance of too few articles in a special
journal section devoted to research involving behavioral assessment, or
in a journal devoted entirely to such research, might signal that beha-
vioral research is rare, perhaps because it is very difficult (as, ironically,
it is), or unpopular for other reasons. Such signals would probably
weaken, not strengthen, the motivation to assess behavior among
those who have not yet done so in their own research.
One way to avoid both of these dangers might be to award prizes to
especially good research in which behavior was assessed. Division 49
(Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy) of the American
Psychological Association, for example, awards a prize each year for the
best dissertation research on groups. Maybe that organization, along with
other organizations that award research prizes (prizes that could be won
by people who study groups), might be encouraged to focus on research in
which attempts were made to assess participants’ behavior.
IN CLOSING
More could be said about all this, but it’s time now to close the chapter.
Our main goal here was to alert social psychologists who study groups
about a problem. If that goal has been accomplished, then we are content.
We hope that our colleagues will consider the problem carefully, and if it
seems serious to them, then develop and try to implement some solu-
tions. We have offered a few suggestions regarding these issues, but a
broader and deeper analysis is needed. That analysis is already overdue
and should now begin.
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II
Behavior and
Intra-Individual Processes
4 Individuals, Behavior, and What Lies
Between the Two
Donal E. Carlston
William G. Graziano
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from

nature.
—Montaigne (1588).
The Harris cartoon that serves as frontispiece to this volume and the
epigraph that serves to introduce this chapter both suggest that some-
times there are gaps in our understanding that are most readily explained
by appealing to miracles. In psychology, that gap is often between sti-
mulus environment and behavioral response, in what was once character-
ized as the ‘‘black box’’ of the mind. In this simple model, stimuli
influence the individual’s unknown internal workings, which then influ-
ence observable behaviors. Doctrinaire behaviorism urged researchers to
ignore what was unobservable and unknowable and concentrate on the
superordinate link from stimulus to response. Conditioned by decades of
behaviorist domination, psychologists came to speak of that black box
mostly in hushed tones, until the cognitive revolution came along and
freed them to pontificate about it with considerable zeal. So much zeal, in
fact, that the stimulus environment and behavioral response, which were
once the only socially acceptable topics of scientific discourse, became
neglected instead.
After the cognitive revolution, the black box was mostly character-
ized as a magnificent information processor, which could churn up
stimuli, mix and match them with other material from memory, and
produce new, more elaborate representations. If the question arose as to
how to get from these new representations to actual behavior, there was
often a certain amount of hand waving and reference to what would be, in
essence, a miracle dressed in scientific clothing. Like William James, more
than 100 years ago (1890), psychologists seemed to reason that mental
representations of behavior must be linked to motoric representations of
behavior, so obviously, if the mind could manufacture the former, the
body would enact the latter.
Of course, the information processing characterization of the black
box wasn’t the only one, and other psychologists came to view it in terms
of such concepts as emotions, attitudes, or personality, all of which could
mediate between stimulus and response. Like the information processing
models, these other concepts served to make the black box seem less
inscrutable and mysterious. In many cases, however, clarity regarding one
component of the causal chain (the black box) was somewhat negated by
vagueness about the next (the link to behavior)—the exact mechanisms
through which emotion, attitude, or personality were supposed to affect
behavior remained a mystery. So a miracle was still needed.
Many of the contributions in this section of this book serve to clear up
these mysteries (and cancel the need for a miracle). Among these are
chapters on the mediating role of emotions (Chapter 7: Baumeister,
DeWall, Vohs, & Alquist), attitudes (Chapter 9: Fabrigar, Wegener, &
MacDonald), and personality (Chapters 10–13: Furr, Wagerman, &
Funder; Goldberg; Paulhus & Holden; Baron). In addition, chapters res-
urrect and clarify two older conceptions of behavior mediation that were
largely neglected during the first stages of the cognitive revolution, habit
(Chapter 5: Verplanken) and unconscious behavioral guidance
(Chapter 6: Bargh & Morsella). Though habit was an acceptable construct
to the behaviorists, its considerable impact on behavior has been largely
ignored since then (see Triandis, 1980, for an early exception). And the
idea of unconscious behavioral guidance was awkward, to say the least, in
the era of information processing. With today’s interest in implicit social
cognition, both concepts have come out of the closet, and the included
chapters emphasize how much traction they afford in accounting for large
portions of human behavior.
In virtually all of these chapters, the authors challenge either the
field’s neglect or its misconstrual of the mediator on which they focus.
In the process, several authors also raise doubts about the adequacy of the
whole causal metaphor with which this chapter began. In Verplanken’s
construal of habit, behavior is cause as well as effect, as frequently
performed behaviors become ingrained and contribute to their own sub-
sequent execution. Baumeister et al. suggest that emotion is not so much
INDIVIDUALS, BEHAVIOR, AND WHAT LIES BETWEEN THE TWO 59
the direct cause of behavior as a consequence, which serves to feed back

and shape subsequent behaviors. And Baron essentially questions any
distinction between the stimulus environment, the individual, and beha-
vior, arguing that all three of these are embodied in the affordances
inherent in settings and situations. Such views don’t just clarify the
causal chain but, rather, melt it down and remold it. Given this perspec-
tive, any tendency the field has had to neglect behavior (see Chapter 2 by
Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder) becomes a threat to our understanding of all
aspects of individual psychology, as these are all bound inextricably
together in a coherent system.
Another theme common to many of the chapters in this section is
their focus on construct measurement. Verplanken describes a self-report
measure of habit, Paulhus and Holden discuss behavioral measures of self-
enhancement tendencies, Furr et al. emphasize a method for assessing
behavior observationally, and Goldberg reviews an extensive program of
research that relies on self-reports of behavioral acts. Measurement issues
have also been important, for some of the same reasons, in the attitude-
behavior debate covered in the Fabrigar et al. chapter. Perhaps the central
reason for this importance is the continued exaltation of behavior as
uniquely objective and meaningful (but see Goldberg, this volume)
coupled with an appreciation for the difficulty and expense involved in
assessing it (see Furr et al., this volume). In any case, given that the
adequacy of measures can make or break any attempt to understand the
psychology of the individual, this consensual emphasis on behavior mea-
surement makes sense.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS AND BEHAVIOR
The first five chapters of this section deal with some possible mediators of
behavior. They are ordered in this volume roughly in terms of conceptual
level, with Chapters 5 and 6 representing the most basic mechanisms
(habit and unconscious behavioral guidance), Chapters 8 and 9 repre-
senting the most cognitive (implementation intentions and attitudes),
and Chapter 7 (emotions) in between. We here present a brief overview
of each.
In Chapter 5, Verplanken notes that 45% of everyday behaviors are
repeated in the same location almost every day, and are so ‘‘subtly woven’’
into the fabric of people’s lives that they occur outside of awareness.
Thus, he makes the case both for the ubiquity of habitual behaviors and
for their nonconscious nature. He notes that some models of attitudes,
such as the Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) model of behavioral intentions, fail
to take into account the habitual effect of past behaviors. In doing so, he
essentially distinguishes his emphasis from that of more cognitive

approaches, such as those described by in Chapters 8 (implementation
intentions) and 9 (attitudes). He then discusses a meta-analysis suggesting
that past behavior is the dominant predictor of frequently performed
behaviors, though intention is the dominant predictor of infrequent
behaviors. This discussion helps to delineate some of the boundary con-
ditions for different mediators of behavior covered in this section of this
book.
Verplanken observes that habitual behaviors tend to be externally
cued, so that the ‘‘center of control over behavior’’ shifts from the indi-
vidual to the environment. This view dovetails nicely with Baron’s
Chapter 13 interpretation of the ‘‘affordances’’ inherent in different
environments, as well as with aspects of Bargh and Morsella’s Chapter 6
description of an unconscious behavioral guidance system. Verplanken
makes the connections with the latter work even more explicit by basing
his own Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI) partly on Bargh’s (1994) criteria
for automaticity. The goal in doing so is to formally recognize that habit
cannot be equated solely with past behavioral frequency, as the processes
underlying that frequency also matter.
Finally, Verplanken discusses relationships among motivation, goals,
and habits, suggesting that higher-level aspects of behaviors (e.g., goals)
can become habitual even when lower-level aspects (execution of the
behavior) are not. Thus, for example, a person may have a habit of
working out, though the days, times, and activities involved may be
entirely under intentional control. He concludes this analysis by sug-
gesting that ‘‘habits are inherently goal-directed,’’ suggesting further
ties between his chapter and the goal-directed properties of unconscious
behavioral guidance (Chapter 6) and implementation intentions
(Chapter 8).
In Chapter 6, Bargh and Morsella note that in the 1980s (relatively
early in the cognitive revolution) psychologists were comfortable with
conscious-process accounts of behavior but not with less-conscious pro-
cess accounts. Consequently, even though consciousness is arguably more
mysterious, and more atypical (for animals, especially, but humans as
well), arguments regarding nonconscious processes were met with some
skepticism. But thanks to several decades of intensive research, models of
such processes are now viewed as much more theoretically and empiri-
cally tractable than was true earlier.
Bargh and Morsella detail the evidence for four different noncon-
scious behavioral guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, motivational,
and emotional. In each case evidence is first presented regarding basic
priming or activation effects, followed by evidence that these effects
actually have behavioral consequences. Consequently, the four systems,
as sequenced above, provide partial accounts for phenomena discussed in

Chapters 10 (affordances), 9 (attitudes), 8 (implementation intentions),
and 7 (emotions), respectively. But the emphasis here on automatic
processes that serve to diminish the ‘‘role for intentional conscious causa-
tion and guidance’’ provides a rather different perspective towards most
of these phenomena than do those that follow.
In Chapter 7, Baumeister et al. challenge the traditional view that
emotion directly causes behavior, as represented in the claim that
someone did something ‘‘because he was angry’’ or ‘‘because she was
afraid.’’ Essentially, this is the view that ‘‘the impetus for the behavior is
contained in the emotion,’’ a premise that still leaves a miraculous gap
between feeling the emotion and enacting the behavior. As an alternative,
the authors advance the view that ‘‘conscious emotion tends to come after
behavior and operates as a kind of inner feedback system.’’ This view is
consistent with Bargh and Mosella’s discussion of emotion, though
Baumeister et al. confine themselves to emotions that are ‘‘conscious
feeling states’’ distinct from more subtle and less-conscious automatic
affect.
The authors bolster their argument against the traditional view with
evidence that emotions are not specific enough to serve as impetus for
specific behaviors, that emotions seem to have more impact on cognition
than on behavior, and that emotional influences on behavior tend to
disappear unless people believe that their actions will affect their emo-
tional state. They also note that habit and emotion are negatively corre-
lated, so that rather than developing stronger feelings as behaviors are
practiced, emotional reactions actually attenuate. The authors suggest
that all of this evidence is more consistent with the premise that emotions
serve as feedback that leads people to anticipate the emotional conse-
quences of their behaviors and adjust their actions accordingly than it is
with the traditional view of emotions as causes of behavior. They also
note that their theory of emotion helps to explain people’s tendency to
overestimate the strength of future emotional reactions, because such
exaggeration serves the adjustment function by increasing the likelihood
that people will modify their behavior. Taking into account such
adjustments, they conclude that ‘‘emotion does have a causal influence
on behavior, just not in the direct and immediate manner widely
assumed.’’
In Chapter 8, Gollwitzer et al. focus on one of the more cognitive
mediators of behavior, dealing with the extent to which implementation
intentions lead to successful execution of an intended behavior. From this
viewpoint, automatic processes such as those discussed in the preceding
chapters (particularly 5 and 6) are sometimes an unwanted source of
interference that must be dealt with for a desired behavior to transpire.
The chapter is framed as a lesson on how to overcome such interferences

by creating the most efficacious forms of intentions, though a by-product
of such efforts is a better understanding of the ‘‘miraculous’’ translation of
intentions into actions.
Among the phenomena discussed is the greater effectiveness of inten-
tions that have more specific antecedent conditions (the ‘‘if’’ in intentions
couched in ‘‘if-then’’ form). Thus, an individual is more likely to mail a
letter if he or she resolves to do so at the office (‘‘if at office, then mail
letter’’) than if he or she resolves to do so at the office, the nearest
mailbox, or the nearest postal substation. The paradox, of course, is
that more specific antecedent provides fewer opportunities to fulfill the
intention, and the individual may overlook acceptable antecedents not
included in the constrained intention statement. But the broader inten-
tion dilutes attention by including too many possible antecedents,
creating a risk that none will be successfully recognized, and the letter
will not get mailed. This example emphasizes the manner in which
implementation intentions attempt to take advantage of automatic per-
ceptual processes such as those described by Bargh and Morsella, while
overcoming other automatic (and nonautomatic) processes that might
interfere with behavioral execution.
In Chapter 9, Fabrigar et al. discuss the best-established mediator of
behavior, attitude, for which there is also the most extensive literature on
behavioral effects. Historically, attitudes were virtually defined as beha-
vioral influences, as in the tripartite definition (attitudes as cognition,
affect, and behavior) or Allport’s (1935) characterization of them as
‘‘states of readiness’’ that exert a ‘‘directive or dynamic influence’’ on
people’s responses. As Fabrigar et al. note, the attitude literature agonized
for years over whether people’s attitudes really predict their behaviors
and discovered a fair number of moderators of the attitude-behavior
relationship in the process. However, they note further that the relation-
ship was probably never as tenuous as people imagined, and that under
most circumstances, it is reasonably strong.
The authors present a general framework for organizing the modera-
tors that have been suggested in the literature, focusing on several central
distinctions. First, they distinguish between predictions of behavior and
mechanisms that might actually mediate the underlying attitude-beha-
vior link. The first category of moderators includes the kinds of measure-
ment issues postulated by Fishbein and his colleagues—issues that are
potentially germane to efforts to predict behavior from any individual
difference variable (such as those described in the personality chapters
summarized below). The Fabrigar et al. chapter distinguishes mediational
mechanisms further along lines suggested by dual-processing theory,
into those involving low-deliberation behaviors and those involving
high-deliberation behaviors. The former includes perceptual and beha-

vioral cuing effects that could implicate habitual or nonconscious pro-
cesses similar to those described in Chapters 5 and 6. The latter arguably
encompasses both higher-level propositional reasoning and biased infor-
mation processing (finally, something to make the hardcore cognitivists
happy!).
The Fabrigar et al. chapter provides a comprehensive review of the
most elaborate literature on predicting individual behavior, and the
implications of the review are potentially relevant to all of the constructs
considered in this section of this book. Beyond that, however, the chapter
serves as a useful reminder of several central issues. First, measurement
matters. The chapters on personality described in the next section of this
chapter will certainly drive this home, but even more generally, it is
important to remember that how we examine the mediation of behavior
may be as central to our findings as the constructs we examine and the
theoretical premises of our approach. Second, processing matters. The
role of any construct in determining behavior is likely to depend very
heavily on what exactly a person is doing. More specifically, given the
chapters just reviewed, it is likely to depend on how often the person has
engaged in a behavior, how aware he is of engaging in it, how engaging in it
makes him feel, how well articulated his intentions of engaging in it are,
and whether he is deliberating a lot or a little about engaging in it.
We might add, as well, that the individual matters. And though we
can distinguish individuals based on their habits, emotions, intentions,
and attitudes, they are also commonly distinguished by their personal-
ities. This is the focus of the next group of chapters.
PERSONALITY CONSTRUCTS AND BEHAVIOR
Four of the chapters address issues linking personality to behavior.

Personality psychology brings a distinctive perspective on the issue of
behavior. The dominant view in modern research-oriented personality
psychology is that personality is more than the study of one individual
difference at a time. It is instead the study of the ways individuals organize
and structure the entire package of individual differences and processes
they possess. Our expectations about the likely social behavior of a person
who is intelligent is qualified by additional knowledge that she is also
female, and qualified further by knowledge that she is/is not physically
attractive, and still further by knowledge that she is/is not dispositionally
introverted. Behavior represents one of the adaptive outputs of the struc-
tural compromises that constitute the individual’s personality. Going a
bit further, behavioral demands of certain ecologies, roles, and life stages
may affect personality structure.
Furr, Wagerman, and Funder offer a chapter that describes a need for
a descriptive foundation (Chapter 10). They—and they alone—explicitly
argue for the role of behavior as part of the descriptive foundation of
personality and social psychology. Such research addresses the funda-
mental assumption that ‘‘who you are affects what you do.’’ Furr et al.
move beyond exhortation to an analysis of why behavior seems to have
moved to the back row in psychological research in recent years. It is
costly in time, effort, and money to collect behavioral observations rela-
tive to reaction times and self-ratings. Moreover, there was a lack of
standardized systems for measuring or coding such observations. And
finally, the simpler and less expensive methods have indeed yielded
good fruit.
Furr et al. assert that the most general benefit of behavioral data is
that it permits psychological scientists to address behavior with empirical
conviction. Without such data, the ability to claim status as a science of
behavior is greatly reduced. Central to direct behavioral observation
research is a coding system. Exactly what are the behaviors to be observed
and the method of observing and scoring them? They note key considera-
tions in choosing a behavioral observational system, including the context
in which the system is to be deployed, and the situational specificity of the
behaviors. Within these issues are additional, increasingly concrete con-
siderations. Exactly what behaviors should be observed and at what level
of abstraction? For observations that occur in sequences, exactly how
should the sequences be ordered? There are, of course, trade-offs. The
more concrete and focused the measures, the fewer inferences the obser-
vers need to make.
In the words of the philosopher Walter Kaufman, it is easier to detect
a rotten egg than to lay a fresh one. Furr et al. eschew the easy task and
offer us a fresh egg with the Riverside Behavioral Q-sort. It was originally
derived from the California Adult Q-Set. For each personality item on the
CAQ, the Riverside researchers wrote items describing behaviors that
might be used flexibly in a range of situations relevant to personality and
social psychology. Furthermore, the eggs come with sauce béarnaise:
They offer also a computer program for coding the behavioral
observations.
In Chapter 11 Goldberg presents data that aligns nicely with the
Furr, Wagerman, and Funder strategy. Goldberg notes that it is one
thing to develop a new measure of some individual difference; it is
another to establish its utility as a predictor of important human
behaviors. Goldberg shows very explicitly that who you are indeed
affects what you do in everyday life. Clearly vocational interest
patterns have proven their worth over the years. What about avoca-
tional interests, as measured by self-reports of the relative frequency
of individuals’ engagement in various interest-related activities?
Goldberg presents a survey of behavioral act frequencies for a
wide-ranging array of daily activities in a community-wide sample.
These provide the basic data from which to assess important indivi-
dual differences in lifestyle. Such patterns of lifestyle differences,
then, might ultimately be useful as criteria. A total of 400 behaviors
(e.g., ‘‘read the Bible or other sacred text;’’ ‘‘played with a pet
animal’’) were reduced to a more manageable set of 22 reliable
clusters of avocational behavior. Some of the relations between the
avocational interest scales and demographic indices are high. Correla-
tions with gender range up to .60 (housekeeping chores, with women
doing more) and .55 (fashion-related activities, again with women
doing more). Furthermore, aspects of people’s lifestyles (as reflected
in the frequency with which they engage in various activities) are
differentially related to personality perceptions by others, above and
beyond the individual’s own self-perceptions. That is, the activity
clusters seemingly constitute cues that others use to assess targets’
personality traits. These cues may be used similarly by oneself and
others to assess the same personality trait, but some of them must be
used somewhat differently by the two kinds of judges, thus permit-
ting the interest-related scales to predict above and beyond the
informants’ personality assessments.
The chapters by Paulhus and Holden (Chapter 12) and by
Reuben Baron (Chapter 13) take approaches different from the
others in the set. Both of these chapters question whether behavior
deserves a position at the center of our universe. Paulhus and Holden
note that social and personality psychologists address the issue of
behavior in rather different ways. Social psychologists tend to exploit
behavior as a concrete outcome reflecting the difference in psycho-
logical state induced by an experimental manipulation. Within social
psychology, behavior appears to hold a more elevated stature in the
hierarchy of scientific credibility. It is viewed as more credible and
tangible. In contrast, personality psychologists view behavior as only
one indicator of psychological constructs. Peer ratings, for example,
are in some respects superior to behavioral observation. And self-
reports have advantages that explain why they are the most popular
of methods (Paulhus & Vazire, 2007).
Paulhus and Holden note that the traditional complaint against self-
report measures is their vulnerability to self-presentation effects. The
general tendency for people to self-enhance raises concerns that self-
reports are just as likely to reflect presentation motives as actual
personalities. One solution is to index self-enhancement via behavioral

measures. Paulhus and Holden compare the full range of options from
self-report to concrete behavioral methods. They also discuss the over-
claiming approach, which taps the tendency to claim knowledge of non-
existent items. They conclude with the response latency approach, which
is purely behavioral in nature. Their summary favors the overclaiming and
response latency methods.
Baron offers a far-reaching and integrative chapter in his discussion of
affordances. He notes that behavior is a central element of any ecologi-
cally-based view of psychology, including J. J. Gibson’s (1979/1986)
discussions of the visual perception basis of affordances and Barker’s
(1968) discussion of behavior settings. In both cases, behavior is the
‘‘straw that stirs the drink.’’ For Gibson (1979/1986) in particular,
seeing is for doing. He views the detection of affordances as embodied
in behavior through perceiving–acting cycles. What we see affects what
we do and what we do affects what we see.
Baron offers several important insights about the role of behavior in
psychology in general, but especially in social and personality psychology.
He explores whether his ideas can be turned into a fresh look at a theory
of situations. In such a theory, situations are a complementary mirror
image of a theory of personality, in the same sense that certain niches
imply certain plants and animals, while certain plants and animals imply
certain niches. Here are the powerful ideas of coevolution and the self-
organization of complex systems. Why are certain opportunities config-
ured to support certain dispositions, and/or types of people? He suggests
that the social analogue of coevolution is the embedding of personality in
the organizational dynamics of behavior to recruit people with the appro-
priate personality traits to carry out these roles successfully.
DISCUSSION
The chapters in this section provide a diverse set of views on the relation-
ship between various individual differences and behaviors. Some of those
individual differences—for example, attitudes, emotions, and person-
ality—have been central to social psychology for a long time. And some
of the described approaches can be traced back a fair number of years as
well. Yet, almost without exception, the clarion cry of these chapters is
for more sophisticated theoretical treatment or empirical measurement
of those individual differences, of behavior, or of the relationship
between the two. With such sophistication, it is hoped, the ‘‘nature’’ of
individuals’ behavior will become more evident and the need for miracles
will diminish.
REFERENCES
Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social
behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Allport, G. W. (1935). Attitudes. In C. Murchinson (Ed.), A handbook of social
psychology (pp. 798–844). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Bargh, J.A. (1994). The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, intention,
efficiency, and control in social cognition. In: R.S. Wyer & T.K. Srull (Eds.),
Handbook of social cognition (vol.1, pp.1–40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Barker, R. G. (1968).Ecological psychology.Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Original work published 1979.)
Montaigne (1588). Of custom. Essays.
Paulhus, D. L., & Vazire, S. (2007). The self-report method. In R.W. Robins,
R. C.Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in personality
psychology (pp. 224–239). New York: Guilford.
Triandis, H. C. (1980). Values, attitudes, and interpersonal behavior. In:
H. E. Howe, Jr., & M. M. Page (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, 1979
(pp.195–259). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
5 Habit: From Overt Action to
Mental Events
Bas Verplanken
Repetition is the heartbeat of everyday life. We repeat many behaviors

over and over again in one way or another. Most people would acknowl-
edge that they have a substantial number of habits. Wood, Quinn, and
Kashy (2002) reported on the basis of diary studies that approximately
45% of everyday behaviors are repeated in the same location almost every
day. Habits are subtly woven into the fabric of everyday life activities, and
we usually are not aware of them. We may experience habits when we can
no longer execute them, for instance when we change environment (e.g.,
relocating), or when a changing environment disrupts behavior (e.g., a
power shutdown). In spite of the abundance of habits, the habit construct
has not been incorporated in prevalent models of behavior, although
there are a few exceptions (e.g., Bamberg & Schmidt, 2003; Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993; Triandis, 1980). In this chapter, I will first discuss the
role of past behavior, followed by addressing the conceptualization and
measurement of habits. I will then extend the habit concept beyond overt
behavior, and introduce the concept of ‘‘mental habits.’’ Finally, I will
discuss a number of outstanding issues concerning habit.
THE ROLE OF PAST BEHAVIOR
Although prevalent models of attitude–behavior relations, in particular

the theories of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and planned
HABIT: FROM OVERT ACTION TO MENTAL EVENTS 69
behavior (Ajzen, 1991), have demonstrated great value in modeling

antecedents of behavior, these models do not fully account for the rela-
tionship between past and later behavior; past behavior usually appears as
the most powerful predictor of later behavior and remains significant
even when controlling for the model variables (e.g., Ajzen, 1991, 2002;
Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005; Bentler & Speckart, 1979; Conner & Armitage,
1998; Fredricks & Dossett, 1983). This phenomenon is referred to as the
residual variance effect (Ajzen, 2002).
An important insight in the role of past behavior was provided by a
meta-analysis of studies that incorporated measures of intentions, past
behavior, and later behavior (Ouellette & Wood, 1998). Both intentions
and past behavior were found significantly related to future behavior.
However, the frequency with which behaviors occurred was a moderator;
intentions were the dominant predictor of later behavior when behaviors
were infrequently performed, whereas past behavior was the dominant
predictor when behaviors were frequently performed. This meta-analysis
thus suggested a dual process account of the influence of past behavior on
future behavior (cf., Triandis, 1980). When behavior is infrequent, the
experiences from past behavior are likely to feed into our belief systems
and guide future behavior through behavioral intentions. For instance, we
may evaluate a previous holiday destination and decide to go there once
more. Such an account is fully compatible with the theories of reasoned
action and planned behavior. However, when behavior is frequently
performed, this loop may not occur anymore. Although behavior may
still be in line with previously formed attitudes and intentions, there
may not be a need to consciously review past experiences; choices and
behavior have become automatic and habitual (Aarts & Dijksterhuis,
2000). For instance, after moving to a new house, it may take some
deliberation and experience to find the most efficient way to commute,
but once a particular route has proven satisfactory, this becomes highly
automatic and does not require any more thought. It is important to note
that repetition of behavior does not necessarily lead to an automatic and
habitual mode per se (Ajzen, 2002). For instance, an investor may be
faced with repetitive and similar decisions but is advised to consider each
decision carefully.
The dual process view of the influence of past on future behavior thus
suggests that repetition and habituation of behavior pose boundary con-
ditions to the influence of intentions and thus to the power of the theories
of reasoned action and planned behavior. Triandis (1980) suggested a
trade-off between intention and habit in the prediction of behavior and
thus was the first to integrate reasoned and habitual action. A number of
primary studies have directly demonstrated such Intention Habit
interactions in the prediction of later behavior (de Bruijn et al., 2007;
Ferguson, & Bibby, 2002; Ji & Wood, 2007; Verplanken, Aarts, van
Knippenberg, & Moonen, 1998). For instance, in a longitudinal design
and using different measures of habit, participants in Verplanken et al.’s
(1998) study responded to a questionnaire assessing their intentions to
use the car versus public transport during the following week. In addition,
their car use habit strength was measured. Under the cover story that the
researchers wanted to know where people were traveling, transportation
mode choices were recorded in a travel diary, which was kept over the
course of the week following the questionnaire. It was found that beha-
vioral intentions to take the car were highly predictive of later behavior,
which was in accordance with the theory of planned behavior. However,
this was only the case for individuals who did not have strong car use
habits. On the other hand, strong habit participants’ intentions were
unrelated to later behavior. Additional evidence for a shallower decision
process under strong habit conditions comes from studies on information
acquisition and decision making (Aarts, Verplanken, & van Knippenberg,
1997; Verplanken, Aarts, & van Knippenberg, 1997). These studies
demonstrated that habit attenuates information acquisition, such as the
amount of information acquired about choice options and about choice
situations, and the use of less elaborate decision rules in different stages of
the decision-making process.
Practice and repetition thus may make individuals switch from delib-
erate thinking and decision making to a more automatic mode of behavior.
For example, Wood et al. (2002) observed that participants were less likely
to think about their behavior when performing habitual acts. An impor-
tant caveat is that in the ‘‘deliberate mode’’ behavior is largely internally
cued, that is, by a person’s motivation and intention, thus following the
principles represented by the theories of reasoned action and planned
behavior. This includes the proposition that previous experiences feed
into the belief systems, which then form the basis of new deliberations
and choices. On the other hand, in the ‘‘habitual mode’’ behavior is largely
externally cued, that is, by features in the environment where behavior
takes place (Wood & Neal, 2007). A diversity of cues may fulfill such a
role, for instance time cues, location cues, or people (Wood et al., 2002).
Switching from a deliberate to a habitual mode thus moves the center of
control over behavior from the individual to the environment. This may
have important consequences, for instance, for strategies to influence
behavior. Internally cued behaviors may be sensitive to changes in beliefs
and attitudes. Changing the balance of perceived advantages and disadvan-
tages may thus lead to intentions to adopt a new behavior. However, such
strategies are much less likely to affect habitual behavior. As the latter is
externally cued, changing attitudes and intentions will not affect the cue-
response mechanism that drives such behavior.
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT OF HABIT
So far, I equated ‘‘habit’’ with ‘‘repeated behavior’’ or ‘‘past behavioral

frequency.’’ I thus followed the prevalent view among psychologists,
which stems straightforwardly from the behaviorist conception of
habits as behavioral responses that are established by learned associations
between situational cues and rewards (e.g., Hull, 1943; James, 1890;
Skinner, 1938). Most psychologists to date have drawn on this conception
(e.g., Ouellette & Wood, 1998; Ronis, Yates, & Kirscht, 1989), although
it has been acknowledged that the field lacked adequate measures of habit
(e.g., Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). There are two main conceptual problems
with equating habit and behavioral frequency. The first is that although
repetition is a necessary condition for habits to develop, repetitive beha-
vior is not necessarily habitual (e.g., Ajzen, 2002). A doctor may have sent
numerous patients to the operating table, one would hope this has not
become a habit. The second problem is that habitual behavior is not only
repetitive, but is also characterized by a certain degree of automaticity
(Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Verplanken & Aarts, 1999; Wood & Neal,
2007). Equating habit with behavioral frequency does not capture this
aspect. Thus, repetition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for
labeling a behavior as a habit. Although a number of definitions of habit
have been proposed (e.g., Ronis et al., 1988; Verplanken & Aarts, 1999;
Wood et al., 2002), perhaps the following definition captures the essence
of a habit: ‘‘A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is
acquired through frequent repetition.’’ (The American HeritageÒ Dictionary
of the English Language, 2008).
In line with the conception of habit as past behavioral frequency,
habit has mostly been assessed by some measure of past behavioral
frequency. The prevalent measure has been a one-item self-report, for
instance asking respondents to rate how often they performed a
particular behavior on a scale ranging from ‘‘never’’ to ‘‘always.’’
However, alternative measures of habit have been proposed as well.
One measure combines the self-reported frequency measure with
self-reported habit into one item, as in the question ‘‘How often did
you use your seatbelt during the past month by force of habit’’ (e.g.,
Mittal, 1988).
Some researchers constructed a habit measure by multiplying self-
reported past behavioral frequency with an assessment of context stabi-
lity (Danner, Aarts, & de Vries, 2008; Wood et al., 2002; Ji & Wood,
2007; Wood, Tam, & Guerrero Wit, 2005). The measure of context
stability varies in content, depending on the behavior, and may consist
of multiple items, for example, physical location, time, or people (e.g.,
Ji & Wood, 2007).
Verplanken, Aarts, van Knippenberg, and van Knippenberg (1994)

introduced the Response Frequency Measure (RFM). This instrument
was developed for measuring habitual choices between multiple alterna-
tives. Participants are presented with a range of hypothetical choice
situations (e.g., travel destinations) and are asked to mention as quickly
as possible which alternative (e.g., car, bus, walking) they would choose.
Assuming that the imposed time pressure elicits schema-based
responding, the invariance of a particular choice across the situations
(i.e., the number of times an alternative is chosen) is taken as a measure
of habit strength.
Finally, Verplanken and Orbell (2003) presented the Self-Report
Habit Index (SRHI). The SRHI is a generic 12-item instrument, which
assesses the experience of frequency and automaticity of a particular
behavior. The experience of automaticity is broken down into a number
of facets, that is, the lack of awareness and conscious intent, mental
efficiency, and difficulty to control (Bargh, 1994). In addition, the SRHI
includes the experience of behavior being self-descriptive. To date the
SRHI has been successfully used in a large variety of domains, such as
food or snack consumption (Brug, de Vet, de Nooijer, & Verplanken,
2006; Conner, Perugini, O’Gorman, Ayres, & Prestwich, 2007; de Bruijn
et al., 2007; Honkanen, Olsen, & Verplanken, 2005; Verplanken,
Herabadi, Perry, & Silvera, 2005), consumption of beverages (Kremers,
van der Horst, & Brug, 2007), food safety practices (Hinsz, Nickell, & Park,
2007), physical activity (Chatzisarantis & Hagger, 2007; Verplanken &
Melkevik, 2008), weight loss (Lally, 2007), internet use (Lintvedt,
Sørensen, Østvik, Verplanken, & Wang (2008), and travel mode choices
(Verplanken, Myrbakk, & Rudi, 2005). The 12 items show internal reli-
abilities > 0.90, and satisfactory test-retest reliabilities have been obtained
of 0.71 over one week for unhealthy snacking (e.g., Verplanken, 2006),
and 0.87 over one month for exercising (Verplanken & Melkevik, 2008).
An important piece of evidence that validates the relationship between the
SRHI and automaticity came from two studies in which implicit and
explicit measures of attitudes and behavior were taken with respect to
eating sweets (Conner et al., 2007). These authors showed that the SRHI
moderated the relationships between implicit measures of attitude and
behavior, while no moderation was found in the relationship between
explicit measures and behavior. This suggests that the SRHI indeed taps
into the realm of implicit processes.
Which is the best measure? Given that the one-item self-reported
past behavioral frequency measure fails to capture any other aspect of
habit than behavioral frequency, this seems not an adequate measure of
habit. One-item measures are also notoriously unreliable. The combined
one-item self-reported frequency and self-reported habit measure suffers
from a validity problem due to being double barreled. As for the other
measures, each seems to capture some unique aspect of habit. Selecting
the best alternative measure depends on the researcher’s goal and type of
behavior studied. Wood et al.’s (2002) measure captures context stabi-
lity, in addition to past behavioral frequency. The RFM (if properly taken,
i.e., time-pressured responding) is particularly useful for assessing habits
in multiple choice contexts. The SRHI captures the experience of
both frequency and automaticity. This measure has the advantage of
being generic and easy to use and of having excellent psychometric
properties.
PROGRESS IN HABIT RESEARCH
In their seminal text on attitudes, Eagly and Chaiken (1993) noted that
‘‘. . . the role of habit per se remains indeterminate (. . .) because of the
difficulty of designing adequate measures of habit’’ (p.181). Indeed,
equating habit with past behavioral frequency has stalled the progress of
habit research for a long time. The availability of new habit measures is
therefore progress in and of itself (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005), and clears the
way for new research. One issue that now can be addressed is the distinc-
tion between behavioral frequency and habit. Suppose one wants to
investigate habituation in medicine use. A patient is put on medication,
and, being a conscientious patient, he takes a pill every evening. The
traditional measure of behavioral frequency would not provide informa-
tion about the degree to which this behavior is or becomes habitual. Only
independent measures of habit can distinguish between behavioral fre-
quency and habit. Lally (2007) asked participants to plan a new behavior,
and subsequently presented a selection of seven items from the SRHI
every day over three months. Monitoring participants’ habit strength thus
resulted in individual habit-formation curves. Parameters were estimated
that described these curves, such as the steepness of the curves (speed of
habit formation) and the value at which the curves leveled (degree of
perceived automaticity). This pioneering work on habit formation is
promising, as it may provide a paradigm to quantify habituation over
time.
Another area where progress has been made due to the availability of
a habit measure is the residual variance effect. As discussed earlier in this
chapter, the residual variance effect refers to the robust finding that
measures of past behavioral frequency are strong predictors of later
behavior even when the most powerful ‘‘psychological’’ antecedents of
behavior, most notably behavioral intentions and perceived behavioral
control, are controlled for. Ajzen (2002) proposed a number of explana-

tions of this effect, such as scale compatibility and the stability of beha-
vioral intentions. Habit might be another candidate as a mediator of the
residual variance effect. However, this hypothesis cannot be tested when
habit is operationalized as frequency of past behavior; only independent
measures of habit can provide evidence for a role of habit. Such evidence
was provided in a study on snacking (Verplanken, 2006). In a prospective
design, participants filled out a questionnaire, which contained the theory
of planned behavior variables concerning snacking, a measure of past
behavioral frequency, and the SRHI. Subsequently, participants kept a
food diary over a week, from which a measure of snacking was derived.
A hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed the power of inten-
tions and perceived behavioral control in predicting later snacking
(Step 1), as well as the residual variance effect when past behavioral
frequency was entered (Step 2). The SRHI entered at Step 3 served as
another independent predictor and, importantly for the present discus-
sion, rendered the effects of all other variables nonsignificant, thus sug-
gesting a statistical mediation effect. It is important to note that although
habit mediated the residual variance effect in this particular study, habit
needs not necessarily be involved in other residual variance contexts,
where one or more of the alternative explanations that Ajzen (2002)
proposed may explain the effect.
The availability of independent measures of habit has opened the way
to make significant progress in research on habit. This will undoubtedly
stimulate research in particular on processes underlying habit formation
and change. In the following I will turn to a somewhat unconventional
twist in the use of the habit construct: mental habits.
MENTAL HABITS
If habits are considered as frequent and automatic responses, it might be

argued that habits are not confined to overt behavior, but that we may
have mental habits, too. Mental habits can be described as repetitive and
recurrent thinking patterns (Verplanken, Friborg, Wang, Trafimow, &
Woolf, 2007). Repetitive thoughts may have a large variety of qualities,
such as being evaluative, concrete versus abstract, or pertaining to self
versus others, and may be constructive or dysfunctional (Watkins, 2008).
In order to position the concept of mental habit, it is useful to make a
distinction between content and process. Repetitive thoughts have con-
tent, for instance, self-beliefs, self-perceptions, or attributions. However,
there are also process aspects to repetitive thinking. For instance,
thoughts may be contained in schemas, which are automatically
retrieved, or may be part of a response style that is associated with certain

conditions such as the occurrence of rumination in depression (e.g.,
Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). By referring to the degree to which thoughts
occur frequently and automatically, a mental habit can thus be qualified
as a process aspect of repetitive thinking. Similar to behavioral habits,
mental habits may be automatically triggered by specific cues, for
example, specific events, persons, or locations.
In a comprehensive research program, the mental habit concept was
explored with respect to negative self-thinking (Verplanken et al., 2007).
Instances of negative self-thinking may be constructive and healthy, for
instance, when we critically evaluate our actions and learn from past
mistakes. However, when negative self-thinking occurs frequently and
automatically, it may become dysfunctional, for instance by contributing
to low self-esteem. The primary contribution to such negative conse-
quences stems of course from the content of the thinking. For instance,
a person may think that he is worthless, messes up relationships, or has an
unattractive appearance. However, we assumed that having such
thoughts in a habitual fashion poses an additional risk factor. The overall
hypothesis of this research was that the habitual component of negative
self-thinking independently explains variance in measures of self-worth
over and above negative cognitive content.
In one study (Verplanken et al., 2007, Study 2) participants responded
to the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ; Hollon & Kendall,
1980). This instrument presents 30 negative self-thoughts, and respon-
dents indicate the degree to which they had those thoughts during the
previous week. The ATQ was considered as a measure of content of
negative self-thinking. Participants were then presented with an adapted
version of the SRHI, which in the present context was labeled the Habit
Index of Negative Thinking (HINT). Participants were thus asked to
indicate the degree to which the thoughts formulated in the ATQ occur
habitually, using the 12 items that specify the perception of frequency,
unawareness of the onset of the thoughts, lack of conscious intent, diffi-
culty to control, mental efficiency, and self-descriptiveness. Participants
also responded to a measure of self-esteem. Regression of the self-esteem
measure on the ATQ (content) and HINT (process) revealed an indepen-
dent contribution of the HINT. This result was replicated in a study
where the ATQ was replaced by a thought-listing task (Verplanken
et al., 2007, Study 3). Participants were asked to write down negative
self-thoughts they sometimes had, and, similarly to the ATQ, rated the
extent to which they had these thoughts during the previous week. The
HINT was then presented focused on the set of thoughts. Regressing self-
esteem on the number of thoughts written down, the ratings of the
perceived prevalence of thoughts, and the HINT revealed that while all
predictors were significantly related to self-esteem, the HINT had an

independent contribution.1
Some further evidence of the validity of the HINT as an independent
predictor of unconstructive consequences was provided in a longitudinal
study on depression and anxiety among 1,102 participants, based on a
representative sample of 5,000 adults in Norway (Verplanken et al.,
2007, Study 8). The sample was approached twice with a 9-month
interval. In the first wave a host of clinical measures were taken, among
which were measures of depressive and anxiety symptoms, home and
work stress as well as the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (Weissman &
Beck, 1978), which served as a measure of negative cognitive content,
and the HINT. The second measurement included an assessment of the
occurrence of a range of negative life events, as well as a reassessment of
the presence of depressive and anxiety symptoms. The results showed
that the HINT at Time 1 predicted depressive and anxiety symptoms at
Time 2 over and above all other measures, thus controlling for symptoms
at Time 1. This confirmed the power of the habitual aspect of negative
thinking.
Habitual negative self-thinking was also studied with respect to
more specific self-evaluations, such as body image. In one study it
was found that habitual negative thoughts about one’s appearance
accounted for variance in body image attitudes over and above the
number and negativity of self-generated negative body-related
thoughts (Verplanken & Tangelder, 2007). Importantly, whereas
body dissatisfaction has always been a highly gendered domain, in
that women tend to express more body dissatisfaction than men
(e.g., Feingold & Mazzella, 1998), the independent effects of habitual
negative body image thinking were present for both sexes. In another
study, adolescents aged 12–15 were presented with assessments of
body dissatisfaction, a body image HINT, as well as assessments of
self-esteem and eating disturbance propensity (Verplanken & Velsvik,
2008). The latter two variables were regressed on body dissatisfaction
and negative body image thinking. The body image HINT
predicted self-esteem and eating disturbance propensity over and
above body dissatisfaction. Again, the effects were gender-unrelated,
suggesting that habitual negative thinking posed a risk factor for both
sexes.
1
Of course, there exist other process-oriented constructs in the realm of self-reflection. In one study
the HINT was pitted against measures of mental rumination and (lack of) mindfulness in
predicting self-esteem (Verplanken et al., 2007, Study 4). While all three predictors were
significantly related to self-esteem, the HINT obtained a significant weight, and thus showed discri-
minant validity.
Habitual Negative Self-Thinking and Implicit Processes
The nature of the mental habit concept, and in particular the automaticity
facet, may lead to the hypothesis that habitual thinking has links with
implicit cognitions and processes. For instance, in one study habitual
negative body image thinking was found to be related to the speed with
which negatively valenced food-related words were recognized
(Verplanken, Thompson, & Whale, 2008). Participants in this study
were presented with a lexical decision task, that is, deciding as
quickly as possible whether stimuli were words or nonwords. The
words category included stimuli that were related to unhealthy and
healthy food items. Participants also responded to a body image HINT
and a measure of body image attitude. The latency data revealed a
statistically significant interaction between the HINT and body image
attitude for the unhealthy food items. Simple slope analyses showed that
among participants with negative body images, high HINT scores were
associated with shorter response latencies for the unhealthy food items,,
whereas no such association was present for participants with positive
body images. The were no such effects for healthy food items.
In a number of other studies, habitual negative self-thinking appeared
to be associated with implicit measures of self-esteem. Participants in
Verplanken et al. (2007, Study 5) were presented with an Implicit
Association Test assessing self-esteem (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham,
2000). They also responded to the ATQ and the HINT, in addition to
an explicit measure of self-esteem. The results showed that the HINT was
statistically significantly related to the IAT (r = 0.28, p < .01). Neither the
ATQ nor explicit self-esteem correlated significantly with the IAT. These
results were replicated in the body image domain (Verplanken &
Tangelder, 2007). In this study, participants responded to an IAT asses-
sing body image attitudes. The HINT (focused on thoughts on body
dissatisfaction) was significantly correlated with the body image IAT
(r = 0.20, p < .001).
A conceptual replication of the relationship between habitual negative
self-thinking and implicit self-esteem was obtained by using the name
letter and birthday number effect as an implicit measure of self-esteem
(Verplanken et al., 2007, Study 6). The name letter and birthday number
effect refers to the phenomenon that people tend to like their name
letters (or initials) and their birthday numbers relatively better compared
to people who do not have these name letters or birthday numbers (e.g.,
Nuttin, 1985). The size of this effect has been interpreted as an implicit
measure of self-esteem (Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg,
2001). The HINT correlated weakly but statistically significantly with
this effect (r = 0.17, p < .05), whereas the number of self-generated
negative self-thoughts and the perceived prevalence of these thoughts

(taken as assessments of cognitive content) did not. In all, the HINT
showed consistent associations with a number of different implicit out-
come measures. These findings support the intriguing assumption under-
lying the HINT that this measure captures the experience of
automaticity. I will return to this issue in the next section.
OUTSTANDING ISSUES
In the remainder of this chapter I will discuss four issues concerning habit,
which are unresolved and/or require further attention. These are first the
question where exactly habits are located, given that most behaviors of
interest to social scientists are very complex. Second, I address the issue of
breaking and creating habits. The third issue summarizes an ongoing
discussion of whether habits are inherently goal-directed. Finally, I will
discuss the paradox of conscious reflection on automatic processes.
Where Is the Habit?
The first issue concerns the question whether complex social beha-
viors such as healthy eating, exercising, media use, or transportation
choice are habitual. If we take ‘‘exercising’’ as an example, one may
object to qualifying such behavior as habitual, because many people
who engage in such activities do this in a deliberate and mindful way
(Maddux, 1997). In answering the question of what is habitual in
exercising, we may first acknowledge that ‘‘exercising’’ covers a range
of different decisions and activities, for example, planning, changing
clothes, deciding on which route to take, running, showering, and so
on. Each of these activities may or may not be executed in an
automatic fashion. The realization that exercising is a complex beha-
vior thus requires the scientist, policy maker, or health worker to
designate which of the constituting elements is the interesting or
important one to focus on. One may, for example, designate ‘‘the
decision to exercise’’ (rather than, e.g., the execution of the activity
proper) as the element of interest (Verplanken & Melkevik, 2008).
Once this decision has been firmly built into one’s everyday routines,
it may have acquired all features of a habit, and may thus be quali-
fied as ‘‘habitual,’’ while the actual execution of exercising may occur
in a mindful fashion. From a health promotion perspective, focusing
on the moment of decision, rather than the execution of the activity,
would make much sense; making the decision to exercise habitual
would be an important contribution to a healthy lifestyle.
Another issue related to the question ‘‘where is the habit’’ concerns

the level of construal. Habits may be defined narrowly, such as ‘‘using the
car to bring the kids to school’’, or ‘‘eating a piece of chocolate at 4pm.’’
However, habits may also be construed at a more general level (‘‘taking
the car in any situation’’, ‘‘consuming sweet and fatty food’’), thus encom-
passing a variety of contexts. Such general-level habits may often be more
important in terms of their social, health or environmental consequences
than specific habits (Dawes, 1998; Verplanken et al., 1994). For instance,
persons with a general car use habit produce larger carbon footprints than
persons who selectively, but habitually, use the car for some trips and
public transport for others. Habitually consuming sweet and fatty food in
a large range of food consumption contexts contributes more to an obesity
problem than when a person habitually eats a piece of chocolate, but eats
healthily otherwise. When considering large-scale problems such as
obesity or climate change, habits construed at a general level, encom-
passing a variety of contexts, thus seem much more important than
specific habits.
Breaking and Forming Habits
It often seems to require a miracle to break old habits. However, trivial as

this remark may seem, there has been little discussion about exactly why
this is the case. The discussion has been hampered by the fact that habits
have been defined merely as frequency of past behavior. Taking the
element of automaticity on board provides more insight as well as more
leverage for interventions to change habitual behavior (Verplanken &
Wood, 2006). It is important to note that as many interventions are
based on providing information aimed at changing attitudes and behavior,
the evidence from habit research does not bode well for the effectiveness
of such interventions for two reasons. The first is that habit attenuates
attention to, and desire for, information, particularly information about
new or alternative options (Verplanken et al., 1997). Whereas attendance
to particular mass media campaigns is very low in general (e.g., Weenig &
Midden, 1997), target groups with strong habits are even more unlikely to
attend to such campaigns. Second, habit attenuates the influence of
attitudes and intentions on behavior (de Bruijn et al., 2007; Ferguson, &
Bibby, 2002; Ji & Wood, 2007; Ouellette & Wood, 1998; Verplanken
et al., 1998). Thus, even if an information campaign changes attitudes and
intentions, if these do not connect to behavior, existing habits are unlikely
to change.
There are some optimistic caveats to this pessimistic conclusion. One
is that behavior may be targeted before it becomes habitual. For instance,
it makes much sense to educate young male drivers to abstain from drink
and driving in order to prevent them from joining the most dangerous
segment of the driving population. A second caveat is that existing habits
may temporarily be broken, and thus provide a window of opportunity to
influence or promote deliberate thinking. Context change thus provides
interesting opportunities for influencing new decisions in more sustain-
able or healthy directions. For instance, when people relocate, many
existing habits (e.g., transportation, shopping, leisure activities) are
broken and need to be reviewed. For a short while these individuals
may need information and may thus engage in more deliberate decision
making (Wood et al., 2005). In a study among commuters, Verplanken,
Walker, Davis, and Jurasek (2008) found that participants who were
environmentally concerned reported using more sustainable transporta-
tion modes after they changed residence, compared to environmentally
concerned participants who had not moved house.
The other side of the habit coin is that the very features that make old
habits hard to change are advantageous for new behavior to occur. In
other words, if an intervention is successful in changing behavior, one
would want this new behavior to become habitual. Habit formation may
thus be explicitly adopted as an intervention goal (Verplanken & Wood,
2006). This may have consequences for the type and the scope of an
intervention. For instance, habit formation requires an environment that
cues and maintains the new habit. Behavior change interventions may
thus shift from a focus on knowledge and motivation to properties of the
environment.
One way to start new habits may be to use implementation inten-
tions. Implementation intentions are explicit formulations of specific
cues and responses in the environment where behavior is to take place
(e.g., Gollwitzer & Schaal, 1998). Implementation intentions thus repre-
sent planned automatic contingencies that may turn into habitual
responses when these occur frequently. Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2000)
found that implementation intentions resulted in associations between
goals and actions that were functionally equivalent to similar habitual
associations. However, implementation intentions seem not very effec-
tive in breaking established habits (e.g., Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000;
Verplanken & Faes, 1999; Webb, Sheeran, & Luszczynska, 2008).
Habits and Goals
We develop habits when behavior that fulfills some goal is repeated and
becomes automatic. It can therefore be argued that habits are inherently
goal directed (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000). For instance, Aarts and
Dijksterhuis (2000, Study 1) presented habitual and nonhabitual cyclists

with combinations of travel locations and travel modes, while half of each
group was primed with a travel goal. The dependent variable was the
speed with which they endorsed the combinations as being realistic. It
was found that habitual cyclists responded faster to the stimuli, however,
only if they were primed with travel goals. Other scholars have argued
against the necessity of goal activation in the operation of habits (Wood &
Neal, 2007). For instance, the occurrence of action slips (e.g., taking the
usual way to work instead of the incidental ride to the airport) suggests
that at least the current goal (driving to the airport) is not active, and an
old habit unfolds automatically upon encountering a particular cue that is
associated with it. The studies that demonstrated Intention Habit
interactions in the prediction of later behavior (de Bruijn et al., 2007;
Ferguson & Bibby, 2002; Ji & Wood, 2007; Ouellette & Wood, 1998;
Verplanken et al., 1998) provided circumstantial evidence for the notion
that habits attenuate the role of goals and motivation. Neal, Pascoe, and
Wood (2007) provided more direct evidence for the thesis that goals do
not necessarily mediate habitual responses to cues by manipulating the
accessibility of performance goals in a probabilistic cue-response task
involving weather prediction. In their experiment participants in a habit
formation condition learned to perform by means of procedural memory,
whereas in a control condition participants learned to use declarative
rules. When achievement goals were activated, this facilitated the perfor-
mance in the control, but not in the habit formation, condition, sug-
gesting that habits are a form of goal-independent automaticity. Wood
and Neal (2007) presented a comprehensive model of how habits and
goals may interrelate. The model specifies three principles. The first is
that habits are a form of slowly accrued automaticity, which is based on
the direct association between context and response. The second is that
the context can activate the response without the mediation of a goal. The
third principle is that habit formation and performance interface with
goals and motivated thinking. The latter may occur in multiple ways. For
instance, habits may serve goal accomplishment, goals may activate
habits, goals may be inferred from habits, or habits and goals may both
operate to guide performance.
The Wood and Neal (2007) model demonstrates that the discussion
about how habits and goals are interrelated has gone beyond a perhaps too
simplistic dual-process account. The exact nature of the relations
between habits and goals will undoubtedly be the focus of future debate
and research. A number of issues still remain to be settled. For instance,
goals may operate at different levels of consciousness. Since Bargh’s
(1989) seminal text on conditional automaticity, an impressive literature
has accumulated on implicit goal-dependent processes (e.g., Aarts, 2007;
Bargh, 2005; Bargh & Barndollar, 1996). It is as yet not completely clear
how habits, explicit goals, and implicit goals interrelate. Another issue is
that the distinction between goals and representations of goal-related
contexts is not always clear. For instance, my university represents a
commuting destination and may thus elicit cycling as my mode of trans-
portation. However, once the association of university and cycling has
been established, the question is whether the goal of commuting is still
part of the equation when this association is activated. In addition, the
university is associated with multiple goals (e.g., academic achievement,
social relations) and may therefore not be a sufficient representation of
one goal in particular.
Metacognitive Reflection on Habits
Implicit processes are often portrayed like the miracle component of

Sidney Harris’ cartoon on the frontispiece of this book. The SRHI and
HINT presuppose that participants have the ability to reflect on this
miracle. This in and of itself may be a controversial and perhaps para-
doxical statement. Obviously, I would not want to claim that we have
direct access to and awareness of automatic processes (Nisbett & Wilson,
1977). However, the findings that the SRHI moderates relationships
between implicit measures of attitude and behavior (Conner et al.,
2007) and that HINT correlates with implicit measures such as the
IAT, the name letter effect and lexical decision latencies (Verplanken
et al., 2007; Verplanken & Tangelder, 2007; Verplanken et al., 2008) all
provide strong evidence that these habit measures do relate to implicit
processes. Apparently we do have an ability to reflect on such processes.
There may be a number of reasons why this is the case. First, the SRHI and
HINT break down ‘‘automaticity’’ into more specific facets (e.g., lack of
awareness, lack of control), which may be easier to reflect on than the
generic term. Second, although we may not be able to directly access the
experience of an automatic process, we may be able to reflect on what has
not happened, such as not having given a decision much thought, or not
remembering a conscious intent. Third, implicit processes may do things
to us that enter explicit awareness. For instance, implicit low self-esteem
may surface in the form of nagging doubts, feelings of uncertainty, or
suspicious ‘‘intuitions.’’ When such events occur frequently, these may be
subject to conscious reflection. Fourth, some people may have more
access to their intuitions than others, which makes their self-
reports such as the SRHI or HINT reflect more of their implicit
processes (Koole & DeHart, 2007). Finally, the distinction between
implicit and explicit processes may not be as discrete as the use of these
terms suggest. For instance, Sherman et al. (2008) argue that the
dichotomy between automatic and controlled processes conceals impor-
tant differences, and picture a far more nuanced account.
CONCLUSION
It is probably not an uncommon feeling among writers in psychology to

read William James, and sigh, ‘‘What more is there to contribute?’’ James
(1890) wrote about the essentials of habit; from the imprint that repeti-
tive behavior makes in our brains, habit as a simplifying device that
diminishes fatigue, the attenuated attention to habitual acts, the fluency
of habitual behavior, to advice on habit formation, and designating habit
as ‘‘the fly-wheel of society’’ which keeps our conduct in order. He even
referred to mental habits, when he mentioned the sentimental value of
emotions, which habitually pass by when indulging in music. And James
did not have a problem throwing in some moral messages, such as when
he wrote:
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse

than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually
fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but
realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits,
they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state
(p.127).
In spite of James’ brilliant insights, the habit concept has long been
poorly treated by others after him. The behaviorists provided valu-
able knowledge but did not step beyond the relatively simple
Stimulus-Response scheme (e.g., Hull, 1943). Habit was not part of
the cognitive revolution, and social psychologists uncritically adopted
the concept of habit as merely repetitive behavior. It took a good
century before psychologists again began to appreciate the richness of
the habit concept. Although much has still to be done, habit now
seems to find its place in models that provide a fuller account of how
and why we behave repetitively. We begin to see the broader picture
again by recognizing that habits may form part of larger cognitive
and behavioral structures, which enable us to self-regulate and
interact effectively with the environment. While William James
might have been disappointed in the moral side of contemporary
society, he would undoubtedly have been excited about the new
status of the habit concept in contemporary psychology.
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6 Unconscious Behavioral
Guidance Systems
John A. Bargh
Ezequiel Morsella
It is the duty of the natural scientist to attempt a natural

explanation before he contents himself with drawing upon
factors extraneous to nature.
—Konrad Lorenz (1962, p. 23)
INTRODUCTION
In the early days (by which we mean way back in the 1980s), discoveries
of nonconscious processes were seen as magical, mysterious—if they were
believed at all. The conscious-process account of how one gets from A to
B (say, from attitudes to behavior, or from a witnessed behavior to one’s
attribution of its cause) involved self-reportable steps or stages, clear and
easy for all to see. But when the same effects began to be demonstrated
without conscious awareness or involvement, the underlying process was
invisible, and quite mysterious (especially mysterious, for some reason, to
journal editors and reviewers!). Happily, in the three decades that fol-
lowed, our understanding of how these nonconscious or automatic pro-
cesses operate has improved a hundred-fold (see Bargh, 2006). No longer
are these effects viewed as miraculous; today they are just as theoretically
tractable as conscious or controlled processes, and appeals to divine
miracles are no longer necessary to explain them.
Purposive behavior is widespread among living organisms, although

only a few possess anything approaching the information-processing
capacities of human consciousness (Mayr, 1976; Tomasello et al.,
2005). The behavior of most organisms living today—the fly, the Venus
flytrap, and perhaps the alligator and its fellow reptiles—is under the
guidance of what we humans consider to be unconscious control. (For a
treatment regarding the presence of consciousness in nonhuman animals,
see Gray, 2004.) Moreover, for millions of years prior to the advent of
consciousness, the actions of intelligent life forms, both toward the world
and toward each other, were under the control of exclusively unconscious
systems. Conscious mental processes (e.g., conscious intentions) were
relative latecomers in the phylogeny of intelligent behavior (Corballis,
2007; Deacon, 1997; Dennett, 1991; Donald, 1991). Thus, as difficult as
it may be for us to imagine—because consciousness encompasses the
totality of what ‘‘we’’ are and could ever experience—the history of our
planet and its organisms was for the most part one devoid of conscious-
ness: A zombie-like world having colorful plants, streams, and gigantic
creatures performing complex acts and communicating with each other,
but possessing nothing that could ever be conscious of any of it.
Hence, despite our intuitions and how much consciousness may mean
to ‘‘us,’’ consciousness is actually an atypical phenomenon and tool with
respect to both the natural world and the majority of human nervous
functions. Figuratively speaking, it is as atypical regarding the nuts and
bolts of intelligent behavior as are the computerized, GPS-based naviga-
tional systems in today’s automobiles. These devices, and their ‘‘reverse
engineering,’’ fail to reveal the basic principles of mechanized transport,
and, as sophisticated as they may be (interacting with satellites and creating
graphical ‘‘representations’’ of one’s current driving environment, including
traffic conditions), they are not responsible for either powering the car or
for conducting it. Just as automobiles could get from one place to another
long before the advent of such systems, so did creatures express intelligent
behavior before the advent of consciousness. The intelligentsia of this
‘‘unconscious fauna’’ is still within us, and, like the engine and driver of a
car, it is working behind the scenes as the prime mover of our behavioral
repertoire, in the form of unconscious behavioral guidance systems.
Who Is the Real Driver Behind the Wheel of the Cognitive

Apparatus?
Because evolution works only gradually, making incremental changes and, if

at all possible, ‘‘exapting’’ already-existing structures and processes (Allman,
2000; Bargh & Morsella, 2008), we should be able to find evidence still today
UNCONSCIOUS BEHAVIORAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS 91
of the continued operation of these original unconscious behavioral gui-

dance systems. How would such systems work? The simplest mechanism,
present in all living organisms from single-cell paramecia to human beings, is
reflexive approach versus withdrawal behaviors, in direct response to
external stimuli (Schneirla, 1959). For many animals, incoming stimuli
would activate approach or withdrawal behaviors (Roe & Simpson, 1958).
These are simple reflex or S–R (stimulus–response) reactions. Humans, of
course, are much more complex information processors than this, with
sophisticated internal processing systems specializing in producing affective,
emotional, cognitive, perceptual, and motivational responses to external
stimuli, each of which mediate between the sensation of a stimulus event
and its effect on behavior (Bargh, 1997). Despite the claims of the radical
behaviorists (e.g., Skinner, 1953; see Bargh & Ferguson, 2000), human
behavior is not controlled by such simple S-R, direct stimulus-to-behavior
linkages: indeed, the concept of the simple reflex arc on which behaviorist
theory was built had long ago been abandoned by physiologists such as
Sherrington (1906), who called it ‘‘a convenient, if not probable, fiction’’
(p. 137). Skinner’s (1957) attempt to account for the higher mental pro-
cesses (including language and social interaction) in humans using only such
simple S-R associations failed spectacularly and helped in fact to bring about
the cognitive revolution (Chomsky, 1959; Koestler, 1967), as he permitted
himself no recourse to internal systems to extract the important, situation-
ally- and purpose-relevant meanings from external stimuli, and to prepare
the individual for appropriate behavioral responses.
Research on priming and automaticity in social psychology, on the
other hand, has examined the direct (unconscious) effect of environ-
mental stimuli on these important internal mediational systems and has
shown that the mere, passive perception of environmental events directly
triggers higher mental processes in the absence of any involvement by
conscious, intentional processes (see reviews in Bargh & Ferguson, 2000;
Dijksterhuis, Aarts, & Chartrand, 2007; Higgins, 1996). These automatic
effects of environmental stimuli were found to drive evaluation (e.g.,
Fazio, 1986, 1990), stereotyping and prejudice (Devine, 1989), social
behavior (e.g., Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Dijksterhuis & van
Knippenberg, 1998), and motivated goal pursuit (e.g., Bargh &
Gollwitzer, 1994; Chartrand & Bargh, 1996)—in each case, without any
awareness by the individual of the role played by these external stimuli in
the production of his or her behavior. The ease and ubiquity with which
priming effects on these sophisticated higher mental (including execu-
tive) processes have been obtained reveal both the openness of the human
mind to environmental influences, and a necessarily decreased role for
intentional, conscious causation and guidance of the higher mental pro-
cesses (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Huang & Bargh, 2008).
The Present Model
According to the above logic, the human version of unconscious behavioral

guidance systems must have (at minimum) two main stages, not just one
(i.e., S-R): the initial automatic activation of the mediating system by
external stimuli (Step 1) and that system’s effect on behavior (Step 2). Both
stages must be capable of unconscious operation, that is, with no role played
by conscious choice or guidance in the entire sequence, for us to be able to
speak of truly unconscious behavioral guidance systems (see Figure 6.1).
What are the different mental systems that are directly and uncon-
sciously activated by external stimuli?1 Research has identified four: per-
ceptual, evaluative, motivational, and emotional. They are considered
Step 1 Step 2
Evaluative
System
Emotional
Environ- System
mental Motivational Behavioral
Stimuli System Responses
Perceptual
System
Figure 6.1. Unconscious Behavioral Guidance Systems. ‘‘Step 1’’ (solid lines) refers
to automatic activation of distinct internal information processing systems; ‘‘Step 2’’
(dotted lines) refers to automatic influences of these activated systems on behavior.
1
How researchers define the unconscious significantly affects conclusions as to its power over human
behavior and other higher mental processes (Bargh & Morsella, 2008). In cognitive science, the powers
of the unconscious are often operationally equated with the powers of subliminally presented stimuli
(i.e., one must be unaware of the triggering stimulus itself). This practice has led to the conclusion that
the unconscious is rather ‘‘dumb’’ (Loftus & Klinger, 1992) because while concept activation and
primitive associative learning could occur unconsciously, nothing complex requiring flexible
responding, integration of stimuli, or higher mental processes could. But this was not the original
meaning of the term ‘‘unconscious,’’ which was used by Darwin (1859), Freud (see Brill, 1938), and
others to refer to the unintentional nature of the behavior or process, with an associated lack of
awareness not of the stimuli themselves, but of the influence or consequences of those stimuli. It is
this ‘‘unintentional’’ definition that has driven research on unconscious (automatic, nonconscious,
implicit) phenomena in social psychology since Nisbett and Wilson (1977) posed their seminal
question: ‘‘To what extent are people aware of and able to report on the true causes of their behavior?’’
distinct systems because they are dissociable—they have different oper-

ating characteristics and qualities and are not reducible to each other. For
example, activations in the perceptual system are relatively short lived, and
those in the evaluative system are even shorter, but activated motivational
representations (goal pursuit structures) actually increase in strength over
time (until the goal is actively pursued: Atkinson & Birch, 1971; Bargh,
Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001, Study 2).
In what follows we will first sketch out the evidentiary support for
these four unconscious behavior guidance systems; within each of the
four types we present the basic evidence for Step 1 priming or activation
effects, followed by the Step 2 evidence that these priming effects extend
to the creation of appropriate behavioral tendencies.
UNCONSCIOUS BEHAVIORAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS
Perceptual
Theoretical Background. Recent cognitive neuroscience research supports

the dissociation of conscious awareness and intention from the operation of
complex behavioral processes (see Prinz, 2003). First, in a classic study by
Goodale, Milner, Jakobsen, and Carey (1991), patients with lesions in the
parietal lobe region are able to correctly identify an object held up to them
by an experimenter but are not able to reach for it correctly based on its
spatial orientation (horizontal or vertical). Patients with lesions in the
ventral-visual system, on the other hand, could not identify (recognize)
the object, but were still able to reach for it correctly when the experi-
menter casually asks them to take it. Thus, the one group exhibited
appropriate action tendencies toward the object in the absence of conscious
awareness of what the object was (i.e., action without perception), while
the other group was aware of what the object was but could not act toward
it appropriately (i.e., perception without action). Theorists have concluded
from this and related studies that two different cortical visual pathways are
activated in the course of perception, a dorsal pathway that supports
actional responses (‘‘what to do’’) and a ventral pathway supporting
semantic knowledge regarding the object (‘‘what it is’’; see review in
Westwood, 2009). Importantly, it is the dorsal (actional) system that is
believed to operate largely outside of conscious awareness, while the
operation of the ventral system is normally accessible to awareness
(Decety & Grèzes, 1999; Jeannerod, 2003; Norman, 2002).
Indeed, humans are generally unaware of the operations of their
motor system (Fourneret & Jeannerod, 1998; Frith et al., 2000;
Rosenbaum, 2002). This research is revealing a startling lack of awareness
on the part of individual human beings of exactly how one is moving one’s
body through space. Fourneret and Jeannerod (1998) showed that when
one’s hand is controlling a computer-drawing device but behind a screen
so the individual is prevented from seeing the hand in motion, partici-
pants can be easily fooled into thinking their hand moved one direction
when it had actually moved in a different direction (through false feed-
back on the computer display). Participants reported great confidence
that their hand had moved in the direction of the line drawn on the
screen, when in reality substantial bias had been programmed into the
translation of their actual movement into what was displayed. This result
is obtainable only if participants had little if any conscious access to their
actual hand movements.
One important function of social perception of which people are
generally unaware is its direct effect in preparing one’s own behavioral
responses. The priming effects of people’s behavior and other situational
features extend to a direct influence on our own behavior, beginning soon
after birth. Infants naturally learn much about how to behave by mere
passive imitation of fellow children and also their adult caretakers.
Meltzoff (2002) concluded from decades of researching this phenomenon
that infants can imitate body movements and facial acts at birth, and that
this ability represents a ‘‘primordial connection between infant and care-
taker’’ (p. 19).
That infants engage in direct imitation of others’ behavior indicates
that such imitation is likely not a strategic or intentional act on their part,
but the outcome of an unconscious tendency to act in harmony with those
around us. As Dawkins (1976) pointed out, the best behavioral strategy
from the point of view of evolution and adaptation ‘‘depends on what the
majority of the population is doing’’ (p. 69; see Maynard Smith, 1982;
Maynard Smith & Parker, 1976). Thus, ‘‘blindly’’ or unconsciously
adopting what others around you are doing, especially in new situations
or with strangers, makes good adaptive sense as a default option or
starting point for your own behavior.
Step 1. Automatic or unconscious influences on social perception were

among the first experimental demonstrations of automaticity in social
information processing. Individuals as social objects are automatically
categorized in terms of their social groups (race, gender, roles, etc.), and
social behaviors are automatically categorized in trait terms (e.g., Uleman
et al., 1996), so that social perceivers naturally ‘‘go beyond the informa-
tion given’’ (e.g., Brewer, 1988; Bruner, 1957; Fiske, 1982). The precon-
scious analysis of the environment that is continually occurring during
normal perceptual activity (e.g., Neisser, 1967) was found, in the case of
social information, to extend to a rich activation of knowledge,
assumptions, and expectancies concerning the individuals one encoun-

ters, much of it at an implicit or unconscious level (as in automatic
stereotype activation; e.g., Devine, 1989). The ease and ubiquity of
priming effects in social psychology (and now in other fields such as
behavioral economics, health psychology, consumer behavior, and poli-
tical psychology) is testimony to the rich variety of meanings uncon-
sciously activated during normal perceptual activity (see reviews in
Bargh, 1989, 2007; Higgins, 1996).
Step 2. These imitative impulses, triggered by the perceived behavior of

others, continue to be activated throughout one’s life, causing children
and adults to have default tendencies to act the same as those around
them are acting—producing behavioral and emotional contagion effects.
Thus, how other people are acting around us in the present is yet a further
unconscious influence or guide as to how we ourselves should act. This
tendency, and its unconscious and unintentional nature, has been repeat-
edly demonstrated in human adults in the research of Chartrand and
colleagues (e.g., Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Chartrand, Maddux, &
Lakin, 2005; Lakin & Chartrand, 2003). People don’t know and even
don’t believe once informed that they had engaged in these imitative
behaviors. Not only do people tend to adopt the physical behavior (pos-
ture, facial gestures, arm and hand movements) of strangers with whom
they interact, without intending to or being aware they are doing so, such
unconscious imitation also tends to increase liking and bonding between
the individuals—serving as a kind of natural ‘‘social glue’’ (see also Giles,
Coupland, & Coupland, 1991).
Wiltermuth and Heath (2009) recently extended this finding from
the dyadic to the group level. They pointed to the widespread use of
synchronous rituals by social groups over thousands of years of human
history, and argued that these rituals serve the purpose of promoting
cohesiveness within the group: for example, armies marching in lockstep,
and worshipers at religious services standing, kneeling, and singing in
unison. They provided experimental demonstrations of this natural phe-
nomenon by first manipulating synchronous activity—for example, by
having participants walk in step with each other (or not) on a stroll around
campus, mouthing song lyrics together (or not) while listening to a well-
known song. Compared to those in the control group, those who acted in
synchrony with each other then were found to cooperate with each other
to a greater extent across a variety of cooperative tasks. Doing the same
things at the same time as one’s group-mates fosters bonding and coop-
erative behavior within the group, just as it does within dyads.
Finally, just as the internal meanings that are automatically activated
during social perception (Step 1) extend beyond what is directly
observable in the current environment (as in stereotype or trait concept

activations), so, too, do the automatic behavioral effects (Step 2) of those
perceptual activations (see reviews in Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001;
Dijksterhuis, Aarts, & Chartrand, 2007). Stereotypic content activated
during social perception creates behavioral tendencies to act in line with
that content, across a wide range of stereotypes and types of behavior
studied (e.g., activating the elderly stereotype influences both physical
behavior such as walking speed but also cognitive performance such as
forgetfulness). The perception of situations also automatically activates
behavioral dispositions in line with the particular setting; for example,
priming the concept of ‘‘library’’ causes participants (not actually in a
library) to speak more quietly (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2002). Because the
individual is unaware of both the stereotype activation and its influence
on action tendencies, these studies show a direct, unconscious influence
of the current environment on behavior that is mediated by mundane
perceptual activity.
Related Evidence. The discovery of mirror neurons in both macaques

(Rizzolatti & Arbib, 1998) and humans (Buccino et al., 2001), in which
perception of behavior in a conspecific directly (unconsciously) activates
the same premotor cortical regions used to engage in that behavior
oneself, is significant further support for the proposed direct, unconscious
influence of perception on behavior. This tight, automatic connection
between our perceptual and our actional representations suggests that we
are prewired to have behavioral and goal pursuit tendencies in line with
those around us.
Moreover, related cognitive neuroscience research has indicated as
well an automatic connection between behavioral concept representa-
tions and their corresponding motor representations. Merely hearing
action verbs pronounced out loud activates the same brain region
(Brodman 45) as does witnessing a meaningful action (Jeannerod, 1999)
and both activate implicit motor representations needed to carry out that
type of behavior (Perani et al., 1999). Motor programs thus appear to be
part of the very meaning of action-related verbs (Grèzes & Decety, 2001;
Pulvermuller, 2005), and this fact is likely responsible for the many
successful behavioral priming demonstrations using verbal stimuli (as in
the commonly used Scrambled Sentence Test manipulation of priming).
Evaluative
Theoretical Background. Preferences and feelings are unconscious

guides to appropriate behavior. A tight connection between immediate,
unconscious evaluation and appropriate (approach versus avoidance)

actional tendencies is found throughout the animal kingdom; even
single-celled paramecia have them (Schneirla, 1959). These ‘‘guides’’ do
not arise out of thin air, however. Our present preferences are derived
from those that served adaptive ends in the past. Knowledge gained at a
lower level of blind selection, the shortcuts and other ‘‘good tricks’’
(Dennett, 1995) that consistently worked over our long-term evolu-
tionary past, is fed upwards as a starting point—appearing as a priori
knowledge, the source of which we are unaware. Campbell (1974)
called these ‘‘shortcut processes’’ because they save us from having to
figure out, each of us individually from scratch, which are the good and
helpful things and which are the dangerous.
Step 1. The finding that attitudes can become active automatically upon
the perception of the attitude object (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, &
Kardes, 1986; see also Fiske, 1982) was one of the first demonstrations
of automaticity in social psychology. The mere presentation of an attitude
object name (prime) was shown to automatically and immediately acti-
vate its associated evaluation (good versus bad), in that the activated
evaluation facilitated or interfered with evaluation of a second presented
attitude object (target) in a Stroop-like fashion. Subsequent research
using this and other experimental techniques (e.g., the Implicit
Association Test; Nosek et al., 2007) revealed automatic evaluation to
be a fairly general and ubiquitous phenomenon, occurring even for novel
stimuli (e.g., fragments of abstract art) the participant had not encoun-
tered before (Duckworth, Bargh, Garcia, & Chaiken, 2002).
Step 2. Under the present argument that the unconscious evolved as a

behavioral guidance system, a source of adaptive and appropriate actional
impulses, these unconsciously activated preferences should be found to
be directly connected to behavioral mechanisms. Several studies have
now established this connection: immediate and unintended evaluation
processes are directly linked to approach and avoidance behavioral pre-
dispositions in humans, as theorized originally by both Lewin (1935) and
Osgood, Suci & Tannenbaum (1957). Chen and Bargh (1999; see also
Neumann, Förster, & Strack, 2003) showed that participants are faster to
make approach movements of the arm (pulling a lever towards oneself)
when responding to positive attitude objects, and faster to make avoid-
ance movements (pushing the lever away) when responding to negative
attitude objects. This was true even though their conscious task in the
experiment was not to evaluate the objects at all, merely to ‘‘knock off the
screen’’ the names of these objects as soon as they appeared. And this
unconscious behavioral tendency to approach what is good and avoid
what is bad extends even to novel objects never encountered before;

Duckworth et al. (2002) obtained the evaluation–action link for the
novel as well as the mundane attitude objects in their study.
Related Evidence. This ‘‘evaluation-motivation-action’’ effect appears to

be bidirectional: Cacioppo, Priester, and Berntson (1993) found that
participants induced into approach-related versus avoidance-related mus-
cular movements while being exposed to novel attitude objects caused
evaluations of the objects (i.e., attitude formation) to be consistent with
the induced motivational orientation. Recently, van Knippenberg et al.
(2007) showed that inducing participants to make avoidance-related
(versus approach-related) muscular movements resulted in more
effortful cognitive processing on a subsequent task, in line with now-
established findings that negative stimuli attract greater attention
(Smith, Cacioppo, Larsen, & Chartrand, 2003) than positive stimuli,
and negative moods recruit effortful processing to a greater extent than
positive moods (e.g., Schwarz & Clore, 1996).
Motivational
Theoretical Background. Goals can be conceptualized as mental repre-

sentations of desired end-states that include the means through which
those states can be attained (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh, 1990;
Kruglanski et al., 2002; Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007; McCulloch,
Ferguson, Kawada, & Bargh, 2008). Theoretically, then, goals can thus
be primed, or unconsciously activated by relevant environmental stimuli,
just as can other representations (Bargh, 1990).
That a goal can operate independently of conscious awareness of its
operation implies the existence of a dissociation between the executive
control structures in the brain responsible for ‘‘running’’ that goal’s ‘‘pro-
gram’’ and those that enable conscious awareness of the goal pursuit.
Recent cognitive neuroscience research has confirmed that distinct ana-
tomical structures support the operating goal program, on the one hand,
and the knowledge of its operation (i.e., consciously held intentions) on
the other. As one review concluded, aspects of the processing of con-
scious intentions appear to be represented in the prefrontal and premotor
cortex, but it is the parietal cortex that houses the representation used to
guide action (Frith, Blakemore, & Wolpert, 2000).
Moreover, the hypothesis that executive control structures could
operate without the person’s awareness of their operation requires the
existence of dissociable component processes within executive control or
working memory structures (Baddeley, 2003; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974;
Buchsbaum & D’Esposito, 2008). Evidence of such dissociations had been

reported in stroke patients with ‘‘environmental dependency syndrome’’
(Lhermitte, 1986; also Bogen, 1995), whose behavior was almost entirely
driven by situational cues. This hypothesis is supported as well by
research in which incentives associated with various goal pursuits were
manipulated outside of participants’ awareness and nonetheless influ-
enced effort expenditure at the task (Aarts, Custers, & Marien, 2008;
Pessiglione et al., 2007).
Step 1. Research on unconscious goal pursuit has typically primed a goal

representation and then measured its predicted effect on behavior.
However, this is the same method used to demonstrate perception–
behavior effects, and so from the behavioral effects alone it can be
difficult to tell if the responsible mechanism is an activated motivational
state or a straight, nonmotivational activation of a behavioral predisposi-
tion (see discussion in Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001). Therefore, other
means must be found in order to be able to tell one system’s operation
from the other.
Fortunately, the pioneering theoretical and empirical work of Kurt
Lewin (1926, 1935) provided us with signature qualities of motivational
states that permit us to classify an effect as motivational instead of
cognitive, evaluative, or perceptual. Classic research on conscious goal
pursuit confirmed the existence of the signature phenomenal qualities of
motivational as posited by Lewin (Bandura, 1977, 1986; Gollwitzer &
Moskowitz, 1996; Heckhausen, 1991; Lewin, 1926), and more recent
research has confirmed that these qualities hold as well for unconscious
goal pursuit. These qualities include persistence in the face of obstacles,
resumption of interrupted goal pursuits despite the availability of intrin-
sically more attractive activities (Bargh et al., 2001; Chartrand & Bargh,
2002; Custers, Maas, Wildenbeest, & Aarts, 2008; Ferguson, Hassin, &
Bargh, 2007), increase in goal strength over time (Atkinson & Birch,
1971; Bargh et al., 2001, Study 2), and changes in mood and goal strength
depending on the success versus failure of the goal attempt (Bongers,
Dijksterhuis, & Spears 2009; Chartrand & Bargh, 2002).
Cognitive neuroscience studies of the brain regions involved in moti-
vated behavior support the hypothesis that the same underlying mechan-
isms are implicated in unconscious as in conscious goal pursuit.
Pessiglione et al. (2007) showed an automatic effort increase effect in
response to increases in incentive or reward on a hand grip exertion task,
both when the reward cue (amount of money to be won on that trial) was
presented to conscious awareness as when it was presented subliminally.
They also found that the same region of the basal forebrain moderates task
effort level in response to both the consciously perceived and the
subliminally presented reward signal. The authors concluded that ‘‘the

motivational processes involved in boosting behavior are qualitatively
similar, whether subjects are conscious or not of the reward at stake’’
(p. 906). Neurophysiological recordings also show that the same brain
regions are invoked whether the goal pursuit is conscious or unconscious
(Pessiglione et al., 2007).
Moreover, just as perceptual-priming effects on social behavior are
relatively short lived and decrease over time (e.g., Higgins, Bargh, &
Lombardi, 1985), perceptually driven unconscious effects on behavior
decrease over time as well, but goal or motivation priming effects actually
increase over time (Atkinson & Birch, 1971) until the goal is pursued.
Bargh et al. (2001; Study 2) demonstrated this dissociation of these two
effects over a time delay: effects of an achievement prime on social
perception (impression formation) decreased and disappeared after a 5
min delay, but its effects on task performance behavior increased over the
same time interval. Taken together, research has revealed unconscious
goal pursuit to produce the same outcomes, through the same underlying
processes and involvement of the same brain regions, and to possess the
same phenomenal qualities as in conscious goal pursuit (see Huang &
Bargh, 2008), supporting the present conclusion that goal representations
were indeed automatically activated (Step 1) and responsible for the
behavioral effects described next under ‘‘Step 2’’.
Step 2. The goal-priming literature has shown that these representations

can be activated without the individual knowing about or intending it and
then impact the individual’s evaluations, emotions, and behaviors.
A variety of environmental stimuli have been employed as activation
triggers in these studies: not only verbal stimuli semantically related to
the goal (as in many studies), but also material objects such as backpacks
and briefcases to prime cooperation and competitiveness, respectively
(Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, & Ross, 2004); candy bars to prime tempting
hedonic goals (Fisbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003); dollar bills to
prime greed (Vohs, Mead, & Goode, 2006); scents such as cleaning fluids
to prime cleanliness goals (Holland, Hendriks, & Aarts, 2005); power-
related features of the social context (Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2002;
Custers, Maas, Wildenbeest, & Aarts, 2008); and the names of close
relationship partners (e.g., mother, friend) to prime the goals they have
for the individual as well as those the individual characteristically pursues
when with the significant other (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003; Shah, 2003).
Related Evidence. In recent experimental work by Custers and Aarts

(2005, 2007), a positive affective response was classically conditioned to
the name of a particular goal. This manipulation increased the probability
that the participant would pursue that goal over other possible alternatives,
with the participant unaware of this influence on their goal pursuits.
Extending this finding, Aarts, Custers, and Marien (2008) unconsciously
manipulated both the goal of high performance (exertion) and the incen-
tive attached to that goal; participants who had been subliminally primed
with the goal of exertion did outperform a control group on the hand-grip
squeezing task, but those primed simultaneously with both the exertion
goal and positive stimuli outperformed everyone else. Moreover, Aarts,
Custers, and Holland (2007) obtained the complementary effect: pairing
negative stimuli with a goal increased the probability that the participant
would disengage from the goal. Thus, both the goal itself and the incentives
associated with the goal can be manipulated unconsciously and will then
influence task performance just as if the participant had been aware of the
incentives and had consciously chosen the goal to pursue. These findings
provide additional support for the hypothesis that the same underlying
brain regions and processes are mobilized in unconscious as in conscious
goal pursuit, and that conscious goal pursuit makes use of preexisting
unconscious motivational structures.
Emotional
Theoretical Background. Emotions have long been taken to be the least

controllable automatic activation event; Mowrer (1960) originally argued
that emotions served to simulate the expected or anticipated outcomes of
environmental events in a ‘‘safe,’’ internal manner so that behavior could be
guided without having to actually experience those outcomes. For
example, fear is an unpleasant, noxious emotional state that we seek to
dissipate—but it is better to experience fear than the greater unpleasant-
ness of actual physical attack and damage that we might have stumbled into
without the warning emotion. Accordingly, it would make a poor func-
tional arrangement if our emotional states were instead under our own
control; this would mitigate their important signaling function (see also
Damasio, 1994). And if emotions were not automatically activated (Step
1) and difficult to prevent (Öhman & Mineka, 2001), we would not need to
engage so often in the regulation of emotions after the fact (Gross, 1998).
Step 1. Emotional states can automatically trigger goals and motivational

states of which the individual is not aware and does not consciously
intend; anger, for example, induces approach motivation with associated
feelings of greater efficacy and confidence; disgust induces a strong avoid-
ance motivation towards all present stimuli; sadness triggers a motivation
to change state (e.g., Haidt, 2001; Lerner & Keltner, 2000).
Step 2. Clues that this activation is unconscious and automatic include

the participant’s lack of awareness of any carryover influence of the prior
emotional state on the subsequent task or decision, plus the finding that
these emotion-induced goals produce outcomes that go against the
rational, best interests of the individual. For example, in the ‘‘endowment
effect’’ in behavioral economics research, people place a higher value on
objects they possess than those they do not yet possess, resulting in the
setting of higher prices to sell something they already have, compared to
the price they’d be willing to pay to acquire the same object if they didn’t
already own it. Selling an object for a higher price than one would pay for
it makes perfect, rational economic sense.
However, Lerner, Small, and Loewenstein (2004) showed that the
endowment effect can be moved around—even reversed—by manipu-
lating the emotional states of participants. In an ostensibly unrelated first
experiment, the researchers had participants think about something sad,
or something disgusting, or neither, in the control condition. Sad moods
are known to trigger a goal to change one’s state. This goal was found to
operate in the subsequent economic game, so that compared to the
control condition, sad participants in the ‘‘buy’’ condition were willing
to spend more money (apparently to change state by acquiring the new
object), and in the ‘‘sell’’ condition were willing to take less money (to
change state by getting rid of the object)—thus reversing the usual
endowment effect.
The disgust condition produced relevant findings as well. Disgust is
an emotion known to trigger the goal of protection or rejecting objects
from coming into contact with the body (e.g., Haidt, 2001). As would be
expected if this protection motive had been unconsciously activated by
the disgust prime, participants in the Lerner et al. (2004) study induced to
recently feel disgust showed both lower buy (reducing chances of
acquiring the object) and lower sell (increasing chances of expelling the
object) prices, compared to the control condition.
THE UNCONSCIOUS AS THE SOURCE OF BEHAVIORAL

IMPULSES
The present approach to the sources of human behavior is in harmony

with contemporary theory and research in evolutionary biology, in which
unconscious forces are understood to drive the behavior of all living
organisms. In the case of humans, these structures must have existed
long before the advent of conscious information-processing capabilities.
From these starting points the hypothesis of unconscious behavioral
guidance systems can be derived. Social cognition research over the past
quarter century has confirmed the existence of these unconscious gui-
dance systems, in that each variety of automatic process of relevance to
social psychology—in the domains of evaluation and attitude activation,
social perception, and goal pursuit—has been found to be directly con-
nected to behavioral tendencies, without any need for conscious intention
or awareness in the production of these adaptive behaviors. Together,
these findings support the present argument that unconscious processes
for adaptively guiding human behavior existed prior to the advent of
consciousness and continue to generate behavioral tendencies today.
Such an idea is not new. Several theorists have suggested that the
conscious mind is not the source or origin of our behavior; rather, impulses
to act are unconsciously activated, and the role of consciousness is as gate-
keeper and sense-maker after the fact (Eagleman, 2004; Gazzaniga, 1985;
James, 1890; Libet, 1986; Wegner, 2002). In this model, conscious pro-
cesses kick in after a behavioral impulse has occurred in the brain—that is,
the impulse is first generated unconsciously, and then consciousness claims
(and experiences) it as its own. Take, for example, Libet’s (1986) time of
intention studies. In the Libet paradigm, participants are free to make a
button-pressing or other response whenever they choose (simulating the
state of free will) and are asked only to note when (by referring to a sweep-
hand clock in front of them) they had made the intention to respond. At
the same time, the experimenter was measuring brain activation potentials
associated with the instigation of action. The finding, surprising at the time,
was that the action potential consistently came hundreds of milliseconds
before the participant’s conscious awareness of intending to make the
response. Consistent with the present argument that our action impulses
are generated for us through unconscious mechanisms, the impulses, even
in this paradigm emphasizing free will or action, came prior to the person’s
conscious awareness of having made them.
Eagleman (2004) hypothesized from the Libet experiments that
people do not generate intentions consciously but infer them based on
perceptions of their own behavior. Recently, Banks and Isham (2009)
tested this hypothesis in a new paradigm in which deceptive feedback was
given to participants regarding the timing of their behavioral responses.
When this feedback was slightly delayed (using an auditory beep repre-
senting when the participant began his or her behavioral response),
participants’ estimates of when they initiated their action were also
delayed. The estimate was thus an inference based on the perceived time
of response initiation, and therefore participants could be ‘‘fooled’’ by
manipulations of that perception. These authors concluded from their
experiments that ‘‘. . . the intuitive model of volition is overly simplistic—
it assumes a causal model by which an intention is consciously generated
and is the immediate cause of an action. Our results imply that the intuitive
model has it backwards; generation of responses is largely unconscious, and
we infer the moment of decision from the perceived moment of action’’ (our
italics).
Wegner and colleagues (2002; Wegner & Wheatley, 1999) had
already made this point in a different way, by showing how people’s
feeling of having willed a given event to occur is an attribution or inference
(not a direct readout of actual causation) based on key variables such as
the timing of their thoughts of performing the action relative to the action
occurring, through a novel paradigm in which these variables could be
manipulated without the person’s knowledge. The right combination of
these variables produced feelings in the participants of having willed the
event when in fact it had not been under their control.
Thus, many have proposed that consciousness is not the source of
impulses to act. Yet to date there has been little said about where, exactly,
those impulses do come from. Given the evidence reviewed above, how-
ever, there now seems to be an answer to this question. There are a
multitude of behavioral impulses generated at any given time from our
unconsciously operating motives, preferences and their associated
approach and avoidance behavioral tendencies, emotional reactions and
their associated motivations, and mimicry and other behavior priming
effects triggered by the mere perception of others’ behavior. There cer-
tainly seems to be no shortage of suggestions from our unconscious as to
what to do in any given situation.
All of these separate types of input have their own direct connections
to behavioral mechanisms, and they operate in parallel (see Bargh, 1997).
And so there also must have been some mechanism to integrate the
multiple parallel unconscious inputs into serial responses because this is
a problem we must have faced as a species in the distant past before the
development of consciousness.
How Do Multiple, Parallel Unconscious Behavioral Guidance

Systems Interact?
How do these parallel influences get channeled back through the bottle-
neck of having to act in real time? To presage the argument which follows,
language is behavior (Clark, 1996): it is for doing things, for accom-
plishing goals with others (as opposed to by oneself), and so we might
want to look to language production models—how ideas and thoughts are
expressed—for insights as to how (other forms of) behavior
are expressed. These linguistic production models have already tackled
the problem of how parallel processes (thoughts, ideas, intentions) are
transformed into serial speech acts (Dell, Burger, & Svec, 1997). It may be
that serial, real-time behavior in general follows the same principles, and
even uses the same or a similar mechanism.
In other words, if language is action, then how language is produced
may well be how behavior in general is produced. The relevant point
about language production is that we do not usually formulate sentences
in our mind prior to saying them. Rather, we may have some vague ideas
about what we want to say, the ideas or points we want to make, and these
guide what we say, but the ways in which we express these intentions, out
loud, with words, are opaque to us. That is, language is complex yet
spontaneous, in most cases: it has a goal, but no preset concrete plan,
yet it is nevertheless produced automatically and unconsciously (Bock &
Levelt, 1994; Levelt, 1989).
Language Probably Made Use of Pre-existing Behavioral

Structures
An important clue in this regard is how quickly and suddenly, in terms of

evolutionary time scales, we acquired language (Pinker, 1994). It was not
gradual and did not depend on our brains growing to a certain critical size,
for Neanderthal brains, which did not have language capabilities, were if
anything larger than our contemporary brains (Calvin, 1989). Language is
a complex skill that could not possibly be acquired so quickly in young
children through normal, slow, trial-and-error learning processes
(Chomsky, 1959); it develops spontaneously in nearly all children world-
wide regardless of their levels of intelligence. The language production
mechanism ‘‘takes a web of thoughts and outputs them in form of words
spoken one at a time, without a conscious effort or formal instruction, and
is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic’’ (Pinker, 1994, pp.
101–102). In other words, it faced the same problem now posed to us in
the case of behavior more generally: how to take multiple parallel beha-
vioral suggestions and map them onto a world in which we can only do
one thing at a time (see Bargh, 1997).
The speed with which we acquired language as a species, and the
exponential advances in culture and knowledge we’ve made since then
(see Diamond, 1992), suggests that as an ability it piggybacked or was
‘‘scaffolded’’ (Williams, Huang, & Bargh, in press) onto an existing struc-
ture, or what Dennett (1995) called a ‘‘good trick’’—a solution that
nature has come up with for a problem that tends to be used over and
over again in nature (for example, eyes evolved independently in over 30
different species). The evolutionary theorist Calvin (1989) argued simi-
larly that innate language abilities themselves are quite recent, even
rushed, additions to our genetic makeup and as such are very likely
exaptations of previously existing sequencing circuitry in the brain.
What this means for present purposes is that not only did sophisticated,
unconscious modules evolve that give us today the building blocks of
adaptive motives, preferences, and behavioral impulses, all operating
unconsciously, but there also evolved (indeed, had to evolve) a
mechanism to integrate or interface these separate, parallel inputs into
serial behavioral and judgmental responses. (Indeed, it has been proposed
that the primary function of consciousness is to integrate the outputs of
different action-oriented systems that are vying for skeletal muscle con-
trol [Morsella, 2005]). Our ability to take a vague thought and have it
come out of our mouths in a complete coherent sentence, the production
of which happens unconsciously, is a paramount example of this.
MIRACLES OR MECHANISMS? SOME CONCLUDING

THOUGHTS
We began this chapter by pointing out how unconscious processes are no

longer considered as miraculous as they once were. But how conscious
human cognition produces behavior might well seem miraculous as well
given the standard cognitive science approach to mental concepts—what
Clark (1996, p. 55) termed the ‘‘product tradition,’’ or the intellectual
aspect of concepts. In the product tradition, concepts are studied for what
they contain, how they define the external objects, events, and qualities
they stand for. Concepts, in this research tradition, are not for doing, they
are for knowing. By contrast, the action tradition (typified by the work of
Vygotsky and Goffman) has been concerned with how people use con-
cepts (and language) to get things done in their daily lives; that is, the
experiential aspect of concepts. The traditional cognitive science approach
to concepts is all about their intellectual function and does not attempt to
connect concepts to action—for example, in one recent magnus opus on
concepts (Murphy, 2002), there is no mention of the development or
nature of behavioral or action concepts—the term action does not even
appear in the index. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003, p. 269) noted,
‘‘cognitive psychology is dominated by the old idea that concepts are all
literal and disembodied.’’
In contrast, for those who have been focusing on action itself for many
years, and especially those of us who have focused on automatic or
unconscious uses of activated concepts, they are all about the mediation
of higher mental processes, including complex action and behavior in
social settings. As showcased in the Oxford Handbook of Human Action
(Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009), these are exciting times as science
is beginning to unravel the basic nuts and bolts of human action, the
majority of which are unconscious. People are generally unaware of the
sources of their behavioral impulses and of how their actions are success-
fully guided to completion; it is difficult indeed then to understand how
conscious awareness can effectively guide action without massive support
by unconscious guidance systems.
In the rest of the natural sciences, especially evolutionary biology and
neuroscience, complex and highly intelligent design in living things is not
assumed to be driven by conscious, intentional processes on the part of
the plant or animal (e.g., Dawkins, 1976). As Dennett (1991, p. 251) put
it, ‘‘in biology, we have learned to resist the temptation to explain design
in organisms by positing a single great Intelligence that does all the
work . . . We must build up the same resistance to the temptation to
explain action as arising from the imperatives of an internal action-orderer
who does too much of the work.’’ Especially, we would add, when there
now exist such promising leads to how human behavior is generated and
guided within the domain of unconscious processes.
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7 Does Emotion Cause Behavior (Apart
from Making People Do Stupid,
Destructive Things)?
Roy F. Baumeister
C. Nathan DeWall
Kathleen D. Vohs
Jessica L. Alquist
Psychology is often described as the scientific study of behavior. In

practice it studies many other things, including thoughts and feelings,
and indeed by some measures the direct observation of behavior has been
disappearing from many laboratories and journals (Baumeister, Vohs, &
Funder, 2007; see Chapter 2). Yet in principle, the study of thoughts,
feelings, and other phenomena is justified partly on the basis that under-
standing these things will help illuminate behavior.
This chapter focuses on the relationship between emotion and beha-
vior. It will present two main theories about that relationship. They are not
equals. One is widely accepted, is simple, and enjoys the benefits of tradi-
tion and parsimony. The other has none of those advantages. By rights,
therefore, the one deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt, and the
second theory should only be considered seriously if the first one is found to
be seriously inadequate to account for the evidence. But I shall propose that
it has finally been revealed by the gradual accumulation of evidence to be
seriously inadequate if not downright wrong. Hence a new theory is
needed—preferably one that can fit the observed facts, especially including
the ones that have gradually discredited the standard theory.
In a nutshell, the two theories are as follows. The first holds that
emotion directly causes behavior. Actions can be explained by citing the
emotional state that gave rise to them: Someone did something ‘‘because
he was angry’’ or ‘‘because she was happy’’ or ‘‘because he was afraid’’ or

‘‘because she was sad.’’ The evolved purpose and function of emotions
was to cause people to act in particular ways.
The second theory, in contrast, holds that conscious emotion tends to
come after behavior and operates as a kind of inner feedback system that
prompts the person to reflect on the act and its consequences, and
possibly learn lessons that could be useful on future occasions. People
may choose their actions based on the emotional outcomes they antici-
pate. The influence of emotion on behavior is thus indirect.
The title of this book, ‘‘Then a Miracle Occurs,’’ suggests a mystery if
not a miracle intervening between antecedent situational causes and
behavioral response. The two theories construe this miracle quite differ-
ently. In the first theory, the emotional state is itself sufficient, or almost,
to account for the miracle. Once the emotion arises, the behavior cannot
be far behind, because the impetus for the behavior is contained in the
emotion. The blackboard in the cartoon could be simplified. The second
theory, on the other hand, may require considerably more writing and
perhaps a larger blackboard. Emotion is stimulated by actions and out-
comes, and emotion in turn stimulates cognitive processing, reappraisal,
and simulations, all of which then may interact with the banks of pro-
grams that the person’s executive function consults in order to know how
to act on nonspecific future occasions. Consideration of current beha-
vioral options may be influenced by mental simulations of action and their
anticipated emotional consequences.
The chapter will be organized as follows. Before we lay out the two
theories, it is necessary to grapple with what is meant by emotion. This is
more than a definitional conundrum or chore, because there are at least
two major classes of phenomena that are understood as emotion, and they
are quite different in feeling, function, process—and relation to behavior.
After this we shall outline the first theory, along with the arguments
against it. Then the second theory and some of the relevant evidence.
This chapter presents an overview of the main ideas. Readers inter-
ested in a more detailed explication, as well as a fuller presentation of
relevant evidence, should consult the article by some of us published in
2007 (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007).
TWO TYPES OF EMOTION PROCESSES
Many phenomena are grouped under the rubric of emotion: vague

moods, intense feeling states, twinges of liking and disliking, and more.
They do not necessarily all have the same processes, nor the same effects
on behavior.
DOES EMOTION CAUSE BEHAVIOR? 121
For present purposes, it is useful to distinguish two broad categories.

Our main focus will be on what ordinary people (i.e., not specialists in the
psychology of emotion) call emotions. These are conscious feeling states.
A person normally has one at a time. Often it is characterized by a bodily
response, such as physiological arousal. These states are highly differen-
tiated, and people have a wealth of terms they use to denote many
different emotions: fear, anger, jealousy, joy, surprise, anger, disgust,
and many more. These states tend to be slow to arise and slow to dissipate.
Such states must be distinguished from automatic affects, which are
possibly far more common than full-blown emotions but are perhaps less
frequently recognized. These can be subtle, possibly not even conscious.
They are activated quickly and may come (and go) within a fraction of a
second. Because these are linked by simple associations, and a person may
have multiple associations, a person may have several affective reactions
at the same time. They may not be as differentiated as conscious emo-
tions, and in some views affects are simply on a single dimension of
positive to negative, although some recent work has begun to suggest
that even nonconscious affective reactions fall into various distinct cate-
gories that are demonstrably different (Ruys & Stapel, 2008).
Because conscious emotion typically involves a bodily response,
including arousal that can take some time to develop, it may not be effective
for providing input into behavioral decisions in a fast-changing or newly
emerging situation. In contrast, the automatic affects arise within millise-
conds and thus are plenty fast enough to contribute even to quick reactions.
One more difference has to do with the amount of cognition involved. In
the 1980s, psychologists debated whether emotion depended on cognition
(cf. Lazarus, 1982; Zajonc, 1980). The two sides in the debate seemed to
refer to different kinds of phenomena. Zajonc’s (1980) title ‘‘Preferences
need no inferences’’ argued that emotion was independent of cognition, but
he was referring chiefly to the automatic, affective reactions. One often has a
reaction of liking or disliking almost as soon as one recognizes what the object
is. Therefore, very little cognitive processing was required beyond knowing
what something is and perhaps having one simple association. In contrast,
full-blown emotional reactions tend to be saturated with cognitions,
insofar as they depend on interpreting and appraising the eliciting events.
THE STANDARD THEORY: EMOTION DIRECTLY CAUSES

BEHAVIOR
The idea that emotion directly causes behavior, and moreover that that is
the proper function of emotion, is well established in psychology. It has
been asserted in various forms by many theorists (see Baumeister, Vohs,
DeWall, & Zhang, 2007, for partial review). It makes intuitive sense—
which may be part of the problem because the intuitive appeal has likely
prevented the idea from being scrutinized critically.
The frequently used example is that fear causes one to run away. This
view resonates with personal experience. It also lends itself to convincing
evolutionary arguments. Thus, an ancestor who lacked a fear response
might approach a dangerous snake or tiger and be killed, thereby failing
to pass along his or her genes. In contrast, fearful ancestors would flee those
predators and as a result would survive long enough to reproduce. Hence
today’s human population would be descended from ancestors who had
emotions such as fear.
Other examples can be suggested (though many theorists seem not to
bother). Anger might cause animals and ancestors to fight, thereby pro-
tecting or gaining resources and status. Frustration might stimulate
aggressive goal pursuit. Love might cause people to engage in sex, thereby
increasing reproduction.
Direct causation implies that the behavior, or at least the beginnings
of it, is somehow contained in the emotional state. For example, anger
might inherently contain incipient motor movements associated with
struggling and fighting. Alternatively, the emotional reaction in the
brain might directly activate other brain regions to initiate activity.
Given the widespread popularity of the direct causation theory, as
well as its plausibility and parsimony, there would not seem to be much
justification for developing a rival theory unless the direct causation
theory were shown to fail in some way. Therefore, we turn next to
delineate some of the problems with that theory.
CRITIQUE OF DIRECT CAUSATION THEORY
The direct causation theory suffers from multiple problems, both in

terms of its internal plausibility and in terms of its fit to the available
evidence. We ourselves embraced that theory for some time uncritically,
and so we share the understanding of that theory’s appeal.
The example that fear causes fleeing and thereby promotes survival
has both theoretical and intuitive appeal, and so we think many
researchers have considered the matter settled. However, that example
has gradually come to seem a poor one, for multiple reasons. First, fear
makes a poor prototype of emotion, and there is some evidence that it is
not a typical emotion (Robinson, 1998). Second, many anecdotal reports
of intensely frightening experiences contain the curious theme that the
person remained calm and clear headed during the crisis but then was
overcome with intense emotion when it was over (e.g., Gollwitzer,
personal communication, 2003). Meanwhile, many animals do not flee

when afraid but instead freeze. Humans, remarkably, sometimes do the
opposite, such as when soldiers walk toward people who are shooting at
them (e.g., Holmes, 1985).
Third, the delayed response reported anecdotally is, on reflection,
possibly inevitable, and the delay reduces the plausibility of the standard
evolutionary argument. When an animal encounters a predator,
immediate flight is often vital for survival. Immediate flight does not
allow time for the body to develop an arousal reaction that then serves
as input into the behavioral decision process. Anyone who jogs in the
woods has likely noticed that wildlife take flight as soon as the jogger’s
approach is perceived, rather than after the perception of the jogger has
stimulated a slowly building bodily reaction of arousal that is then per-
ceived by the brain and taken as impetus to skedaddle.
Another theoretical objection to the direct causation view is that, in
human life at least, there are many, many behaviors but not nearly as many
emotions. Emotions are thus not specific enough to give rise to specific
behaviors, as the direct causation theory requires. This point has been
articulated eloquently by Schwarz and Clore (2007): Based on knowing
that people are afraid, it is impossible to predict their precise behaviors,
which might well include starting to run but might instead involve things as
different as listening to weather reports or selling their stocks.
Schwarz and Clore did not elaborate on this point, but it is a devastating
objection to the direct causation theory. Specific behaviors depend on the
situation and its structure of opportunities, constraints, and affordances (see
chapters by Reis, by Holmes & Cavallo, and by Baron in this volume).
Behavior cannot be driven by the emotion alone because behavioral choices
can only be negotiated between the person and the situation. At most,
emotions might activate broad tendencies toward approach and avoidance,
but what specific form the behaviors take would depend on the situation.
Perhaps some readers may find these theoretical objections uncon-
vincing. Let us turn, then, to consider actual evidence. Surely, one thinks
(as we did), there must be plenty of evidence that emotional states cause
behavior? An excellent and highly influential review by Loewenstein,
Weber, Hsee, and Welch (2001) claimed that ‘‘the idea that emotions
exert a direct and powerful influence on behavior receives ample support
in the psychological literature’’ (2001, p. 272). Yet it is revealing that
when Loewenstein et al. (2001) made that statement, they did not
provide a long list of references, or indeed any. They simply assumed it
was true. Such an assumption seems reasonable (and indeed the editors
and reviewers of that paper, which was published in a highly rigorous
journal, seemed to find the statement so uncontroversial that they did not
challenge the authors to provide specific findings).
What happens when one looks for findings? Let us return to Schwarz
and Clore, who were tasked with providing a review of the effects of
emotion. Their 1996 review was 27 pages long, but it devoted barely half
a page to the effects of emotion on behavior. The rest was spent on how
emotion affects cognition. They were aware of how scant this seemed and
said, with a slightly apologetic tone, that the imbalance in their coverage
reflected the state of the empirical literature. A decade later, they revis-
ited the same literature, and this time they were more confident than
apologetic: ‘‘The effects of emotion . . . are more mental than behavioral’’
(2007, p. 402). Our search led to similar conclusions. Emotion seems to
have its impact on cognition, not often directly on behavior.
To be sure, we did find some studies in which emotion as independent
variable (or mediating variable) produced significant effects on behavior
as dependent variable. But a close look at these raised further problems
for the direct causation view.
One problem is that even when emotion does affect behavior, the
results are often less than optimal and sometimes downright counter-
productive. Among the general population, emotion has the stereotype of
causing people to do irrational, sometimes destructive and even self-
destructive things. This stereotype is not undeserved. A review of psy-
chology’s research on self-defeating behavior found that emotional dis-
tress was often implicated (Baumeister & Scher, 1988). That is, when
people are in intense emotional states, they sometimes do things that
bring suffering, harm, or failure to themselves. There are various pro-
cesses by which this occurs. For example, when people are upset, they
take foolish risks, often selecting a course of action that offers a small
chance of a very good payoff but carries a substantial probability of
producing a bad outcome, as opposed to playing it safe as people in
neutral emotional states tend to do (Leith & Baumeister, 1996).
The links between emotion and self-defeating behavior explain the
second part of the title of this chapter. Emotion apparently does make
people do stupid, destructive things, at least sometimes.
Why are the irrational, destructive effects of emotion a problem for
the direct causation theory? At first blush, one might look upon such
findings as supporting the direct causation theory: It seems that emotion
does cause behavior, after all. But evolution would not likely build the
psyche with mechanisms that cause it to harm itself. Self-harm is mala-
daptive. If emotion directly caused such behavior, then natural selection
would have favored ancestors who had fewer and weaker emotions, and
so emotion might gradually have been phased out of the human psyche.
To put this argument more precisely: The observations about self-
defeating behavior could support the idea that emotion does sometimes
cause behavior, but they contradict the idea that that is its main function.
Self-defeating behaviors are almost by definition an unwanted side effect

of processes that serve other, adaptive functions. If emotions do cause
behavior in the form of self-defeating behavior, that indicates that their
main function lies elsewhere.
A recent meta-analytic investigation by DeWall, Baumeister, and
Bushman (2008) involved a systematic and detailed search for direct causa-
tion of behavior by emotion. The search was narrowly focused on articles in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is generally acknowl-
edged to be the most prestigious and influential journal devoted to those
two fields (i.e., personality and social psychology). It compiled tests for
mediation by emotion. That is, it surveyed studies examining the effects of
various situational factors (as independent variables) on behaviors and/or
judgments (the dependent variables), and that included measures of emo-
tion as possible mediators. To illustrate, Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, &
Stucke (2001) showed that randomly assigned experiences of social rejec-
tion and exclusion caused increases in subsequent aggressive behavior, and
they reported mediation analyses to test the theory that rejection would
cause emotional distress, which in turn would cause increases in aggression.
Thus, the direct cause of aggression would be the emotional distress.
Over 4,000 articles in the journal were consulted. These included
nearly 400 tests for mediation by emotion. Over half of these looked for
effects on behaviors. Of them, only 17% were significant at the .05 level
(which means that random variation would produce such results about
5% of the time). The remaining studies examined effects on judgments,
and the results were no better: Only 18% reached significance.
This result is shocking. Space in that journal is highly competitive,
and by consensus only the best, most important results have a chance of
being published there. Despite these high standards, the journal appears
to report a great many null results—specifically, results testing hypoth-
eses that the direct cause of behavior would be emotion. Apparently,
authors, reviewers, and/or editors have believed that it is vital to test for
mediation by emotion, as if that were the most likely explanation that
needed to be ruled out before any other explanation could be asserted.
Thus, there were indeed some findings indicating that emotion did
lead directly to behavior. But not very many, and certainly not nearly as
many as somebody (again, one cannot know whether authors, editors, or
reviewers thought those tests needed to be done) expected.
Let us turn now to consider those few cases in which emotion does
apparently cause behavior. Do these indicate that emotion at least some-
times directly causes behavior? On close inspection, some of these turn
out to be misleading as well.
The inherent ambiguity in studying the effects of emotion, or at least
negative emotions, was articulated in the 1980s by Isen (1984, 1987). She
pointed out that when emotional distress leads to a behavioral response,

there are almost always at least two possible explanations. One is direct
causation: The emotion makes the person act in a certain way. The other
is mood regulation. A person who is upset may act in a particular way in
the hope or expectation that the behavior will produce a change, pre-
sumably an improvement, in the emotional state. For example, if severe
disappointment leads to an increase in the consumption of alcoholic
beverages, it may signify that distress makes people thirsty for intoxi-
cants—or it could mean that disappointed people choose to drink because
they think that intoxication will make them feel better.
It is quite difficult to tease those two explanations apart, which led
Isen to recommend that researchers study positive emotions instead.
However, one ingenious procedure for separating those two explanations
was devised by Manucia, Baumann, and Cialdini (1984). They dubbed it
the ‘‘mood-freezing pill,’’ which is to say a pill that supposedly will cause a
person’s emotional state to remain the same for an hour or two regardless
of what else might happen. Of course there is no such pill, but it is
possible to make naı̈ve research participants believe that one exists and
to give them a placebo with that cover story.
Manucia et al. (1984) sought to explain one well-documented effect of
emotion on behavior, namely that sadness leads to an increase in helping.
They induced sadness in many participants and by random assignment
administered the mood-freezing pill manipulation to half of them. If sad-
ness directly causes helping, then the mood-freezing pill should make no
difference: Sadness would still cause helping regardless of whether one’s
mood is frozen or changeable. But they found that the mood-freezing pill
eliminated the effect of sadness on helping. The implication is that sad
people help others because they believe that helping will cheer them up.
The mood-freezing pill means that one cannot be cheered up whether one
helps or not, and under those circumstances, helping disappeared.
The finding is important because it undermines some of the
remaining evidence that emotion directly causes behavior. Sadness had
been shown to lead to helping. But the findings of Manucia et al. (1984)
indicated that sadness does not directly cause helping. Rather, sadness
makes people look for some opportunity to escape from sadness, and they
strategically decide to do good deeds in order to achieve this goal. The
operative relevant effect of emotion is that emotion is the goal and the
outcome of the behavior, not its direct cause.
Researchers have begun to apply the mood-freezing manipulations in
other settings. One of the best replicated effects of emotion on behavior in
all the social sciences is that anger leads to aggression. Although the fact is
not widely remarked, in practice aggression researchers have found it
nearly impossible to get laboratory participants to behave aggressively
unless they are provoked and angered in some way. Hence all the thou-
sands of studies of the causes of aggression are in fact demonstrations of
what variables increase or decrease the basic effect of angry provocation on
aggression. To be sure, purists have pointed out that anger is neither
necessary nor sufficient for aggression and that much anger does not lead
to aggression (Averill, 1982). (The last observation is actually relevant
here, for it suggests that anger does not directly or inevitably cause aggres-
sion; but one might retort that perhaps anger naturally causes aggression,
but sometimes people manage to self-regulate and override the aggressive
impulse, thereby thwarting the natural tendency for anger to cause aggres-
sion. See Baumeister, 1997.)
Yet when Bushman, Baumeister, and Phillips (2001) administered the
mood-freezing pill manipulation to several samples of research partici-
pants, the time-honored effect of anger on aggression disappeared. Thus,
anger does not directly cause aggression. Rather, angry people only aggress
when they believe they can change their emotional state. The implication is
that angry aggression is a strategic effort to improve one’s mood.
Other standard findings have likewise withered under mood-freeze
manipulations. Sadness and emotional upset lead to increased eating of
sweets and junk food—but only because people think the tasty and
unhealthy treats will make them feel better (Tice, Bratslavsky, &
Baumeister, 2001). Likewise, emotional distress undermines prudent
delaying of gratification, causing people to choose immediate rewards
instead of larger, delayed ones—but not if their moods are frozen. The
impact of distress on delay of gratification is in fact a strategic effort to
improve one’s mood (Tice et al., 2001). Sadness leads to procrastination,
but only if people can procrastinate with pleasant, entertaining tasks that
promise to cheer them up, and (again) only if their moods are believed to
be changeable (Tice et al., 2001).
Thus, of the cases in which emotion does seem to cause behavior,
further study with appropriate control groups again disconfirms the
direct causation theory. What looks at first glance like emotion causing
behavior is in fact behavior pursuing emotional outcomes. This brings us
to the second, feedback theory, which proposes precisely that: Emotion
functions as the outcome of behavior.
EMOTION AS FEEDBACK
Thus far we have surveyed multiple reasons to reject the standard theory
that the proper or primary function of emotion is for the direct causation
of behavior. The theory had serious inadequacies on conceptual grounds
and also has failed to find much empirical support. What ostensible
support there was turned out on closer inspection to suggest, instead, that
emotion is the goal rather than the driver of behavior. In this section we
will build on that insight to flesh out the theory of emotion as a feedback
system.
The core idea is that full-fledged, conscious emotion serves mainly to
provide feedback after behavior, by stimulating the person to reflect on
recent actions and their consequences and possibly to learn lessons for the
future. This approach deals effectively with several of the observations
that plagued the direct causation theory. The lack of specificity is not a
problem because emotion serves to stimulate cognitive processing about
what has already happened, and so the behavior is already existent. The
slow-arising nature of emotion is not a problem because there is no urgent
rush to make decisions, only an open-ended opportunity to think about
what happened and what might have happened. The fact that emotion
sometimes directly leads to self-defeating behaviors is not a problem
because that involved the direct effects of emotion on current choices,
and emotion is not supposed to facilitate current choices, only retroactive
reflection.
We reported Schwarz and Clore’s (2007) observation that the
research literature has shown the effects of emotion to be much more
centered on cognition than on behavior. This fits the feedback theory,
which holds that emotion is for stimulating learning (thus cognition).
In all this, our emphasis has been on the full-blown, conscious emo-
tional states rather than on automatic affect. Automatic affect may be
part of the story, however. The full-blown emotional states may create
affective memories and associations that can be useful in the future.
Return for a moment to the suggestion that the full-blown conscious
emotion of fear may often arise only after the crisis or emergency has
passed because it is too slow to drive behavior during a fast-occurring
occasion of danger. One might well wonder, what use would there be in
being afraid after the danger has passed? But the strong wash of fear may
leave strong associations to the circumstances that contained the danger.
The next time one approaches or notices signs of similar circumstances,
those associations may produce automatic affective twinges of fear that
can help steer the person to take preventive action. Full-blown fear is not
needed on that later occasion, just the automatic affective reminder.
Feedback may come as a surprise at first, but over time people
develop rather elaborate and thorough knowledge of what kinds of
actions in various situations bring what emotional outcomes. They can
thus learn to anticipate how they will feel if they do this or that. Crucially,
we think these anticipated emotions can help guide behavioral choices. In
that sense, we have suggested behavior comes to pursue emotion, rather
than emotion directly causing behavior.
The idea that behavior pursues emotion can account for the mood-
freezing findings. People come to know, for example, that helping will
make them feel good, and so when they are sad and an opportunity arises
to help someone, they help, and as a result they feel better. Researchers
can thus show that sad moods lead to increased helping, and some may be
misled into thinking that sadness somehow directly causes helping. The
truth, however, as revealed by the mood-freezing studies by Manucia
et al. (1984), is that the crucial factor is people’s knowledge of their
emotional lives and their anticipation of what actions will make them
feel certain ways. They choose their actions strategically to produce the
emotional outcomes they desire.
We have noted that the favorite example of theorists advocating the
direct causation theory involved fear causing someone to flee. Guilt is a
good example to illustrate the feedback theory. Guilt does not directly
cause any behavior, although it has been shown to lead people to do various
things that may reduce their guilt, such as apologizing, making amends,
promising to refrain from repeating the transgression, and doing various
good deeds (for review, see Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994).
The ordinary sequence involving guilt goes something like this. The
person performs some misdeed, possibly for selfish reasons or in many
cases simply because the person fails to realize the adverse effects of the
action on others. Afterward, the person feels guilty, especially insofar as
the unhappy effects of the action become apparent. Guilt stimulates the
person to reflect on the misdeed, including replaying the episode mentally
multiple times, and in particular imagining counterfactual scenarios by
which other possible actions would have produced better, less harmful
outcomes (and hence no guilt). By virtue of these ruminations and reflec-
tions, the person learns some lesson about how to avoid a repeat of this
unhappy scenario. At some point in the future, a similar situation arises,
and a recognition of the similarity produces associations that bring auto-
matic affect, including twinges of guilt that help the person realize that to
act in the same way as before will bring guilt again. Anticipating that
possible and unwelcome feeling, the person selects a course of action that
will bring a better result (including no guilt).
Evidence supports this scenario. A pair of studies by Baumeister,
Stillwell, and Heatherton (1995) compared accounts of transgressions
that produced guilt with transgressions that did not. Although the two
sets were similar in many respects including type and apparent severity of
outcome, the ones involving guilt were more likely than the others to
include reference to learning lessons and changing behavior subsequently.
These findings suggest that guilt does indeed function to make people
reflect on what they did wrong, extract a relevant lesson or moral for the
future, and change their behavior on subsequent occasions.
EVIDENCE: EMOTION AND LEARNING
This section will cover some of the evidence that makes the feedback
theory plausible. In view of the fact that this chapter is intended as an
introductory overview, it cannot provide a full treatment of such evi-
dence, and interested readers are referred to the more thorough presenta-
tion by Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang (2007).
We have already mentioned the fact that research has been much
more successful and prolific at demonstrating effects of emotion on
cognition than on behavior, and this fact is quite congenial to the idea
that emotion is for stimulating learning. Some of the particular facts
about the effects of emotion on cognition lend further credence to the
idea that emotion promotes learning. Emotion appears to strengthen the
memory traces that are formed, such that information with emotional
impact is remembered better than other information. There is abundant
evidence for this so-called emotional modulation of memory (for reviews,
see McGaugh, 2000, 2002). Also, emotional states seem to focus people’s
attention better, so that they zero in on the most relevant aspects of an
event and thus learn the crucial lesson better (as compared to learning
that occurs in the absence of emotion).
One of the most important mental processes for social learning is
counterfactual thinking. This appears to be rather distinctively human,
although it is difficult to know for certain what can occur in the minds of
various animals. Still, humans seem especially likely to replay events
mentally while altering various aspects or steps in the unfolding sequence.
Counterfactual thinking has the potential power to multiply the learning
benefits of an event many times over. Even just replaying an event
repeatedly exactly as it happened could improve learning, insofar as
each replay creates a new memory trace and thus possibly strengthens
the total impact on memory. But counterfactual replays allow the person,
in effect, to experience a full range of the behavioral contingencies,
imagining at least every possible action and what outcome it might have
produced. For the highly complex events that occur in human social life,
counterfactual replaying can help the person work through all the pos-
sible aspects of a situation and the various possible courses of action, and
thus can ideally produce useful learning well suited to the unique
demands of human society.
Emotion contributes to counterfactual thinking in multiple, impor-
tant ways. First and foremost, emotion, especially aversive emotion,
appears to be a powerful stimulus to engage in counterfactual thinking.
Roese’s (1997) authoritative review of counterfactual thinking concluded
that negative emotional states were a, if not the, ‘‘chief determinant’’ of
such thought. Thus, one vital function and consequence of unpleasant
emotional states is to make people reflect back on what they did, on what
went wrong, and on how things might have gone differently.
The link between emotion and habit is also instructive here. The link
is strikingly negative. Wood, Quinn, and Kashy (2002) have shown that
when people perform habitual actions, they tend to experience little or no
emotion, as compared to when people perform activities that are not
habitual. By definition, habits are behaviors that are very well learned (see
chapter by Verplanken, this volume). The implication is that people feel
emotions when they are learning patterns of behavior, but when the
learning is done, the emotion is gone.
The link between emotion and learning could also have implications
for how people judge and infer learning. If emotion is generally useful for
stimulating learning, then people might infer from emotion that they
learned something. One of us first began to suspect this when watching
game shows and hearing the characters say how much they had learned. In
this particular case, the possible lessons (which were never spelled out by
the contestant) seemed unpromising. He said the experience had taught
him a lot about himself. Perhaps he had learned that he (the eponymous
bachelor in a show about choosing a romantic partner) enjoyed riding
around in limousines, drinking champagne, and having a dozen beautiful
women competing for his affections. Big insight! But no doubt he had had
quite a set of unusual emotions during this experience, and perhaps these
emotions create the illusion of learning.
To study the illusions of learning, Baumeister, Alquist, and Tice
(2008, unpublished) have conducted an initial study. Participants first
read a biographical article about George Bernard Shaw, ostensibly for a
study of reading comprehension. Then they performed an emotion induc-
tion exercise (presented as a writing exercise) in which they vividly
imagined an episode that would produce a strong emotion. After this,
they were asked to rate how much they had learned from the article. Then
they completed a mood measure. Participants who had been induced into
highly aroused emotional states reported feeling that they learned more
than participants in other conditions. In further studies we are obtaining
objective measures of learning to compare with the self-reports of
learning.
Thus, a dose of emotion, in this case generated by a completely
irrelevant task, increased the extent to which people believed they had
learned much from reading an article. Such a pattern suggests that emo-
tion operates as a subtle cue to the self about learning. Emotion may
generate an illusion of learning, which could be highly relevant to many
phenomena, including teacher ratings in undergraduate courses. Many
instructors have suspected that students will give higher marks to a
lecture that uses vivid stories and exciting audiovisual materials to
dramatize a pedestrian point than they will to a relatively dry lecture that
is packed with information. Administrative pressure on college faculty to
obtain high course ratings may gradually shift the educational process
away from providing information and toward stimulating emotional
responses in students.
ANTICIPATED EMOTION
An important aspect of the feedback theory of emotion is that people learn

to anticipate emotional outcomes and adjust their behavior accordingly. In a
sense, this could render most human behavior a form of emotion regulation,
insofar as people decide what to do as a strategic effort to pursue and achieve
emotional outcomes. We proposed guilt as a useful prototype of how the
feedback theory could operate, and guilt can guide behavior effectively even
if people quite rarely actually feel guilty, insofar as they anticipate what
actions would bring guilt and change their behaviors so as to avoid that
unpleasant outcome. Indeed, one of the surprising findings to emerge from
the research literature on guilt is that guilt and guilt proneness tend to
produce more positive and beneficial outcomes than negative ones, despite
the prevailing cultural stereotype of guilt as a useless, self-destructive emo-
tion (for reviews, see Baumeister et al., 1994; Tangney & Dearing, 2002).
Several important sets of findings about anticipated emotion lend
credence to the feedback theory. One is the evidence that anticipated
regret, in particular, can influence decisions, mostly in beneficial, advan-
tageous ways. That is, people make choices based on anticipating what
will bring them regret, and the impact of this anticipation on the choices
is generally to steer people to choose in ways that will benefit them (see
Mellers, Schwartz, & Ritov, 1999).
More generally, anticipated emotion tends to shift decisions toward
two types of choices, which sometimes will be less than the optimal one
but which, by and large, seem likely to be beneficial. The first is that
anticipated emotion (including anticipated regret) makes people facing
uncertain circumstances choose relatively safe options (e.g., Richard, De
Vries, & van der Pligt, 1998; Simonson, 1992; Tetlock & Boettger, 1994).
These can be shown to depart sometimes from what would be economic-
ally optimal and might produce the best outcome, such as pursuing a risky
but promising opportunity. Still, playing it safe cannot really be charac-
terized as a foolish, irrational, or self-defeating strategy in general, and so
to the extent that anticipated emotion makes people play it safe, they are
probably doing reasonably well.
Second, anticipated regret or other anticipated emotion can shift people
toward favoring the status quo, as long as it is acceptable (Anderson, 2003;
Kruger, Wirtz, & Miller, 2005). That is, they do not choose options that
produce change but rather stick with known options as long as those are
acceptable. Again, this can sometimes mean forgoing a promising opportu-
nity, but again staying with an acceptable status quo is a form of playing it
safe and thus seems likely to avoid the worst possible outcomes.
Research on affective forecasting is also relevant. Affective fore-
casting refers to people’s predictions of how they will feel under future
or hypothetical circumstances. The standard finding from that literature,
which has been replicated many times, is that people tend to predict that
their emotional reactions to future events will be relatively long lasting,
whereas when such events occur the emotions tend to dissipate. In a
sense, people overpredict their emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003).
The overprediction of emotion indicates the importance of anticipa-
tion. If people underpredicted their emotional reactions, it would be very
difficult to suggest that anticipation of emotion is important because
anticipation would tend to be small and trivial whereas the experienced
reality would be relatively large and impactful. In a sense, then, the
biggest emotion is the expected one, rather than the actually experienced
one. Emotion looms larger and thus presumably has more impact in
anticipation than in actual experience.
And sure enough, anticipated emotion does seem to have more
impact on behavior than actually experienced emotion. Earlier we cited
the compilation of JPSP mediation analyses indicating that experienced
emotion only significantly mediated behavior about 17% of the time
(DeWall, Baumeister, & Bushman, 2008). In that same investigation, in
contrast, anticipated emotion significantly mediated emotion 90% of the
time! The success rate of anticipated emotion was thus even greater than
the shocking failure rate of experienced emotion.
To be sure, there were far fewer studies testing for mediation by
anticipated emotion than by experienced emotion, and the 90% figure
is thus a less reliable estimate than the other numbers. Still, the contrast
between the two is so striking that it strongly recommends that future
researchers pay more attention to the relevance of anticipated emotion in
mediating behavior. For present purposes, at any rate, it certainly under-
scores the importance of anticipated emotion specifically, and the feed-
back theory generally, as deserving further, prospective tests.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This chapter presented two theories of emotion. We made no attempt to

present them as equal rivals in a fair fight. One is well established, and
indeed for a long time we subscribed to it ourselves. Yet the accumulating
evidence of its inadequacy compelled us to search for an alternative,

which led to the development of the second theory. We reviewed the
research literature with an open-minded search for evidence that would
enable us to develop a new and correct theory, but our presentation here
has been organized so as to present the best research evidence and most
compelling reasons that we think the second theory is better. As we said, a
more nuanced and thorough presentation is available in Baumeister,
Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007).
The first theory was that emotion directly causes behavior and that,
moreover, direct causation of behavior is a principal function of emotion.
We have believed this in the past and we think many researchers continue
to believe it. There are many signs of the widespread belief in this theory,
including the fact that so many JPSP authors almost routinely report
analyses for mediation of behavior by currently felt emotion.
We presented conceptual and empirical reasons to reject that theory.
Considered carefully, it has serious gaps, including the inability of the
relatively few emotions to directly cause the many different behaviors
that people show. The majority of findings reported in the field’s premier
journal fail to show that emotion is the (mediating) direct cause of
behavior. And even when emotion does seem to cause behavior, replica-
tion with appropriate control conditions often shows that the behavioral
effects depend on strategic attempts to regulate emotion.
Instead, we think the available evidence suggests that emotion oper-
ates as a feedback system. After behavior has occurred, emotion drives
appraisal and reflection, often including counterfactual replays, which
can promote learning. Moreover, people learn to anticipate what actions
will lead to what emotions, and they adjust their behaviors accordingly.
Behavior pursues emotion.
The feedback theory does in a way provide a positive answer to our
titular question of whether emotion causes behavior. Emotion does have
a causal influence on behavior, just not in the direct and immediate
manner widely assumed. Rather, emotion stimulates learning from beha-
vior, and this learning can have beneficial effects on behavior in the
undefined future. The effect of emotion on behavior is thus indirect.
Nonetheless, it can be powerfully beneficial.
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8 How to Maximize Implementation
Intention Effects
Peter M. Gollwitzer
Frank Wieber
Andrea L. Myers
Sean M. McCrea
How do people turn their intentions into behavior? This miracle is

clarified in the present chapter by analyzing how if-then planning (i.e.,
implementation intentions; Gollwitzer, 1993, 1999) supports the trans-
lation of intentions into actions. In addition, we will examine how if-then
plans should be worded best to maximize their effectiveness.
Subsequently, we will address the importance of the if-then format
when wording implementation intentions by inspecting the extension of
such plans into an if-then-why format, and by inspecting upward counter-
factuals as an if-then format directed at past goal pursuits.
IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS AND DIFFICULT GOAL

STRIVING
Whereas goal intentions merely specify desired end states (‘‘I want to
achieve goal X!’’), implementation intentions in the format ‘‘If situation Y
arises, then I will initiate behavior Z!’’ additionally specify when, where,
and how a person intends to pursue a goal. Implementation intentions
delegate control over the initiation of the intended goal-directed behavior
to a specified opportunity by creating a strong link between a situational
cue and a goal-directed response. For example, a person who has the goal
to become physically fit can form the implementation intention ‘‘If
I come home after work on Friday, then I will immediately go for a 30 min
run!’’ Implementation intentions have been found to be beneficial with
respect to four major obstacles that have to be overcome to bridge the gap
from initial goal setting and meeting that goal (i.e., not getting started to
act on one’s goals, getting derailed during goal striving, not disengaging
when courses of action are failing, and overextending oneself during goal
striving). Recent meta-analyses revealed a medium-to-large effect size
(Cohen, 1992) of implementation intentions on goal achievement on
top of the effects of mere goal intentions (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006;
Webb & Sheeran, 2008).
Knowing this, can implementation intentions clarify the miraculous
translation of intentions (goals) into behavior, even in situations that do
not seem responsive to self-regulation? Indeed, implementation inten-
tions have been found to help overcome several problems people might
encounter during goal realization. Implementation intentions are capable
of prompting particular motivational states or efforts. For example, in a
study on solving analytic reasoning tasks, they improved participants’
performance by strengthening self-efficacy (Bayer & Gollwitzer, 2007).
Secondly, implementation intentions helped people protect themselves
from inner states that interrupt goal striving. In a study by Achtziger,
Gollwitzer, and Sheeran (2008), implementation intentions were shown
to help tennis players regulate disruptive cognitive, motivational, physio-
logical, and emotional states in order to better compete against an oppo-
nent. Implementation intentions also support peoples’ attainment of
prosocial goals in cognitively demanding situations. For example, when
people find themselves in loss-framed negotiations, implementation
intentions can support the use of more integrative negotiation strategies
(Trötschel & Gollwitzer, 2007). Moreover, implementation intentions
can be used to replace bad behavioral habits that threaten the realization
of attractive goals (e.g., wasteful recycling behaviors for people with the
goal to protect the environment) with more appropriate behaviors (e.g.,
recycling; Holland, Aarts, & Langendam, 2006).
Lastly, there are three ways in which unwanted automatic processes
that cause problems for goal realization can be controlled by using imple-
mentation intentions. First, these plans help suppress unwanted cognitive
responses. For example, they can reduce automatic stereotyping by auto-
mating counterstereotypic thoughts (Stewart & Payne, 2008). Second,
they can improve emotion regulation in aversive and fear-triggering situa-
tions. For example, implementation intentions were shown to reduce
arousal when fear or disgust-triggering stimuli were presented
(Schweiger Gallo, Keil, McCulloch, Rockstroh, & Gollwitzer, 2009).
That this strategic emotion regulation by if-then plans operates in an
automatic fashion was supported by evidence from early electrocortical
HOW TO MAXIMIZE IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION EFFECTS 139
correlates. Finally, implementation intentions can enhance behavioral

inhibition. For example, inhibition performance in a neuropsychological
task (i.e., stop task) was improved among children with ADHD by using
implementation intentions (Gawrilow & Gollwitzer, 2008).
HOW ARE IMPLEMENTATION INTENTIONS WORDED MOST

EFFECTIVELY?
The implementation intentions used in the reported experimental

research were always found to be highly effective; other research has
demonstrated that this effectiveness does not produce costs in terms of
rigidity (Gollwitzer, Parks-Stamm, Jaudas, & Sheeran, 2008) or ego
depletion (Bayer & Gollwitzer, 2009; Webb & Sheeran, 2003). Does
this connote that implementation intentions are always effective in
terms of meeting one’s goals? Several limits of the effectiveness of imple-
mentation intentions have been found in terms of goal attributes, self-
beliefs, and personality factors. First, a weak commitment to the
respective goal intention limits the effectiveness of implementation
intentions (Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005). This goal-dependence
of implementation intentions may generally protect people from rigidly
enacting plans directed at goals that are obsolete or not vitally important.
However, it may also occasionally counter people’s intentions. For
example, when a person has the goal of becoming physically fit but has
rather weak goal commitment, even implementation intentions will not
work wonders. Second, low self-efficacy beliefs concerning the respective
goal intention have been demonstrated to limit the effectiveness of
implementation intentions (Wieber, Odenthal, & Gollwitzer, in press).
Although low self-efficacy beliefs may often represent a correct indica-
tion that a goal cannot be successfully realized, they may also limit
people’s goal striving. For instance, when a person unwarrantedly
doubts his or her ability to run for 30 minutes, a relevant implementation
intention may not support goal attainment. Moreover, individuals who
preferably evaluate their behavior according to others’ standards (i.e.,
people who score high on socially prescribed perfectionism; Powers,
Koestner, & Topciu, 2005) do not seem to benefit from forming imple-
mentation intentions. Possibly, the personality attribute of socially pre-
scribed perfectionism hinders full commitment to if-then plans, thus
reducing the effectiveness of these plans. Finally, the personality trait of
conscientiousness has been found to limit implementation intentions’
effectiveness (Webb, Christian, & Armitage, 2007). Whereas
persons with a low level of conscientiousness immensely benefited from
forming implementation intentions, those with a high level of

conscientiousness did not; the superior performance of high conscien-
tious individuals left little room for improvement (ceiling effect; Webb
et al., 2007).
In addition to the limitations caused by these moderators of imple-
mentation intention effects, attributes of implementation intentions
themselves (namely the wording and format of these plans) might limit
their effects on goal-striving behavior. In everyday life, people may not
succeed in forming effective implementation intentions either because
the if-component or the then-component is specified suboptimally or
because the format of the implementation intention as a whole is inap-
propriate. The remainder of this chapter will inspect these potential
limits and how implementation intentions should be formed to maximize
goal attainment.
How to Word the If-Component of Implementation Intentions?
According to the theory of intentional action control (Gollwitzer, 1993;

1999), planning a situation in which one intends to act on a goal via the
formation of an implementation intention leads to heightened cognitive
accessibility of the mental representation of the situation. This accessi-
bility persists over time until the plan is enacted or the goal is achieved or
dismissed. The heightened activation of the critical situation helps people
to easily recall the specified situation (Achtziger, Bayer, & Gollwitzer,
2009, Study 1) and leads to swift attention when the situation arises
(Aarts, Dijksterhuis, & Midden, 1999; Achtziger et al., 2009, Study 2).
For example, Webb and Sheeran (2004, Study 2 and 3) observed that
implementation intentions improve cue detection (fewer misses and
more hits) without stimulating erroneous responses to similar cues
(false alarms and correct rejections). However, because attentional and
cognitive resources are limited (Wegner & Bargh, 1998), the increased
readiness to attend to an implementation intention’s critical cues should
reduce attention to other cues (Broadbent, 1958; Kahneman, 1973).
Given this consequence, can specifying situational cues in the implemen-
tation intention’s if-component both support and hamper goal attain-
ment? Three studies tested this hypothesis.
Cue Detection During Goal Pursuit. In a Story Listening Study

(Parks-Stamm, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2007), participants had to iden-
tify five-letter words in a recorded story that was quickly read aloud.
Before listening to the story, all participants familiarized themselves with
the two most common five-letter words ‘‘Laura’’ and ‘‘mouse.’’ In the
implementation intention condition, they additionally included these

words in if-then plans (‘‘If I hear the word ‘Laura,’ then I will immediately
press the L; if I hear the word ‘mouse,’ then I will immediately press
the M!’’). The facilitated detection of the critical five-letter words would
indicate a shift in attention to the implementation intention cues.
As attentional resources are limited, it was predicted that implementation
intentions would increase performance in response to the two critical
five-letter words but impair performance in response to the remaining
five-letter words. In line with these assumptions, implementation inten-
tions increased performance in response to the critical words but at the
cost of reduced performance in response to the remaining five-letter
words. Thus, preferring one situational means by including it in an imple-
mentation intention may compromise the use of alternative means to
the goal.
Attention Attraction During the Pursuit of Unrelated Goals. Will critical

cues even attract attention when they occur during the pursuit of an
unrelated goal? To test this, Wieber and Sassenberg (2006) conducted
two attention disruption studies. In both studies, the disruption of atten-
tion through implementation intentions was investigated by presenting
critical situations (stimuli that were part of an implementation intention
for an unrelated task) as task-irrelevant distractors along with
task-relevant stimuli in a so-called flanker paradigm (Eriksen & Eriksen,
1974). In the first study, half of the participants formed implementation
intentions (‘‘If I see [the word] ‘flower’, then I will press the left control
key!’’ and ‘‘If I see ‘insect’, then I will press the right control key!’’). The
other half of the participants formed control intentions (‘‘I will respond to
‘flower’ as quickly and accurately as possible!’’, ‘‘I will respond to ‘insect’
as quickly and accurately as possible!’’, ‘‘I will press the left control key as
quickly and accurately as possible!’’, and ‘‘I will press the right control key
as quickly and accurately as possible!’’). These intentions were directed at
the goal of performing well on a subsequent categorization task (a flower
vs. insect implicit association task). Next, participants worked on the
ostensibly unrelated flanker task, in which they had to make word
versus nonword decisions while both neutral and critical stimuli were
presented as task-irrelevant distractors. The results indicated that the
presence of a critical stimulus slowed down participants’ responses; how-
ever, this effect only occurred when they had formed implementation
intentions, not when they had formed control intentions. In the second
study, these findings were replicated using a flanker task with vowel
versus consonant classifications.
Taken together, these findings imply that critical situations will not
escape a person’s attention when they have been included in an
implementation intention, regardless of whether the implementation

intention is goal relevant or not. This may, however, compromise atten-
tion to other goal-relevant cues, as attention is a limited resource. Thus,
one has to be careful which critical situational cues one includes in the if-
component of an implementation intention.
One way to prevent missing alternative opportunities would be to
formulate rather inclusive situational descriptions in the if-component of
one’s implementation intentions. For example, to ensure one uses an
unexpected good opportunity on Tuesday to go for a run, one may
simply specify ‘‘Once a week after work’’ in the if-component instead of
‘‘If I arrive at home after work on Fridays at 5pm’’. However, a potential
problem of using more inclusive formulation is that the critical situation
may not acquire a sufficiently high state of activation and thus not allow
effortless identification of the situation once it occurs. Consequently,
more inclusively formulated if-components might not ensure that a
good opportunity to act is captured, especially when an immediate recog-
nition of the opportunity is required.
Inclusive If-Components. The effectiveness of inclusive, as compared to

specific, formulations of the if-component was tested in a Car Race Study
(Wieber, Odenthal, & Gollwitzer, 2009, Study 1). The participants’ task
was to drive as fast as possible on a computer-based car race simulation
without damaging the car in potentially dangerous situations, such as on
slippery racetracks, around competing cars, and in sharp curves. After
completing two laps around the racetrack, participants worked on a so-
called intention training, which served to manipulate their intentions.
All participants formed the goal intention ‘‘I will complete the race track
as fast and damage-free as possible!’’ Participants in the specific imple-
mentation intention condition additionally added the implementation
intention ‘‘If I see a black and white curve road sign, then I will immedi-
ately adapt my speed!’’ Participants in the inclusive implementation
intention condition added the implementation intention ‘‘If I enter a
dangerous situation, then I will immediately adapt my speed!’’ After
this intention manipulation, they drove two more laps around the race-
track. Although the inclusive implementation intention included various
dangerous situations, it was predicted that specific if-component formu-
lations would lead to an increased performance compared to an unspecific
if-component, as the classification of a dangerous situation requires the
effortful assessment of the actual situation and might not be completed
swiftly enough to prevent car damage.
The results indeed supported the assumptions. Whereas the driving
performance of those participants who used abstract formulations of the
if-component did not differentiate from the mere goal intention
condition, participants with specific implementation intentions caused

less damage to their cars without slowing down than those in the other
two conditions. Thus, forming more inclusive if-components does not
seem to represent a viable alternative to forming specific ones, at least
when the swift recognition of the situation is crucial for successful action
initiation.
Summary. When identifying an alternative opportunity to act is crucial,

forming specific and exclusive if-components might not be ideal, as they
cannot ensure the detection of all crucial opportunities. However, when
representative situations can be identified that account for a large propor-
tion of the situations appropriate to pursue an intended goal (e.g., sharp
curves in the reported study), the benefits of forming specific implementa-
tion intentions should generally outweigh the costs of overlooking alter-
native opportunities. This should especially be true when one is prone to
miss the critical opportunity, either because it is difficult to detect (e.g., it
presents itself only shortly and thus requires immediate recognition) or
because one is exhausted and therefore lacks focused attention.
How to Word the Then-Component of an Implementation

Intention?
In addition to the heightened accessibility of the if-component, a second

process underlies the implementation intention effect on goal attainment.
Implementation intentions create a strong link between the if-component
and the then-component (Gollwitzer, 1993; 1999). As a result, the
initiation of the action specified in the then-component in response to
the critical situation acquires features of automaticity. Responses are
initiated immediately (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997), efficiently
(Brandstätter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer, 2001), and without the need of
a further conscious intent (Bayer, Achtziger, Gollwitzer, & Moskowitz,
2009).
How can this process best be utilized when wording the then-
component of an implementation intention? Specifying concrete
behaviors seems appropriate whenever a whole array of specific opera-
tionalizations is possible. Planning in advance which type of goal-directed
behavior is to be executed prevents disruptive deliberation once the
critical situation is encountered (with respect to choosing one behavior
over another). For example, when one holds the goal of exercising reg-
ularly and decides in advance to go to the gym, then one inevitably
prevents the deliberation of whether to go to the gym, run, or possibly
question the plan of exercising once the situation arises. In this way,
implementation intentions help one to act in line with one’s valued long-
term goals, even when the necessary means require overcoming short-
term costs like initial reluctance to engage in unpleasant behavior (i.e.,
when one runs only for the result of being physically fit but does not like
running per se).
To reduce disruptive deliberation during goal striving above and
beyond the mere initiation of a behavior, simple behaviors should be
included into the then-component that are easily carried out (without
requiring reflective thought). Such simple behaviors can refer to single
operations (e.g., pressing a keyboard button) or several operations that
have been learned well (scripts like going to the gym, flossing teeth; see
Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). But in addition to simple behaviors, peo-
ple’s goal striving at times requires the initiation and enactment of com-
plex actions, like applying abstract rules or enacting a sequence of actions
that are taxing to automate (Hull, 1951). Does specifying
complex behaviors in the then-component of an implementation inten-
tion still support goal attainment? Two recent studies examined this
question.
Switching Task Strategies. In a Water Jar Study (Wieber, Odenthal,

et al., 2009, Study 2), participants had to allocate a predetermined
amount of water from an initial jar (A) to a target jar (E) by using three
jars (B, C, and D) with specified volumes (Luchins, 1942). Five trials
required the application of one specific strategy (A C + 2 D or
A B + 2 C) and five trials required the other. All participants learned
about these strategies in the task instructions. Before the task began,
participants were put in one of four intention conditions. In one condi-
tion, participants formed mere goal intentions ‘‘I want to find the right
solution as fast as possible!’’ whereas participants in the remaining con-
ditions added an implementation intention comprising the strategies
explicated in the instructions in an if-then format. In the remaining
three conditions, implementation intentions specified either one of the
two pouring strategies in the then-component (‘‘If I start working on a
new task, then I will first try to pour water from jar A to jar C!’’; ‘‘If I start
working on a new task, then I will first try to pour water from jar A to jar
B!’’) or both strategies combined (‘‘If I start working on a new task, then I
will first try to pour water from jar A to jar C or from jar A to jar B!’’). The
results revealed that implementation intentions specifying both pouring
strategies improved participants’ performance more than those specifying
one pouring strategy or those who merely formed goal intentions.
Action Sequences. A further aspect of complex behaviors relates to the

enactment of action sequences. Do implementation intentions only
automate the initiation of the first action of a sequence or do they

additionally automate the initiation of subsequent actions in the sequence
(like scripts)? To test if the enactment of an action sequence addressed in
the then-component of an implementation intention acquires features of
automaticity, an Action Sequence Study was conducted (Wieber,
Odenthal, et al., 2009, Study 3). Participants worked on a computer-
based lexical decision task that required pressing the left control key in
response to nonwords and the right control key in response to words. As
an exception, the word ‘‘jug’’ required pressing the ‘‘l’’ key (with the right
hand), followed by the mouse button (with the left hand) and the right
floor-based button (with their right foot). In addition, all participants
were assigned goal intentions (‘‘I want to perform as well as possible on
the task!’’) and either added implementation intentions or not. Half of the
implementation intentions only spelled out the initial action response to
the word ‘‘jug’’ (‘‘If the word ‘jug’ shows up, then I will first press the ‘l’
key!’’), while the other half spelled out all three sequential action
responses in the then-component (‘‘If the word ‘jug’ shows up, then I
will first press the ‘l’ key, followed by the right mouse key, and the right
floor key!’’). As participants had to respond as quickly and correctly as
possible, the immediacy of their reactions indicated the automaticity of
the behavior. As expected, implementation intentions specifying the
initial action response accelerated the initial action response time com-
pared to mere goal intentions, but not those of the second and third
response (i.e., mouse and floor key press). Most importantly, participants
who formed implementation intentions specifying all three behavioral
responses in the then-component reacted faster to the complete action
sequence than those who formed mere goal intentions.
Summary. In addition to simple behaviors, complex behaviors can also

be fruitfully included in the then-component of implementation inten-
tions. People should benefit from this possibility as it allows them to
effectively tackle more complex problems like flexible switching between
task strategies and the enactment of action sequences.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FORMAT OF IMPLEMENTATION

INTENTIONS
So far, we have examined how to best specify the if-component and the
then-component of implementation intentions. But in addition to the
content, the format per se might also contribute to implementation
intentions’ effectiveness. Generally, the if-then format seems to represent
an elementary component of human cognition. If-then conditionals are
integral parts of information processing frameworks that are designed to

model higher-order cognition (e.g., mathematics, language, reasoning,
memory, and problem solving) in psychology, computer science, lan-
guage science, and philosophy. Examples include production system
theories such as cognitive stimulus-response theories (ACT; Anderson,
1983; Anderson et al., 2004), symbolic programming languages (e.g.,
Java, Perl, PHP), scientific speech theories (e.g., König & van der
Auwera, 1988), and philosophical approaches (e.g., Stalnaker, 1968).
To clarify the importance of the if-then format for the effectiveness of
implementation intentions, we now address three emergent questions:
(a) Is the if-then format of implementation intentions necessary?, (b) Is an
if-then-why format even more effective?, and (c) Do if-then conditionals
have to be directed at the future?
Is the If-Then Format Necessary for Strong Implementation

Intention Effects?
If-Then versus When, Where, and How. The contribution of the if-then
format was recently tested in a Fruit and Vegetable Promotion Intervention
Study (Chapman, Armitage, & Norman, 2008). Participants were randomly
assigned to a control condition, a ‘‘global’’ implementation intention condi-
tion (in which participants freely chose how to make their plan) or an if-then
implementation intention (in which participants were additionally required
to plan using the if-then format). One week later, participants filled out a
second questionnaire indicating their fruit and vegetable intake during the
previous week. As a key result, participants in the control condition did not
manage to increase their fruit and vegetable intake, whereas those with
global implementation intentions did, although only when their initial
intake was low. However, with if-then implementation intentions, even
participants with high initial fruit and vegetable intake were able to improve
their goal attainment. Similarly, in a study by Oettingen, Hönig, and
Gollwitzer, 2000 (Study 3), if-then implementation intentions were more
effective than specified goal intentions explicating the when and where of an
intended goal-directed behavior (i.e., doing regular math homework). In
summary, then, implementation planning that uses an if-then format seems
particularly effective.
Is an If-Then-Why Format Even More Effective?
One important prerequisite of implementation intention effects is a

strong commitment to the respective goal intention (see also goal-
dependent automaticity, Gollwitzer & Schaal, 1998; Sheeran et al.,

2005). Implementation intentions per se do not affect the strength of
people’s goal intentions (Webb & Sheeran, 2008, Study 1). Therefore,
one might ask if the if-then format can be expanded to ensure sufficient
motivation. One possible way to achieve this is to remind oneself of the
desired long-term consequences of goal pursuit. This strategy may be
especially helpful when the major problem encountered during goal
striving is to overcome an initial reluctance to act on a goal. For example,
one may seriously aspire to speak Italian as a foreign language to enjoy
vacations in Italy but does not like learning vocabulary or grammar. How
could one remind oneself of the positive consequences of a goal? One
strategy suggested by Freitas, Gollwitzer, and Trope (2004) is to simply
ask oneself why one intends to perform a certain goal-directed action.
Thus, an if-then-why format might be a suitable way to increase people’s
motivation and thereby make implementation intentions particularly
effective. Four studies tested this hypothesis.
If-Then-Why and Assigned Goals. In an Analytical Reasoning Study

(Wieber, Gollwitzer, Gawrilow, Odenthal, & Oettingen, 2009,
Study 1), participants worked on 20 Raven matrices (Raven, 1977,
2000), in which they had to select one of eight possible result patterns
that logically completed a 3 3 matrix pattern. All participants first
learned that double-checking was a useful strategy to improve one’s
performance on the upcoming task. Participants then either formed a
mere goal intention (‘‘I will correctly solve as many trials as possible!’’) or
added an implementation intention to it (‘‘If I have a first idea for the
solution to a trial, then I will double-check it!’’). To vary motivation,
participants either added a reason to their goal or implementation inten-
tion (‘‘because I want to achieve a good performance!’’) or not. The results
revealed that implementation intentions without the motivation inter-
vention as well as goal intentions with the motivation intervention were
effective in improving participants’ performance. However, the combi-
nation of implementation intentions and the motivation intervention did
not result in the expected improvement in participants’ performance;
they did not solve more matrices correctly than did participants in the
goal intention group.
If-Then-Why and Self-Set Goals. To replicate these effects with self-set

goals, a Dieting Behavior Study was conducted, in which participants
formed self-set goal intentions for the highly valued goal of losing weight
(Wieber, Gollwitzer, et al., 2009, Study 2). As a baseline, participants’
weight and body fat were measured in a first session, and they
were required to document their eating habits for 2 weeks. In a
subsequent second session, participants were randomly assigned to one of

four intention conditions. In the goal intention conditions, they either
formed the mere goal intention ‘‘I want to lose weight’’ or additionally
added their three foremost motivations for wanting to lose weight (e.g.,
‘‘I want to lose weight because I want to stay healthy!’’). In both imple-
mentation intention conditions, participants had to write down three
critical situations (e.g., at a party, watching TV) that might jeopardize
their goal, define suitable means of counteracting these critical situations,
and merge them into three implementation intentions (i.e., in the if-then
format). In the implementation intention plus why-component condi-
tion, they furthermore added their three foremost motivations for
wanting to lose weight (e.g., ‘‘If I am sitting in front of the TV, then
I will eat fruit because I want to become more attractive!’’). After four
weeks, participants’ body weight, body fat percentage, and body mass
index (BMI) were again collected. Moreover, the average calorie and fat
content of their weekly meals was computed based on their food diary.
Results replicated the findings from the Analytical Reasoning Study.
Whereas participants who formed goal intentions without motivational
reasons did not manage to change their eating habits (no weight differ-
ence), participants who formed implementation intentions without moti-
vational reasons lost on average more than two pounds. Whereas
supporting goal intentions with motivational reasons produced an
average weight loss of more than two pounds, the implementation inten-
tions plus motivational reasons again did not achieve a significant
weight loss.
Adding a why-component to the if-then plans did not result in
improved performance in either study, but rather offset the previously
observed positive effects for implementation intentions without the why-
component. Conversely, adding a why-component to the goal intention
improved participants’ goal striving in both studies. These findings do not
support the notion of additive effects of thinking of motivational reasons
when forming implementation intentions. A plausible explanation is that
adding the why-reasoning not only focuses people’s attention on the
beneficial long-term goals but also impacts their cognitive orientation
(i.e., mindset) during goal striving. Mindsets are defined as cognitive
orientations that accompany the different action phases proposed by
the mindset theory of action phases (Gollwitzer, 1990). During goal
setting, a deliberative mindset prevails that is characterized by an
increased openness to new information and an impartial and realistic
assessment of this information. This benefits the main task during this
action phase, namely weighing the desirability (i.e., incentives) and fea-
sibility (i.e., expectancies) of one’s wishes in order to commit only to the
realization of the most desirable and feasible ones (e.g., Gollwitzer &
Bayer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Kinney, 1989; Puca & Schmalt, 2001). Goal
striving, in contrast, is accompanied by an implemental mindset that is
characterized by closed-mindedness to new information. This again is
functional because it helps to shield goal striving from interfering or
distracting information (e.g., attention to competing goals, deliberating
pros and cons; Puca & Schmalt, 2001; Taylor & Gollwitzer, 1995). Thus,
within the pursuit of a single goal, goal intentions are best formed against
the backdrop of deliberative mindsets, and implementation intentions are
best formed against the backdrop of implemental mindsets. Asking
‘‘Why?’’ during implementation intention formation might impact one’s
motivation by reminding oneself of the positive consequences of a goal;
however, it might also induce a switch from an implemental to a delib-
erative mindset (Freitas et al., 2004). Wieber, Gollwitzer, et al. (2009)
therefore postulated a matching principle of intention formation and
mindsets: goal intention formation should work best when people are in
a deliberative mindset, whereas implementation intention formation
should work best when people are in an implemental mindset. In other
words, inducing an implemental mindset during goal intention formation
and inducing a deliberative mindset during implementation intention
formation should weaken goal setting and if-then planning, respectively,
and thus impair subsequent goal attainment.
Do We Have to Assume a Matching Principle Between Mindsets

and Intentions?
If-Then-Why and Self-Control. Two studies tested the matching principle

by separately manipulating intention formation and mindset induction.
In the Handgrip Self-Control Study (Wieber, Gollwitzer, et al., 2009,
Study 3), a well-established test of self-control was applied, namely the
handgrip trainer task (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998). The task
requires clutching the handles of a handgrip closed as long possible,
despite the increasing discomfort and taxing physical endurance (i.e.,
required exertion of self-control). All participants learned that the pain
experienced is harmless and can be ignored. As a manipulation of parti-
cipants’ intentions, they either received no training (i.e., no intention) or a
paper-based hand trainer task training including a goal intention (‘‘I will
press the handgrip as long as possible!’’) or a goal intention plus imple-
mentation intention (‘‘If my muscles hurt, then I will ignore the pain!’’).
As a manipulation of participants’ mindsets, they either received no
mindset manipulation or one of two versions of an ostensibly unrelated
paper-based study on ‘‘personal relationships.’’ Participants either
thought about reasons ‘‘why’’ it is important to establish and keep
personal friendships (deliberative mindset) or about ways ‘‘how’’ to

establish and keep personal friendships (implemental mindset; for a
similar manipulation, see Freitas et al., 2004). By asking why versus
how questions four successive times in a sequence (e.g., asking why/
how the answer to the first why/how question is helpful), increasingly
deliberate or implemental thoughts are produced step by step.
Subsequently, they performed the handgrip task.
Results indicated that overall, mindsets alone did not impact
performance, but intentions did. Implementation intentions lead to
better self-control in comparison to goal intentions. Most impor-
tantly, this effect was qualified by mindsets. In line with the
matching hypotheses, being in a deliberative mindset improved the
performance of participants who formed a goal intention compared
to those in an implemental mindset or no mindset. Being in an
implemental mindset, on the other hand, improved the performance
of participants who formed an implementation intention compared
to those who were in a deliberative mindset or the control condition.
In summary, this study provides initial evidence for the postulated
matching principle of intention formation and mindset. As this study
does not allow for the disentangling of motivational (i.e., ego deple-
tion) and cognitive processes (i.e., suboptimal cognitive processing),
another study was conducted.
If-Then-Why and Automaticity. The Dual Task Study (Wieber,

Gollwitzer, et al., 2009, Study 4) sought to replicate the results of the
Handgrip Self-Control Study in a more cognitively demanding speed-
accuracy performance task. It was additionally intended to shed light on
the processes underlying the effects of matching mindset–intention com-
binations with goal attainment. Derived from the theory of intentional
action control (Gollwitzer, 1999) and the mindset theory of action phases
(Gollwitzer, 1990), goal intention–deliberative mindset combinations
were expected to improve goal attainment via resource-demanding delib-
eration processes; conversely, implementation intention-implemental
mindset combinations were expected to improve goal attainment via
automated processes. To test the automaticity of the performance, a
dual-task paradigm was employed in accordance with Brandstätter et al.
(2001, Studies 3 and 4). Participants had to simultaneously work on a
primary tracking task (enclosing a target circle that moved across the
computer screen with a mouse-controlled second circle) and a secondary
go/no-go task (pressing the left mouse button as quickly as possible in
response to numbers [in particular number 3], but not to letters) that
both relied on the same resources (i.e., visual attention and motor
responses). As attentional capacities are limited, an improved
performance on one task is expected to carry features of automaticity only

when the performance on the other task is not compromised.
To manipulate participants’ intention, they formed the goal intention
‘‘I want to react to numbers as quickly as possible’’ and either added an
implementation intention (‘‘And if the number 3 appears, then I will
press the left mouse button particularly fast’’) or a control intention
(‘‘I will particularly memorize the number 3’’). Subsequently, partici-
pants’ deliberative or implemental mindsets were induced using the task
from the previous study (Wieber, Gollwitzer, et al., 2009, Study 3).
Next, participants worked on the dual-task trials with high task com-
plexity (cognitive load), followed by trials with moderate task complexity
(no cognitive load).
The results confirmed the hypotheses. When the primary task was
easy and thus no automaticity was required for responding, participants in
both matching mindset-intention combinations were able to improve
performance on the secondary task (i.e., faster responses to critical cues
on the go/no-go task) without suffering impaired performance on the
primary task (tracking task). Those in the mismatching mindset–intention
combinations were less able to improve their performance on the tasks.
However, when the primary task was difficult and thus automaticity was
required for responding, only those in the implementation intention–
implemental mindset combination condition, and not those in the goal
intention–deliberative mindset condition, were able to improve their
performance on the secondary task without suffering impaired perfor-
mance on the primary task. Those in the mismatching mindset–intention
combinations were again less able to improve their performance on the
tasks. These results suggest that the proposed matching principle
cannot be completely explained by the depletion of self-regulatory
resources, but that the cognitive orientation (mindset) explanation is
also required.
Summary. Taken together, these studies provide evidence for the impor-
tance of the proposed matching principle for successful goal attainment
(Wieber, Gollwitzer, et al., 2009, Studies 1–4) rather than the effective-
ness of an if-then-why format. Compared to mismatching intention–
mindset combinations, matching intention–mindset combinations
improve goal attainment. Thereby, matching mindset–intention combi-
nations impact performance either through effortful processes (goal
intentions with deliberative mindsets) or automatic processes (imple-
mentation intentions with implemental mindsets). Moreover, mis-
matching mindset–intention combinations limit goal striving, no matter
how the mismatching mindsets are induced (i.e., during the pursuit of the
focal goal or of a nonfocal goal). As people commonly pursue multiple
goals, is it important to ensure that intentions and mindsets match during

goal pursuit. Thus, the present findings suggest that instead of using an if-
then-why format during planning, people should either combine tasks
requiring concrete implemental actions or abstract deliberating. For
example, sorting one’s e-mail and organizing a conference trip in one
work session should prevent cognitive processing mismatches, thereby
resulting in enhanced performance.
Thinking About the Future Versus Thinking About the Past:

Implementation Intentions and Upward Counterfactual
Thoughts
Deliberating over whether and why to pursue a goal during the formation
of an implementation intention undermines its effectiveness. But what if
such considerations are completed prior to the formation of the plan, thus
avoiding the problem of mismatching mindsets? In this case, motivation
could be increased and the strength of subsequently formed implementa-
tion intentions enhanced. Such deliberation could be accomplished
through upward counterfactual thinking. Upward counterfactuals are if-
then statements indicating how a previous outcome could have been
better. For example, a student might consider the thought ‘‘If only I had
attended every lecture, then I would not have failed the exam!’’
Numerous studies have found that considering upward counterfactuals
improves subsequent performance (Markman, McMullen, & Elizaga,
2008; Roese, 1994).
Several explanations for this effect have been postulated. Roese and
colleagues (Epstude & Roese, 2008; Roese, 1994; Smallman & Roese,
2007) have suggested that counterfactual thoughts could affect perfor-
mance by identifying useful strategies and supporting the formation of
plans. For example, one could convert the counterfactual ‘‘If only I had
attended every lecture, then I would not have failed the exam’’ into the
implementation intention ‘‘Whenever there is a lecture, then I will
attend.’’ There is evidence from several studies that considering upward
counterfactuals increases the accessibility of corresponding behavioral
intentions (Smallman & Roese, 2007). However, the intentions (i.e.,
‘‘I will do X’’) examined in these studies did not take the if-then format
of an implementation intention. Thus, it is unclear whether counter-
factual thinking is sufficient to support the spontaneous formation of
specific if-then plans. Past work (Roese, 1994) examining whether indi-
viduals enact the behavioral strategy contained in the counterfactual has
produced mixed results. Moreover, these studies were correlational in
nature, raising the possibility that the counterfactuals generated by parti-

cipants merely reflected previously held behavioral intentions.
A second manner in which counterfactual thoughts might improve
performance is by mobilizing effort (Epstude & Roese, 2008; Markman &
McMullen, 2003). Upward counterfactual thinking involves evaluating
the outcome relative to a higher standard. These comparisons are likely to
cause disappointment with one’s goal progress. Theories of effort mobi-
lization (Brehm & Self, 1989; Carver & Scheier, 1999) suggest that such
perceived goal discrepancies will increase effort and persistence.
Consistent with this account, performance benefits of upward counter-
factual thinking appear to be limited to situations in which the individual
is dissatisfied with the outcome (Markman et al., 2008). Conversely,
upward counterfactual thoughts reduce persistence and effort when
they serve to excuse failure (McCrea, 2008).
Myers and McCrea (2009) conducted several studies directly com-
paring the effects of upward counterfactuals and implementation inten-
tions that shared a behavioral strategy. If upward counterfactuals improve
performance by supporting the spontaneous generation of specific if-then
plans, then forming an implementation intention should have no addi-
tional benefits. However, based on the notion that counterfactuals mobi-
lize effort, Myers and McCrea (2009) predicted that these thoughts
would increase persistence and performance, particularly when accom-
panied by more negative affect. Furthermore, these effects should be
independent of the behavior specified in the thought. In contrast, imple-
mentation intentions should lead to enactment of the specified behavior,
independent of affect. Thus, both types of thoughts were expected to
additively improve goal attainment.
Assigned Counterfactuals and Implementation Intentions. In an initial

study, participants were told they would be taking part in a study on
decision making under time pressure. Participants were required to
quickly select from a pair of pictures the one with the higher point
value (adapted from Jaudas & Gollwitzer, 2004). Correct identifications
were rewarded with the point value of the picture, minus a time penalty.
Importantly, a picture of a water lily was of the highest point value, such
that responding quickly on trials in which this picture appeared was a
particularly effective strategy. Participants were provided with feedback
after the first task and then assigned to one of two counterfactual condi-
tions; those in the counterfactual group were asked to consider the
thought ‘‘If I had pressed the corresponding key every time I saw the
water lily, then I would have done better,’’ whereas those in the control
condition were asked to consider the statement ‘‘I would like to know
how my friends would do on the test.’’ Participants were then randomly
assigned to one of two implementation intention conditions; those in the

implementation intention group were asked to consider the plan ‘‘Every
time I see the water lily, then I will immediately press the corresponding
key,’’ whereas those in the control condition proceeded to the next phase
of the experiment. All participants completed a measure of mood and a
second block of the task. Performance on this block relative to the initial
block was examined. Participants in the counterfactual condition who
also reported less positive affect responded faster on the critical (water
lily) trials, compared to those in the control condition or who reported
more positive affect. Furthermore, they made fewer errors on noncritical
trials and improved their overall score more than did the latter groups.
As expected, the beneficial effects of upward counterfactual thinking
generalized to aspects of performance not mentioned by the thought
and appeared dependent upon experiencing dissatisfaction with one’s
performance. Both of these findings are more consistent with increased
effort mobilization rather than with the spontaneous formation of a plan.
Indeed, implementation intentions were found to improve reaction times
on the critical trials, suggesting that these plans had an additional (albeit
specific) effect on performance. In other words, those who listed both the
counterfactual thought and the implementation intention improved
the most.
Self-Set Counterfactuals and Implementation Intentions. In a second

study, effort mobilization in the form of task persistence was directly
examined. Participants were given two word completion tasks. Two
insolvable items were included in each task, such that the amount of
time spent working on the task constituted a true measure of persis-
tence. As in the previous study, participants were assigned to coun-
terfactual and no counterfactual conditions and implementation
intention and no implementation intention conditions prior to com-
pleting a second block of items. However, participants freely gener-
ated these statements, rather than being provided the statements by
the experimenter. Consistent with the initial study, individuals per-
sisted more in the counterfactual condition than in the control con-
dition, but only when they reported experiencing more negative
affect. Moreover, analyses classifying the statements generated by
participants revealed that this effect was not limited to those coun-
terfactuals concerning time spent on the task. Those assigned to form
an implementation intention also persisted longer compared to those
in a control condition, but this effect was not moderated by mood.
Furthermore, classifying the implementation intentions generated by
participants revealed that only those statements related to time spent
on the task increased persistence.
In summary, implementation intentions and counterfactual thoughts

had additive effects on goal striving, with counterfactuals increasing effort
mobilization and implementation intentions increasing the enactment of
specified behaviors. In addition to explaining how counterfactual
thoughts improve performance, these findings imply that implementa-
tion intentions can be made more powerful by first considering how a past
performance could have been better. Because counterfactuals increase
effort mobilization, subsequently formed implementation intentions
become more effective, making it more likely that individuals will over-
come the intention–behavior gap. It appears to be critical that counter-
factuals are made prior to the formation of implementation intentions,
thereby avoiding the problem of mismatching mindsets presented by the
if-then-why phasing. Finally, these results once again demonstrate the
unique qualities of the if-then format of implementation intentions.
Although both counterfactuals and implementation intentions share a
conditional phrasing, only implementation intentions commit one to act
in a specified manner in a future situation. As a result, counterfactuals do
not appear to be as effective in promoting the enactment of specific goal-
directed behaviors.
Conclusion and Outlook
In the past, implementation intentions (if-then plans) have been observed

to effectively reduce the gap between intentions and behavior. But how
should one formulate one’s implementation plans to maximize their
effectiveness for goal attainment? In the present chapter, we first raised
the question of how the components of implementation intentions
should be worded. Regarding the if-component, including a specific
situational cue in the if-component ensures that the critical cue does
not escape one’s attention. However, as this attention attraction effect
compromises the attention given to alternative cues, people have to
carefully choose what kind of situational cue they want to specify in an
implementation intention. Specifying more inclusive (abstract) situa-
tional cues in the if-component does not qualify as a solution, as such
integrative specifications no longer ensure that swift attraction of atten-
tion occurs. Thus, the if-component of implementation intentions should
be worded by using specific but ‘‘representative’’ good opportunities to
act towards the goal. Regarding the then-component, specifying simple
behaviors (such as pressing a response key) as well as complex behaviors
(such as switching between different action strategies or enacting a
sequence of behaviors) seems to be effective in promoting goal
attainment. Thus, people can also utilize implementation intentions to

facilitate the initiation of complex behaviors.
The format of implementation intentions was subsequently exam-
ined. As the if-then format was more effective than merely specifying
when, where, and how one intends to pursue a goal, people should apply
the if-then format when forming implementation intentions. Conversely,
an if-then-why format does not promote goal striving via implementation
intentions. Instead, a matching principle between mindsets and intentions
was extracted. This finding implies that people should not engage in too
much deliberating during the formation or the enactment of an imple-
mentation intention, as an implemental, but not a deliberative, mindset
supports goal striving with implementation intentions. Finally, applying
the if-then format when thinking about past goal pursuits via upward
counterfactual thoughts (i.e., conditional if-then statements indicating
how a previous outcome could have been better) represents a powerful
method to strengthen the motivational basis for subsequently formed
implementation intentions
Which venues should future research address in order to expand
knowledge on maximizing the effectiveness of implementation inten-
tion? A closer look should be given to the situational context in which
goal striving with implementation intentions takes place. People pursue
their goals in a vast array of different situations, in which intrapersonal
differences may be relevant to the maximizing of implementation inten-
tion effects. People may only experience problems during goal striving in
some domains but not others. For example, a person may encounter
problems exercising self-control in the domain of professional
goals (e.g., writing an essay) but may have no problem exerting self-
control within the domain of a health goals (e.g., resisting tempting
chocolates). Thus, making people sensitive to the domains in which
they experience difficulty with self-control should allow them to tailor
their implementation intentions to the action control problems they most
likely encounter.
Finally, future research should systematically develop procedures to
ensure that the moderators of implementation intentions do not limit
their effects on goal attainment. For instance, only when people are
strongly committed to a goal intention can implementation intention
effects be expected (e.g., Sheeran et al., 2005). To guarantee such
strong goal commitment, people can either form upward counterfactuals
or complement the use of implementation intentions with the mental
contrasting technique (i.e., contrasting desired future states with the
present negative reality to identify potential obstacles and ensure strong
motivation; Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009). Interventions may
also target a second prerequisite for strong implementation intention
effects, namely a strong commitment to the plan. A promising route to

ensure strong commitment to the plan is to form implementation inten-
tions collaboratively (Prestwich et al., 2005). The collaborative discussion
should increase the quality of the plans as more options are considered
and inappropriate specifications of situations and behaviors can be pre-
vented. Moreover, the public commitment of an implementation inten-
tion should increase people’s commitment to the plan. Finally, low
efficacy should also be considered as a limit of implementation intention
effects. One way to strengthen people’s self-efficacy beliefs is to form
implementation intentions that include motivational self-speech (e.g., to
improve performance on an analytical reasoning test, ‘‘When I start a new
problem, then I will tell myself: I can solve it!’’; Bayer &
Gollwitzer, 2007). In other words, people may use implementation
intentions to favorably modulate the moderators of implementation
intention effects.
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9 Distinguishing Between Prediction and
Influence: Multiple Processes Underlying
Attitude-Behavior Consistency
Leandre R. Fabrigar
Duane T. Wegener
Tara K. MacDonald
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR

CONSISTENCY RESEARCH
Attitude researchers have long recognized the importance of under-

standing the relation between attitudes and behavior. Indeed, since the
earliest days of attitude research, theorists have speculated about how
attitudes might relate to behavior. Early conceptual perspectives gener-
ally assumed a close association between the constructs. For example, in
his highly influential chapter on attitude theory, Gordon Allport (1935)
defined attitudes as ‘‘mental and neural states of readiness’’ that exert
‘‘directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s responses to all
objects and situations with which it is related.’’ Other early definitions
also conceptualized attitudes in terms of their presumed directive impact
on behavior (e.g., F. H. Allport, 1924; Bogardus, 1931; Chave, 1928;
Doob, 1947; Droba, 1933).
Moreover, early theories of attitude structure also explicitly postu-
lated that behavior was closely intertwined with attitudes. Most notably,
the well-known tripartite theory of attitudes went so far as to postulate
that behavior was actually a component of attitudes (Insko & Schopler,
1967; Katz & Stotland, 1959; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960). Likewise,
early indirect measures of attitudes such as the information error tech-
nique and the lost-letter technique relied on directly observable behaviors
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN PREDICTION AND INFLUENCE 163
that were presumed to be manifestations of attitudes (Hammond, 1948;

Millgram, Mann, & Harter, 1965). Thus, these measurement approaches
implicitly assumed that attitudes were strongly related to behavior.
The Attitude-Behavior Problem
Unfortunately, by the late 1960s, data had begun to accumulate challen-

ging the assumption of a strong association between attitudes and beha-
vior (e.g., see Deutscher, 1966; 1973). Perhaps the most influential
expression of what came to be known as the ‘‘attitude-behavior problem’’
was published by Wicker (1969). Wicker reviewed the results of 46
studies in which attitude-behavior associations were reported. He con-
cluded that correlations between attitudes and behavior were rarely larger
than .30 and on average only about .15. Wicker thus argued that there was
little evidence that attitudes were strong predictors of behavior.
Rather than discouraging the study of attitudes, the ultimate result of
Wicker’s (1969) challenge and other criticisms of the utility of the attitude
construct (e.g., Wicker, 1971) was to encourage researchers to think in more
sophisticated ways regarding why correlations between attitudes and beha-
vior often seemed to fall short of what might be expected. The answer to
this question took a number of forms. Some researchers disputed the
accuracy of the conclusion itself (e.g., see Kelman, 1974; Schuman &
Johnson, 1976), noting that inclusion of a broader set of studies than those
examined in Wicker (1969) suggested that attitude-behavior correlations
were often substantially larger than he concluded. Another response to this
challenge was to note methodological limitations in past studies (e.g., mis-
matches in specificity of attitudes and behavior, error of measurement) that
might account for weak correlations (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977; Fishbein
& Ajzen, 1974; Kelman, 1974; Schuman & Johnson, 1976; Weigel &
Newman, 1976). Still other research, most notably under the auspices of
the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Azjen,
1975) and later the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), suggested
that attitudes might sometimes fail to translate into behavior when
attitudes were in conflict with other important determinants of behavior.
Although each of these responses generated significant interest, per-
haps the response that produced the largest and most varied body of
research and that continues to receive significant attention is the work on
moderators of attitude-behavior associations. Researchers in this literature
have postulated that the strength of association between an attitude and
behavior might be regulated by a host of dispositional characteristics of the
person, situational factors present at the time the attitude is assessed and/or
the behavior is performed, and properties of the attitude or behavior
themselves. For example, attitude-behavior associations have been found to

be stronger when situational factors that are likely to make people internally
focused are present at the time of behavior (Gibbons, 1978; Snyder &
Swann, 1976) or when people are dispositionally inclined to be more
internally focused when determining how they should behave (Ajzen,
Timko, & White, 1982; Snyder & Swann, 1976; Zanna, Olson, & Fazio,
1980). Likewise, attitude-behavior associations have been found to be
stronger in situations where the relevance of the attitude to behavior is
very clear (Snyder, 1982; Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982). Still other research
has suggested that attitudes are better predictors of behavior if people are
simply asked to report their attitudes rather than to carefully introspect
about their reasons for their attitudes prior to reporting them (Wilson &
Dunn, 1986; Wilson, Dunn, Bybee, Hyman, Rotondo, 1984; Wilson,
Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989; Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989). A sizable
body of research, sometimes referred to under the broad label of ‘‘attitude
strength’’ research (for reviews, see Petty & Krosnick, 1995), has indicated
that structural features of attitudes (e.g., accessibility, ambivalence, amount
of attitude-relevant knowledge), properties of the evaluation itself (i.e.,
attitude extremity), subjective beliefs regarding the attitude (e.g., certainty,
importance), and the process by which an attitude is formed or changed
(e.g., amount of cognitive elaboration, direct behavioral experience) mod-
erate the strength of attitude-behavior associations. Finally, a smaller body
of research has suggested that attitude-behavior relations are strongest
when the basis of the attitude matches the type of behavior (e.g., affec-
tively-based attitudes with consumatory behaviors and cognitively-based
attitudes with instrumental behaviors, Millar & Tesser, 1986).
Current Status of Attitude-Behavior Consistency Research
Social psychologists’ understanding of attitude-behavior consistency has

come a long way since Wicker’s influential challenge. Attitude theorists
now no longer seriously entertain the extremely pessimistic conclusions
advanced in the late 1960s, and general consensus exists among attitude
researchers that attitudes can often be useful predictors of behavior (e.g.,
see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Fabrigar, MacDonald, & Wegener, 2005; Fazio
& Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005; Kraus, 1995). Indeed, attitude researchers (e.g.,
Eagly & Chaiken, 1993) have sometimes expressed surprise that, in light of
the large body of empirical evidence that has been amassed to the contrary
over the past 40 years, some social psychologists continue to believe that
attitudes are only weakly related to behavior.
Moreover, research has moved well beyond the simple question of
whether attitudes are related to behavior. Formal theories such as the
theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen,
1975), the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), and the MODE
model (Fazio, 1990; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999) have been proposed
to explain the processes by which attitudes guide behavior. Likewise, it is
now recognized that characterizing the association of attitudes and beha-
vior as generally weak or strong is misleading because conditions exist in
which associations between attitudes and behavior can be extremely large
or nonexistent (Fazio & Zanna, 1981; Kraus, 1995). Researchers have
compiled an impressive list of moderators that can readily account for this
variability in attitude-behavior associations. Indeed, the list of moderators
of attitude-behavior consistency has grown so lengthy that it borders on
overwhelming. For example, consider simply one area of attitude-beha-
vior consistency research: the attitude strength literature. In this litera-
ture, no less than a dozen properties of attitudes have been documented
as moderators of attitude-behavior associations.
Thus, it is fair to say that it is now acknowledged that attitudes can be
useful predictors of behavior and that significant progress has been made in
understanding the processes that account for why attitudes are predictive
of behavior. A great deal is also known about what factors regulate how
well attitudes will predict behavior. However, although the list of mod-
erators of attitude-behavior consistency is quite lengthy, many of the
mechanisms responsible for the moderation effects have never been
tested, and the psychological mechanisms underlying many of these mod-
erator effects are not well understood (see also Fabrigar et al., 2005; Fazio &
Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005). Moreover, theories of attitude-behavior consis-
tency (e.g., the MODE model) were not specifically formulated to provide
a general organizing framework for understanding when and why many
variables moderate attitude-behavior associations (even when these the-
ories have provided insights into the effects of some moderators).
Following the metaphor of the Sidney Harris cartoon presented on
the cover of this book, herein lies the remaining ‘‘miraculous’’ compo-
nent of the attitude-behavior consistency equation. We know quite well
what factors determine the strength of the attitude-behavior associa-
tions but much can be learned about why these moderating factors have
their effects. As such, it is unclear to what extent various moderators
reflect similar versus distinct underlying processes and thus no general
conceptual framework exists to organize these seemingly diverse
moderators.
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MODERATORS OF

ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR CONSISTENCY
The goal of the present chapter is to provide the general outlines of

a theoretical framework that might organize moderators of
attitude-behavior consistency. Our perspective focuses on mechanisms

responsible for prediction and influence (MRPI) and postulates that,
although the list of documented moderators is lengthy and diverse, six
primary mechanisms are responsible for the effects of these moderators.
The MRPI does not restrict the effects of a given moderator to operate
through only a single mechanism, nor does it assume that a
given moderator must necessarily involve all six mechanisms.
However, we propose that any given moderator will exert its effects
on attitude-behavior associations via these six processes or some subset
of them.
Distinguishing Between Prediction and Influence
In considering why moderators of attitude-behavior consistency exert

their effects, we begin with the premise that it is important for
researchers to be clear about what is meant by the term ‘‘attitude-beha-
vior consistency.’’ Typically, this term has been construed in one of two
ways (see Fabrigar et al., 2005). First, it is sometimes used to refer to the
extent to which a measure of an attitude predicts some subsequent beha-
vior (i.e., the degree of association between an attitude measure and a
measure of subsequent behavior). Second, it is often used to refer to the
degree to which an attitude influences or guides some subsequent behavior
(i.e., the extent to which an attitude exerts a causal influence on the
performance of a behavior). These two construals, though related, are not
the same.
Variations in the extent to which an attitude influences behavior do
generally imply corresponding variations in the extent to which an atti-
tude measure predicts that behavior. However, variations in prediction
do not necessarily imply corresponding variations in influence.
Interestingly, although most discussions of moderators of attitude-beha-
vior consistency have used the term to refer to the magnitude of influence
of an attitude on behavior, few studies have included design features that
permitted this construal to be differentiated from mere variations in
prediction. Specifically, most attitude-behavior studies measure a target
attitude, and then at some later point in time a target behavior is assessed.
Attitude-behavior consistency is evaluated by computing a measure of
association (usually a correlation or regression coefficient) between the
attitude measure and the behavioral measure. Hypotheses about various
moderators are then tested by comparing the strength of this association
at different levels of the proposed moderator. Thus, at the operational
level, attitude-behavior consistency is defined in most studies in terms of
prediction.
Processes Involving Variations in Prediction of Behaviors

by Attitudes
The first important distinction that can be made among our six underlying
processes is between those mechanisms that solely reflect variations in
prediction and those that reflect actual variations in the influence of
attitudes on behavior. We postulate that there are two processes by
which an attitude measure might fail to predict some subsequent beha-
vior without implying that an attitude failed to influence a behavior (see
Table 9.1). First, an attitude measure might not predict a subsequent
behavior because that measure fails to adequately assess the intended
attitude. In such a case, the failure to observe a strong attitude-behavior
association does not necessarily imply that people have failed to rely on
their attitudes as guides to behavior. For example, imagine a case in which
the attitude in question involves a socially sensitive topic such as attitudes
toward a particular ethnic group. People holding negative attitudes might
be reluctant to report their true attitudes and hence their responses might
suggest positive attitudes toward the group. However, when some target
behavior toward members of that group is assessed, they might engage in
negative behaviors toward the group member. In such a case then, there
might be little association between the attitude measure and subsequent
behavior, but this lack of association would not imply that people were
not relying on their attitudes. Indeed, the opposite might well be true.
People’s negative attitudes could be exerting a substantial impact on their
behavior and, had these attitudes been properly captured by the measure,
Table 9.1. Mechanisms to Organize Moderators of Attitude-Behavior Consistency

Mechanisms Responsible for Prediction and Influence:
Prediction Mechanisms:
1. Measurement Error: Influences the accuracy or relevance of the attitude measure to
the behavior of interest.
2. Attitude Stability: Influences the stability of the attitude over the time between the
initial attitude measure and the behavior.
Influence Mechanisms (for Low-Deliberation Behaviors):
3. Indirect Judgmental Cue: Influences the extent to which the attitude biases
people’s perceptions of the target of the behavior.
4. Direct Judgmental Cue: Influences the extent to which the attitude directly
informs the person whether they should enact the behavior.
Influence Mechanisms (for High-Deliberation Behaviors):
5. Central Merit of the Behavior: Influences the extent to which the attitude serves as
an argument supporting or opposing the behavior.
6. Biasing Processing of Behavior-Relevant Information: Influences the extent to
which the attitude biases assessments of the merits of the behavior.
a strong association would have been found. Thus, this possible

mechanism represents a parallel but more general version of the point
previously made by Fishbein and Ajzen (1972) when they noted that
adequate (correspondent, or compatible) measures of attitudes were
more likely to predict behavior. When measures of attitudes do not
adequately tap the relevant attitude (because the wrong attitude is tar-
geted, because people are unmotivated or unable to provide their true
attitude, etc.), then attitude-behavior relations are likely to be relatively
weak.
Thus, when investigating any moderator of the strength of attitude-
behavior associations, it is important to consider whether that moderator
could in some way alter the accuracy of attitude measurement. Indeed, a
number of previously documented moderators might plausibly be inter-
preted in light of this measurement process. For instance, consider the
attitude-behavior consistency research on the personality trait of self-
monitoring (Ajzen et al., 1982; Snyder & Swann, 1976; Zanna et al.,
1980). The finding that low self-monitoring leads to stronger attitude-
behavior associations has often been interpreted to be a result of these
people being more likely to access their attitudes at the time of behavior
and thus to rely on these attitudes as a guide to how they should act. Such
an interpretation is entirely plausible and of course implies that increases
in the actual impact of attitudes on behavior have occurred. However, a
second and not mutually exclusive explanation could be that these people
are more likely to access their attitudes at the time of measurement (e.g.,
see Kardes, Sanbonmatsu, Voss, & Fazio, 1987) and thus to base their
responses to the attitude measure on their stored evaluation rather than
transient contextual factors at the time of measurement. Importantly, in
many studies of attitude-behavior consistency, this explanation has not
been considered.
In some cases, the attitude might be appropriately assessed, but the
underlying attitude might change in the intervening time between when
the attitude is measured and performance of the behavior. Thus, attitude
instability could be a second mechanism that weakens the attitude-beha-
vior relation without necessarily implying that attitudes fail to guide
behaviors. In such a case, because the response provided at the earlier
point in time no longer accurately reflects that person’s attitude, the
measure might be a poor predictor of behavior. However, it is possible
that the new attitude the person holds at the time of behavior could be
exerting a strong impact on behavior. Thus, if the attitude had been
measured shortly before the behavior, a strong association might have
been obtained.
Obviously, attitude instability is only likely to be a plausible process
in situations where delays between the measurement of attitudes and the
performance of behavior are sufficiently long. Hence, attitude instability

is unlikely to account for the results of many laboratory studies of atti-
tude-behavior consistency in which measures of attitudes and behavior
were separated by only a few minutes. However, many field studies and
some laboratory studies have involved delays of a few days or even several
weeks. In some circumstances, during the time between attitude measure
and behavior, additional social influence or available attitude-relevant
information might have changed attitudes. Thus, instability might well
be a viable explanation for observed lack of attitude-behavior consistency
in such studies.
Many moderators of attitude-behavior relations could be related to
attitude stability. Perhaps most notably, in the attitude strength litera-
ture, nearly all of the properties known to moderate attitude-behavior
associations also predict the persistence of attitudes over time and the
resistance of the attitude to persuasion (see Petty & Krosnick, 1995).
Indeed, stability explanations have been proposed to account for the
moderating effects of some strength-related properties of attitudes (e.g.,
see Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Davidson, Yantis, Norwood, & Montano,
1985; Doll & Ajzen, 1992; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). However, empirical
demonstrations of attitude stability accounting for moderation of atti-
tude-behavior relations have been very rare.
Processes Involving Variations in Influence of Attitudes on

Relatively Nondeliberative Behaviors
Four of our six proposed mechanisms involve variation in the impact of

attitudes on behavior. In considering these four mechanisms, we further
distinguish between processes in which the influence of attitudes on beha-
viors occurs when people are highly deliberative about the behavior and
processes in which attitudes guide behavior with little deliberation about
the behavior. Thus, our theoretical perspective draws upon an important
premise first featured in the MODE model within the domain of attitude-
behavior consistency (Fazio, 1990; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999) and also
long prominently featured in theories of attitude change such as the ela-
boration likelihood model (ELM: Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty &
Wegener, 1999) and the heuristic-systematic model (HSM; Chaiken,
1987; Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989). We postulate that the precise
process by which an attitude is likely to influence subsequent behavior
depends on the extent to which that behavior is performed in a deliberative
versus nondeliberative manner. By extension, we also assume that the
mechanisms by which moderators regulate the strength of an attitude’s
influence on behavior will also vary as a result of the degree to which the
behavior is based on relatively thoughtful versus nonthoughtful (i.e., delib-

erative vs. nondeliberative) processes.
When people are relatively nondeliberative in the performance of
behaviors (either as a result of low motivation and/or ability to engage in
careful thought while performing the behavior), attitudes may influence
behavior in two ways (Table 9.1). First, attitudes might guide behavior by
biasing people’s perceptions of the target of the behavior (Fazio, 1990;
Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999; Fazio & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005).
Specifically, attitudes are likely to bias people to perceive the target in
attitude-congruent ways (Fazio & Dunton, 1997; Fazio, Ledbetter, &
Towles-Schwen, 2000; Smith, Fazio, & Cejka, 1996). These perceptions
of the target may then serve as a basis for how the person defines the
current behavioral context and thus responds to that situation.
Importantly, this process is assumed to be relatively automatic and thus
involve little cognitive effort. As such, the attitude can be conceptualized
as serving as an ‘‘indirect judgmental cue’’ regarding how to respond to the
behavioral situation.1 That is, the behavioral response is not directly
based on the attitude, but the attitude may direct attention to simple
features of the object that do directly serve as a basis for the behavioral
response.
Although attitudes might sometimes serve as an indirect cue, atti-
tudes could also serve as a ‘‘direct judgmental cue’’ for inferring an
appropriate behavior independent of any biasing effects on perception
(Fabrigar et al., 2005; Fabrigar, Petty, Smith, & Crites, 2006). For
instance, information in the behavioral context may be unambiguous
and thus unlikely to be distorted (see Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994).
Alternatively, some behavioral or decision contexts may contain rela-
tively little information to be distorted (see Lord & Lepper, 1999). In
such cases, attitudes might still influence behaviors in a nondeliberative
way by serving as a direct cue telling the person whether a particular
behavior toward the attitude object is appropriate (see Petty & Cacioppo,
1
In the MODE model of attitude–behavior consistency, nondeliberative attitude–behavior consis-
tency is primarily conceptualized as a result of the attitude biasing perception of the attitude object,
which in turn influences how a person perceives a particular behavioral context. In our discussion of
nondeliberative attitude–behavior processes, we deviate slightly from the MODE perspective in two
ways. First, we allow for the possibility that an attitude could also sometimes serve as a direct cue for
inferring an appropriate behavior independent of any biasing effects on perception. Second, we use the
term ‘‘indirect cue’’ to refer to the sorts of low-effort biasing processes discussed in the MODE. We use
this term to differentiate this process from ‘‘biased elaboration’’ or ‘‘biased processing,’’ which has
typically been used in the ELM to refer to the process by which a given factor biases thoughts about the
central merits of an attitude object. Such biasing of effortful thinking is discussed in the MODE model
under the rubric of mixed models of attitude–behavior processes (i.e., automatic components within
deliberative processes).
1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999). For example, imagine a case where a
person is planning to purchase a particular type of product from one of
two companies, but the person is not sufficiently motivated or able to
think carefully about the purchase. The person’s general attitudes toward
those two companies could serve as simple cues to select between two
competing products from those companies in the absence of any scrutiny
of the merits of the two specific products under consideration (cf.,
Sanbonmatsu & Fazio, 1990).
Thus, when investigating a moderator of the strength of attitude-
behavior associations, it is also important to consider whether that mod-
erator could alter the likelihood of using the attitude as a direct or indirect
cue. Of course, for the attitude to serve as a direct or indirect cue, the
attitude must be activated at the time of the behavior (Fazio, 1990; 1995;
Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999). Thus, moderators of attitude-behavior
consistency under low-deliberation conditions may exert their effects in
part via their relation to attitude accessibility. Indeed, a number of
moderators of attitude-behavior associations might be related to attitude
accessibility, and in many cases these relations have been empirically
established (Fabrigar et al., 2005).
Processes Involving Variations in Influence of Attitudes on

Deliberative Behaviors
Nondeliberative behaviors are certainly common, but in many cases

people are highly motivated and able to think about their behavior. For
example, a person may be motivated because the behavior has significant
consequences for the person or because the behavior is related to some-
thing about which the person cares a great deal (see Petty & Cacioppo,
1990). The person may be able to think when he or she has substantial
time and few distractions when considering his or her actions (e.g., Petty
& Wegener, 1999; Petty, Wells, & Brock, 1976).
When people deliberate about their behaviors, we believe that atti-
tudes can influence behaviors via two additional mechanisms. Attitudes
may influence behavior by serving as a direct argument for a particular
action or by biasing the interpretation and evaluation of information
about the merits of a given behavior (see Table 9.1; see Fabrigar et al.,
2005; cf., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999). If the
attitude is perceived as directly relevant to the behavior in question, it
may serve as a direct argument in favor of or against a course of action
(i.e., the attitude may be a piece of information directly pertinent to
assessing the merits of a particular behavior; Fabrigar et al., 2005;
Fabrigar et al., 2006). For example, one’s relative liking for two people
could be seen as an argument in favor of one person versus the other when
deciding which of two competing social invitations to accept.
It is important to note, however, that even if the attitude is not
perceived as directly relevant to evaluating the merits of a behavior, it
could still influence behavior by biasing the interpretation and assessment
of information that is directly relevant to the behavior (assuming that
information is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for more than one inter-
pretation; Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994). For example, imagine a situa-
tion where a person is encouraged by a friend to donate money to a
particular charitable cause. The person’s positive attitude toward the
friend might positively bias assessment of information about the merits
of that charitable cause thereby leading to the behavior.
A number of factors could regulate the extent to which attitudes
influence behaviors via these two high-deliberation processes. For
example, as with nondeliberative behaviors, attitudes must be activated
at the time of the behavior if they are to bias processing of information
relevant to the behavior or serve as a direct argument for or against the
behavior. However, under high levels of deliberation, merely activating
the attitude may not be sufficient to ensure that attitude influences
behavior. The attitude must also be judged as applicable or relevant to
the behavior (e.g., see Fabrigar et al., 2006; Lord, Lepper, & Mackie,
1984; Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982). If an attitude is viewed as irrelevant
or inappropriate, it will be disregarded as an argument in favor of or
against a particular course of action. People may also try to eliminate
any inappropriate or ‘‘biasing’’ impact that this attitude might have on
their decision to engage in the behavior (cf., Wegener & Petty, 1997).
Thus, even if an attitude is activated, if the attitude is judged to be
irrelevant or inappropriate, people may work to avoid use of the attitude
when interpreting information relevant to the behavior (e.g., Dunton &
Fazio, 1997; Schuette & Fazio, 1995; Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2003).
These applicability mechanisms should most likely come into play
when behaviors are highly deliberative. The metacognitive process of
judging the applicability of an attitude to a given behavior and disre-
garding it or correcting for its influence is likely to require considerable
cognitive resources (see Petty, Briñol, Tormala, & Wegener, 2007).
Supporting this perspective, corrections for perceived biases in social
judgments often require relatively high motivation and ability to think
(e.g., Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990; Sczesny & Kühnen, 2004). Research
has also revealed that when people are unable or unmotivated to think
extensively about decisions, they often rely on attitudes even if, on logical
grounds, it is inappropriate to do so (Fabrigar et al., 2006; Sanbonmatsu &
Fazio, 1990; Schuette & Fazio, 1995). Reliance on inapplicable attitudes
is less common when people are highly deliberative in their decisions.
There are reasons to suspect that many moderators of attitude-beha-

vior associations might be related to the extent to which attitudes are
perceived as appropriate guides to behavior. For example, a person who is
highly certain of his or her attitude might be much more likely to perceive
that attitude as an appropriate guide to behavior than someone who is not
certain. Likewise, an attitude arrived at via extensive thought might be
seen as more generally informative than an attitude arrived at with little
thought. Unfortunately, there have only been a few cases in which this
mechanism has been examined. In recent research on attitude com-
plexity, complexity of the attitude has been found to strengthen the
attitude’s effect on behavior at least in part because the attitude is
viewed as more applicable when based on information that is more
complex (i.e., covering a greater number of behavior-relevant dimen-
sions, Fabrigar et al., 2006).
Even when attitudes are activated and deemed to be appropriate as a
reason to support the behavior, not all attitudes will be equivalent in the
strength of bias they exert. For example, a person with an attitude based
on extensive knowledge or careful thought might be capable of engaging
in more extensive attitude-congruent distortion of behavioral informa-
tion than someone who has little knowledge or who has given little
thought to the attitude. To date, this possible mechanism has not been
tested. However, there is a substantial theoretical and empirical basis to
argue that many known moderators of attitude-behavior associations may
also regulate the extent to which attitudes can distort the interpretation
of information. For example, some properties of attitudes, such as the
extent to which the attitude is based on cognitive elaboration (e.g.,
Haugtvedt & Petty, 1992; Haugtvedt & Wegener, 1994) or the extent
of knowledge associated with the attitude (Biek, Wood, & Chaiken,
1996) have been related to the degree to which people can counterargue
persuasive messages.
ILLUSTRATING MODERATOR PROCESSES IN THE CONTEXT

OF INTROSPECTION
In summary, the MRPI approach postulates that the many diverse mod-
erators of attitude-behavior associations exert their effects through a com-
paratively parsimonious set of underlying mechanisms (see Table 9.1).
Assuming that these six processes account for many moderators of atti-
tude-behavior associations, a natural question that might arise is to what
extent the MRPI generates novel insights into past effects and new predic-
tions regarding effects yet to be demonstrated. This question is perhaps
best answered by illustrating in detail how the framework might be applied
to a single moderator of attitude-behavior associations. Thus, in the sec-

tions that follow, we discuss the MRPI in the context of one well-docu-
mented variable known to alter attitude-behavior associations:
introspection.
Summary of the Introspection and Attitude-Behavior

Consistency Literature
Over the past 25 years, much research suggests that consistency between
attitudes (or beliefs) and behaviors is lower when people are asked to
introspect about their reasons for holding their attitudes before or during
the attitude measure (Wilson & Dunn, 1986; Wilson et al., 1984; Wilson,
Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989; Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989; Wilson &
LaFleur, 1995). This effect of introspection has been demonstrated
using novel attitude objects (e.g., puzzles) and familiar attitude objects
(e.g., dating partners) and with delays between attitude measures and
behavior ranging from a few minutes to several months.
Before discussing how this finding might be explained by the MRPI
mechanisms, it is useful to consider how the typical introspection experi-
ment is conducted. With novel attitude objects, under introspection
conditions, participants are usually first instructed to think about their
reasons for their reactions to the object and then are exposed to the
object. Following exposure, participants are again instructed to think
about their reasons for their attitudes and then to report their attitudes.
Later, participants are provided with an opportunity to engage in some
object-relevant behavior or to provide a self-report of the behavior.
Under control conditions, the procedures are similar with the exception
that participants are not prompted to consider their reasons for their
reactions prior to exposure to the object or prior to reporting their
attitudes. Introspection studies involving familiar attitude objects are
similar but without an exposure stage. In both types of studies, the
amount of attitude-behavior consistency is typically assessed by com-
puting attitude-behavior correlations.
Introspection and Prediction Processes
Although the effects of introspection have long been established, the

psychological processes responsible for these effects have been less defi-
nitively documented. Wilson and his colleagues have speculated that
introspection about the reasons for one’s attitudes or beliefs focuses
people on attributes that are readily accessible in memory and reasons
that are easily verbalized and intuitively plausible (see Wilson, Dunn,
Kraft, & Lisle, 1989; Wilson, Hodges, & LaFleur, 1995). These generated
attributes and reasons may not imply the same attitude held by people
prior to introspection. Therefore, within the MRPI approach, one way to
view this phenomenon is to say that attitude measures in introspection
conditions are not accurate (i.e., not tapping the stored attitude most
likely to guide later behaviors). Instead, attitude measures in introspec-
tion conditions may reflect mere transitory beliefs rather than people’s
more stable general evaluations of the object, resulting in poorer predic-
tion of subsequent behavior.
One interesting implication of this explanation is that it suggests that
the timing of introspection is critical. Past studies have instructed people
to introspect immediately prior to reporting their attitudes. If the atti-
tude-measurement-error process is responsible for introspection effects,
then having participants introspect after they have reported their atti-
tudes should have little effect on the strength of attitude-behavior asso-
ciations. To date, introspection studies have not investigated this
possibility or measurement error processes more generally.
To take another MRPI process, one could instead say that introspec-
tion temporarily changed the attitude, making it relatively unstable.
Indeed, attitude stability processes have been the primary explanation
offered for introspection’s effects on attitude-behavior associations (see
Wilson, Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989). As noted, Wilson and colleagues
have argued that introspection leads people to focus on attributes that are
readily accessible in memory and on reasons for the attitude that are easily
verbalized and intuitively plausible. They further argue that this process
results in people temporarily changing their attitudes. The temporary
attitude serves as the basis for responses to the initial (postintrospection)
measure. However, the attitude is assumed to rapidly decay, and the
original attitude reasserts itself by the time the behavior is assessed.
Hence, attitude reports following introspection are poor predictors
because responses to the attitude measure reflect an attitude that no
longer exists at the time of behavior.
To date, there have been no direct tests of this hypothesis (i.e.,
meditational analyses involving stability). However, there is indirect
evidence for this mechanism. Experiments have confirmed that inducing
people to introspect about their attitudes can produce different attitude
reports than would be obtained had people not introspected (Hodges &
Wilson, 1993; Wilson & Kraft, 1993; Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989).
Moreover, situations in which introspection fails to alter attitude reports
(e.g., when attitudes are based on extensive knowledge) also fail to
produce the typical lower level of attitude-behavior association for intro-
spection conditions (Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989).
Of course, it is worth noting that these same findings are also con-
sistent with the predictions one might generate using an error-of-mea-
surement explanation. Indeed, the distinctions between these two
explanations are somewhat subtle. In the error-of-measurement explana-
tion, the assumption is that the original attitude has not been altered but
that its influence on the response to the measure has been weakened as a
result of other constructs (extraneous to the attitude) influencing
responses to the measure. For the attitude stability explanation, one
would assume that the actual attitude has been altered and this new
attitude is reflected in the initial attitude measure, but the attitude is
unstable and changes back to the prestudy attitude by the time the
behavior takes place.
If one assumes that the attitude stability explanation is viable, it
suggests some interesting implications. First, it implies that attitudes can
be relatively resilient psychological entities. Although it can be temporarily
altered by introspection, the original attitude will reassert itself (often in a
matter of minutes), and that original attitude will ultimately be a relatively
strong determinant of behavior. A second interesting implication is that the
stability explanation makes somewhat different predictions than a mea-
surement explanation regarding the timing of introspection. The stability
explanation implies that assessing attitudes in the normal way and later
asking people to introspect immediately prior to the behavior would
decrease the attitude-behavior association. Presumably this would
happen because, at the time of behavior, a new attitude is created, and
this new attitude influences the behavior (rather than the original attitude
reflected in the initial measure). An attitude measurement explanation
would not make the same prediction, unless one assumed that the newly
created beliefs extraneous to the attitude were sufficiently strong to
directly influence the subsequent behavior (without affecting the attitude).
Introspection and Attitudinal Impact Under Low Deliberation
When deliberation about the behavior is low, introspection might lower

the likelihood of attitude activation at the time of behavior. Specifically,
Wilson and colleagues have noted that some of the attributes and reasons
generated during introspection are not consistent with the original atti-
tudes. Activating an evaluative construct tends to facilitate the activation
of other evaluatively consistent constructs and inhibit the activation of
evaluatively inconsistent constructs (Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, &
Pratto, 1992; Fazio, Powell, & Herr, 1983; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell,
& Kardes, 1986). Thus, if introspection produces cognitions inconsistent
with the attitude, this might diminish the likelihood of the attitude being
activated and thus the likelihood that the attitude can serve as a direct or
an indirect judgmental cue.
Though untested, the attitude activation explanation has several
interesting implications. First, the effects of introspection should only
diminish attitude-behavior associations when the cognitions generated
are inconsistent with the attitude. Were consistent cognitions generated,
one would predict no decrease and perhaps an increase in the likelihood of
attitude activation. This might be one reason that introspection does not
decrease attitude-behavior consistency for high-accessibility attitudes
(Hodges & Wilson, 1993). A second implication is that the effects of
introspection on attitude-behavior associations should be comparatively
short lived. Because activation of constructs is generally thought to be
comparatively brief in duration, especially in a changing environment,
any inhibition or facilitation effects of introspection should not last very
long (Forbach, Stanners, & Hochhaus, 1974; Warren, 1972; cf., Srull &
Wyer, 1980). Thus, activation mechanisms could potentially explain
some lab studies in which behaviors were assessed only a few minutes
following the attitude report but would have a harder time accounting for
studies in which delays were days or months in length.
Introspection and Attitudinal Impact Under High Deliberation
Under high deliberation, introspection might once again be expected to

influence attitude-behavior associations via its impact on attitude activa-
tion. Introspection might also exert its effects by altering the extent to
which attitudes are seen as appropriate guides to behavior. Specifically,
introspection might induce people to think about the attitude object
more broadly than they typically would. Because people want to appear
rational to themselves and to others, introspection might encourage
people to generate as extensive a set of reasons as possible for their
attitudes. This process could result in people strengthening or elaborating
upon some beliefs that were originally only weakly associated with the
attitude object and in some cases constructing new beliefs regarding the
attitude object. The result of this process might be to produce attitudes
that are more complex (i.e., more multidimensional in their underlying
bases) than was true prior to introspection.
Research suggests that increasing the complexity of beliefs underlying
attitudes can alter the extent to which attitudes influence behaviors
(Fabrigar et al., 2005; Fabrigar et al., 2006; Fabrigar et al., in preparation).
When the newly generated or strengthened dimensions are evaluatively
consistent with the overall attitude, increased complexity could lead the
person to view the attitude as a particularly valid guide for behavior. On
the other hand, if the newly generated or strengthened dimensions are

evaluatively inconsistent with the attitude, this can decrease attitude-
behavior associations by leading people to see their attitudes as an inap-
propriate guide to action (Fabrigar et al., in preparation).
For instance, when the behavior in question is closely related to a
dimension that is evaluatively inconsistent with the global attitude,
people may judge their global attitude to be an inappropriate guide and
instead follow their evaluation of the more specific dimension. Also, when
behaviors or decisions are not directly relevant to any dimension upon
which their attitude is currently based, the existence of evaluative incon-
sistency among dimensions may make people reluctant to assume that their
global evaluation is generally informative. Thus, they may be unwilling to
rely upon it, unless the behavior is highly relevant to the specific dimen-
sions upon which the attitude is based. Increased complexity could also
alter the extent to which people’s attitudes bias interpretation of informa-
tion relevant to the behavior. When introspection produces additional
evaluative reactions that contradict the attitude, these conflicting reactions
may weaken or undermine the extent to which people are motivated or
able to distort behavioral information in an attitude-congruent fashion.2
To date, although research has demonstrated that complexity regu-
lates attitude-behavior associations in the manner described, there has
been little attempt to examine whether introspection alters attitude
complexity and complexity might account for the effects of introspection
on attitude-behavior associations. Some unpublished data have failed to
produce evidence that introspection changes complexity (see Wilson,
Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989), but the measure of complexity was not
especially sensitive.
If complexity is one of the mechanisms responsible for the effects of
introspection, it suggests two interesting implications. First, presuming that
the newly strengthened or created dimensions underlying the attitude pro-
duced by introspection persist over time, one might expect the effects of
introspection on attitude-behavior associations to be relatively long lasting
under highly deliberative conditions. Second, this explanation suggests that
there should be contexts in which introspection actually increases attitude-
behavior associations when behaviors are highly deliberative.
Specifically, research has established that increased complexity invol-
ving dimensions that are evaluatively consistent tends to strengthen
2
In some circumstances, however, increasing ambivalence may increase motives to process new
information in a way that favors attitude-consistent information and avoids or opposes attitude-
inconsistent information (see Clark, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 2008; Nordgren, van Harreveld, & van der
Pligt, 2006).
attitude-behavior associations by causing people to see their attitudes as

generally informative guides to behaviors relevant to the target. This
enhanced impact of attitudes on behaviors is a result of one of two pro-
cesses (see Fabrigar et al., 2006). First, when attitudes are based on many
distinct dimensions of beliefs, the likelihood that the attitude will be based
on at least one dimension directly relevant to a given behavior is greater
than when the attitude is based on only a single dimension. Second, even in
situations in which a behavior is not directly relevant to any dimension
upon which the attitude is based, increasing the number of evaluatively
consistent dimensions leads people to assume the object is evaluatively
similar on other dimensions for which they have no knowledge and thus to
conclude their attitude is a generally informative guide to behavior.
Based on these two processes, it follows that attitude-behavior asso-
ciations should be stronger when introspection results in people gener-
ating or elaborating upon dimensions that are consistent with each other
and the original dimensions. Similarly, when introspection produces
attitude-consistent cognitions, it also suggests that the ability of attitudes
to bias information regarding the behavior could be enhanced. This
should occur because people presumably should have a more extensive
knowledge base underlying their attitude and thus should have greater
ability to distort behavioral information.
CONCLUSIONS
Attitude-behavior consistency has been of interest to attitude researchers

nearly as long as attitudes have been a topic of scientific inquiry. There is
no doubt that major advances have been made in understanding attitude-
behavior consistency processes. The question of whether attitudes can
predict behavior has largely been put to rest, and influential theories
designed to explain the processes by which attitudes exert their influence
on behavior have been proposed. Moreover, researchers have docu-
mented an impressive array of moderators of the extent to which atti-
tudes are associated with behavior.
It is this later contribution that in some ways poses one of the great
remaining challenges. Although the field has produced an extensive catalog
of moderators, there has been little attempt to develop a theoretical frame-
work in which to organize them. The six-process framework offered in this
chapter is intended to be a first step toward addressing this gap.
If ultimately supported by empirical research, the MRPI approach
could advance understanding of attitude-behavior consistency in notable
ways. First, by providing a relatively finite set of processes to account for
the effects of a wide range of variables, it could provide a basis for a
parsimonious categorization of the many moderators of attitude-behavior

associations. Specifically, although our illustration involved a variable
(i.e., introspection) whose effects could involve all six processes (across
different circumstances), this would not be true of all moderators. Rather,
our perspective merely postulates that a given moderator will exert its
effects via a least one of these processes and that the possible processes at
work will vary depending on the level of deliberation involved. Each
moderator and each behavior setting must be considered in light of its
specific conceptual properties and how they relate to the processes out-
lined in the framework. In some cases, these properties will suggest that a
given moderator could exert effects via multiple processes. For example,
a moderator could influence not only measurement properties but also
the likelihood of the attitude serving as a direct or indirect cue (when
deliberation is low) or the likelihood of the attitude biasing processing of
behavior-relevant information (when deliberation is high). In other cases,
a given moderator may have its effects via only one or a small subset of the
six processes. As such, the MRPI is intended as a framework to guide the
questions researchers ask about moderators of attitude-behavior associa-
tions and the methods they use to investigate these questions rather than
to provide the answers themselves. By undertaking research guided by
these questions and methods, it might ultimately be possible to produce a
categorization of moderators based on the extent to which they reflect
common versus distinct underlying processes.
A second potential contribution of the MRPI approach is its utility for
generating novel hypotheses. To date, most moderators of attitude-beha-
vior associations have been presumed to have fairly unitary effects (e.g.,
introspection about reasons leads to weaker attitude-behavior associa-
tions, increased amounts of knowledge lead to stronger attitude-behavior
associations, etc.). With few exceptions, there has been little attempt to
specify conditions under which the effects of these moderators might
disappear or perhaps even reverse. As we have illustrated in this chapter,
when moderators are considered in light of the MRPI, a number of novel
predictions along these lines can be generated.
In closing, it is important to acknowledge that testing of the MRPI
mechanisms is still in the very early stages. Evidence exists for each of the
six processes in the context of some moderators of attitude-behavior
associations. However, currently no single moderator has been examined
in light of all six processes, and some moderators have yet to be examined
in light of any of these processes. Thus, much research remains to be
conducted. However, regardless of the ultimate outcome of these tests,
the process of testing the MRPI is likely to further the goal of turning
‘‘miraculous effects’’ of moderators of attitude-behavior consistency into
enhanced scientific understanding of those moderators.
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10 Personality as Manifest in Behavior:
Direct Behavioral Observation Using the
Revised Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort
(RBQ-3.0)
R. Michael Furr
Seth A. Wagerman
David C. Funder
If one accepts the standard definition given by most introductory texts,

psychology is the study of ‘‘behavior and mental processes’’ (Myers, 2007,
p. 2). Relatedly, personality can be described as ‘‘an individual’s charac-
teristic pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the
psychological mechanisms . . . behind those patterns’’ (Funder, 2007,
p. 5). Clearly, behavior is central to psychology in general and to person-
ality psychology in particular.
In recent years, however, the study of directly observed behaviors
with robust psychological meaning has become relatively rare
(Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007; Furr, in press a; see Chapter 2 in
this volume). Recent research appears to be increasingly dominated by
studies of dependent variables such as reaction time, memory recall, and
self-report, which are chosen for their relevance to hypothesized under-
lying cognitive processes rather than because of their intrinsic impor-
tance. Historically, one could argue that the field has never dedicated
itself to a comprehensive and coherent examination of basic social beha-
viors. Even the classic studies of social psychology in the 1960s and 1970s,
which did focus on consequential actions, generally examined but one
behavior or aspect of behavior, such as how much time was taken to help
someone ostensibly in need, how intensely a participant ostensibly
shocked someone, or whether people on the street stopped to join a
PERSONALITY AS MANIFEST IN BEHAVIOR 187
group that was ostensibly looking intently at something. While these

studies were important, single behaviors provide a very narrow
window into what people are doing, which at any given moment is
multifaceted.
In the current paper, we discuss direct behavioral observation of
meaningful social behavior in personality psychology. By direct behavioral
observation we refer to data provided by independent observers who
supply systematic descriptions of something they have actually seen a
person do. Our goals are to convince readers that direct behavioral
observation is an important facet of psychological research in general
and of personality psychology in particular, to outline important consid-
erations in planning or choosing a system for organizing and coding
behaviors in such research, and to describe a particular method that
researchers may find useful in examining personality as manifest in
behavior.
THE COST AND BENEFIT OF BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATION IN

PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY
The Cost of Behavioral Observation
Any serious attempt to study a range of meaningful social behaviors in an

objective way is likely to be costly, and direct behavioral observation may
be the most demanding of all assessment strategies. Indeed, the potential
benefits of direct behavioral observation must be weighed against their
sometimes-significant costs (for additional discussion, see Furr, in press a,
in press b).
One challenge is that the process of directly observing a range of
meaningful social behaviors can be expensive in terms of time, money,
and effort. Depending on one’s goals and the scope of one’s project, the
process of obtaining, preparing, and analyzing direct behavioral observa-
tions can require a huge investment. In some research, such observations
are made as behavior unfolds, by having observers watch and immediately
rate participants’ actions. In other research, participants’ behavior is
recorded, and observers later watch and rate the recorded behavior.
In either form of direct behavioral observation, the work requires signifi-
cant time—both in terms of organizing the observers (e.g., creating a
schedule, conducting training, preparing materials) and in terms of the
actual collection of the observers’ ratings. In fact, the process can take
years—literally—though this depends heavily on the scope of one’s
project. Along with an investment of time comes a potential investment
of money for obtaining and preparing adequate infrastructure (e.g.,
recording devices or room configuration), salaries of people who oversee

the process, and payments to people who serve as observers. By contrast,
pencils and paper for self-report questionnaires cost little.
Moreover, the less-expensive methods have produced important
findings. For example, questionnaires and tests are tried-and-true
methods for gathering extensive information about self-perceptions,
self-reported attitudes, perceptions of other people, abilities, and so on.
Such data have provided important insights such as the dimensional
structure of personality (or at least the structure of perceived individual
differences in personality characteristics), the accuracy of personality
judgments (or at least the degree to which people agree in their person-
ality judgments), and the nature of cognitive ability (or at least a
reasonable proxy thereof). To be sure, psychology has learned much
while relying largely on a variety of relatively simple and inexpensive
methods.
The downside is that much of psychology seems to have turned away
from studying behavior at all. Cognitive science and neuroscience give the
impression of having little interest in what people actually do, often
focusing instead on which portion of the participants’ brain ‘‘lights up’’
an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) when performing cer-
tain cognitive tasks. Even social psychology, in its move towards ‘‘social
cognition,’’ risks becoming more interested in cognitive mediators of
behavior than behavior itself. As a result, current research sometimes
seems to seek behaviors that can test proposed mediators rather than
mediators that can explain important behaviors.
Another reason for the rarity of direct behavioral observations may be
a lack of tools available to researchers interested in such work. Given the
demands of direct behavioral observations, researchers may feel that
the hill is too steep to climb—where does one even begin? What should
one measure? How does one plan a system for collecting behavioral
observations? What are the key considerations in conducting such
work? There are few places that researchers may turn to for answers to
these kinds of questions (Furr & Funder, 2007). Furthermore, few beha-
vioral coding systems are available to researchers, as very few have been
carefully developed with an eye toward a broad range of social behaviors,
and as few have been psychometrically evaluated through rigorous use
and examination.
An important goal of the current paper is to address these final
impediments to broader use of direct behavioral observation.
Specifically, we outline important considerations in planning or choosing
a system for direct behavioral observations, and we present a system
reflecting years of development, application, evaluation, and refine-
ment—the revised Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort (RBQ-3.0). Our hope is
that our outline, system, and experience help pave the way for others to
pursue the important benefits of behavioral observations.
The Benefit of Behavioral Observation
As students sometimes remind us, psychology is interesting precisely

because it is supposed to reveal ‘‘why people do what they do.’’ If we
truly want to understand ‘‘what people do’’ in a broad and meaningful
way, then we must study a wide range of social behaviors. The most
general benefit of direct behavioral observation, then, is that it offers
particularly strong insight into the social behaviors that people actually
enact.
Behavioral observation is essential for the theoretical and empirical
well-being of psychology. As a science dedicated, at least in part, to
explaining consequential behaviors and outcomes, psychology’s value
rests heavily on the production of research directly bearing on meaningful
behavior. Personality psychology provides a particularly poignant
example of this point. In 1968, a book was published that challenged
the very core of the field (Mischel, 1968). It reviewed some empirical
evidence regarding the consistency or specificity of presumably trait-
relevant behavior (e.g., the correlation between two behaviors ostensibly
related to dependency, p. 27). The book concluded that such evidence
was sorely lacking, which was interpreted to mean that personality traits,
as they had been traditionally conceptualized, do not exist. By extension,
some people—perhaps many people—interpreted this to mean that per-
sonality itself does not exist in a substantive way—that one’s behavior is
almost entirely attributable to situational forces.
It should go without saying that such conclusions were destructive to
those who believed that personality actually figured prominently in the
equation (e.g., some graduate programs in personality psychology closed
their doors, and have not yet reopened). Although personality psychology
long ago reasserted and solidified its foundation (Kenrick & Funder,
1988), psychologists are still, nearly 40 years after Mischel’s book, dis-
cussing the dramatic decline and ‘‘comeback’’ of personality psychology
(Swann & Seyle, 2005). In retrospect, it is clear that a major contributing
factor to the temporary diminishment of personality psychology was the
lack of behavioral research that could be used to rebut Mischel’s asser-
tions. That is, there was a dearth of well-implemented studies that
included a sufficient range of social behaviors; thus, personality psy-
chology was left exposed (fairly or unfairly, Block, 1977) to this assault
with very little behavioral data to provide cover. Perhaps if more high-
quality data had been available, personality psychology would never have
suffered this setback and faced a struggle to re-emerge. Fortunately, after

Mischel’s book, personality researchers did begin collecting more beha-
vioral data (e.g., Asendorpf, Banse & Mücke, 2002; Borkenau, Riemann,
Angleitner, & Spinath, 2001; Funder & Colvin, 1991; Furr & Funder,
2004), but such work remains relatively rare.
In sum, the most general and powerful benefit of behavioral data is
that it allows psychological scientists to speak of behavior with empirical
conviction. Without such data, our ability to claim status as a science of
behavior (in a broad, coherent, and generalizable sense) is weakened. For
reasons outlined above, the field has been reluctant to collect good, wide-
ranging behavioral data; however, we believe that greater familiarity with
basic issues in direct behavioral observation can improve the situation.
At the heart of any direct behavioral observation research is the coding
system—the behaviors to be observed and the method of observing and
scoring them.
Researchers willing to pursue this task face several important con-
siderations. The next section describes key issues in planning, creating, or
choosing a behavioral coding system. Our description reflects issues we
have found compelling in the context of personality and social psy-
chology, but we suspect that they apply to many potential applications
of direct behavioral coding. Other sources provide additional perspec-
tives on behavioral observation across psychology (e.g., Bakeman, 2000;
Bakeman & Gottman, 1997; Margolin et al., 1998; Thompson, Symons, &
Felce, 2000). In addition, Furr and Funder (2007) outline additional
considerations in the implementation and evaluation of direct behavioral
observations.
PLANNING, CREATING, OR CHOOSING A BEHAVIORAL

CODING SYSTEM
Researchers must consider several important issues in planning a coding

system for direct behavioral observation. Again, whether a new coding
system will be created or an existing system will be chosen and adapted,
there are at least three key sets of planning-related considerations
(see Table 10.1).
Observational Context
One key consideration in planning a behavioral coding system is the

context within which it will be used (Rosenblum, 1978). This considera-
tion has at least two facets. First, observations might be made in a lab
Table 10.1. Considerations in Design of the Revised Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort
Considerations in Planning the Design or Selection of a

Behavioral Coding System RBQ-3.0
Contextual considerations
In-lab or out-of-lab Either
Specific or general situations General
Behavioral considerations
Behavioral domain – narrow or broad Broad
Level of analysis – micro or macro In-between
Amount of psychological interpretation Moderate
Temporal considerations
Sequential or global Global*
*
The RBQ-R has been used in a global or nonsequential manner to date; however, it could be
used in sequential analysis as well.
setting or in a more ‘‘real-world’’ context. Lab settings afford greater

control for the researcher in terms of when the behavior in question (or
the observation of it) is meant to begin and end, the number of observers
involved, the physical location of observers or recording devices, the
physical layout of the observational area, the number of participants
observed at a given time, and so on. In contrast, field settings afford
much less control than in-lab settings, but they may offer greater ecolo-
gical representativeness.
For example, the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) is a rela-
tively new technological development used to capture real-world verbal
behavior (Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003). The EAR is an unobtrusive digital
recording device worn by participants, and it records the sounds in the
participant’s environment, including whatever they might be saying or
hearing. In one study, Mehl and Pennebaker (2003) coded each segment
of sound recorded by a participant’s EAR, categorizing the information in
terms of the interaction, activity, and location. Results indicated, among
other things, that ‘‘people’s everyday lives are not only coherent from the
agent’s perspective but also show a high degree of consistency from an
outsider’s perspective’’ (p. 867). That is, the EAR method provided
important real-world confirmation of previous findings of personality
stability—findings that had previously been obtained via methods more
reliant on participants’ self-report.
A second contextual consideration is situational specificity versus
generality of the coding system. For some purposes, a coding system
needs to be applicable only to a narrow range of situations, perhaps
even only a single, specific context, and so only a few, specific behaviors
might be assessed. For other purposes, a coding system might need to be
applicable across a wide range of situations; in such cases, researchers

might examine a variety of behaviors potentially applicable across a range
of situations.
Behaviors in the Coding System
When designing, choosing, or adapting a new coding system, researchers

face important choices about the nature of the behaviors contained
therein. A key decision is the behavioral domains to include. Naturally,
this decision should arise from theory and from the researchers’ purposes.
Some coding systems might focus on a single behavioral domain with
specific relevance to a particular research question. For example,
Asendorpf, Banse, and Mücke (2002) studied behavioral manifestations
of shyness, videotaping participants engaged in activities intended to
induce shyness. After watching the videotapes, observers coded six beha-
viors hypothesized as manifestations of shyness (e.g., speech duration,
gaze aversion). Such domain-focused coding systems include a few spe-
cific behaviors with direct theoretical relevance. Others could be more
wide ranging, reflecting many domains of behavior. Of course, coding
systems that include many behaviors require more time and effort from
observers than do more focused ones; however, such wide-ranging sys-
tems provide a wealth of information with potential relevance for many
domains of psychology (e.g., Furr & Funder, 1998; 2004).
Along with the behavioral domains covered by a coding system, a
second important issue is the level of abstraction of the behaviors coded.
At a microanalytic level, behaviors are defined in very narrow—some-
times simple physical—terms. For example, the Facial Action Coding
System (FACS; Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002) is the standard coding
system for facial displays of emotion (Rosenberg, 1997). The FACS and
similar microanalytic systems include highly specific physical behaviors
such as eyeblinks, eyewinks, and the amount of ‘‘backward lean’’ (Ekman
et al., 2002; Ellgring, 1989; Kalbaugh & Haviland, 1994). At the other
end of the spectrum, some behavioral coding strategies are more macro-
analytic. For example, some behavioral research has examined broad
behavioral styles such as ‘‘managerial-autocratic,’’ ‘‘blunt-aggressive,’’ or
‘‘cold and socially avoidant’’ (e.g., Alden & Phillips, 1990; Hokanson,
Lowenstein, Hedeen, & Howes, 1986).
Bakeman and Gottman (1997) recommend a coding system at a level
of analysis that is slightly more molecular or microanalytic than the level
at which the research questions are articulated. They suggest that rela-
tively molecular behaviors can be aggregated into more molar or macro-
analytic behavioral categories, but not vice versa (pp. 24–26). This logic is
appealing, but researchers should consider such behavioral aggregations

carefully—items in a coding system may appear to share meaning with
each other, but an item’s meaning may shift from one social context to
another. Consider a potential behavioral item such as ‘‘Competes with
others’’; the psychological implication of competitiveness observed in a
game-playing interaction could be quite different from competitiveness
in a typical ‘‘getting acquainted’’ interaction. Given the potentially
shifting meaning of competitiveness, with which items should it be
aggregated? The answer to this question may vary consequentially, both
conceptually and empirically. Thus, aggregation could produce beha-
vioral composites without coherence or psychological meaning across
situations, compromising researchers’ ability to generalize across situa-
tions and/or studies. Although item aggregation might have some psy-
chometric and statistical benefits (e.g., potentially increasing reliability),
it may discard information of potential psychological importance and
create new psychometric problems (e.g., lack of factorial invariance
across situations). Researchers interested in the possibility of aggregating
behavioral items might be well advised to analyze data at the item level
before aggregating. This allows evaluation of potential lost psychological
meaning arising from aggregation.
A coding system’s level of abstraction is linked closely to the amount
of psychological inference required by coders. In some coding systems,
observers make minimal inferences regarding the meaning of participants’
behavior. For example, microanalytic systems require no inference about
the psychological meaning of an eyeblink, eyewink, or backward lean.
Although such codings may be subjective in terms of whether the blink,
wink, or lean actually occurred, they do not require coders to interpret the
psychological implications of the events—coders need not decide
whether the events convey friendliness, nervousness, coquettishness,
competitiveness, or simply a sneeze. In contrast, other coding strategies
require a great deal of psychological inference. For example, a more
macroanalytic rating of behavioral styles such as ‘‘managerial-autocratic,’’
‘‘blunt-aggressive,’’ or ‘‘cold and socially avoidant’’ requires coders to
make highly inferential judgments of the general psychological quality
of a participant’s behavior. The ‘‘level of inference’’ issue has been recog-
nized in previous discussions of behavioral observation—Cairns and
Green (1979) distinguish between behavioral observations (recording of
actual activities) and behavioral ratings (social judgments that observers
make, regarding the target’s standing on a psychological dimension), and
Bakeman and Gottman (1997) distinguish physical and social behaviors
(pp. 17–22).
Thus, researchers face a trade-off in choosing appropriate levels of
abstraction and inference within a coding system. On one hand, a
physically oriented coding system might require less psychological infer-

ence on the part of the coders; on the other hand, the data derived from
such a system might produce results with ambiguous psychological
meaning, or none at all. In contrast, a coding system that is based partly
on reliable, consensual social inferences might lead more directly to
interesting and important psychological implications.
Temporal Units in the Coding System
The temporal units to be coded are a third issue to be addressed in

planning or choosing a behavioral coding system. Specifically, researchers
must consider how the flow of a participant’s observed behavior will be
segmented during the coding process, if at all.
Some coding systems are used sequentially, parsing the moment-by-
moment flow of behavior into segments. Within each segment of the
behavioral sequence, observers use the behavioral coding system to
describe the target participant’s behavior during that segment.
Segments can be defined in several ways, including event sequential,
state sequential, timed event sequences, and interval sequences
(Bakeman, 2000). Perhaps most well-known in this form of behavioral
coding is Gottman’s work with married couples. For example, Gottman,
Markman, and Notarius (1977) were interested in ‘‘the marital dyad as an
interacting system’’ (p. 463), observing husbands and wives while dis-
cussing marital problems. To capture the interactive and reciprocal
nature of the behavioral flow of a marital conversation, Gottman and
his colleagues parsed each marital conversation into a sequence of beha-
vioral units, each of which was coded in terms of several verbal/content
and nonverbal/affect codes. These codes were then examined sequen-
tially, revealing patterns of behavior as they unfolded during marital
conversation. Results revealed, for example, that ‘‘unsatisfied’’ couples
showed a more maladaptive sequence of behavior than did satisfied
couples.
Whereas some coding systems are used sequentially, others are used
in a nonsequential or temporally global manner. That is, behavioral codes
are derived to characterize the entirety of a person’s behavior during the
period of observation. For example, Furr and Funder (1998) asked coders
to observe videotapes of participants in several 5-minute dyadic interac-
tions with an opposite-sex stranger. For each participant, coders watched
an entire 5-minute interaction and rated the degree to which the partici-
pant generally exhibited 64 specific behaviors during the interaction.
That is, rather than recording a participant’s talkativeness (or timidity
or degree of smiling, etc.) during specific segments of the interaction,
coders described the participant’s overall level of talkativeness (and

timidity, etc) across the entire interaction. Such data produced interesting
results, revealing, for example, that women self-reporting a negative view
of themselves tended to express insecurity, irritation, and feelings of
victimization during their interactions with a male stranger.
In planning the temporal units for a coding system, researchers face
yet another trade-off. A highly segmented, sequential approach is extre-
mely demanding in terms of time and energy, whereas a more global
approach is somewhat less demanding. However, some have argued
that a sequential approach reveals ‘‘process’’ more effectively than a
global approach, in terms of ‘‘behavior unfolding in time’’ (Bakeman,
2000, p. 140). Although it is true that a sequential approach reveals the
unfolding of an interpersonal process within the context of a single inter-
action or period of observation, a global approach can also provide insight
into interpersonal processes, albeit at a more macro level. For example,
Furr and Funder’s (1998) research included not only participants’ self-
reported personality judgments, but also behavioral observations of those
participants, behavioral observations of the participants’ interaction part-
ners, and ‘‘informant-report’’ personality ratings of the participants pro-
vided by their close acquaintances. The overall pattern of results,
including the global behavioral observations, implied that a negative
self-perception (i.e., ‘‘personal negativity’’) manifests itself quickly in
maladaptive behavioral style, eliciting negative behavioral responses
from interaction partners, and ultimately producing a negative social
reputation. Thus, this research provides potential insight into an inter-
personal process transcending a single interaction.
In sum, as with all decisions regarding the design or selection of a
behavioral coding system, the decision regarding the appropriate temporal
unit of analysis should rest on a blend of conceptual and practical considera-
tions. Certainly, researchers should consider the temporal orientation
reflecting their theoretical interests; if they are interested in understanding
the moment-by-moment process through which behavior emerges, then a
sequential approach may be appropriate. However, researchers should also
consider carefully the significant investment of time and energy required by
such approaches. And indeed, perhaps the first issue a researcher should
consider is whether to go through the effort of developing an entirely new
coding system or to simply use/adapt an existing system.
UNDERWEAR: NEW OR USED?
Some might plunge headlong into the process of developing a new system
for coding behavioral observations. Fortunately, such effort might not be
necessary; although few coding systems are available, researchers might

discover one that fits their needs. Perhaps more likely, researchers might
find a system that, with a bit of revision, works quite well. Indeed, time
spent searching for existing coding systems might more than pay for itself
by eliminating the extensive effort required to develop an entirely new
coding system.
In their extensive discussion of behavioral observation, Bakeman and
Gottman assert that using someone else’s coding system might initially
feel like ‘‘wearing someone else’s underwear’’ (1997, p. 15). Frankly, we
do not know if this is true (none of us have tried to use someone else’s
coding system). That said, we suspect that a little alteration might pro-
duce a fairly comfortable fit.
In that spirit, we invite researchers to consider the Revised Riverside
Behavioral Q-Sort (RBQ-3.0) as a tool, process, and even software for
conducting direct behavioral observations. The RBQ-3.0 is a revision of a
behavioral coding system described by Funder, Furr, and Colvin (2000;
see also Funder & Colvin, 1991), meant to include a wide range of
behaviors applicable to many personality characteristics and many social
situations.1
Researchers are invited to adapt the RBQ-3.0 to suit their needs,
but any adaptation represents a trade-off. On one hand, adaptation
allows researchers to tailor the RBQ-3.0 items and methods to fit
closely their particular interests and theories; on the other hand,
close continuity with the RBQ-3.0 allows coherence across studies.
The field may benefit from a coherent accumulation of empirical
findings related to a common core of social behaviors, and we believe
that the RBQ-3.0 is a strong candidate for that core. Thus, we
recommend that researchers use and expand the RBQ-3.0 to fit
their needs, but that they maintain the core set of RBQ-3.0 items
as completely as possible.
THE REVISED RIVERSIDE BEHAVIORAL Q-SORT
The Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort was originally derived—somewhat

indirectly— from the items of the California Adult Q-Set (CAQ; Bem
& Funder, 1978; Block, 1961), a well-validated and widely used measure
of personality. For each personality item, we sought to write items
1
Funder, Furr, and Colvin (2000) formally presented the 64-item second version of the Riverside
Behavioral Q-sort, but a 62-item initial version had been used in earlier research (e.g., Funder & Colvin,
1991). Thus, the current chapter presents the third and most widely applicable version of the RBQ.
describing one or more behaviors that might be relevant. For example, the
first item in the CAQ read ‘‘is critical, skeptical, not easily impressed.’’
The associated RBQ-3.0 items reads ‘‘expresses criticism (of anybody or
anything).’’ Because behavior is multiply determined (Funder, 1991),
some behavioral items pertain to more than one CAQ item, and
thus the RBQ-3.0 is shorter in length than the (100-item) original.
Advantages to measuring constructs through use of a Q-sort tool are
that (a) it reduces the difficulty of response biases (participants, being
forced to categorize cards in a manner that results in a quasinormal
distribution, are not free to overuse any particular point on the scale)
and (b) it encourages the sorter to consider whether one item is more
descriptive of a person than another item (a within-person comparison
across all behaviors, in this case), which may be importantly different
than considering whether an item is more descriptive of one individual
than another individual (a between-person comparison for each
behavior).
Other, more microlevel measurements of social behavior (e.g.,
counting the number of smiles or noting foot-tapping behavior) seem
less informative in that they do little to illuminate the underlying psy-
chological processes that cause them, and because they—by themselves—
may be inconsistent across situations (Funder et al., 2000). An advantage
of the RBQ-3.0 is that it assesses behaviors that can be displayed by a
number of microlevel manifestations, being itself a tool aimed at a mid-
level of analysis (see Table 10.1). RBQ-3.0 item 37 for example, ‘‘Is
expressive in face, voice, and gesture,’’ might be used by an observer to
indicate any number of smiles or foot taps but, being superordinate to
these types of behaviors, is less likely to miss the connection between any
particular tic or twitch and its psychological origin.
One problem with the earlier item set (Funder & Colvin, 1991;
Funder et al., 2000), however, is that it was constructed for the
purposes of examining social behavior in the context of videotaped,
experimental sessions, often dyadic or triadic in nature. It has been
successful in this capacity, but when aiming to conduct a direct
observation of behavior outside of such a setting, the original RBQ
becomes less than ideal. Partly, this is due to the presence of items
that are much less salient in the field (e.g., an item in the original set
was ‘‘Expresses awareness of being on camera and/or in an experi-
ment’’), and partly due to the absence of items that might be used to
describe behavior outside of this environment. It is for this purpose
that the recent revision was undertaken.
In order to move the behaviors from the original RBQ outside of the
narrow setting for which they were constructed, each item was examined
carefully in relation to its potential utility in describing the social
behaviors of people in their everyday lives. There were three possible

outcomes:
1. The item was fine as it was, capturing a behavior that might occur
as well outside a laboratory as within one,
2. The item captured the essence of such a behavior, but needed
modification of its wording in order to be more broadly
applicable, or
3. The item was too narrow in nature and needed to be deleted
entirely.
More than half of the original 64 items were deemed usable as

written; 27 items were altered to be more flexible in their usability, and
only 1 item (the one relating to being on camera) was deleted entirely.
Four completely new items were added, bringing the number of items in
the newly modified RBQ-3.0 up to 67. The complete item set of the
RBQ-3.0 is presented in the Appendix.
As mentioned earlier, one of the largest impediments to direct beha-
vioral observation has been that it required a great deal of time and effort.
In response and as a further inducement to consider using the RBQ-3.0,
we offer an avenue by which it (or another Q-sort-style coding scheme of
the researcher’s own devising) might be used in a quicker and more
efficient manner. Benefits of the Q-sort method aside, it can by its very
nature be a cognitively taxing process. A rater needs to be able to think
about and remember which items have been used and where they have
been placed, not to mention the general messiness of having small pieces
of paper arrayed in front of the user on a (necessarily large) tabletop and
the potential for error in recording the final result.
In an attempt to alleviate these difficulties, a computer program was
developed to allow the RBQ-3.0—and other Q-sorts—to be completed
and recorded on a computer.2 The Riverside Accuracy Project’s Q-Sorter
Program runs on Windows XP, and it is currently available online at
http://rap.ucr.edu/qsorter as freeware. The program retains the same
basic procedure as the classic Q-sort (items are first sorted into three
piles—characteristic, uncharacteristic, and neutral—and from there into
the chosen distribution) but now operates with the convenience of a drag-
and-drop interface that allows the sorter to move items from their initial
piles into the appropriate category or from one category to another (see
Figure 10.1). The program supports certain useful safety features, such as
warning flags that indicate when the number of items in a category
2
Our thanks to Matthew Fast for his effort and the outstanding results.
Figure 10.1. The Riverside Accuracy Project Q-Sorter Program.
exceeds its prescribed maximum and the automatic blocking of saving a

sort that is improperly formatted or incomplete. Data from the Q-sorter
program are saved directly into an easy-to-use text file that appends each
additional sort into the same .txt file.
Perhaps the best feature of the program, however, is simply its
adaptability. While the deck files for the three currently active Q-sorts
(the original CAQ, the RBQ-3.0, and the newly developed Situational
Q-Sort or RSQ) are available for download on the RAP website, the
program is flexible with respect to the number of items in the Q-deck,
the content of the items, the number of categories in the distribution, and
the shape of distribution. Thus, anyone with a rudimentary under-
standing of how the program works could easily alter any existing deck
to suit their needs or create and load a Q-deck of their own. Indeed, while
the items of the RBQ-3.0 were based upon one particular foundation (the
CAQ) for a particular purpose (to see what behaviors are associated with
the CAQ personality characteristics), other items with other bases and
intended for other purposes could and should be written. The Q-sorter
program was designed partially with the goal in mind of encouraging the
use of Q-methodology in general, and to make the use of such instru-
ments more user friendly.
CONCLUSION
For a discipline ostensibly dedicated to understanding ‘‘why people do

what they do,’’ modern psychological science seems to have spent little
time measuring what it is people are actually doing, especially during
what the American Psychological Association has dubbed the ‘‘Decade of
Behavior.’’ It has been asserted in the past (Funder, 2000) and we will
entreat researchers here again: there is a need for a body of descriptive
research within personality that links personality traits and dispositions to
their real-world consequences and behavioral manifestations. Not only
would such research solidify the fundamental assumptions of our field
(that who you are affects what you do), but it also will lead to the
cumulative development of a foundation for a more coherent organiza-
tion of meaningful social behaviors. Without such a foundation, we risk
finding ourselves in the place of the scientists in the Harris cartoon. While
it’s nice to believe that miracles occur, it is indeed our business to be more
explicit in ‘‘step two,’’ metaphorically located between ‘‘people’’ and
‘‘what they do.’’
APPENDIX
Items of the RBQ-3.0
1. Interviews others (if present). (E.g., asks a series of questions).

2. Volunteers a large amount of information about self.
3. Seems interested in what someone had to say. (Disregard whether interest
appears ‘‘genuine’’ or ‘‘polite.’’)
4. Tries to control the situation. (Disregard whether attempts at control
succeed or not.)
5. Dominates the situation. (Disregard intention, e.g., if P dominates the
situation ‘‘by default’’ because other(s) present do very little, this item
should receive high placement.)
6. Appears to be relaxed and comfortable.
7. Exhibits social skills. (E.g., does things to make other(s) comfortable,
keeps conversation moving, entertains or charms other(s).)
8. Is reserved and unexpressive. (E.g., expresses little affect; acts in a stiff,
formal manner.)
9. Laughs frequently. (Disregard whether laughter appears to be ‘‘nervous’’
or ‘‘genuine.’’)
10. Smiles frequently.
11. Is physically animated; moves around a great deal.
12. Seems to like other(s) present. (E.g., would probably like to be friends
with them.)
13. Exhibits an awkward interpersonal style. (E.g., seems to have difficulty

knowing what to say, mumbles, fails to respond to other(s)’ conversa-
tional advances.)
14. Compares self to other(s) (whether others are present or not).
15. Shows high enthusiasm and a high energy level.
16. Shows a wide range of interests. (E.g., talks about many topics.)
17. Talks at rather than with other(s). (E.g., conducts a monologue, ignores
what others say.)
18. Expresses agreement frequently. (High placement implies agreement
is expressed unusually often, e.g., in response to each and every state-
ment made. Low placement implies unusual lack of expression of
agreement.)
19. Expresses criticism (of anybody or anything). (Low placement implies
expresses praise.)
20. Is talkative (as observed in this situation).
21. Expresses insecurity. (E.g., seems touchy or overly sensitive.)
22. Show physical signs of tension or anxiety. (E.g., fidgets nervously,
voice wavers.) (Lack of signs of anxiety = middle placement; low
placement = lack of signs under circumstances where you would
expect to see them.)
23. Exhibits a high degree of intelligence. (NB: At issue is what is
displayed in the interaction not what may or may not be latent.
Thus, give this item high placement only if P actually says or does
something of high intelligence. Low placement implies exhibition of
low intelligence; medium placement = no information one way or
the other.)
24. Expresses sympathy (to anyone, i.e., including conversational refer-
ences). (Low placement implies unusual lack of sympathy.)
25. Initiates humor.
26. Seeks reassurance. (E.g., asks for agreement, fishes for praise.)
27. Exhibits condescending behavior. (E.g., acts as if self is superior to others
[present, or otherwise].) (Low placement implies acting inferior.)
28. Seems likable (to other(s) present).
29. Seeks advice.
30. Appears to regard self as physically attractive.
31. Acts irritated.
32. Expresses warmth (to anyone, e.g., include any references to ‘‘my close
friend,’’ etc).
33. Tries to undermine, sabotage or obstruct.
34. Expresses hostility (no matter toward whom or what).
35. Is unusual or unconventional in appearance.
36. Behaves in a fearful or timid manner.
37. Is expressive in face, voice, or gestures.
38. Expresses interest in fantasy or daydreams. (Low placement only if such
interest is explicitly disavowed.)
39. Expresses guilt (about anything).
40. Keeps other(s)ata distance; avoids development of any sort of interpersonal

relationship. (Low placement implies behavior to get close to other(s).)
41. Shows interest in intellectual or cognitive matters. (E.g., by discussing an
intellectual idea in detail or with enthusiasm.)
42. Seems to enjoy the situation.
43. Says or does something interesting.
44. Says negative things about self. (E.g., is self-critical; expresses feelings of
inadequacy.)
45. Displays ambition. (E.g., passionate discussion of career plans, course
grades, opportunities to make money.)
46. Blames others (for anything).
47. Expresses self-pity or feelings of victimization.
48. Expresses sexual interest. (E.g., acts attracted to someone present;
expresses interest in dating or sexual matters in general.)
49. Behaves in a cheerful manner.
50. Gives up when faced with obstacles. (Low placement implies unusual
persistence.)
51. Behaves in a stereotypically masculine/feminine style or manner. (Apply
the usual stereotypes appropriate to the P’s sex. Low placement implies
behavior stereotypical of the opposite sex.)
52. Offers advice.
53. Speaks fluently and expresses ideas well.
54. Emphasizes accomplishments of self, family, or acquaintances. (Low
placement = emphasizes failures of these individuals.)
55. Behaves in a competitive manner. (Low placement implies cooperative
behavior.)
56. Speaks in a loud voice.
57. Speaks sarcastically. (E.g., says things (s)he does not mean; makes face-
tious comments that are not necessarily funny.)
58. Makes or approaches physical contact with other(s). (Of any sort, including
sitting unusually close without touching.) (Low placement implies unusual
avoidance of physical contact, such as large interpersonal distance).
59. Engages in constant eye contact with someone. (Low placement implies
unusual lack of eye contact.)
60. Seems detached from the situation.
61. Speaks quickly. (Low placement = speaks slowly.)
62. Acts playful.
63. Other(s) seek advice from P.
64. Concentrates on/works hard at a task. (Low placement implies loafing.)
65. Engages in physical activity. (E.g., works up a sweat.) (Low placement =
almost completely sedentary.)
66. Acts in a self-indulgent manner. (E.g., spending, eating, or drinking.)
(Low placement implies self-denial.)
67. Exhibits physical discomfort or pain. (High placement = in excess of
what seems proportionate; low placement implies lack of these signs
where expected.)
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11 Personality, Demographics, and
Self-Reported Behavioral Acts: The
Development of Avocational Interest
Scales from Estimates of the Amount of
Time Spent in Interest-Related Activities
Lewis R. Goldberg
HOW DOES ONE STUDY ‘‘BEHAVIOR’’?
Periodically, social psychologists suffer troublesome and often baffling

spasms of guilt and self-flagellation. One of their most common laments is
not studying real ‘‘behavior,’’ at least recently as compared with the good
old days (e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007).
But, all of us ‘‘behave’’ all day, every day—so what? Behavior must
be transduced through some medium before measurement occurs and the
resulting measures can then be used for scientific purposes. Even the
classic bar presses of rats and pigeons had to be mechanically transformed
into graphical recordings, which then had to be interpreted by human
observers.
Although some of the media through which behavior can be trans-
duced include various kinds of mechanical apparatus (e.g., activity
counts, dial settings), by far the most common medium for converting
behaviors to measures is the human brain. Behavioral observers are used
for this purpose in various contexts, including (a) short-term versus long-
term periods of behavioral observation, (b) in experimental or laboratory
settings versus in more normal life settings, and (c) observing the beha-
viors of others directly or from audio or video transcriptions. Each of
these modes of transduction has advantages and disadvantages, many of
which are discussed in methodological textbooks. In all cases, however,

humans are used at some stage of the measurement process to filter,
schematize, organize, classify, conceptualize, and/or categorize their
observations into a format suitable for that context.
USING SELF-REPORTS AS TRANSDUCERS OF

BEHAVIORAL ACTS
There are some kinds of research contexts when the most accurate
observer of a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors is the person
himself or herself (e.g., Buss & Craik, 1983). At the most basic level,
one can characterize those contexts as ones when (a) there is nothing for
the self-observer to gain by not being accurate; and (b) the task is relatively
easy for most people. In addition, people are likely to be more accurate
(1) when recalling the past, rather than predicting the future; (2) when
asked about real past events, not hypothetical scenarios; (3) when the
questions are short and clearly stated; and (4) when the response options
fit the questions.
Some caveats are in order: First of all, it is important to realize that we
may not know all the reasons why we behave as we do (e.g., Nisbett &
Wilson, 1977). Moreover, we certainly differ in our ability to recall
events, and in the kind of events that we recall most accurately. Indeed,
we may sometimes forget important lifetime events, perhaps even highly
traumatic events (Freyd, 1996; Gleaves, Smith, Butler, & Spiegel, 2004).
But, all in all, we are probably pretty accurate recorders of our past
activities, at least to differentiate between those things that we did a lot
and those that we did rarely if at all.
A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO DEVELOPING AGGREGATES

OF SELF-REPORTED BEHAVIORAL ACTS: FROM 400 ACTS TO
60 ACT CLUSTERS
To the extent that individuals are reasonably accurate reporters of the

relative frequency with which they have engaged in various behavioral
acts, a survey of their act frequencies in a wide-ranging array of such
activities should provide the basic data from which to assess important
individual differences in lifestyle. Such patterns of lifestyle differences,
then, might ultimately be useful as criteria for assessing the comparative
validity of measures of personality traits.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AVOCATIONAL INTEREST SCALES 207
As a first step in that direction, we examined the large set of activities

included in the research surveys developed by the National Merit
Scholarship Corporation and administered to college student samples
during 1962–1963 (Loehlin & Nichols, 1976). All of those acts that
involved school-related behaviors (e.g., went to sleep in class) were
either omitted or rewritten so that the resulting activity pool would be
potentially relevant to an adult community sample, most of whom would
no longer be associated with any educational institution. In addition, we
employed focus groups of adults to examine preliminary act lists and
provide additional examples of common behavioral acts that had not
yet been included. Through an iterative series of such forums, we settled
on a set of 400 activities, some examples of which are included in
Table 11.1.
In the Fall of 1997, the 400 act descriptions were included in a longer
questionnaire that was administered by mail to approximately 800 mem-
bers of the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS). The ESCS
had been recruited in 1993 from lists of homeowners in this Oregon
community, all of whom had agreed to complete one or two question-
naires per year for at least 5 to 10 years. ESCS participants are paid for
each completed survey they return to Oregon Research Institute; they are
identified only by a precoded number, and they are always requested to
not include their names on their questionnaires. As of 2008, the ESCS
Table 11.1. Some Examples of the 400 Activities

Played chess. Had a hangover. Read the newspaper.
Shot a gun. Cried. Had my back rubbed.
Lied about my age. Consulted a lawyer. Played with a child.
Polished my toenails. Walked on a beach. Went to a night club.
Sang in a bath or Planned a party. Chewed gum.
shower. Skipped a meal. Bought new clothes.
Gave money to a panhandler. Read the Bible (or Slept more than 10 hours
Was late for work. other holy book). at a time.
Instructions and Response Options:

Here are things that people sometimes do. Please indicate HOW FREQUENTLY you
have done each of them.
(1) NEVER in my life.

(2) Not in the past year.
(3) ONCE or TWICE in the past year.
(4) THREE or MORE times in the past year, but not more than 15 times.
(5) MORE THAN 15 TIMES in the past year.
Note: Adapted from Loehlin and Nichols (1976).

Table 11.2. Some Example Clusters (with an Example Item)
Alcohol and drug usage (Had a hangover).

Religious practices (Said grace before a meal).
Computer usage (Surfed the Internet).
Sports (Played golf).
Housekeeping chores (Washed dishes).
Physical exercise (Lifted weights).
Cultural event attendance (Visited a museum).
Travel and leisure activities (Rode in a taxi).
Gardening chores (Did yard work).
Summer activities (Went on a picnic).
Anger manifestations (Hit or slapped someone).
Friendliness manifestations (Made a new friend).
Literary pursuits (Read poetry).
Child-care activities (Played with a child).
participants have completed over 30 assessment measures, and the ques-

tionnaire containing the 400 act descriptions was the 14th in this
sequence.
Based on a series of hierarchical cluster analyses of the intercorrela-
tions across subjects of the frequency ratings to each of the 400 activity
items, we settled on a preliminary set of 60 act clusters. These clusters
ranged in size from 3 to 14 acts. Their mean item intercorrelations ranged
from .15 to .60, and the coefficient alpha reliability estimates for each act
cluster ranged from .40 to .90. The 14 clusters with the highest reliabil-
ities are included in Table 11.2, along with an example activity in each
cluster.
PREDICTING EACH OF THE 22 MOST RELIABLE ACT

CLUSTERS FROM DEMOGRAPHIC AND PERSONALITY
VARIABLES
The mean frequency across all of the acts within each cluster was calcu-
lated for each of the ESCS participants, and these activity cluster scores
were correlated with their gender, age, and educational level. The gender
correlations ranged up to .70 (Housekeeping chores: women reporting
more). The age correlations ranged up to .50 (Anger manifestations:
younger participants reporting more). The correlations with educational
level ranged up to .45 (Cultural activities: the more highly educated
participants reporting more).
Multiple correlations based on the three demographic indices ranged

from .10 (Religious practices) to .75 (Housekeeping chores) and averaged
about .40. When the most highly correlating single scale from virtually
any of the broad bandwidth personality inventories (e.g., the NEO-PI-R)
was added to each regression equation, the average multiple correlation
increased to about .50. Adding the five most highly correlating person-
ality scales from that inventory increased the mean multiple correlation to
around .55.
In summary, then, unlike many criterion variables used in personality
research, these self-reported act clusters tend to be highly associated with
demographic indices. However, for most of the act clusters one or two
personality measures can serve to increase their predictability beyond that
provided by the demographic indices alone. Indeed, for some of these
clusters the predictability from both demographic and personality mea-
sures appears to be almost as high as seems possible, given the reliabilities
of the clusters and the personality scales.
USING ACT CLUSTERS AS ONE TYPE OF CRITERION FOR

THE EVALUATION OF PERSONALITY MEASURES
In what is probably the most comprehensive comparative-validity study

ever attempted, Grucza and Goldberg (2007) compared 11 multiscale
personality inventories (e.g., the NEO-PI-R, CPI, 16PF, HPI, MPQ, TCI,
JPI) as predictors of three types of criteria: (a) six of the most highly
reliable act clusters of those described above; (b) five Big-Five assessments
by two to three knowledgeable informants; and (c) six self-reported indi-
cators of potential psychopathology. The six activity clusters were selected
to include two that were rather undesirable (Drug use and
Undependability), two that included quite desirable acts (Friendliness
and Creativity), and two that were more middling in their desirability
implications (Communication and Erudition). Findings from a series of
analyses indicated that there was little difference in the predictability of
the six act clusters, with mean cross-validities ranging only from .48 to .54.
And, remarkably, when averaged across the 17 criteria of all
three types combined, there was little difference in the mean cross-
validities among the 11 inventories, with the cross-validated multiple
correlations ranging between .40 and .45. Seemingly, then, there is
much in common at the core of most modern personality inventories,
despite substantial differences in the ways that they are commercially
marketed.
DEVELOPING MEASURES OF AVOCATIONAL INTERESTS AS

INDEXED BY THE REPORTED AMOUNT OF TIME SPENT
ENGAGING IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF INTEREST-RELATED
ACTIVITIES
There are few, if any, public domain inventories measuring either avoca-
tional or vocational interests, yet both of these types of individual differ-
ences are likely to be quite useful as predictors of important human
outcomes. To begin to correct this lacuna, we have now developed
public domain measures of eight vocational orientations, which we pro-
pose as potential improvements over Holland’s (1973) classic 6-domain
RIASEC model. Using only 89 items, these 8 new scales have alpha
reliabilities ranging from .80 to .90, averaging about .85. They are pro-
vided here in Appendix A. They were included in a questionnaire admi-
nistered to the ESCS in the Fall of 2006.
We measure vocational interests by asking people to indicate how
much they would like to engage in various activities and occupations if
they had their lives to live over again, and if there were no constraints on
their skills or training. That is a form of hypothetical scenario that is
probably not conducive to optimal self-reporting accuracy, but vocational
choices are determined by so many factors beyond one’s interests that it
makes sense to try to get at those interest patterns in such an ‘‘as-if’’
fashion.
Not so for avocational interests, which should be more directly linked
to the frequency with which one engages in different types of interest-
related activities. To test that conjecture, we have developed 33 avoca-
tional interest scales, each of which includes from 4 to 8 behavioral acts as
items. There are 200 items in this new public-domain inventory, roughly
6 acts per scale.
In contrast to the 60 activity clusters developed from the 400 beha-
vior acts—which were based on a bottom-up strategy—the avocational
scales were developed using a top-down approach: We began with an
analysis of potential categories of avocational interests, and then sought
the specific activities that would be representative of each such interest
domain.
The items included in each of these new scales are provided in
Appendix B. The instructions and response options include: ‘‘Here are
some things that people sometimes do. Please indicate how frequently
you have done each of them, using the following scale: (1) Never in my
life; (2) Not in the past year; (3) One or two times in the past year;
(4) Three to ten times in the past year; (5) More than ten times in the past
year.’’ These activity items were administered to the ESCS in the fall of
2007.
As would be expected from the findings from our analyses of the first
set of activity clusters, some of the relations between the avocational
interest scales and demographic indices are quite high: Correlations
with gender range up to .60 (Housekeeping chores, with women
reporting more) and .55 (Fashion-related activities, again with women
reporting more). Correlations with age range up to .55 (Food and eating,
with younger persons reporting more) and .40 (Computing, with
younger persons again reporting more). And, correlations with educa-
tional level range up to .40 (Cultural activities) and .35 (Political/
Organizational acts), with more educated persons more likely to engage
in such pursuits.
Because of the strong correlations between activity patterns and
demographic indices, we had assumed that a substantial source of the
internal consistency within the act clusters stems from demographic
variance, and therefore that estimates of internal-consistency reliability
would be substantially attenuated in demographically distinct subsamples
(e.g., men versus women). One remarkable finding from this project is
that such an assumption is incorrect: The internal-consistency reliabilities
of the scales do not differ much between same-sex and pooled samples.
For example, the coefficient alpha reliability of the 5-act Fashion scale is
.78 in the pooled sample as compared to .75 and .79 in the female and
male subsamples, respectively. For the 7-act Housekeeping scale, the
coefficient is .63 in the pooled sample as compared to .60 and .67 in
each of the two gender-separated subsamples. What this suggests is that
although demographically different subsamples may differ in their
activity patterns, this is not the source of the cohesion among activities
of the same sort.
Obviously not all activity patterns are equally prevalent within
the ESCS; indeed, mean differences among the act clusters are quite
substantial. At one extreme are activities such as Reading,
Housekeeping, Gardening, Computing, Understanding, Food-related,
and Shopping, which many of the ESCS participants engage in fre-
quently; at the other extreme are activities such as Automotive,
Social Networking, Gambling, Creating, Collecting, Financial, and
Romantic, which are engaged in relatively rarely in this adult com-
munity sample.
For the purposes of predicting important lifestyle differences, clusters
that elicit a large range of individual differences may be far more useful
than those that elicit relatively little variation among the ESCS partici-
pants. The highest-variance categories include Computing, Exercise,
Religion, and Drinking, whereas the lowest-variance categories include
Romance, Automotive, Green-related, and Political/organizational
activities.
RELATIONS BETWEEN AVOCATIONAL INTEREST PATTERNS

AND OTHER INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Because of the enormous amount of information available on each of the

ESCS participants, it is possible to examine the correlations of both
avocational and vocational interest patterns with a wide array of other
types of individual differences. Although most of those findings are
beyond the limited scope of this chapter, a few of them may be of interest
to readers of this volume.
One such topic concerns the relations between avocational interest
patterns and personality traits. Using Goldberg’s (1992) 100-item Big-
Five factor markers as measures of personality, we can examine the
avocational interest correlates of self-reported personality factors.
Overall, the correlations between measures of interest and personality
are quite modest, certainly less substantial than the relations between
interest patterns and demographic indices. Unsurprisingly, the highest
interest correlates of Extraversion are Partying (r = .25) and Romance
(r = .20). For Agreeableness, the highest correlates are Housekeeping
(positively related) and Financial (negatively related), both with correla-
tions about .20. For Conscientiousness, the highest correlate is Financial
(r = .15), and for Emotional Stability it is Fashion (r = -.20). Finally, for
Intellect/Imagination the correlations are more substantial: .40 for
Creating, .30 for Culture, and around .25 for Self-Improvement,
Understanding, and Being Alone.
NOW TO THE BOTTOM LINE: CAN AVOCATIONAL INTEREST

PATTERNS ADD TO THE VALIDITY OF PREDICTIONS OF
REPORTS BY KNOWLEDGEABLE INFORMANTS?
It is one thing to develop a new measure of some individual difference; it

is another to establish its utility as a predictor of important human out-
comes. Clearly vocational interest patterns have proven their worth over
the years as predictors of job satisfaction and other work-related attitudes.
But what about avocational interests? And specifically what about avoca-
tional interests as measured by self-reports of the relative frequency of
individuals’ engagement in various interest-related activities? Because
there has been little previous research on the utility of such measures, it
is important to demonstrate their incremental validity.
But what should we use as criteria? Probably the most difficult type of
criterion is one that shares no method variance with the avocational
interest measures and is not related in content in any sort of one-to-one
manner. Of the three types of criteria used in the comparative-validity

studies of Grucza and Goldberg (2007), one type (act frequency self-
reports) shares both method and content overlap, whereas another type
(self-reports of aspects of psychopathology) shares a reliance on self-
reports. The third type of criteria, on the other hand, personality assess-
ments by knowledgeable informants, would seem to be as distal a type of
criterion as one could imagine.
Moreover, we know from past research that (a) assessments by
knowledgeable informants are highly related to self-reports on the same
or similar personality traits, and (b) self-reported activity frequencies are
highly related to various demographic indices, such as gender, age, and
educational level. As a consequence, it is far from obvious that any
avocational interest scale scores could be incrementally associated with
personality assessments by knowledgeable others, after controlling both
for demographic variables and for self-reports on the same personality
traits. Indeed, one might argue a priori that this would constitute an
unusually challenging validity test.
Each of the participants in the ESCS had been asked to recruit the
‘‘three persons who know you best’’ to provide personality descriptions of
that participant, to be mailed directly to Oregon Research Institute in
return for an honorarium check. In a letter that the participants gave the
informants, they were requested to be as candid as possible, and to refrain
from sharing any of their assessments with the participants, who in turn
received a bonus check if all three informants returned their completed
forms within a specified period of time. Most participants were described
by three informants, a few by two, and a very few by only one; the average
of the ratings by the informants were used in our analyses.
The informants described the personalities of the ESCS participants
using two separate sets of Big-Five factor markers: (a) The 44-item Big-
Five Inventory (BFI) developed by Oliver John (e.g., John & Srivastava,
1999), and (b) the 40-item Big Five Mini-Markers (SMM) developed by
Gerard Saucier (1994). Both inventories were augmented by two addi-
tional items tapping physical attractiveness, so the informant question-
naire included 88 items. A varimax rotation of six components derived
from these 88 items, which is included as Table 5 in Grucza and
Goldberg (2007), is as clean and clear a representation of the Big Five
factor structure as can be found in the literature. Orthogonal factor
scores on the five personality factors were used as criteria in the present
analysis.
To examine the incremental validity of the avocational interest scales
as predictors of informants’ reports, each of the five orthogonal factor
scores was used as the criterion in a hierarchical analysis in which at Step 1
the three demographic indices (gender, age, and educational level) were
first entered in a multiple regression analysis, followed at Step 2 by the

orthogonal factor scores derived from self-reports to Goldberg’s (1992)
100 Big-Five factor markers, and then finally followed at Step 3 by the 33
avocational interest scales, entered in a stepwise fashion, but stopping
when no further variable was significantly associated with the criterion at
the p < .001 level of statistical significance. Findings from each of the five
hierarchical regression analyses are presented in Table 11.3. Those avoca-
tional interest scales that provided incremental validity, above and
beyond the demographic indices and the self-reported personality traits,
are listed in Table 11.4.
At Step 1, the demographic indices predicted the five informant
factors with multiple correlations that ranged from .05 (Conscientious-
ness) to about .35 (Emotional Stability and Intellect). By Step 2, the
introduction of the five self-reported personality factors increased the
multiple correlations substantially, and the resulting coefficients now
ranged from about .50 (Agreeableness and Emotional Stability) to .70
(Extraversion). Remarkably, however, at Step 3 the provision of one or
more avocational interest scales served to increase the multiple correla-
tion statistically significantly in every case—a quite small amount in the
Table 11.3. Predicting Assessments by Knowledgeable Informants from

Demographic, Personality, and Avocational Interest Measures: Multiple Correlations
at Each Stage from Five Hierarchical Regression Analyses
EXT AGR CON STA INT
Step 1: 3 Demographics .20 .28 .05 .37 .35

Step 2: Big-Five self-reports .70 .49 .54 .52 .61
Step 3: 33 Avoc. int. scales .71 .53 .57 .55 .66
Note: EXT = Extraversion. AGR = Agreeableness. CON = Conscientiousness. STA = Emotional

Stability. INT = Intellect/Imagination/Openness to Experience.
Table 11.4. Significant (p < .01) Avocational Interest Predictors AFTER

Controlling for Demographic Indices AND for Self-Reported Personality Traits
EXTRAVERSION: + Sports; - Exercising
AGREEABLENESS: - Drinking; + Food/Eating;
- Games; + Children
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: - Pets; + Housekeeping;
- Self-Improvement; + Reading
EMOT. STABILITY: + Sports; - Automotive;
- Culture; - Gambling
INTELLECT: + Creating; + Housekeeping;
- Sports; - Fashion;
+ Reading; - Exercising
case of Extraversion but by quite a substantial amount (.03 to .05) in the

case of the other four factors.
The avocational interest scales that provided these significant
increments in validity, which are listed in Table 11.4, suggest aspects
of people’s lifestyles (as reflected in the frequency with which they
engage in various activities) that are differentially related to person-
ality perceptions by others, above and beyond the individual’s own
self-perceptions. That is, one can think of the activity clusters as
some of the cues used by others to assess our personality traits.
Many of these cues may be used similarly by oneself and others to
assess the same personality trait, but some of them must be used at
least somewhat differently by the two kinds of judges, thus permit-
ting the interest-related scales to predict incrementally the infor-
mants’ personality assessments.
Can one achieve the same results using alternative kinds of
activity clusters and/or alternative measures of self-reported person-
ality traits? One potential problem with the analyses reported in
Tables 11.3 and 11.4 is that each of the three major sets of variables
(informants’ reports, self-reports, and avocational interest scales)
were administered to the ESCS at different times. To make sure
that our findings were not an artifact of time differences in variable
administration, we repeated the hierarchical regression analyses using
data collected at roughly the same time (1997–1998). Because the
ESCS participants had completed the exact same set of Big-Five
assessments (BFI and SMM) as their knowledgeable informants, and
during the same period of time, we used the five factor scores from
those self-reports in Step 2 of our analyses. And, then, in place of the
33 avocational interest scales in Step 3, we used the 33 activity
clusters with the highest item intercorrelations, based on the analyses
described earlier in this chapter.
At Step 1, the findings were identical to those presented in
Table 11.3; the demographic indices predicted the five informant
factors with multiple correlations that ranged from .05
(Conscientiousness) to about .35 (Emotional Stability and Intellect).
At Step 2, however, the introduction of the five new self-reported
personality factors increased the multiple correlations even more
substantially than before, with the resulting coefficients now ranging
from about .60 (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional
Stability) to .72 (Extraversion). Remarkably, however, once again at
Step 3 the provision of one or more of the activity clusters served to
significantly increase the multiple correlation in every case—again by
only a quite small amount in the case of Extraversion but by quite a
substantial amount (.05) in the case of Intellect/Openness.
SOME CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Why are some aspects of people’s lifestyles (as reflected in the

frequency with which they engage in various activities) significantly
related to personality trait inferences by others, above and beyond
the individual’s own self-ascriptions? Avocational pursuits are among
the most easily observable aspects of our lifestyles, and thus they are
likely to be highly salient cues used by others to infer our personality
traits. On the other hand, the things that we do a lot are likely to be
highly automatic routines, to which we may pay little attention.
Moreover, we may assume that what we do is pretty much the
same as what is done by others, and therefore that our avocational
interest patterns have little to say about our basic personality traits.
As a consequence of these two cognitive processes, the assessment of
avocational interest patterns may provide particularly useful variables
in understanding the differences between the personality trait infer-
ences made by ourselves versus others.
More generally, one implication of these findings is that we may
need to be far more inclusive in the types of individual differences
included in our assessment batteries if we are to substantially
increase the predictability of important human outcomes. Measures
of cognitive abilities have a long history of utility in predicting
educational and vocational outcomes, and more recently measures
of personality traits have been linked to a wide range of health-
related criteria, including mortality versus longevity (e.g., Roberts,
Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007). Although measures of
vocational interests are popular in counseling settings, they are
rarely included in research-oriented assessment batteries. And, mea-
sures of avocational interests are virtually never included in research
in either social or personality psychology. Part of the reason for this
neglect may have been stemmed from the lack of availability of
public-domain inventories for assessing vocational and avocational
interest patterns. Hopefully, the measures described in this chapter
will help to solve that problem.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Funds for this project have been provided by Grant AG20048 from the
National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public
Health Service.
APPENDIX A: THE ITEMS IN EIGHT NEW VOCATIONAL INTEREST

SCALES (89 ITEMS)
Instructions: For each of the following activities and occupations, decide how
much you would like doing it if you had your life to live over again. Disregard
whether you have the necessary skills or training. Please use the following
scale for your responses: (1) Strongly dislike; (2) Dislike; (3) Neutral;
(4) Like; (5) Strongly like.
Adventure (CISS: Adventuring; Holland: Realistic)

Be a professional athlete
Engage in exciting adventures
Survive in the wilderness
Be a racing car driver
Face physical danger
Be a military officer
Compete in athletic events
Be a bounty hunter
Be a long-distance bicycle rider
Be a police officer
Production (CISS: Producing; Holland: Realistic)

Care for cattle or horses
Be a farmer
Construct new buildings
Be a forest ranger
Cultivate plants
Go on nature walks
Do woodworking
Raise flowers
Repair cars or trucks
Work with tools and machinery
Creativity (CISS: Creating; Holland: Artistic)

Create works of art
Create new fashion designs
Be a professional dancer
Write short stories or novels
Play an instrument in a symphony
Redecorate one’s house
Select art works for a museum
Sing professionally
Be an actor or actress
Be an artist or architect
Act in a play
Write songs
Paint or draw
Erudition
Be a translator or interpreter
Be a librarian
Be a professor of English
Make up word puzzles
Edit a newspaper
Know many languages
Be a foreign correspondent
Speak fluently on any subject
Read many books
Keep a diary or journal
Altruism (CISS: Helping; Holland: Social)

Help others learn new ideas
Care for sick people
Be an elementary school teacher
Be a social worker
Be a minister, priest, rabbi, or other religious teacher
Counsel persons who need help
Instruct parents on child care
Be a doctor or nurse
Be a physical therapist
Provide comfort and support to others
Participate in charity events
Help people make career decisions
Be a counselor or therapist
Leadership (CISS: Influencing; Holland: Enterprising)

Make important things happen
Lead other people
Be a sales or marketing director
Be the chief executive of a large company
Organize a political campaign
Be the master of ceremonies at a meeting
Plan an advertising campaign
Debate topics in a public meeting
Persuade others to change their views
Be a state governor or senator
Run for political office
Make decisions that affect a lot of people
Organization (CISS: Organizing; Holland: Conventional)

Be the financial officer for a company
Be an office manager
Plan budgets
Prepare financial contracts
Develop an office filing system
Supervise the work of others
Plan investment strategies
Establish time schedules
Monitor business expenses
Be a purchasing agent
Keep track of a company’s inventory
Manage a computer database
Keep detailed records
Analysis (CISS: Analyzing; Holland: Investigative)

Be a chemist
Design a laboratory experiment
Be a mathematician
Explain scientific concepts to others
Be a physicist
Carry out medical research
Be a scientific reporter
Solve complex puzzles
Develop a computer program
Be a statistician
CISS = Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (Campbell, Hyne, & Nilsen, 1992).
APPENDIX B: THIRTY-THREE PRELIMINARY AVOCATIONAL INTEREST

SCALES
Instructions: Here are some things that people sometimes do. Please indicate
how frequently you have done each of them, using the following scale:
(1) Never in my life; (2) Not in the past year; (3) One or two times in the
past year; (4) Three to ten times in the past year; (5) More than ten times in
the past year.
Being Alone (6 Items [Alpha = .73])

Ate dinner alone.
Went to the movies alone.
Went to a concert or theater alone.
Chose to spend a day by myself.
Went on a trip by myself.

Spent an entire vacation by myself.
Child-Related (6 Items [.86])

Played with a child.
Let a child win a game.
Took a child on an outing.
Served as a baby sitter.
Read a story to a child.
Read the comics to a child.
Collecting (5 Items [.84])

Worked on my collection.
Bought something for my collection.
Traded something in my collection.
Read a book about the things that I collect.
Bought a book about the things that I collect.
Computing (6 Items [.89])

Used a computer.
Sent a message by electronic mail (e-mail).
Surfed the Internet.
Read news on the Internet.
Played a computer game.
Looked up information on the Internet.
Creativity (7 Items [.69])

Tried something completely new.
Produced a work of art.
Wrote poetry.
Acted in a play.
Painted a picture.
Played a musical instrument.
Sang or played an instrument in public.
Culture (6 Items [.82])

Attended a public lecture.
Visited an art exhibition.
Visited a museum.
Attended a ballet performance.
Attended an opera or a concert.
Attended a stage play or musical.
Drinking (5 Items [.84])

Drank beer or wine.
Drank whiskey, vodka, gin, or other hard liquor.
Drank in a bar or nightclub.
Became intoxicated.
Had a hangover.
Exercise (7 Items [.85])

Went running or jogging.
Lifted weights.
Used an exercise machine.
Exercised for 40 minutes or longer.
Did aerobic exercise.
Did yoga or other movement exercises.
Participated in an exercise program.
Fashion (5 Items [.76])

Spent more than 10 minutes thinking about what to wear.
Spent more than an hour thinking about what to wear.
Read a fashion-related magazine.
Read a fashion-related book.
Bought a fashionable item of clothing.
Financial (6 Items [.75])

Obtained stock market prices.
Read a book on a financial topic.
Bought or sold stocks or bonds.
Bought or sold real estate.
Purchased a commodity as an investment.
Worked on a retirement plan.
Food-Related (7 Items [.64])

Chewed gum.
Ate candy.
Ate in a restaurant.
Ordered food to be delivered.
Ate food while walking or working.
Ate too much.
Ate or drank while driving.
Gambling (6 Items [.79])

Played bingo for money.
Gambled with cards or dice.
Purchased a scratch ticket.

Gambled on a slot machine or video poker game.
Went to a casino.
Bet money on a sports event.
Game Playing (5 Items [.65])

Worked on a jigsaw puzzle.
Played cards.
Played a board game.
Played chess or checkers.
Learned a new board or card game.
Gardening (6 items [.85])

Cared for a potted plant.
Gardened.
Did yard work.
Planted or transplanted a plant.
Bought or picked flowers.
Bought plants for a garden or yard.
Green Activities (7 Items [.52])

Used public transportation.
Composted food scraps or yard waste.
Walked or rode a bicycle to work.
Changed a habit to have less impact on the environment.
Used both sides of a piece of paper before discarding it.
Picked up litter.
Recycled one or more items.
Housekeeping (7 Items [.75])

Washed dishes.
Made a bed.
Cleaned the house.
Ironed linens or clothes.
Cooked a meal.
Baked a cake, pie, cookies, or bread.
Knitted, quilted, sewed, or crocheted.
Music (8 Items [.77])

Listened to music on the radio.
Listened to music while working.
Downloaded music from the Internet.
Traded music with a friend.
Purchased a musical album.

Shopped in a music store.
Read music-related news.
Used an MP3 player or iPod.
Partying (5 Items [.82])

Had someone over for dinner.
Went to a small party.
Went to a large party.
Planned a party.
Entertained six or more people.
Pets (5 Items [.84])

Played with a pet animal.
Fed a pet animal.
Cared for a pet animal.
Bathed or groomed a pet animal.
Purchased a pet animal.
Political/Organizational (7 Items [.70])

Signed a petition.
Attended a rally or demonstration.
Donated money to charity.
Donated money to a political campaign or cause.
Volunteered for a club or organization.
Attended a town meeting.
Wrote a letter to a newspaper or politician.
Reading (5 Items [.75])

Read a book.
Bought a book.
Read in bed before going to sleep.
Read an entire book in one sitting.
Visited a public library.
Religious/Spiritual Practices (7 Items [.89])

Discussed religion or spirituality.
Prayed (not including blessings at meals).
Read the Bible or other sacred text.
Gave a blessing at a meal.
Attended a church or religious service.
Listened to a religious program on the radio or TV.
Read a book about religion or spirituality.
Romance (6 Items [.57])

Wrote a love letter.
Went on a date.
Went dancing.
Dined by candlelight.
Attended a formal dance.
Wore formal clothing.
Self-Improvement (5 Items [.66])

Read a self-help book.
Bought a self-help book.
Studied some subject.
Learned a new skill.
Enrolled in a course of study.
Shopping (7 Items [.66])

Spent 10 minutes or more in a nongrocery store.
Spent an hour or more in a nongrocery store.
Bought something other than groceries.
Checked the sales ads in a newspaper.
Read newspaper ads for nongrocery items.
Shopped on the Web.
Used eBay to buy or sell something.
Social Networking (5 Items [.69])

Used a computer for social networking.
Read someone’s personal web page.
Made an entry on a personal web page.
Participated in an online discussion group.
Used instant messaging to chat online.
Sports (6 Items [.79])

Discussed sports.
Watched a televised sports event.
Attended an athletic event.
Played a team sport.
Played basketball.
Played tennis or golf.
Summer Activities (7 Items [.74])

Went on a picnic.
Went on a hike.
Walked on a beach.
Went swimming.
Went backpacking or camping.
Went boating or rafting.
Went fishing or hunting.
Travel (6 Items [.79])

Took a trip.
Went sightseeing.
Took travel photographs.
Stayed in a hotel, motel, or resort.
Traveled by train or plane.
Went on a cruise or tour.
TV (7 Items [.61])
Watched television.
Watched television news.
Watched a television soap opera.
Watched a television talk show.
Watched a television reality show.
Recorded a television program.
Watched too much television.
Understanding (6 Items [.61])

Read a news magazine.
Watched an educational channel on TV.
Looked up a word in a dictionary.
Read the editorial page of a newspaper.
Looked something up in an encyclopedia.
Read poetry.
Vehicles (4 Items [.50])

Rode a motorcycle.
Read a car magazine or book.
Bought a car, truck, or motorcycle.
Raced a car, truck, or motorcycle.
Writing/Remembering (7 Items [.69])

Made an entry in a diary or journal.
Wrote a postcard.
Wrote a handwritten letter.
Wrote poetry.
Wrote a thank-you note.
Put pictures in a photo album.
Worked on a scrapbook.
REFERENCES
Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1983). The act frequency approach to personality.
Campbell, D. P., Hyne, S. A., & Nilsen, D. L. (1992). Manual for the Campbell Interest
and Skill Survey: CISS. Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems.
Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University.
Gleaves, D. H., Smith, S. M., Butler, L. D., & Spiegel, D. (2004). False and recovered
memories in the laboratory and clinic: A review of experimental and clinical
evidence. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11, 3–28.
Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure.
Psychological Assessment, 4, 26–42.
Grucza, R. A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The comparative validity of 11 modern
personality inventories: Predictions of behavioral acts, informant reports, and
clinical indicators. Journal of Personality Assessment, 89, 167–187.
Holland, J. L. (1973). Making vocational choices: A theory of careers. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History,
measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.),
Handbook of personality: theory and research (2nd ed.: pp. 102–138). New York:
Guilford.
Loehlin, J. C., & Nichols, R. C. (1976). Heredity, environment, and personality: A study
of 850 sets of twins. Austin, TX: University of Texas.
Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The
power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits,
socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life
outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 313–345.
Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar Big-Five
markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63, 506–516.
12 Measuring Self-Enhancement: From
Self-Report to Concrete Behavior
Delroy L. Paulhus
Ronald R. Holden
OVERVIEW
Self-enhancement is the tendency to exaggerate one’s positive qualities.

In the context of questionnaire styles, self-enhancement is typically
referred to as socially desirable responding and is tapped by measures
such as the Marlowe-Crowne scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964). A second
category of measures incorporates a criterion by contrasting self-evalua-
tions with intrapsychic or external criteria. By contrast, we highlight two
behavioral methods: (1) a reaction-time technique, and (2) a knowledge
overclaiming technique. Paulhus’s overclaiming method relies on the fact
that self-enhancers tend to claim knowledge of nonexistent foils (e.g.,
people, places, events). Holden’s response-latency method exploits the
fact that the response times of fakers exhibit a pattern distinct from those
of individuals who respond honestly. Our taxonomy of assessment
methods is discussed in terms of the continuum running from self-report
to concrete behavioral measures.
INTRODUCTION
The chapters in this collection illustrate that social and personality psy-
chologists tend to address the issue of behavior in rather different ways.
This difference is not surprising given the variety of ways in which the two
fields differ in method and theory (Tracy, Robins, & Sherman, in press).
Social psychologists tend to view behavior as a concrete outcome
reflecting the difference in psychological state induced by an experi-
mental manipulation. In that field, behavior appears to have an exalted
status in the hierarchy of scientific credibility. Because it is more tangible,
and can be scored more objectively, concrete behavior is commonly
viewed as more valid.
By contrast, personality psychologists tend to view behavior as only
one of a family of indicators. Two other modes of measuring psycholo-
gical constructs are considered at least as credible. Ratings by knowledge-
able informants, for example, are viewed as superior in some respects (see
McCrae & Weiss, 2007; Vazire, 2007). Self-reports too have a variety of
advantages that help explain why they remain the single most popular
method for measuring personality traits (Paulhus & Vazire, 2007).
The traditional complaint against self-report measures is their vulner-
ability to self-presentation effects. The general tendency for people to
self-enhance continues to raise concerns that self-reports are contami-
nated with an extraneous source of variance. Thus interest in the concept
of self-enhancement arose in the context of controlling for bias in self-
reports. That reason alone justifies the prolonged attention given to the
development of valid self-enhancement measures. However, the ten-
dency to self-enhance in self-reports has also turned out to be of interest
in its own right. For both these reasons, the search continues for improved
measures of self-enhancing tendencies.
In this chapter, we consider the potential for indexing self-enhance-
ment via behavioral measures. To properly situate this possibility, our
chapter will compare the full range of options from self-report to concrete
behavioral methods. We begin with traditional social desirability scales,
which rest on the notion that individuals who tend to give extremely
desirable responses are not to be trusted. Next we consider measures that
incorporate a criterion by contrasting self-evaluations with intrapsychic
or external criteria. Closer to the behavioral end of the continuum, the
overclaiming approach taps the tendency to claim knowledge of nonexis-
tent items. Finally, we turn to the response latency approach, which is
purely behavioral in nature. Our conclusion favors the overclaiming and
response latency methods.
Note that our choice of the term self-enhancement is purposely
restrictive. We consider those indexes measuring the promotion of
positive qualities. We do not include measures of minimizing one’s
faults. The latter would include concepts such as malingering, self-
effacement, and defensiveness and denial (see Paulhus, Fridhandler, &
Hayes, 1997).
MEASURING SELF-ENHANCEMENT 229
STANDARD METHODS
Socially Desirable Responding
Socially desirable responding (SDR) is the term applied to positive self-

presentation on self-report questionnaires (for a review, see Paulhus,
1991). When asked to rate their own personalities, people tend to bias
their ratings in the favorable direction (Edwards, 1970). When measured
as a stable individual difference, this tendency is often called a social
desirability (SD) response style 1 (Jackson & Messick, 1962). The broader
concept of SD response set includes context-driven motivations to respond
desirably. Whether construed as a set or style, the purpose for measuring
SDR is concern over dissimulation. A respondent who scores high on an
SDR measure is likely to have responded desirably on other question-
naires administered at the same time.
This concern extends to response tendencies beyond a simple favor-
ability bias. People may purposely fabricate an unfavorable image, for
example, misrepresenting themselves as mentally ill (Baer et al., 1992) or
incompetent (Furnham & Henderson, 1982). Again, we do not address
such tendencies in this chapter.
Factors of SDR. Early factor analyses had suggested that socially desirable
responding was not a uniform unidimensional construct (Edwards, 1970;
Wiggins, 1959). Some coherence was brought to the field by Paulhus’s
(1984) comprehensive factor analyses. He found that extant SDR mea-
sures could be arrayed in a two-factor space framed by axes labeled Self-
Deception and Impression Management. The label, Impression Manage-
ment, was based on the rationale argued by Sackeim and Gur (1978):
Exaggerated claims for desirable behaviors that are public must be con-
sciously tailored: After all, such responses such as ‘‘I always pick up my
litter’’ must be made with full awareness of distorting the truth. Items on
the Self-Deception scale, by contrast, concern more ambiguous internal
events (‘‘My first impressions about people always turn out to be right.’’).
Such claims are more easily rationalized without blatant awarenesss.
These two sets of items were incororporated into early versions of the
Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1986). The corre-
lation between the two subscales was positive but only modest in size.
1
Abbreviating the term further to ‘‘social desirability’’ leads to misleading characterizations such as
‘‘high in social desirability.’’ That terminology should be reserved for labeling individuals who possess
desirable attributes.
The Self Deception scale was later subdivided into Self-Deceptive

Enhancement and Self-Deceptive Denial (Paulhus & Reid, 1991).
That development eventuated in the development of Version 6 of the
BIDR (Paulhus, 1991). The standard version comprised the Impression
Management and Self-Deceptive Enhancement scales. The BIDR-6 has
enjoyed wide usage and now approaches the popularity of the Marlowe-
Crowne scale. The commercial version, BIDR-7 (also known as the
Paulhus Deception Scales), is distributed for financially profitable appli-
cations (Paulhus, 1998b). A comprehensive measure that incorporates
content domains (agency & communion) is now under development
(Paulhus, 2002; 2005).
The acknowledgement of content in SDR measures reinforces long-
standing concerns that they contain more substance than style (e.g.,
McCrae & Costa, 1983). The difficulty of distinguishing SDR from forth-
right self-descriptions provided by people with socially desirable attributes
was exemplified in a series of studies by Graziano and Tobin (2002).
Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of measuring SDR without asking
respondents about their personality or abilities. One exception is worth
noting. The final item on Costa and McCrae’s (1992) NEO-PI-R is ‘‘Were
you being honest in completing this questionnaire?’’. The psychometric
properties of the self-report measures were weaker among those
answering ‘‘no’’ (Carter, Herbst, Stoller, Kidorf, King, Costa, &
Brooner, 2001).
Krueger’s Method. More sophisticated is the idiosyncratic-weighting

method (Krueger, 1998; Sinha & Krueger, 1998). Here, self-enhance-
ment is indexed by the correlation between a respondent’s self-ratings
and his or her desirability ratings of the same items. Effectively, this
method weights each item rating by its desirability as judged by the
respondent. By contrast, other methods assume implicitly that the
social consensus regarding the social desirability of items is shared by all
respondents.
The method also has the advantage of adaptability because the weights
can be adjusted to address group and context differences. For example,
judgments of social desirability differ between psychopaths and non-psy-
chopaths (Kitching & Paulhus, 2008). The disadvantage in such research is
that respondents have to judge the same items twice: Once for the desir-
ability ratings; then again for their self-ratings. Moreover, the order of
these two tasks influences the self-ratings (Kitching & Paulhus, 2009).
One might argue that this method has a behavioral aspect. Implicitly,
respondents are demonstrating the degree to which they value their own
responses. In a sense, they are providing a key template for their own
responses.
Contrast Methods: Intrapsychic and External Criteria
The methods in this section differ from SDR measures in several respects.
Whereas SDR measures infer self-enhancement from the positivity of
self-descriptions, the contrast measures compare self-descriptions with a
credible criterion. Because a direct comparison is involved, the latter
measures promise to be more effective than are SDR scales in distin-
guishing distortion from truth.
The primary application of SDR measures has been to determine
whether to trust answers on concurrently administered self-report scales.
Contrast methods were targeted at something deeper, namely, a character-
iological tendency toward self-favorability. Issues garnering the most atten-
tion are whether self-enhancement is commonplace, adaptive, and unitary.
The Taylor and Brown (1988) review provoked interest in measuring
the concept of self-enhancement via contrast methods. Measured in this
fashion, self-enhancement can be demonstrated even on anonymous self-
descriptions (Baumeister, 1982; Brown, 1998). As such, the phenom-
enon corresponds to the private audience component of SDR (Paulhus &
Trapnell, 2008).
Three issues have dominated the literature. One is the ideal opera-
tionalization. A second addresses the adaptiveness of self-enhancement.
The third concerns the breadth and structure of self-enhancement.
Competing Operationalizations. Although the concept might seem

straightforward, much controversy has arisen over the choice of opera-
tionalization. Here, we will entertain two that warrant special attention.
Intrapsychic Comparisons. The most popular choice has been to index self-
enhancement as the tendency to view oneself more positively than one
views others. [Kwan, John, Kenny, Bond, and Robins (2004) refer to this
operationalization as social comparison.] A well-replicated body of
research indicates that a majority of people tend to rate themselves
above average on lists of evaluative traits (e.g., Brown, 1998). If pervasive,
this tendency certainly implies an illusion: After all, it is not possible for a
large majority of people to actually be better than average.2
To index a general tendency, self-enhancement scores are typically
aggregated across a wide set of evaluative traits. Respondents may be
asked for separate ratings of self and others or, alternatively, a direct
comparison of themselves relative to the average other. A number of
2
Although impossible if everyone were referring to the same dimension, individuals tend to define
evaluative traits (e.g., intelligence) in an idiosyncratic fashion to ensure that they score high (Dunning,
2005). In that sense, everyone can legitimately report being above average.
studies have confirmed that individuals scoring high on such indexes of

self-enhancement tend to be well adjusted (Brown, 1986; Kurt &
Paulhus, 2008; Taylor Lerner, Sherman, Sage, & McDowell, 2003).
Note, however, that this operationalization makes it difficult to
distinguish self-enhancement from true differences in positive traits.
After all, many people are actually above average—even across a large
set of traits (Colvin & Block, 1994). In short, the intrapsychic operatio-
nalization lacks a reality criterion against which the validity of the self-
descriptions can be evaluated.
External Criterion Discrepancies. This limitation led a number of other

researchers to operationalize self-enhancement as a criterion discrepancy,
that is, the overestimation of one’s positivity relative to a credible cri-
terion. This category of measures includes both difference scores and
residual scores. Rather than absolute values, higher numbers indicate
the degree to which respondents’ self-ratings exceed their criterion
scores. Almost invariably, discrepancy measures of self-enhancement
have shown negative associations with long-term adjustment outcomes
(e.g., Colvin, Block, & Funder, 1995; John & Robins, 1994; Kwan et al.,
2004; Paulhus, 1998a; Robins & Beer, 2001; Shedler, Mayman, & Manis,
1993; but see Bonanno, Field, Kovacevic, & Kaltman, 2002).
The most sophisticated version is the SRM approach developed by
Virginia Kwan and her colleagues (Kwan, John, Kenny, Bond, & Robins,
2004). It fully exploits the statistical sophistication of Kenny’s (1994)
social relations model (SRM). The technique decomposes personality
ratings into perceiver effects, target effects, and unique self-perception
components.
SRM analyses typically draw on round-robin data: That is, all parti-
cipants rate each other. In one typical application, all members of a task
group rate each other and themselves (Paulhus & Reynolds, 1995). All
three rating components showed a significant contribution to rating
scores.
To measure self-enhancement, Kwan and colleagues took the SRM
approach one step further. They included controls for several factors that
plague its competitors. The criterion discrepancy method omits a control
for the tendency to rate targets high versus low. The intrapsychic method
omits a control for the tendency to receive high versus low ratings. The
SRM method controls for both in asking, ‘‘Is the target’s self-rating higher
than would be expected from his/her tendency to give and receive high
ratings?’’
Adaptiveness of Self-Enhancement. As noted above, Taylor and Brown

(1988) claimed that tendencies toward self-enhancement (‘‘positive
illusions’’) were adaptive in most respects. Two decades of further

research have revealed that the validity of that claim turns on the choice
of operationalizations of self-enhancement.
For example, the Taylor-Brown claim appeared to be supported by
such research as the Brown (1986) study: He showed that individuals
who claimed to be above average across a wide variety of traits also scored
high on a standard self-esteem scale. A number of subsequent studies
have supported the Taylor-Brown claim for adaptive outcomes (e.g.,
Bonanno et al., 2002; Sedikides et al., 2004).
Critics pointed specifically to Taylor and Brown’s use of the
intrapsychic operationalization, which lacks a reality criterion against
which the validity of the self-descriptions can be evaluated (Colvin
et al., 1995; Robins & John, 1997). Critics also pointed to the
problem of using self-report outcomes when studying self-report
predictors. If individual differences in self-favorability bias contam-
inate both the predictor and outcome, this common method variance
will induce an artifactual positive correlation (Colvin & Block, 1994).
For that reason, many critics have insisted that the criterion measures
for adaptiveness be independent external measures such as peer-rated
adjustment (Paulhus, 1998a), expert ratings of adjustment (Colvin et
al., 1995), or school grades (Gramzow, Elliot, Asher, & McGregor,
2003; Robins & Beer, 2001).
Such criticism led many researchers to turn to the criterion
discrepancy operationalization of self-enhancement. When external
criteria were used to evaluate outcomes, discrepancy measures of
self-enhancement showed long-term maladaptive outcomes (e.g.,
Colvin et al., 1995; John & Robins, 1994; Paulhus, 1998a; Robins &
Beer, 2001).
Even with the discrepancy operationalization, however, the out-
comes of self-enhancement are not uniformly negative. For example,
Paulhus (1998a) investigated reactions to self-enhancers in two longitu-
dinal studies where small groups met weekly for a total of 7 weeks.
Results showed that, although high self-enhancers were initially per-
ceived favorably, those perceptions became more and more negative
over time. Paulhus concluded that self-enhancing tendencies were a
‘‘mixed blessing’’ (p. 1207).
This mixed blessing was also evident in subsequent research reported
by Robins and Beer (2001). They showed, in two studies, that self-
enhancing tendencies had short-term affective benefits but did long-
term damage to self-esteem and task engagement as disconfirmation of
overly positive self-assessments became evident. Even with concrete
behavioral criteria, then, the research seems to dispute claims that self-
enhancement has any long-term adaptive outcomes.
Recently, Kurt and Paulhus (2008) have provided a head-to-head

comparison of the intrapsychic and criterion discrepancy methods.
They also expanded the outcomes to include four different measures of
psychological adjustment. Results showed that, in the same sample,
intrapsychic measures had positive associations and discrepancy measures
had negative associations with externally evaluated adjustment—except
self-rated self-esteem.
In sum, the literature indicates that the criterion discrepancy
measure is more valid than the intrapsychic method for tapping
chronic self-enhancement. Based on research with the more valid
measure, we conclude that chronic self-enhancement is linked to
maladaptive attributes. The jury is still out on the direction of
causation.
Three exceptions are noteworthy. One is that chronic self-enhance-
ment may promote intrapsychic forms of adjustment such as self-esteem
and happiness. Second is that self-enhancement may promote short-term
interpersonal adjustment in the sense of engagement with strangers.
Third, self-enhancement may pay off in severe settings (e.g., refugee
victims), where a formidable self-confidence is required for psychological
survival.
In sum, no absolute conclusion can be drawn regarding the Taylor-
Brown claim for the adaptiveness of self-enhancement. In retrospect, this
outcome is not surprising: It simply confirms the inherent complexity of
defining psychological adjustment (Asendorpf & Ostendorf, 1998;
Paulhus, Fridhandler, & Hayes, 1997; Scott, 1968).
Structure of Self-Enhancement. Does the domain of self-enhancement

make a difference? Recent work is converging on the importance of
distinguishing between agentic and communal content. Paulhus and
John (1998) initiated this work with a factor analysis of self-criterion
discrepancies. The two primary factors mapped clearly onto the agency
versus communion distinction.
Other researchers have elaborated on this distinction (e.g.,
Lonnqvist, Verkasalo, & Bezmenova, 2007). It has proved especially
useful in the study of cross-cultural issues (Church et al., 2006;
Kurman, 2001).
A recent chapter by Paulhus and Trapnell (2008) illustrated the
parallel between the structure of socially desirable responding measures
and that of self-enhancement measures. In both cases, the distinction
between agentic and communal content helped organize the available
measures. The organizational robustness of these two dimensions may
derive from the underlying impact of agentic and comunal values
(Trapnell & Paulhus, in press).
THE OVERCLAIMING TECHNIQUE (OCT)
The methods reviewed so far have both advantages and disadvantages.

SDR scales offer easy administration but lack a criterion. Criterion dis-
crepancy measures appear more credible but are impractical in standard
administration settings because they require collection of the criterion.
The overclaiming technique (OCT) was designed as a compromise
between these approaches (Paulhus, Harms, Bruce, & Lysy, 2003).
The OCT also incorporates departure from reality, but in a different
fashion from the criterion discrepancy method. Respondents are asked to
rate their familiarity with a set of persons, places, items, or events.
Twenty percent of the items are foils: that is, they do not actually exist.
Such responses can be scored via signal detection method to yield both
accuracy and bias scores for each respondent.
Respondents receive high accuracy scores to the extent that they
claim real items and disclaim foils. A high bias score ensues from an
overall tendency to claim items—especially foils. In short, the credibility
of this measure derives from the argument that claiming nonexistent
items is an a priori index of self-enhancement.
A variety of formulas are provided by Paulhus et al. (2003). Of
these, the most intuitively evident are the so called ‘‘common-sense
measures.’’ Accuracy is the difference between the hit rate (PH) and
the false-alarm rate (PFA). Bias is indexed by PFA (or the mean of
PH and PFA). The inclusion of PH in the latter formula is based on
the assumption that those who self-enhance on the foils also self-
enhance on the reals: that is, such respondents inflate their famil-
iarity ratings on both sets of items.
Item Content
The original overclaiming questionnaire comprised 15 items in each of 10

academic categories (e.g., science, law, philosophy, history, literature,
language). A series of studies demonstrated that the accuracy index pre-
dicted verbal IQ scores in the .40–.60 range (Paulhus & Harms, 2004).
The bias index correlated moderately (.25–.38) with trait self-enhance-
ment measures such as narcissism and the Self-Deceptive Enhancement
scale (Paulhus et al., 2003). When the items concerned such lay topics
such as sports, music, and films, the bias link was more nuanced.
Correlations with narcissism were significant only for topics that the
respondent valued. Interestingly, the accuracy scores predicted IQ for
virtually any of the lay topics.
Several advantages of the OCT have already been demonstrated. For

example, the validity of accuracy scores is sustained under faking condi-
tions, where bias scores increase (Paulhus & Harms, 2004). On the other
hand, bias validities are sustained under warning conditions, where the
presence of foils is made salient (Paulhus et al., 2003).
A recent practical application is to the field of marketing surveys
(Nathanson, Westlake, & Paulhus, 2007). In the traditional approach to
indexing product familiarity, a survey with a list of product names is
administered. But foils are rarely included. We developed a marketing
survey comprising 12 product categories (e.g., wine, cars, fashion
designers, cosmetics brands). Following the OCT, 20% of the items in
each category were foils. We administered the consumer version under a
variety of instructional sets. Our results indicated that the validity of the
accuracy index held up even when the bias index was inflated, for
example, under instructions to fake good.
Some work has begun on clarifying the processes underlying over-
claiming. What would make individuals claim knowledge of nonexistent
foils under anonymous circumstances? Preliminary evidence suggests
both motivational and cognitive elements at work. Independent of narcis-
sism scores, bias scores tend to correlate with a global memory bias.
In short, the overclaiming technique offers an efficient and robust
method for indexing self-enhancement. It is robust across a variety of
administration conditions. Finally, the method is largely nonthreatening
and unobtrusive because the apparent purpose is a survey of personal
familiarities.
RESPONSE LATENCIES
As an assessment tool for detecting response biases, response times have a

long history. Consider that in 1908, Munsterberg (p. 86) stated that
deceptive responses have an ‘‘involuntary retardation by emotional influ-
ence.’’ Although intuitively appealing as a indicator of dissimulation,
empirical evidence for the use of raw response latencies as indicators of
lying suggests that the effects tend to be small and subject to moderating
influences (DePaulo et al., 2003). A more refined approach to the use of
response times arose in the 1980s: It sought to reduce the low signal-to-
noise ratio inherent in latency data (Fazio, 1990). In particular, as infor-
mation processing models came to be applied to personality, schema
theory and notions of self-schema led to the use of adjusted rather than
raw response times for assessing standing on personality traits (Erdle &
Lalonde, 1986).
Consider that a schema is a cognitive structure that directs the acqui-

sition, organization, and application of knowledge; that a self-schema is
one based on past experiences and representative of the self; and that a
personality trait represents a structural component of a schema (Fekken &
Holden, 1992). A prominent self-schema (e.g., a salient personality
trait), will induce differential processing of schema-relevant and
schema-irrelevant information. Schema-consistent information will be
accepted faster (and rejected more slowly) and schema-inconsistent infor-
mation will be rejected faster (and accepted more slowly). As a result,
individuals at the high end of a personality trait will endorse a relevant
positively-keyed personality item more quickly than they reject it and will
reject a relevant negatively-keyed personality item more quickly than
they endorse it.
Of course, the response time for a specific individual answering a
specific item is determined by myriad factors, many of which are not
directly relevant to the personality trait being measured (Holden, Fekken,
& Cotton, 1991). Most specific about these factors is Rogers’s (1974a, b)
independent stage model of responding to personality items. In identi-
fying distinct stages for stimulus encoding, stimulus comprehension, self-
referent decision making, and response selection, he served to highlight
various item properties that influence the speed of processing for specific
stages. Examples of item factors included item length, item ambiguity,
item controversiality, number of response options, and so forth. Holden
et al. extended Rogers’s model by identifying corresponding person fac-
tors that affect processing speed for these same stages. Examples of
person factors included reading speed, verbal ability, schema organiza-
tion, motor speed, and so forth. Subsequent work by Holden and collea-
gues demonstrated that the key factors in measuring personality traits are
not the main effects attributable to items or to persons but, rather, the
interaction of the schema-relevant item and the respondent’s relevant
schema.
In addition to controlling for main effects for items and for
persons, the use of response times must also take into account
whether a respondent endorses or rejects a trait-relevant personality
item (Erdle & Lalonde, 1986). Endorsement and rejection represent
opposite sides of the ‘‘inverted-U RT’’ effect found for decision times
for self-ratings of adjective descriptors (Kuiper, 1981) and personality
items (Akrami, Hedlund, & Ekehammar, 2007). Further, because
single latencies tend to be unreliable, more reliable response latencies
are obtained by averaging over related trait-specific items. When
these adjustments are undertaken (see Appendix for a detailed
example), response latencies will demonstrate appropriate patterns
of validity for scales of personality and psychopathology in adults,
children, and psychiatric patients (Holden et al., 1991) and will

generally demonstrate the presence of construct validity (Fekken &
Holden, 1994; Holden & Fekken, 1993).
Although relevant for assessing personality self-schemas, this
response latency approach for response times has been extended to
adopted schemas associated with faking (Holden & Hibbs, 1995;
Holden & Kroner, 1992; Holden, Kroner, Fekken, & Popham,
1992). Individuals faking good will take relatively longer in providing
responses that make them look bad rather than good. (Individuals
faking good will provide some negative information about them-
selves. If they offer only favorable responses, standard validity
scales will detect this.) Respondents who fake bad will take relatively
longer to give answers that make them look good rather than bad.
(Again, individuals faking bad will offer some positive responses to
avoid being caught by standard validity scales.) In short, these
within-respondent response latency differences represent relatively
longer response times for answers that are incompatible with a
faking schema than for compatible answers, and these response
time differences can generate summary scores that successfully dif-
ferentiate between honest and dissimulating respondents.
Holden (1995), for example, demonstrated this response incompat-
ibility effect for faking in samples drawn from two distinct populations.
Using a job application scenario, 64 university students were randomly
assigned to complete a validated personnel selection test under either
honest instructions or instructions to maximize their chances of being
hired (i.e., fake) for a government job. Item content for the test included
81 items related to delinquency (e.g., employment trouble, illegal drug
use). Not surprisingly, individuals instructed to maximize their chances
of being hired scored an average of more than one standard deviation
lower on an overall measure of delinquency. Importantly, however,
although giving keyed responses to many fewer delinquency items,
fakers were relatively much slower in providing these relatively fewer
‘‘delinquent’’ responses (i.e., answers incompatible with their schema to
fake). Similar findings emerged for a second sample comprising 100
unemployed adults actively seeking employment who were also ran-
domly assigned either to answer honestly or to fake.
More recent research has attempted to explore and expand on the
associations between response latencies and faking, but not always suc-
cessfully. Although some have argued that socially desirable responding is
a response-editing process that requires more time than that for honest
responding (Holtgraves, 2004; McDaniel & Timm, 1990), there is no
evidence to indicate that controlling response times can prevent or
reduce faking. Holden, Wood, and Tomashewski (2001) limited response
time to 1.5 s per personality test item and found that the deleterious
effects of faking on validity were not diminished. Further, Holden (2005)
set a limit of 0.5 s per item and similarly reported that the disruption of
validity by faking remained unabated. It appears, therefore, that faking is a
primitive process requiring little cognitive load.
In an innovative undertaking using a variation of the Implicit
Association Test, Gregg (2007) sought to refine the schema incompat-
ibility effect on response times by enhancing antagonistic responding
associated with not answering truthfully. To date, this approach has
focused on distinguishing liars and truth-tellers for obviously true and
false factual (e.g., ‘‘The sky is blue’’; ‘‘The sky is purple’’) and self-
descriptive (e.g., ‘‘My name is Ron’’; ‘‘My name is George’’) statements.
Reported effect sizes were very impressive. Whether this technique can
be applied to faking on personality items is unknown but certainly worthy
of future investigation.
In sum, we place the response latency approach at the behavioral end
of the continuum. Unlike rational scale construction strategies, which
emphasize a one-to-one correspondence between verbal reports and
reality, response latencies are more indirect because they tap into
personality-relevant cognitive processes. In this regard, response laten-
cies, particularly statistically adjusted, aggregated ones, seem less
susceptible to deliberate response distortion than standard verbal reports
of behavior.
SUMMARY
This chapter has focused on the potential for measuring self-enhance-

ment via behavioral as opposed to self-report methods. To this end, we
organized extant methods into three categories, in increasing order of
emphasis on concrete external criteria. These were social desirability
scales, criterion comparison methods (intrapsychic and external criterion
measures), and behavioral approaches (overclaiming and response latency
techniques).
We conclude that the behavioral element of the latter two methods
advances their credibility as indexes of self-enhancement. The response
latency method is clearly superior to the others with respect to behavioral
concreteness. The validity of the overclaiming technique rests on the
proposition that any claim to recognize foils is inherently indicative of
exaggeration. In both cases, self-reports are still required but it is the
behavioral coding of these reports that leads us to recommend them over
alternative measures of self-enhancement.
APPENDIX: AN EXAMPLE OF THE COMPUTATION OF ADJUSTED

RESPONSE LATENCIES
Note: Data would normally comprise many more items and respondents.
Personality Items:
1. I like to be the first to apologize after an argument.
2. I get a kick out of seeing someone I dislike appear foolish in front of
others.
3. If public opinion is against me, I usually decide that I am wrong.
4. I get annoyed with people who never want to go anywhere different.
5. I live from day to day without trying to fit my activities into a pattern.
Raw response time latencies (in seconds) for five respondents:
Item
Respondent 1 2 3 4 5 Mean SD
1 4.12 19.82 4.50 6.42 5.06 7.98 6.67

2 9.61 10.43 6.81 6.59 5.83 7.85 2.03
3 3.95 10.66 4.51 14.23 3.40 7.35 4.84
4 4.45 9.45 0.30 3.79 4.28 4.45 3.27
5 10.77 76.31 12.14 6.29 4.50 22.00 30.52
Mean 6.58 25.33 5.65 7.46 4.61
SD 3.33 28.80 4.32 3.95 0.90
Step 1. Reset maximum latencies to 40 seconds and minimum latencies to

0.5 seconds (values outside this range are regarded as outliers that
will unduly influence analyses).
Item
1 4.12 19.82 4.50 6.42 5.06 7.98 6.67

2 9.61 10.43 6.81 6.59 5.83 7.85 2.03
3 3.95 10.66 4.51 14.23 3.40 7.35 4.84
4 4.45 9.45 0.50 3.79 4.28 4.49 3.20
5 10.77 40.00 12.14 6.29 4.50 14.74 14.47
Mean 6.58 18.07 5.69 7.46 4.61
SD 3.33 12.96 4.26 3.95 0.90
Step 2. Standardize within a respondent to adjust for irrelevant person

factors such as reading speed, verbal ability, motor speed, etc.
Item
1 -0.58 1.77 -0.52 -0.23 -0.44 0.00 1.00

2 0.86 1.27 -0.51 -0.62 -1.00 0.00 1.00
3 -0.70 0.68 -0.59 1.42 -0.82 0.00 1.00
4 -0.01 1.55 -1.25 -0.22 -0.07 0.00 1.00
5 -0.27 1.75 -0.18 -0.58 -0.71 0.00 1.00
Mean -0.14 1.40 -0.61 -0.05 -0.61
SD 0.62 0.45 0.39 0.84 0.36
Step 3. Standardize within an item to correct for irrelevant item factors such
as item length, complexity, order, etc. [Note: For experimental
groups, standardizing within an item should use item means and
standard deviations associated with a control or normative group].
Results are standardized times that represent latencies relative to the
respondent and relative to the item.
Item
1 -0.71 0.82 0.23 -0.22 0.46 0.12 0.60

2 1.61 -0.30 0.25 -0.68 -1.08 -0.04 1.05
3 -0.90 -1.60 0.06 1.74 -0.58 -0.26 1.27
4 0.20 0.32 -1.63 -0.20 1.48 0.03 1.12
5 -0.21 0.76 1.10 -0.64 -0.28 0.15 0.75
Mean 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
SD 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Step 4. These are standardized times. Reset maximum latencies to 3.00 and
minimum latencies to -3.00 (values outside this range are regarded as
outliers that will unduly influence analyses). [Not necessary for this
example].
Step 5. Aggregate data by computing mean latencies within a respondent.
Usually done separately for endorsements and rejections of a specific
trait (or response style) and done separately for answering true and
for answering false to true/false items.
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13 Developing an Ecological Framework for
Establishing Connections Among
Dispositions, Behaviors, and
Environments: From Affordances to
Behavior Settings
Reuben M. Baron
First, the problem. Behavior, be it at the individual or group level, is not a

central concern of mainstream social psychology. We have become so
concerned with why the chicken crosses the road that we don’t bother to
ascertain whether the chicken has actually crossed the road. Sticking with
the chicken metaphor, we can ask which comes first, the chicken or the
egg? I think it is the Lewinian egg in the modern form of ever more
sophisticated cognitive modeling of social phenomena and processes. I
offer a brief historical explanation and a longer investigation of a multi-
level strategy for making behavior more central to our enterprise. To be a
bit melodramatic, if we are looking at Humpty Dumpty after the fall, I am
suggesting a rationale for putting him back together again.
But first, let us look at a possible narrative for how behavior became
not the victim of some conspiracy, but rather an incidental victim of
success. Specifically, from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties psychology
was the scene of ‘‘Mortal Kombat’’, as the computer game puts it,
between the forces of the dark side—the Skinnerian Behaviorists and
the forces of light and good, the cognitivists (cf. Miller, Galanter, &
Pribram, 1960). As with most revolutions, the triumph of the cognitivists
brought with it excesses. In this case, along with diminishing the rele-
vance of Skinnerian Behaviorism, the relevance of behavior itself was also
lessened. In effect, the baby (i.e., behavior) was thrown out with the bath
water, both in the mainstream and in social psychology.
In contradistinction to Zajonc’s (1980) warning that ‘‘preferences
need no inferences,’’ inferences and cognitive rule-based models, in gen-
eral, became dominant. Rather than focus on behavior, there were a
predominance of computer-based or computer-inspired models of cogni-
tion (cf. Wyer & Srull, 1986). Such models told us how people should
think if they were rational, thereby implying that people are biased and a
bit stupid if they violate these conceptual axioms. At this point, I want to
make it clear that I do not want to make the reverse error. When I shortly
offer an ecologically-based strategy for returning behavior to prominence,
I am not saying that the cognitive revolution has not been extremely
useful as one model for social psychology. Rather, I am proposing that
there are complementary approaches that are perhaps better suited to
restoring the importance of behavior.
Specifically, I will be advocating a broadened ecological perspective
that has been run through a social filter. Why is an ecological approach
particularly relevant to this problem? Because behavior is a central tenet
of any ecologically-based view of psychology whether it is James J.
Gibson’s (1979/1986) view of the visual perception basis of affordances
or Roger Barker’s (1968) discussion of behavior settings. In both cases,
behavior is the ‘‘straw that stirs the drink.’’ For Gibson (1979/1986),
seeing is for doing. He views the detection of affordances (opportunities
for action specified in the structure of the environment) as fundamental
to our navigating the world. Specifically, Gibson postulates perceiving–
acting cycles—that is, what we see affects what we do and what we do
affects what we see. Further, for Barker (1968) behavior–environment
congruence, what he refers to as synomorphy, is foundational to his whole
approach. For example, if a school is the behavior setting of interest, the
shape or structure of students’ ‘‘. . . desks and seats fits the sitting and
studying behavior patterns’’ (Schoggen, 1989, p. 385). Similarly, the
desks face the teachers to facilitate successful lecturing. In general,
Barker focuses on extra-individual or group-level behaviors, including
the importance of what Heft (2001) refers to as collective affordances,
that is, affordances specified at the level of a behavior setting. In the
examples given above, these would include Barker’s synomorphs.
However. I recognize that the ecological approach in an unrecon-
structed form is itself too narrow for making a case for the centrality of
social behavior. Indeed, I have become increasingly concerned not only
with making social psychology more ecological (Baron & Boudreau, 1987,
McArthur & Baron, 1983) but rather with making ecological psychology
more social (Baron, 2007). It is in this spirit that I offer a broader way to
frame the present problem. Social psychology needs to move from the
DISPOSITIONS, BEHAVIORS, & ENVIRONMENTS 249
Cartesian—‘‘I think therefore I am’’ to Heidegger’s ‘‘I act therefore I am’’.

Or better yet—as social psychologists, we should say—I act with others
therefore I am. As Buber (1970, p.69) so aptly wrote, ‘‘In the beginning is
the relation’’. I believe that the gap between dispositions (be they cogni-
tions, traits, feelings, attitudes, etc.) and behavior has occurred because
not only are certain computer-based models nonbehavioral (if not anti-
behavioral), but they are also asocial. Cognitions do not enter into rela-
tionships or join groups.
Indeed, in an earlier work I suggested that the ‘‘group is mind’s
environment’’ (Caporeal & Baron, 1997). That is, cognitions are con-
strained by the need to solve basic social problems. For example, there
is data that supports an evolutionary supposition that it was the organiza-
tion of people into ever-larger groups that accelerated the development of
language as well as the development of categorical thinking including
stereotyping (Dunbar, 1993). Viewed this way, it is the constraints of
social functioning that drive both cognitive functioning and the organiza-
tion of behavior. When action is socially situated, behavior is both input
and output; groups not only demand proper thoughts, they demand
proper actions. This is particularly true of group contexts that have an
extended duration such as a behavior setting. Settings such as schools or
churches exert ‘‘environmental force units’’ (Schoggen, 1989, p. 163),
which direct action toward the collective goals of the setting. Neither rats
nor people are left buried in thought at choice points when people act
collectively as part of a social unit. Only when we treat people in isolation
do we ask questions such as: How do we explain how internal states such
as cognitions, emotions, and motivations evoke behavior? When we are
part of a social unit, the pressures to maintain that unit constrain both
dispositions and behavior.
In this sense, all social action is to a certain extent ‘‘groupthink’’ (Janis,
1972). In effect, to answer a number of questions raised in the Purdue
Symposium agenda, we need to recall that the person is in the group and the
group is in the person. In this sense, even when we are engaging in a
supposedly nonsocial behavior such as eating, we are always eating with
others in mind. For example, even when eating alone we follow social
scripts. We do not ordinarily eat with our hands or throw food around.
People, in effect, produce their own environmental force units; this is the
sense in which the group is in the individual.
From this analysis of the general problems facing the Purdue
Symposium, I would like to offer a more specific framing of my particular
approach to these issues. My goal is to develop a common affordance-based
framework for indicating connections among dispositional concepts, beha-
vior, and the impact of the environment. In this context, by affordance I
mean ‘‘the perceived functional significance of an object, event, or place for
an individual’’ (Heft, 2001, p. 123), taken in relation to the functional

capabilities of that person. (I will add to this mix personality traits, a topic I
will address later in this chapter). Thus, even in regard to nonsocial objects,
for example, the sitability of a chair, the graspability of a cup, and so forth,
the affordances are relational. Such meanings do not require categories or
representations. ‘‘They emerge from my relationships to environmental
entities and exist in this relationship’’ (Schmidt, 2007, p. 136). For
example, when a chair affords sitability, what this means is that ‘‘the ability
to sit on the chair is between the person and the chair and is not part of
either separately’’ (Chemero, 2003). That is, affordances are neither sub-
jective nor objective. They have a kind of betweenness that makes such
dualisms irrelevant. The physical sciences long ago accepted such states.
For example, an electron has both particle and wave properties. Like an
affordance, it is not ‘‘this or that’’; rather, it is ‘‘this and that’’. Thus, Buber
(1970, p.69), even though he had people in mind was, in effect, framing
the meaning of all affordances when he said that ‘‘in the beginning there is
the relation’’. Affordances are both relational and embodied. They are
scaled with reference to what the organism brings—size, strength, and
inclinations based on past encounters with the environment. That is,
opportunities for action found in specific objects, places, and so forth,
can only be exploited in regard to the action modes that the person is
capable of making in that environment. For example, the climability of an
incline may require people with a certain level of leg strength. Further, the
information specifying such affordances is outside the head—to be
detected in the optic array in the course of perceiving–acting cycles of
engagements with the environment. Perceiving the relation is just as real
as perceiving that John is taller than Mary (paraphrase of Chemero, 2003).
Indeed, Mark (2007) has demonstrated that one can perceive when a chair
will be sitable for another person.
DISTINGUISHING SOCIAL FROM NONSOCIAL

AFFORDANCES
Given this interpretation of affordances, what distinguishes social from

nonsocial affordances, given that they are both relational? First, when the
environment consists of other people, there are different types of affor-
dances available. For example, we may want to know what another
person’s dispositional properties would afford, particularly in regard to
specific possibilities for relating to that person (Reis, 2008b). The
Gibsonian affordance framework in this context has demonstrated that
extensional information exists for perceiving whether another person is
vulnerable to attack (Gunns, Johnson, & Hudson, 2002), whether they
would be able to help you move an object (Richardson, Marsh, & Baron,
2007), whether they are acting deceptively (Runeson & Frykholm, 1983),
or whether they are capable of carrying a baby carefully (Hodges &
Lindhiem, 2006). It is important to understand that from an ecological
perspective dispositions are not conceptualized at a mentalistic level.
They are viewed as embodied intentions or inclinations that are the
product of a person’s unique encounters with the environment. For
example, we may hold a baby more closely to our bodies or more tightly
as compared to a bag of groceries of the same weight (Hodges &
Lindheim, 2006).
Another type of social affordance study (Schmidt, Christianson,
Carello, & Baron, 1994) frames social affordances in a somewhat different
way that offers a direct bridge to one of the major concerns of this con-
ference—Personality Situation Interactions and how they can be treated
at a behavioral level. Specifically, these investigators measured social dom-
inance and created three conditions: High-Low, High-High, and Low-Low.
All participants were asked to coordinate the movements of their limbs
with the person they were interacting with. The highest level of coordina-
tion was achieved with the asymmetrical as opposed to the symmetrical
pairing—that is, the best combination was a High Dominant and Low
Dominant person. Coordination may be best in this condition because in
it people find a kind of mutual comfort zone. That is, taken together, this
condition provides a complementarity structure for each person’s disposi-
tions. It allows people who want to dominate an opportunity to lead and
people who want to follow an opportunity to follow.
These studies can be interpreted in ways that are useful for distin-
guishing social from physical affordances. Chairs do not seek out sitters in
order to have their affordances fulfilled. By contrast, people both indivi-
dually and collectively may select people to interact with because they are
perceived as offering the right kind of interaction possibilities as in the
above dominance example. Thus, social affordances have a different,
more active and reciprocal organizational structure than physical affor-
dances, a point that becomes critical when we offer an affordance inter-
pretation of personality.
Now, I would like to clarify further the relationship between intraper-
sonal and interpersonal affordances (Richardson, Marsh, & Baron, 2007).
My formulation of affordances allows me to use the same relational con-
cept to deal with both the problem of individuals lifting an object by
themselves and lifting it with the help of another person. At issue again
are scaling relationships between the demands of what is being lifted (e.g.,
length or weight) and the response capabilities of the lifter (e.g., arm span).
That is, certain situations afford individual-based lifting, while others
afford joint lifting, just as different sized groups allow different types of
affordances to be fulfilled (Caporeal & Baron, 1997). Another way to frame

these results is that the presence of another person alters the physical
affordance for lifting by changing response capabilities. In effect, many
physical affordances take a loan on sociality (Baron, 2007).
More formally, the boundaries between liftable and nonliftable
change when another person is available to help with the lifting. The
affordance formulation shifts from what ‘‘I’’ am capable of lifting to what
‘‘we’’ are capable of lifting. This shift from ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘we’’ in orientation is the
hinge for the emergence of social affordances. For example, mother–child
breastfeeding interactions involve more than physical coodinations.
Breastfeeding is likely facilitated where there is a joint perception of
caring viewed as a social (or proto- ‘‘we’’) affordance. I propose that
caring functions as a reciprocal relationship between mother and child
as embodied in the jointness of breastfeeding. From this perspective,
caring becomes a property of a self-organized dynamical social system
which, in turn, will modify subsequent physical coordinations top-
down—what Campbell (1990) referred to as downward causation.
Thus, the invariant of all social affordances may be the emergence of a
‘‘we’’ level of coordination, what Marsh, Richardson, Baron, & Schmidt
(2006) refer to as a social synergy. Such cyclical mutuality may, in turn,
become the prototype of more complex social affordances such as
trusting and cooperation. Further, in line with Buber’s ‘‘In the beginning
there is the relation’’, we may view the mother–child relation as the basic
matrix for how personality interacts with situation.
TRAITS AND SITUATIONS: AN AFFORDANCE

INTERPRETATION
In order to better understand the reciprocity of Personality and Situation,

I propose that traits can be reconceptualized in affordance terms. This
move also allows one to deal directly with how to go from traits to
behavior in that traits can be viewed in an affordance perspective as
affecting response capability, a critical factor in the actualization of affor-
dances. For example, extroverts may have a greater range of social skills
than introverts. Given such skills they will likely be better than introverts
at exploiting environments that offer limited opportunities for social
interaction such as small-sized schools. Further, affordances, because
they have one foot in the individual and one foot in the environment
(including other people), help us understand how the environment
evokes behavior. More generally, different situations afford different
behaviors in many ways including what types of traits they require. For
example, while many school settings may select for open-mindedness,
church settings may recruit for dispositions that support faith. Further, it
may be argued that situations can be derived from the objective environ-
mental organizations that Barker (1968) referred to as behavior settings,
that is, ‘‘behavior settings are the immediate environments of human
behavior—their time and place boundaries can be pointed out precisely’’
(Wicker, 1979, p. 9).
Behavior Settings, Situations and Collective Affordances. Settings, in

turn, are organized in ways that allow people to achieve certain collective
goals. Such goals need to be achieved if behavior settings are to persist and
be effective. For example, a classroom is only likely to be a successful
setting for learning if the right combination of teacher, student, and
arrangement of physical properties exists. Further, such settings have
collective goals and plans—what Barker (1968) refers to as the settings’
programs. Behavior settings are organized around specific functions or
positions (e.g., roles or standing patterns of behavior) that need to be
carried out if the setting is to survive (paraphrase of Wicker, 1979, p.11).
Viewed thusly, behavior settings are constellations of affordances with a
crucial difference. Settings reflect affordances at a collective level. Here we
truly have a situation where the group is in the individual and the
individual is in the group. Further, whereas the affordances at the level
of the individual invite proper actions, the affordances of a behavior
setting have a certain coercive character to them (Barker’s 1968 environ-
mental force units). These affordances are embedded in the standing
patterns of behavior that define proper action as normative in a setting
such as a classroom. In its daily operating mode we may speak of a
behavior setting as a situation. That is, situations are nested in behavior
settings and reflect what properties—from actions to traits—are likely to
be salient and in some cases, required in the current space–time slice,
what Warren and Shaw (1985) refer to as an event. Situations then are
transient environments as compared to behavior settings that have an
extended duration and a specific geography in space–time.
Roles, Situations and Behavior. In this section, I will use affordances to

explore the relationships among roles, situations, and behavior. From
my perspective, a situation refers to what specific affordances are
needed at this particular time in the daily functioning of a behavior
setting. The concept of behavior setting also allows us to relate roles to
behaviors. That is, at issue is not only what is afforded to us as
individuals but is what is afforded to us as role occupants. Role,
what Barker (1968) refers to as a standing pattern of behavior, is not
merely a social construction. It requires a specific spatio-temporal
grounding such as a teacher in a small school in a small town in the
Midwest. Here, I go beyond Gibson and assume that role affects our
response capabilities, much as the arrival of another person may be
perceived as affording the liftability of a log at a dyadic level (Asch,
1952). It is this type of naturalistic example that inspired Richardson
et al.’s (2007) demonstration that social factors alter physical affor-
dances; that is, the presence of another person changes the boundaries
for what is liftable. Similarly, if, as a teacher, I can assume the help of a
teaching assistant, this can radically change the types of assignments I
can provide to my students. Given my augmented response capabil-
ities, more hands-on types of exercises will be possible. Thus, role-
based affordances may moderate between situation and behavior.
Role then is one of the ways that situations evoke behavior, where by
evoke we mean to change the perceived availability of certain affordances,
given that roles potentially alter our response capabilities. Further, roles
are one of the loci of organization that guides specific behaviors in a group
context. For example, whatever the personality of a point guard on a
basketball team, his/her major role (standing pattern of behavior) is not to
shoot the basketball but to assist the other players in getting good shots. In
this context, role organizes the distribution of passing affordances
including shaping response capabilities. It is postulated that good point
guards readily provide information that they possess social affordances for
passing both by the positioning of their bodies and the nature of their eye
contact. Personality, in this case, affects style but not substance. For
example, an extroverted point guard might favor making a behind-the-
back pass while a more introverted point guard might favor a simple
bounce pass. But making the right pass at the right time is what is crucial
for this behavior setting, not how it is done.
The individualism of a given player is evidenced in how he or she carries
out his or her role as well as in that player’s judgments as to whether this is a
good time to fast-break. For example, extroverted and/or more aggressive
players may be more likely to fast-break at the slightest opportunity because
the fast break facilitates spectacular plays like the ‘‘dunk.’’ Other players
being more introverted and/or conscientious may wait for the more ideal
circumstances before looking to fast-break. However, role is still the
meta-constraint because if players, because of personality, fast-break
at inappropriate times, the coach will pull them out of the game.
Specifically, I am suggesting that personality can make for non-interchangeable
role performance at the behavioral level but within the limits of that role.
The classic Barker treatment of role or position is that occupants are
interchangeable. In contradistinction, Larry Bird, a great Indiana State
and Boston Celtics basketball player, had sufficient passing and leadership
skills as a forward that he created a new position—the point forward. Thus,
role influences behavior and can, in turn, be modified by occupants’
personality-relevant dispositional behaviors. This reflects a particular way in

which a Personality Situation interaction might occur.
Viewed thusly, a basketball game is a behavior setting that provides
situations that in Reis’ (2008a) terms ‘‘affords the expression of person-
ality’’ as moderated by role expectations. That is, specific cognitions, etc.,
are nested within traits, which are nested within roles. Given that extro-
verts may have different intentions, goals, skills, and so forth, than intro-
verts in the same situation, one may speak of Role Personality
interactions. Further, people with different personalities may seek out
different behavior settings. Athletic extroverts may, for example, seek
out mass audience sports such as football or basketball, whereas athletic
introverts may prefer small audience sports such as swimming or college
wrestling. What affordance contributes to this kind of analysis is that it
provides a way of talking about the selectivity of behavior that is both
embodied and embedded socially. Here, personality functions as a filter or
organizer of what affordances are focused on, given a person’s inclinations.
From this perspective, personality carries with it situational preferences.
Suitable Circumstances and the Lock and Key Model
My strategy up until now has been to present my case in broad strokes to

give people a feel for my kind of approach. I would now like to be more
analytical. Let’s begin with Harry Reis’ (2008a) suggestion that situations
are the settings that afford the expression of personality. That is, ‘‘they
provide opportunities for certain traits to be expressed’’ (Reis, 2008a).
What might a ‘‘stricter’’ affordance perspective make of this proposition?
First, I propose that situations, in effect, are samplings of the broader
universe of group-based social affordances that constitutes the core of a
behavior setting. Specifically, what does it mean for a situation to afford
opportunities? In Barker & Gump’s (1964) Big School, Small School,
school size dictates the opportunity structure. For example, in a large
school, the universe of affordances is likely to be greater, more specia-
lized, and allow more opportunities for meeting people in more situa-
tions. However, opportunities for one-on-one, more intimate exchanges
both academically and personally might be fewer. That is, people may be
more spread out and busier.
Reframing Personality Situation Interactions. At this point, I want to

apply the affordance approach to Personality Situation relationships at
a more formal level. First, generally speaking we can use Baron &
Boudreau’s (1987) notion of a lock and key relationship between people
and situations to reframe Reis’ (2008a) proposition. Specially, if behavior
settings include constellations of affordances or opportunities for taking

specific actions that allow one to take advantage of the functional utilities
of a setting, we can treat personalities in trait terms as offering keys that
will unlock the opportunity doors. For example, if a large campus pro-
vides a large range of affordances for meeting people in a range of settings,
then people with certain traits are more likely to be able to take full
advantage of such opportunities—for example, extroverts rather than
introverts. Further, in large campuses the social organizations may be
more selective, given the large pool of people. By contrast, given that an
organization needs a certain minimal number of people to function
effectively and carry out its goals, etc., on a small campus, clubs may
have to compromise their standards lest they be undermanned. That is,
size affects staffing rules or what Barker & Schoggen (1973) referred to as
the theory of manning, involving undermanning, optimal manning, and
overmanning.
I want to use affordances to reframe traits both structurally and
functionally in ways that will allow us to do away with the dualism
between trait and situation where situation includes other people. For
example, while information specifying the affordance for edibility is
available in the fruit to be detected by the animal, the affordance for
cooperativeness does not reside exclusively in any single object or entity,
it is a ‘‘we’’-level affordance. It only exists in the reciprocal, mutually
facilitated actions of two or more people. Similarly, helpfulness requires
a helper and a recipient person in need, competition requires a rival, and
dominance requires a subordinate. Such relations are social synomorphs
(defined as a perceived congruence between what one person offers and
the other person needs) analogous to desks affording writing. These
examples are not to be viewed as metaphorical; rather, it is proposed
that such relational structures exist in the world to be detected. For
example, Kean (2000) was able to demonstrate that people are able to
accurately discriminate between whether people are cooperating or
competing given only point light data regarding patterns of movement
for tasks that range from joint folding to a pulling of different ends of a
blanket as in a tug of war. Such perceptions are highly accurate even
when the images are reduced to pixels so that only abstract dynamic
information is available to specify the joint social intentions underlying
cooperation.
More generally, in arguing for sociality as a necessary condition to
specify certain social motives or traits, we are arguing that, for disposi-
tions to be identified behaviorally, we need ‘‘suitable circumstances,’’
what Baron and Misovich (1993) referred to as event activity tests
(EATs). For example, seeing a person high in shyness interact with a
close friend is less informative then seeing him interact with a stranger.
Suitable circumstances, in effect, move us from a nonobservable disposi-

tion to one that is clearly behaviorally specified. Similar arguments can be
made for other Big Five traits. For example, even aggressive people do not
always act aggressively (Wright & Mischel, 1987).
While this approach is relatively straightforward for traits high in
socialness, the more intrapersonal traits such as conscientiousness and
information seeking involve a more difficult challenge. However, I pro-
pose the problem again is to find ‘‘suitable circumstances’’ or, in my
earlier metaphor, ‘‘the right key for the right lock.’’ This may involve
different time slices. For example, to bring out conscientiousness we may
require tasks that need to be performed over time in situations that are
important. For example, one tennis player may practice hard for only a
few days before an important tournament. In this context, another player
who begins to practice several weeks before such a tournament will be
perceived as more conscientious than the first one. Finally, I do not wish
to imply that conscientiousness does not have social implications. Who
better to trust than a conscientious person (see Hogan & Ones, 1997)?
Rather, my point is that variations in conscientiousness are ordinarily not
readily observable in single social encounters.
Viewing dispositions in these terms suggests that an affordance ana-
lysis for the concept of trait allows us to get away from the static, stand-
alone character of traits that creates what we theoretically see as a gap to
be explained between disposition and behavior. Following McArthur &
Baron (1983) and Baron & Boudreau (1987) it may be claimed that an
affordance view does a better of job of capturing the situational specificity
of traits than do traditional trait approaches (Mischel, 1968). The concept
of ‘‘suitable circumstances’’ as manifested in EATS has an advantage over
the general Mischelian (Mischel, 1973) approach that personality-related
behavior is situationally contingent because the suitable circumstances
approach provides a more principled rationale for Personality X Situation
interactions. Only certain situations are relevant for certain dispositions.
Just as salt is soluble in some liquids and not in others (e.g., in water, but
not oil), I claim that ‘‘specifically, many personality dispositions have
suitable circumstances that are likely to reveal the individual’s standing
on that disposition’’ (Baron & Misovich, 1999, p.600).
In sum, ‘‘suitable circumstances’’ encompasses the relational struc-
ture of affordances, whereby personality ‘‘. . . is a key in the search of the
right lock.’’ Reciprocally, the environment (e.g., a behavior setting) is the
lock waiting to be opened so that its affordances can be realized (para-
phrased from Baron & Boudreau, 1987, p.1227). The basic idea here is
that personality and setting interactions are not arbitrary. Personality and
settings, including other people, exhibit reciprocity or mutuality because
each is incomplete without the other. A further derivation from this
approach is that we parse the Big Five traits into dispositions that facilitate
or inhibit the transformation of ‘‘I’’- to ‘‘we’’-based affordances by virtue
of the settings they favor.
The connectivity and selectivity of personality. Personality from such a

perspective is jointly defined by the range of affordances people can
activate as keys and the range of opportunities that occur for unlocking
settings including groupings of people (Baron & Boudreau, 1987). More
specifically, different personality traits provide different response cap-
abilities for connecting to subsets of affordances in a given behavior
setting. The specificity of these connections is the defining ecological beha-
vioral property of this new view of personality. That is, any given behavior
setting has a plethora of affordances, which are differentially available to
people with differing response capabilities. Complex settings offer a
range of affordance, including ‘‘I’’- versus ‘‘We’’-favoring affordances,
only some of which (a) will be detected by specific people, or (b) will
be actualized by still a smaller subject of people. Settings in this view are
not passive, just as people select situations to use as a way of satisfying
personality-driven needs, goals, motives, and so forth, so settings recruit
certain types of people. For example, competitive people may select
settings that reward competitiveness ranging from sports to chess—both
introverts and extroverts can be competitive but differ in how they seek to
express that competitiveness—chess versus team sports, for example. In
regard to settings, basketball coaches may selectively search for highly
competitive, outgoing players. On the other hand, the Peace Corps may
prefer people with a cooperative bent as ambassadors of the United
States. Settings, in effect, recruit occupants who will fit in. Indeed, set-
tings may signal their affordance availabilities both verbally in their
program description and nonverbally in terms of the subtle cues they
give in interviews to make people feel comfortable or uncomfortable.
Moreover, the work of Price & Bouffard (1974) demonstrates that a
strong consensus exists regarding peoples’ perceptions of what activities
are afforded by different settings. For example, churches afford both
worshiping and socializing, which may differ in the sociality of the affor-
dances they reflect—for example, individual prayer versus communal
activities.
In sum, in this view personality is a set of dispositions (e.g., traits,
motives, attitudes, emotions) collectively viewed as inclinations (Heft,
2008) that attune the person to select, detect, and realize certain affor-
dances rather than others. This interpretation also assumes that person-
ality includes effectivities (Turvey & Shaw, 1979) or response capabilities
for actualizing the affordances of the physical and social environment. For
example, people who detect affordances for nurturance need to be both
willing and able to dispense caring. It should be noted that this model is
highly ecological in that we are modeling a successful ecosystem in the
sense that ‘‘each niche requires a particular kind of plant or animal and
each animal requires a particular niche’’ (Baron & Boudreau, 1987, p.
1227). Most importantly, an ecosystem is the meta-model of an affordance-
based analysis—it is the ultimate example of the lock and key metaphor.
We can use it to describe the general properties of all affordances—a fit or
connection between response capabilities and environmental opportu-
nities. More specifically, the model can be used to describe a specific
application such as a Disposition Situation interaction. It is also the
model behind the idea of suitable circumstances—that is, dispositions are
linked to behavior because they are both parts of a broader system. We now
turn to how such a system model might work.
Personality and the Development of Behavior Settings
Given this analysis I want to explore whether these ideas can be turned
into the basis for a fresh look at the idea of a theory of situations. In such a
theory, situations are a complementary mirror image of a theory of
personality in the same sense that certain niches imply certain plants
and animals, while certain plants and animals imply certain niches. At
issue is the powerful idea of co-evolution, which, in turn, is likely to be an
example of what we now refer to as the self-organization of complex
systems. With regard to social settings, we need to understand why
certain opportunities are configured in certain ways to support certain
dispositions, and/or, types of people. What I suggest is that the social
analogue of co-evolution is the embedding of personality in the organiza-
tional dynamics of behavior settings in regard to (a) what roles need to be
performed for the maintenance of a behavior setting, and (b) the ability of
the setting to recruit people with the appropriate personality traits to
carry out these roles successfully.1
It should also be noted that in line with Kelley et al’s (2003) meta-
concept of an atlas of interpersonal situations, the requirement of inter-
dependence is a basic system property of my approach. That is, dynamic
interdependence is what systems are all about. Further, in regard to my
affordance analysis that complex settings have multiple nestings of affor-
dances, which are likely to be differentially sampled by people with
different dispositions (keys), a very similar view is taken in the atlas in
1
This is my formulation, not Barker’s; he eschews personality, given his focus on collective behavior.
the chapter on encounters with strangers. Here, Ickes’ (1982) view that
such situations (locks) are unstructured is reinterpreted as a situation that
is multiply structured—or ‘‘hyperstructured’’—‘‘affording persons with
very different social tendencies, unique opportunities to express them-
selves’’ (Kelley, 2003, p. 348).
This idea is very close to both Baron & Boudreau’s 1987 use of a lock
and key metaphor and more specifically to their proposition that ‘‘settings
therefore offer many possible worlds through their affordance structures’’
(p. 1227). The fact that Kelley arrived at this analysis independently is
encouraging. It is encouraging because it shows that the utility of affor-
dance can be arrived at in multiple ways. The next step, I believe, is to
‘‘use affordances to group phenotypically different settings that share
important affordances’’ (Baron & Boudreau 1987, p. 1227). For example,
both art museum openings and church suppers may afford opportunities
for meeting people. It is time to attempt this move because it is perhaps a
path through which one builds both a typology of settings and a typology
of behavior, where behavior is not written individually but is embedded
in the roles and affordances of behavior settings. Further, I propose that
the kind of ordering of affordances within the setting that I present holds
at the level of both phylogeny and ontogeny, thereby giving the kind of
developmental or narrative organization that has been lacking until now.
TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF SITUATIONS AND BEHAVIOR
Current approaches to building such typologies have followed two major

strategies. One is a bottom-up approach, which codes natural language
(Saucier & Goldberg, 2008); the other is a theoretically driven approach
that Kelley has pioneered. Kelley’s approach involves analyzing interper-
sonal situations through their basic property—interdependence—and then
parsing interdependence into various situations that reflect major problems
that are raised by interdependence such as conflicting and corresponding
mutual joint control, ‘‘me’’ versus ‘‘we,’’ threat, and asymmetric depen-
dence. One of the unusual characteristics of Kelley’s (2003) analysis is that
it took into consideration group size as a moderator of certain effects, for
example, single person versus two- and three-person games.
Group Size and Affordances
I would like to build on this idea that group size is a moderator of certain
situational effects to make group size an engine that organizes the
distribution of affordances, taking as my points of departure Caporeal and

Baron’s (1997) use of the group as mind’s environment and Barker’s use
of the size of behavior settings as a key constraint on the structures and
processes that regulate behavior settings. For example, deviants in a large
behavior setting are expelled whereas in a small setting they are corrected
and resocialized. Further, size matters sufficiently that Dunbar’s (1993)
analysis suggests that it was increasing group size that produced a phase
transition from nonverbal communication to the point where language
developed. The meta-assumption that such a model makes is that because
we are dealing with relationships that can be modeled as complex dyna-
mical systems, even a small change in the triggering independent variable
(control parameter), such as size, ‘‘is able to produce a qualitative change
or phase transition all at once (i.e., without moving through intermediate
stages)’’ (Baron & Misovich, 1999, pp. 595). Viewed thusly, our typology
of situations is also a process model such that group size differences
change affordances in ways that radically alter their meaning and avail-
ability. Thus, in a sense, size gives a kind of developmental or evolutionary
description of what happens to dynamical systems as they become more
complex. Moreover, this progression occurs in both top-down and
bottom-up processes. The top-down effects of size constrain affordances
by affecting resource availability and allocation, while the bottom-up
effects involve the output from one phase serving as the input to the
next phase. For example, size stresses certain affordance boundaries
because beyond a certain size face-to-face interaction is difficult.
Specifically, when memory load is strained and/or sufficient nonverbal
information is lacking, processing then becomes categorical and the group
develops role differentiation. Each of these changes, in turn, affects the
type and amount of affordances available. Note that cognitive processes
are, in these examples, constrained by social challenges.
Group Size and the Evolution of Affordances
In the next sections, I draw upon a systems-based evolutionary model

suggested by Caporeal & Baron (1997). This model is reinterpreted as an
affordance-based typology of situations and behavior. For example, when
group size is two, that is, a dyad, different social action is afforded from
when the group size escalates to five. Major dyadic affordances flow from
forming a basic social unit. For example, assuming that the interactants
are post-pubescent, mating is afforded, which in turn can lead to parent–
child affordances typically involving caring, which shape basic personality
dispositions. This type of relationship is also a prototype for expert–
novice relations involving affective and behavioral synchronizing, which
likely begins to shape traits such as agreeableness, shyness, and openness

to new information. Interpersonal affordances for trust are also likely to
begin at this basic level of social interdependence. Vygotsky, Cole, John-
Steiner, & Scriber’s (1978) proposition that social scaffolding accelerates
cognitive development (the zone of proximal development) can also be
interpreted in these terms.
When we shift to five or more members (but less than ten), group- or
team-level type affordances become possible beginning with distributed
cognition. Here, shareability functions as a constraint on cognition and
role differentiation. The opportunity to cooperate in the form of role
coordination becomes possible. For the first time, the issue of whether
each person is ‘‘pulling his or her own weight’’ becomes important so that
conscientiousness becomes socially relevant and perhaps becomes trans-
formed into dependability. Further, the major behavioral setting shifts
from the family to secondary settings like school or work. In classic
evolutionary analyses, examples include foraging, hunting, and gathering.
In the contemporary setting, examples include study groups and work
teams, as well as sports teams. The next level of size, the band 10–30
(which is the first group size to move from place to place2) is key to our
broader social functioning. Two basic collective affordance problems
emerge: (a) maintaining group stability and (b) building coalitions
between social units, ranging from dyads, to families, to work teams,
and so forth. Problems such as building group cohesion become promi-
nent and with it affordances relevant to in-group, out-group stereotyping
and majority and minority issues become salient.
Most broadly, as group size increases, two simultaneous processes
occur. First, aspects of the lower-order affordance problems persist and
become nested in a broader set of issues. For example, trust remains a
problem as does role coordination, but these problems now have to be
viewed within the context of a higher level of problems dealing with
intergroup issues. Thus, the progression is from the intrapersonal to
interpersonal, then from intragroup to intergroup affordance problems.
One of the key constraints to note at this point flows from our meta-
assumption that we are dealing not simply with more complex aggregates
of people but with more complex dynamical systems. One of the most
important implications of this recognition is that the highest level of
organization feeds back and modifies the functioning of the lower
levels. Consider a simple example—an eco-niche comprised of grass,
plants, and then trees will have a different pattern of growth from a
2
Caporeal & Baron (1997) also deal with a macroband the size of 300 or larger, a unit beyond the
scope of the present analysis.
situation where trees do not exist. Similarly, the intragroup affordances

will change importantly when intergroup processes emerge. For example,
intra-group affordances that favor divergent thinking and the acceptance
of minority views may be suppressed as a kind of groupthink mentality
emerges. Further, with a larger behavior setting, deviants are no longer
likely to be tolerated. They will be rejected and expelled from the group
(Barker & Schoggen, 1973; Wicker, 1979). Thus, staffing theory (Wicker,
1979) and groupthink theory (Janis, 1972) make similar predictions
regarding the toleration of opinion deviants.
Further at the intergoup level, distinctiveness motives (Brewer, 1991)
are likely to be suppressed in favor of people wanting to fit in. People want
to belong as the group orients itself to dealing with out-group level
conflict and threat. Most generally, the individual is acting less and less
as an individual and more as a group member. In such large-group situa-
tions, knowing personality traits may be less predictive of behavior than
knowing the individual’s roles and how strongly people have internalized
group norms and values (Baron, 2002). It should be noted in this context
that I am not talking about the relative salience of agentic versus commu-
nion types of motives. Rather, I am hypothesizing that, in multiple
regression terms, role or group-based variables will be more predictive
of behavior variance than individual-based variables. Further, given that
my general approach is to favor ‘‘this and that’’ over ‘‘either/or’’ formula-
tions, conceptually, my stance would be that as group size increases,
individual motives become embedded in or entrained by group-level
demands. For example, individual traits such as introversion-extroversion
become expressed in terms of role selection and/or in how roles are
performed (see my basketball example in this chapter).
Note that this is analogous to our tree, plant, and grass problem. For
example, to predict the growth of grass, we now need to know how the
grass is affected by the creation of shade and the growth of trees’ roots.
Knowing about the properties of different grasses independent of these
system-level contexts will be of limited utility. Similarly, in the interper-
sonal settings, affordances for trust are nested in the dynamic between
intra- and intergroup processes. Framing the problem in this way is, in
turn, useful in understanding group organization and processes such as
Granovetter’s (1973) ‘‘strength of weak ties.’’ This phenomenon occurs
when intragroup cohesion is limited (the opposite of groupthink). These
issues become more salient as group size increases and group-intergroup
relations are between macrobands, for example, tribes, or business orga-
nization, or nations.
Specifically, weak within-group ties allow a greater role of individual
personality traits as predictors, with trust becoming a matter of interper-
sonal experiences as opposed to group-constructed social reality. In such
groups, personal identity is more related to intragroup than intergroup

processes. Further, weak within-group ties encourage subgroup forma-
tion. In general, affordances become more a matter of satisfying individual
needs and subgroup roles. But, we should always remember that from a
complex systems framework even when an organization allows subgroup
formation, size will affect lower-order processes. The role of personality
and the nature of trust function differently in large and small groups.
Thus, size, as Barker has emphasized, has its own constraints both in
terms of advantages and disadvantages.
Affordances and Dynamical Systems. I would like to conclude my

exploration of the interphase of behavior, settings, and dispositions with
an overview of what the concept of affordances, when linked to a dyna-
mical systems view of a relationship between parts and wholes, buys us.
Perhaps the most important insight is that there is really no useful indivi-
dual level of analysis for the behaviors we are interested in; that is,
behaviors that go beyond reflexes, habits, or largely hormonally-driven
actions. The Big Five type traits, if viewed in an affordance context, are
relational at the level of behavior either directly or indirectly. For
example, even if we begin with something like a neurological basis for
sensation-seeking (Zuckerman, 1978) or a brain-based analysis of intro-
version (Eysenck and Levey, 1972), I would argue that at a behavioral
level, what is critical is a seeking after an environment that allows such
people to avoid highly stimulating events such as the presence of other
people. That is, such people seek affordances for quiet, given their limited
response capabilities for handling stimulation, and in a complementary
manner such people may give off affordance information that they want
to be left alone. Similarly, while conscientiousness appears to be a largely
intrapersonal trait, people with this trait are likely to be recruited into
certain social situations such as the formation of a study group in settings
such as law school. Specifically, such people may afford reliable perfor-
mance of an important group-based affordance involving distributed
cognition (Hogan & Ones, 1997). And as we suggested earlier, traits
such as dominance directly imply the presence of a person to be domi-
nated (Schmidt, Christianson, Carillo, & Baron, 1994).
Further, it is likely that as group size increases, more individualistic
traits like conscientiousness become transformed at the level of social
affordances into social actions such as dependability, which, in turn,
become the building blocks for social-unit level processes such as trust.
Thus, dependability is embodied in the reliability of reciprocally relevant
actions over time, which in turn leads to perceptions of trustworthiness.
Moreover, as we scale up in terms of group size, dependability is likely to
move into role-based phenomena. That is, at issue then is the reliability of
role-constrained actions. For example, on a basketball team, can the point

guard be trusted to look to pass to an open teammate as opposed to looking
first for his or her own shot? Dependability is reorganized at a group-role
level in terms of cooperative team play. That is, dependability contributes to
conceptions of trustworthiness, which in turn affords cooperation. And as I
have noted earlier, cooperativeness can, in itself, be directly perceived as a
joint social action (Kean, 2000).
New Behavioral Paradigms for Studying Social Affordances
My own recent research is direct evidence for the inherent behavior-

orientedness of the ecological approach. Richardson, Marsh, & Baron
(2007) carried out a series of studies designed to demonstrate what the
boundaries were for the transition from intrapersonal to interpersonal
affordances for lifting planks of wood, and in some conditions carrying the
wood across the room. Most relevant to our present analysis, the effects
we found were relational; the key parameters for grasping were captured
by the ratio of physical properties like the length of wood and a person’s
arm span. That is, the point at which participants switched modes of
grasping, be it one versus two hands or one-person versus two-person
lifting and carrying, occurred at similar action-scaled ratios (i.e., plank
length to hand span, plank length to arm span). Basically, this research
demonstrated that when peoples’ own effectivities are insufficient to
utilize a given affordance for lifting, they resort to joint lifting, thereby
defining the boundaries for a shift from intra- to interpersonal affordances
for lifting. More generally, such data suggest that the perception and
actualization of affordances should be understood from the perspective
of dynamical systems theory (Richardson et al., 2007), with the presence
of others functioning as a higher-order control parameter that changes the
affordance boundaries for liftability.
In social psychological terms, the two-person action system is a
situation in which a social unit emerges over time to form a ‘‘fragile we’’
within a ‘‘mutually shared social field’’ (Asch, 1952). In effect, the 2P
condition moves the individual from simple embodiment (acting alone)
toward joint activity—what we might call socially-embodied coopera-
tion. More broadly at issue is determining the point at which mere
behavioral coordination of movement with another person can be
viewed as teamwork, a situation not so different from when a team of
basketball players moves from physical synchronies to playing as a team,
where a team is a kind of social synergy (Marsh et al., 2006).
What this research design does is to give us is a behavioral paradigm
within which one could input, for example, variations on the Big Five
traits. For example, do shy people take longer—that is, need greater
discrepancies between hand or arm size and plank length before they
turn to joint lifting than outgoing people? Or do people who are high on
conscientiousness, persist longer in trying to lift the plank by themselves
because they try harder? Even more to the point, I predict that people
high in agreeableness may move from an intrapersonal to an interpersonal
lifting before they are physically unable to do the lifting. A study by
Isenhower (2009) provides a physical analogue to such personality pair-
ings. He created pairs of individuals matched for either short or long arms
or mismatched in arm span. It was found that the lifting process was
dictated by the participant with the smaller arm span for each pair in all
three groups. Specifically, liftability for a pair was more constrained by
what the person with the shorter arm span person could do.
Researching the Shift to We-Based Affordances
In this context, perhaps the most interesting direction for affordance-

oriented research that comes out of such hybrid studies, which mix social
and physical affordances and are described above, is how physical coordi-
nations might become an occasion for forming a relationship. Given the
foundational nature of trust for extended social interaction (Baron,
2007), do people who are led to trust the other person switch to a two-
person mode earlier? That is, when and how are our physical limitations
embedded in social prompts and constraints? We also need to look at the
consequences of effective passing in sports like basketball or soccer.
Specifically, what kinds of social affordances emerge with teamwork?
For example, are affordances more coercive in a situation that increases
joint outcomes? Here, behaving in synch with other people may create a
situation that induces Barker-like environmental force units, a precondi-
tion for collective affordances. The team is, in effect, a social niche where
the person is in the group and the group is in the person. ‘‘I’’ affordances
become ‘‘we’’ affordances.
Further, my analysis of the relationship between group size and the
emergence of social affordances suggests that at the level of the relation or
group, these affordances are no less real than physical affordances like a
desk affording writing (Barker’s, 1968 synomorph). At issue in all such
social situations are constrained opportunities for social interaction. This
suggests research that turns coordinations between individuals into group
processes, thereby providing a new level of constraint ranging from group
norms to group roles.
This group-level interpretation of social affordances moves us beyond
focusing research on physical coordinations that secondarily take on social
meaning to exploring situations where the physical coordinations are

socially or group embedded from the start. For example, groupness can
be created in two ways:
(1) Subjects could be told that they and their lifting partners will be
compared with other lifting combinations in regard to the speed
with which they carry the planks across the room with a valuable
prize for the winning team.
(2) Following Horwitz (1954), lifters can be told in one condition
that they will be interacting with these same people in future
experiments versus being told that they will not interact with
them in the future. Horwitz (1954) found that those expecting to
interact again formed a stronger group identity in the form of
remembering incompleted group tasks better than interrupted
individual tasks while the reverse was true for people not
expecting to interact in the future.
Each of these paradigms has something to recommend it. The Horwitz

(1954) procedure simulates a key characteristic of being part of a behavior
setting—the continuity over time. On the other hand, the competition
paradigm captures a central characteristic of ongoing teams—the occur-
rence of joint outcomes, which turn coordinations into cooperation (Baron,
2007). Taken together, such procedures can perhaps simulate the collec-
tive affordances that characterize behavior settings.
Finally, it is perhaps not an accident that Aronson (Aronson, Stephan,
Sikes, Barney, & Snapp, 1978) called his cooperation paradigm a jigsaw
strategy. Here each member of a group has only part of the necessary
information needed for the problem to be completed. What occurs is the
creation of social synomorphs where people are both locks and keys. In the
jigsaw example, success is rooted in reciprocity. Just as the desk and chair
are shaped to support writing and studying, so each of the cooperative
constituents in such systems are fragile ‘‘we’s’’ in the making (Baron, 2007).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
One route for reinstating behavior into social psychology is the recogni-
tion that dispositions and behaviors are embedded or situated in settings
that provide affordances for socially-embodied activities. From this per-
spective, embodied cognition is, in most cases, a necessary but not suffi-
cient condition for achieving socially-embodied behavior. The most
important things we do are as parts of social units. Sociality is the meta-
constraint on dispositions, behavior, and settings. A new social cognition
will be behavioral if we abandon the Cartesian mantra ‘‘I think therefore I

am’’ and replace it with ‘‘I act with others, therefore I am.’’ It is from this
perspective that I propose we parse the Big Five personality traits into
dispositions that facilitate or inhibit the transformation from ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘we’’
affordances.
Finally, I do not wish to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Cognitivism has a role in all of this—it allows us some distance between
what we notice in the world and what we do (or don’t) do about it.
Perceptions of affordances invite, but do not force, appropriate or
proper behaviors. In certain situations such perceptions need to be mod-
erated cognitively (note, not mediated). For example, when I notice
injustice in the world I might have an inclination to exact immediate
revenge, but this may not be a wise or practical behavior. The adaptive
value of thinking in such situations is considerable (Hodges, personal
communication, 2008). Just as perceptions may constrain, so may
thinking alter the perception–action cycle. Thus, the final take-away
message is that the mystery is no mystery. One misplaces behavior only
when one conceptualizes the phenomena of interest in social psychology
in ways that ignore the role of bodies, relations, and groups. The value of
the present affordance-based framework is that it makes the relevance of
these factors inescapable.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of William

G. Graziano, Bert H. Hodges, and Joan Boykoff Baron on earlier drafts of
this chapter and the thoughtful responses of the participants at the
Purdue Symposium.
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III
Behavior and
Inter-Individual Processes
14 Behavior Between People: Emphasizing
the ‘‘Act’’ in Interaction
Janice R. Kelly
Understanding behavior has always been a defining goal of social psychology.

Behaviors involving others, whether in their initiation, their enactment, or
their consequences, are of particular interest to social psychologists. Not
surprisingly, behaviors featuring the intertwining of outcomes of actors can
be a theoretical and measurement challenge, though not one that has
resulted in reduced enthusiasm for the attempt (e.g., Kelley et al., 2003).
This section contains a number of chapters that focus on behavior,
both broadly and specifically defined, and inter-individual processes.
Of course, not all behaviors are the same; they differ in fundamental
and dramatic ways. For example, one way in which behaviors differ is in
their relative independence versus interdependence (Agnew, 1999).
Some actions require other people for enactment (e.g., intercourse)
while other actions can be performed without outside assistance or co-
action (e.g., tooth brushing). Behavior also differs depending on the
context in which it is generated. Reading a book on particle physics
while sitting alone in a library is quite different from reading it while
surrounded by a group of friends at a party. Wincing at a colleague’s less
than sensitive remark at a faculty meeting is markedly different from
fluttering one’s eyes in response to a sand storm. In these examples, the
outward behaviors may be the same (reading, wincing), but enactment in
one setting versus another conveys vastly different sentiments, has dif-
ferent social implications, and generates markedly different attributions
on the part of behavioral observers.
Interpersonal interaction adds yet another layer of complexity to the

study of behavior. In interpersonal interaction, behaviors are enacted with
varying degrees of fidelity with respect to the communicator’s intentions.
That behavior is then decoded or interpreted by the receiver, again with
varying degrees of precision, and a response is generated. An interaction
sequence repeats these patterns of enactment, interpretation, and
response. Even the important social behavior of verbal communication
requires interpretation and response, with accordant difficulties for both
actors and those who wish to study those behaviors.
Moreover, the very definition of what constitutes ‘‘behavior’’
becomes challenging in interpersonal contexts. For example, consider
ending a romantic relationship, or ‘‘breaking up.’’ ‘‘Breakup’’ is often
considered a key dependent variable in close relationship research and is
used to validate a number of relationship process variables. It is particu-
larly prized among social psychological researchers given that it is con-
sidered behavioral in nature, in contrast to the multiplicity of
psychological variables often investigated. But what is ‘‘breakup,’’ beha-
viorally? Is it an individual’s action(s) or a dyadic outcome? A number of
researchers have treated it as the latter, ignoring the discrete behaviors
that may be said to constitute the action of breakup. Recent work has
begun to address this theoretical and measurement limitation
(VanderDrift, Agnew, & Wilson, in press), but there are a constellation
of interpersonal behaviors that defy easy, clean, and clear definition and
present a corresponding measurement challenge.
Behavior is an exceptionally broad concept that, not surprisingly, fills
different niches within the field. Art Aron’s chapter (Chapter 15) serves
as a useful reminder of the multiple roles served by behavior in social
psychological research. All too often, behavior is considered important
only as a key dependent variable. Certainly understanding the determi-
nants or precursors of important and consequential behavior is a critical
aim of the field. But behavior is also often used as a criterion variable for
validating self-report measures. Behavior measures are seen as desirable
given that they are seen as being relatively ‘‘objective,’’ and less suscep-
tible to purposeful bias. Moreover, at times behavior is used as a means of
operationalizing a specific affective, cognitive, or motivational state, at
the individual level (e.g., smiling face as operationalization of happiness),
dyad level (e.g., mutual eye gazing as an operationalization of shared
romantic interest), or group level (e.g., audience applause as an operatio-
nalization of popular approval).
Behavior also may be seen as playing a mediating role, providing the
necessary middle step(s) in a process involving multiple steps (and, often,
multiple actors). Behavioral confirmation (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid,
1977) is a perfect example of this role. Aron also reminds us of the classic
EMPHASIZING THE ‘‘ A C T ’’ IN INTERACTION 277
role of behavior as an experimental manipulation, such as the actions

taken by a confederate in a lab study. In fact, the use of behavior as
independent variable may be more common in social psychological
research than its use as a dependent one. Finally, Aron describes how
neuroscience methods often serve the same function for social psycholo-
gist studying neural activity as traditional behavior measures do.
Regardless of the niche filled by behavior, Harry Reis (Chapter 16)
argues that the relationship context of behavior should be of central
concern to social psychologist. He reviews findings from a number of
studies demonstrating how behavior varies as context varies. For
example, the Reis and Shaver (1988) model of intimacy clearly delineates
that when self-disclosure is not met with sensitivity on the part of a
listener, feelings of intimacy will not develop. Thus, behavioral conse-
quences differ as a function of perceived responsiveness (for more on the
general importance of perceived responsiveness in understanding inter-
personal behavior, see Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004).
In addition, Reis outlines the unique and integrative orientation of
social psychology with respect to other disciplines in its approach to
behavior. In its emphasis on situational factors underlying behavior,
social psychology blends elements from various ‘‘macro’’ orientations,
including sociology, political science, and economics. In its emphasis on
person factors, social psychology blends elements from the realms of
neuroscience, biology, and biochemistry. Reis also provides a clear over-
view of aspects of interdependence theory that are particularly relevant to
behavior: (a) the degree of one’s outcome interdependence with an
interaction partner, and (b) whether a situation is characterized as being
one of exchange or of coordination. These aspects suggest the values of an
interdependence analysis in helping understand how relationship context
shapes individual and dyadic behavior.
John Holmes and Justin Cavallo describe other key elements of
interdependence theory in their chapter (Chapter 17). Building on the
cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) framework offered by
Mischel and Shoda (1995), Holmes and Cavallo emphasize the impor-
tance of considering abstract properties of situations to improve beha-
vioral prediction. As illustrated in Chapter 17, the CAPS model
incorporates a person-by-situation interactionist perspective, holding
that specific features of situations activate specific cognitive and affective
elements in individuals that then produce responses to situations. Holmes
and Cavallo argue that the notion of ‘‘situation’’ in the CAPS model is not
at an appropriately abstract level to allow for a priori prediction of what
specific cognitive-affective elements would be activated. To help over-
come this limitation, they review recent developments by interdepen-
dence theorists to produce a comprehensive ‘‘theory of situations.’’
True to its origins as a theory crafted by students of Kurt Lewin,

interdependence theory is ultimately concerned with the social psycho-
logical determinants of interpersonal behavior. It expands on Lewin’s oft-
cited behavior formula [b = f (p, e)] by explicitly taking into account
person and relational elements that influence the interaction occurring
between two people. They describe six key dimensions of situations
identified to date (as elaborated in Kelley et al., 2003). Holmes and
Cavallo also review recent work on the risk regulation model (Murray,
Holmes, & Collins, 2006), a model that describes the delicate balancing
act of being dependent on a relational partner (and vulnerable to their
negative actions) and the need to simultaneously maintain positive feel-
ings about the self.
The interdependence existing between relational actors is particularly
evident in parent–infant interactions. Given the massive dependency of
infants combined with their enormous cerebral cortex, it is reasonable to
surmise that the perceived responsiveness of caregivers might act to shape
a child’s orientation toward relationships with others throughout life.
Building on the pioneering theoretical work of Bowlby on attachment
theory, caregiver–infant relationships, and the attendant development of
guiding mental relational models (Bowlby, 1982), social psychological
researchers have broadened the original focus of attachment theory to
include more of an emphasis on adult relationships (cf., Mikulincer &
Shaver, 2007). In Chapter 18, Phil Shaver and Mario Mikulincer describe
the reciprocal association between mental processes and behavior within
attachment theory. Just as mental states of an individual guide behavioral
enactment toward others, behaviors often give rise to changes in mental
processes. Shaver and Mikuliner review Bowlby’s notion of a behavioral
system, including its evolutionary roots and biological function. They also
describe both normative features of the attachment system and individual
differences in the functioning of the system that arise in response to
exposure to differing experiences with others.
Shaver and Mikuliner argue that relational experience can be char-
acterized as a long chain of mental states and observable behaviors, linked
with reciprocal causal arrows. Viewed in this way, behavior can be seen as
a vehicle between motivational states. Rather than emphasize the parti-
cular importance or primacy of behavior, Shaver and Mikulincer stress
the importance of considering both, in combination. This position strikes
a reasonable middle ground between the pointedly one-sided behaviorist
and cognitivist camps of yore, and places social psychology at the nexus
envisioned by its earliest proponents (Lewin, 1936).
The Bolger, Stadler, and Paprocki chapter (Chapter 19) challenges
the field to overcome its focus on internal states and behavioral precursors
as a substitute for behavior and offers instead a method for studying
behavior in everyday contexts. Using marital conflict as a specific instan-

tiation of an important social behavior, the authors describe the utility of
daily diaries as an important tool for the assessment of these behaviors.
Diary studies offer the important advantages of overcoming various biases
produced by retrospective reports of behavior and increasing the possibi-
lity of sampling infrequent behaviors through sampling a universe of
behaviors. They argue that studying variability in behavior is as essential
to understanding behavior as studying mean levels, and offer possibilities
for statistical analysis of diary data that focus on such variability.
The authors report a reanalysis of couples’ diary data originally pub-
lished in Bolger et al. (1989) that focuses on questions of variability in
marital conflict and reactions to those conflicts. They use husband and
wife diary reports and estimate a multilevel logistic regression model to
specify a population distribution of probabilities of reporting marital
conflict across the days of the diary study. Thus, this approach clearly
assumes that interpersonal behavior is interdependent, and that differ-
ences can occur in how the same behavior is interpreted by two inter-
dependent individuals. They find that husbands’ and wives’ reports of
conflict generally agree, suggesting that the behavior is being reported
accurately, and that, although marital conflict is fairly rare, there is large
variability between couples in conflict level. In terms of distress level,
there was little evidence for high distress levels to occur in both couple
members, as distress levels were only weakly correlated. Similarly, there
was both between and within-couple heterogeneity in distress on days
with no conflict. The authors describe how this analysis of variability led
to insight about couple conflict that was not apparent from the original
analyses reported in Bolger et al. (1989). More generally, the authors
argue for moving beyond a focus on the typical person, to a closer
examination of variability across time and across contexts.
One of the most important forms of social behavior is communica-
tion, as it is through our communication with others that we reveal our
thoughts and emotions and dispositions toward the world around us. In
Chapter 20, Andrea Hollingshead discusses the importance of commu-
nication, which she defines broadly as involving both verbal and non-
verbal features, in coordinating people’s actions within groups. The
interdependent nature of social communication is illustrated as she dis-
cusses the relationship between coordinated action, cognitive synchrony,
and communication, and discusses how communication can enhance or
impair coordinated action depending on various features of the situation.
For example, successful coordination can be achieved in the absence of
communication in situations where there are salient focal points—pro-
minent or conspicuous characteristics of people or situations—that can
serve to unite action. On the other hand, communication is essential for
coordination action in situations where salient focal points do not exist.

Hollingshead illustrates the relationships between coordinated action,
communication, and focal points in research where social stereotypes
functioned as salient focal points in diverse dyads. For example, dyads
were asked to memorize information, some of which was stereotype
consistent with the dimension that defined the dyad’s diversity (e.g.,
gender, culture). Members of diverse dyads compared to members of
similar dyads were more likely to use the social stereotype as a salient
focal point and were therefore better able to remember stereotype-con-
sistent information in the absence of communication. Additional research
demonstrated that when communication between partners was allowed,
performance was impaired. Hollinghead closes the chapter with a
description of her current research involving the coordination of teams
of first responders, where the lack of interpersonal communication
among responder groups was directly related to poor coordination. She
also speculated on how developing technologies may possibly serve as an
aid to coordinated action.
Our book closes with a chapter by Judy Hall on nonverbal commu-
nication in social psychology (Chapter 21). Nonverbal behavior is gen-
erally defined as almost any potentially communicative behavior that is
not purely linguistic in form, including visible and auditory nonverbal
cues, speech patterns and dysfluencies, as well as various physical attri-
butes. As she states at the beginning of her chapter, the study of nonverbal
communication is noncontroversially the study of social behavior, as
nonverbal communication usually involves the expression and interpre-
tation of nonverbal behaviors and subsequent responses to those beha-
viors. The study of nonverbal communication generally follows one of
two main research traditions. The first tradition involves the description
of nonverbal behavior, with the research goal of attempting to understand
the antecedents, consequences, and sometimes the correlates of that
behavior. The second primary research tradition involves the study of
nonverbal communication skills in expression (encoding) and judgment
(decoding), with the research goals of being able to differentiate skill
levels, and to understand other person and situation correlates of skill
level. Hall also explores the good, the bad, and the ugly of nonverbal
communication research. The good includes an explicit focus on beha-
vior, the intrinsic interest that people show toward this research area, the
relevance of this research across disciplines, and the recent publication
surge that indicates a renewal or newfound interest in the area. The bad
includes an atheoretical approach, a lack of professional identity created
by its multidisciplinary nature, and its labor-intensive nature. Finally, the
ugly of nonverbal communication research lies in its complexity.
Nonverbal cues take meaning only in a specific context. Furthermore,
meaning also depends on the perspective of the interactants—is meaning

derived from the intent of the expressor or the interpretation of the
receiver? Despite these difficulties, this field clearly demonstrates the
possibilities and utilities of a focus on actual social behavior.
This section provides readers with a thorough sense of the many ways
in which behavior is considered in social psychological theory and
research. Each of the chapters highlights the complexities and the chal-
lenges inherent in the study of inter-individual behavior. At the same
time, each reflects the genuine enthusiasm of those whose own scholarly
motivation and actions push us closer to a more complete understanding
of the underpinnings and nuances of behavior in its various forms.
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Bolger, N., DeLongis, A., Kessler, R. C., & Schilling, E. A. (1989). Effects of daily
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808–818.
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Books.
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P. A. M. (2003). An atlas of interpersonal situations. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
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15 Behavior, the Brain, and the Social
Psychology of Close Relationships
Arthur Aron
This chapter considers the roles of behavior and neuroscience in

social psychology, focusing on the study of close relationships, the
area of the field with which I am most familiar, as a representative
example. I first consider the major roles of behavior in this field and
then focus on central ways in which neuroscience methods fill par-
allel roles.
THE ROLES OF BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

RELATIONSHIP RESEARCH
I take the term ‘‘behavior’’ to refer to objectively observable actions and

patterns of actions. In practice, social psychologists tend to include as
‘‘behavioral’’ most anything other than self-reports of internal states,
although internal physiology (including neural activity) is usually not
meant to be included. In this section I focus on three major roles of
behavior broadly construed in this way in the social psychology of close
relationships: behavior as operationalization of dependent variables
(including behavior as criterion variables for validating self-report mea-
sures and cases in which particular behaviors are uniquely important
variables in their own right), behavior as operationalization of intervening
variables, and manipulation of behavior as a powerful way of operationa-
lizing independent variables.
Behavior as Operationalization of Dependent Variables
The main role of behavior, broadly construed, in the social psychology of

close relationships has been a way of operationalizing dependent vari-
ables, as an alternative to self-report that is more objectively measured
and avoids problems of various kinds of response bias. In many cases
involving behavioral measures, participants are not aware they are being
assessed at all (as in nonobtrusive measures or the use of archival informa-
tion), or they are not aware of or misled about the purpose of their tasks
(as in implicit measures).
Here are some examples of behavior used in this way, mainly from my
own close relationships research. In the Dutton and Aron (1974) suspen-
sion bridge arousal/attraction study, a key dependent variable was
whether or not the person who met the confederate on the different
bridges (shaky vs. solid) telephoned that night to the phone number
they had been led to believe was the confederate’s phone number. This
is a direct, real-world behavior (phoning or not) that the participant was
not aware of being a measure of anything. A related type of behavioral
measure is based on asking the participant to report retrospectively on an
objective (behavioral) event. For example, in testing our method for
creating closeness between strangers experimentally (Aron, Melinat,
Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997), participants first completed the closeness
(or control) activity in a classroom setting early in the semester. Then, at
the end of the semester, they were asked if they had any further interac-
tion with their partner over the semester. This kind of approach (often
with phone or e-mail contact; and often with the purpose of assessing
whether a person has remained in a relationship with a marital or dating
partner) has become fairly common in relationship research.
Perhaps what many think of as the quintessential ‘‘behavioral’’
approach in the relationship area is videotaping couples discussing some
issue in a laboratory context and later, independent coders rate the inter-
actions for diverse variables ranging from the micro (e.g., number of
interruptions) to the macro (e.g., overall warmth). The task developed
early on by Weiss and colleagues (e.g., Weiss & Heyman, 1990) and made
most prominent by Gottman and colleagues (e.g., Gottman, 1979)
involves couples discussing an issue on which they disagree. In our own
research we used this kind of approach as a dependent variable in one of
our studies (Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna, & Heyman, 2000, Study 5).
In that research, couples engaged together in either a mundane or in a
novel and challenging activity. In this particular study, before and after
the task, couples were videotaped discussing a topic we assigned them.
These discussions were then coded with a focus on overall positivity and
negativity of the discussion. In previous experiments in this series, we had
BEHAVIOR, THE BRAIN, AND CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS 285
already shown the effect using self-report measures. We added the beha-
vioral observation measure to reassure ourselves (and readers) that the
effects were not somehow simply a matter of people in one condition
saying they were happier with their partner. That is, the role of the
behavioral measure here, as often, was simply to add to the confidence
in the effect by the measure being more objectively assessed and with
presumably less opportunity for response bias.
This kind of observation of interpersonal interactions is especially
persuasive when participants are not even aware they are being observed.
We have not used this method in any of our own research, but the
approach has been quite successfully applied in the relationship area.
For example, Fraley and Shaver (1998) observed attachment behaviors
of couples parting at the airport, comparing those in which both members
were leaving to those in which only one was leaving. Another example is
the fruitful procedure developed by Ickes (1983). In this method, pairs of
participants are videotaped interacting when they arrive at the laboratory
and are supposedly awaiting the experiment. (Ickes avoids violating par-
ticipants’ privacy by having the video recording done mechanically and
later giving each participant, separately, the opportunity to have the
recording destroyed before any human being sees it.)
Another much more common approach is simply to ask participants
about whether some objective behavior occurred or its frequency. Thus,
participants might be asked how much time they spend per week with a
close friend or how often they kiss their spouse. For example, in each of two
surveys (Aron et al., 2000, Studies 1 and 2), we asked participants how often
they do ‘‘exciting’’ activities with their partner (as predicted, this correlated
positively with satisfaction and was mediated by relationship boredom).
Indeed, perhaps the most persuasive use of asking participants about objec-
tive events is diary methods, particularly event-related or experience-sam-
pling methods in which people indicate what they are doing right then. For
example, Graham (2008) in a 1-week experience sampling study found that
when couples were signaled at random intervals, the degree of excitement
when doing an activity with their partner predicted later experience-level
relationship quality.
Perhaps the most common behavioral-type approach to operationali-
zation of a dependent variable throughout social psychology, including the
close relationship area, is the use of laboratory tasks involving response
time or memory or eye movement or some other response about which the
participant either has no conscious control or is unaware of the relation of
the response to the focal variable of interest. For example, as part of our
original research program on including other in the self (Aron, Aron,
Tudor, & Nelson, 1991, Study 3), we used a method in which participants
responded to a series of trait words presented on a computer screen. For
each word, participants were instructed to indicate as quickly as possible

whether the trait was or was not true of themselves (a ‘‘me’’-‘‘not-me’’
decision). The prediction (and finding) was that people are slower in
deciding a trait is true of themselves if it is not also true of a close other
(and the closer they subjectively report being to the close other, the
stronger the effect). The idea is that if the other is part of me, then when
something is true of me but not of the other, there is a part of myself that it
is not true of, so there is interference. The point here is simply that
participants were not aware of what was being measured and had minimal
control over differences in milliseconds between words. Again, the main
role of measuring ‘‘behavior’’ (in this case, how quickly one presses a key) is
to provide greater confidence in the objectivity of measurement.
Having emphasized this usage, I also want to note that there are
contexts in which the behavior is not just a way of operationalizing
some internal state or abstract relational property. Sometimes the beha-
vior is itself the key variable of interest. The most obvious examples in the
relationship area are whether and with whom a relationship is formed,
whether a relationship breaks up, and how long it lasts. Some other, more
dramatic examples are violent acts towards the partner, protected versus
unprotected sex, and pregnancy. Somewhat less dramatic, but highly
important (and widely studied) are effects on such variables as health
outcomes and health behaviors (exercise, diet, etc.), economic behaviors
(purchases, investments), and leisure activities and time spent with var-
ious close others. That is, the purpose of much social psychology research
is to understand the causes or processes associated with these behavioral
events because these behavioral events are of great practical significance
in their own right or because they are part of a causal network that
ultimately affects experience (or other behaviors).
Behavior may also function as a criterion variable for validating a self-
report measure. For example, Rubin (1970) used the amount of gazing into
the partner’s eyes as a measure to validate his love scale; Rusbult, Martz, and
Agnew (1998) used whether or not a relationship persisted to validate their
measure of commitment; and Agnew, Van Lange, Rusbult, and Langston
(1998) provided validation for Aron, Aron, and Smollan’s (1992) self-report
measure of ‘‘including other in the self’’ by showing it had a strong correlation
with the number of times participants used first person plural pronouns (we,
us, etc.) when writing about their relationship.
Behavior as Intervening Variable
Intervening variables, variables that are somewhere in the middle of a

multistage process, are sometimes conceptualized as behaviors. For
example, in a dating or conflict or social support script, the partner’s overt

observable response (or typical response pattern) may play a central
mediating role between external circumstances or one’s own actions
and one’s subsequent actions or feelings. Another kind of example is
behavioral confirmation, as in Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid’s (1977)
classic study in which (a) the extent to which one is led to believe an
interaction partner is good looking leads to (b) a pattern of behaviors
towards the partner that (c) lead to the partner behaving like a more
attractive person (as rated by blind observers). A more direct relationship
example is Drigotas, Rusbult, Wieselquist, and Whittin’s (1999) research
on the ‘‘Michelangelo Effect.’’ In this work, one’s partner’s behavioral
reactions to one’s own behavior serve to reinforce one’s own behavior
patterns and characteristics.
This kind of approach is also central to major theoretical models. For
example, Reis and Shaver’s (1998) intimacy model posits a system in
which whether one’s self-disclosure leads to high or low levels of partner’s
responsiveness (understanding, validation, and caring) determines the
extent to which one’s experienced intimacy escalates or declines.
A more general model of this kind is a systems type account of how
attachment styles develop, as classically proposed by Bowlby (1969). In
this model, following an experienced threat, the infant turns to the
caregiver, and the extent to which the caregiver is available and respon-
sive leads to subsequent steps in which one develops either a sense of
security or insecurity. Indeed, in even the most general relationship-
relevant models, behavior often plays a central intervening role. For
example, in evolutionary models, mate choice, a clearly behavioral vari-
able, is a very key factor in the development of a species.
Behavioral Manipulations as Operationalizations of

Independent Variables
It is almost a quintessential social psychological method to operationalize

an independent variable by manipulating the behavior of a confederate.
Perhaps the most classic example is the Asch (1956) conformity study. In
the relationship domain, sometimes a relationship partner is recruited as a
confederate. In other studies, the researcher simply manipulates behavior
that the subject believes is coming from the partner, as in whether or not
the partner sends a supportive or nonsupportive note when the subject is
facing a stressful situation (Collins & Feeney, 2004). It is also possible to
manipulate the participant’s own behavior. For example, in White and
Kight’s (1984) arousal-attraction-effect study, individuals ran in place for
a few minutes (or did not) prior to meeting the confederate. Finally, in
some studies, the behavior of an interacting pair is manipulated. For

example, in our studies of creating closeness between strangers (Aron
et al., 1997), pairs of individuals are instructed to ask each other a set of
questions that are structured to be either rapidly escalating in degree of
personalness (high closeness induction condition) or involve mundane
superficial disclosures (low closeness induction condition). More concre-
tely, in our shared self-expanding activities experiments (Aron et al.,
2000, Studies 3–5), participants carry out together a physical activity
that is either novel and challenging (high self-expansion condition) or
enjoyable but mundane (low self-expansion condition). For example, in
the novel/challenging condition, the couple is first tied together with
Velcro straps at the wrist and ankles, then they push a foam cylinder
together, without using hands or teeth, across a 10 meter gym mat, over a
barrier (a rolled up gym mat) and back, trying to beat a time limit.
Summary
In this first main section we argued (and provided illustrative examples)

that the major roles of behavior in the social psychology of close relation-
ships are (a) operationalizations of dependent variables that are used
mainly because of their virtues of being objective, (b) intervening pro-
cesses in multistep theoretical models, and (c) powerful ways of manip-
ulating independent variables.
HOW NEUROSCIENCE METHODS PLAY PARALLEL ROLES

TO BEHAVIOR
Neuroscientists typically call something a ‘‘behavioral study’’ if it uses any

systematic method other than a neural or physiological one. Thus, they
tend to include among behavioral studies what social psychologists would
call cognitive or self-report. On the other hand, there is a sense in which
social psychologists, as we have seen, tend to define anything that is not an
explicit self-report as behavioral—so that one could call neuroscience
studies behavioral in that sense. Indeed, there is a sense in which neu-
roscience methods are literally studying behaviors, in the sense of objec-
tively observable actions, of neural systems in the brain.
In any case, what I want instead to emphasize here is that in many
ways neuroscience methods can and sometimes do serve for social psy-
chologists, including social psychologists studying relationships, the same
functions as traditional behavioral measures of the types we have been
considering. Neuroscience methods are objectively assessed and usually

minimally subject to response biases, and the variables observed are
closely linked with emotions, motivations, cognitions, and bodily actions.
Thus, I will focus on illustrating how brain activity has been used to
provide objective operationalizations of dependent variables, conceptua-
lized as intervening variables in multistep models, and as powerful manip-
ulations of independent variables. (However, before turning to these
themes, I also want to note that it is my experience that most researchers
using neuroscience methods are doing so to understand the brain, and not
as a tool to understand human experience and behavior. In that light,
collaborations with social psychologists can be very important for neu-
roscientists by providing sophistication about the kinds of social and
psychological phenomena associated with neural processes. However,
again, my focus here is on the role of neuroscience in facilitating advances
in understanding the social psychology of close relationships, in which
brain responses are used as a means to this end, not as the main purpose of
the research.)
Neural Activity as Objective Operationalization of Dependent

Variables
Neuroscience methods can provide data to triangulate with behavioral

methods and, most importantly, to apply to variables difficult to oper-
ationalize behaviorally, permitting objective, nonobvious measurement
of variables such as degree of passionate love, closeness, or stress. The
main procedures used are brain imaging, such as functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI), to identify localized regions of the brain that
respond specifically to an experimentally manipulated task or stimulus
(versus an otherwise comparable control task or stimulus). For example,
Coan, Schaefer, and Davidson (2006) used fMRI methods to create, in
effect, an implicit, objective operationalization of response to stress—
activation of a particular brain region (the HAP-axis) known from both
animal and human research to be active when under stressful stimuli. (It is
the starting point of a hormonal stress cascade to regulate bodily threat
response.) In their study, participants were put in a stressful situation, and
then the researchers assessed whether these areas of the brain were less
active when holding the hand of one’s spouse versus when holding the
hand of a stranger (the experimenter). They also tested how the degree of
reduction of this brain response when holding the spouse’s hand differs as
a function of the quality of the relationship. (That is, Coan et al. corre-
lated the brain response reduction for spouse versus control hand with a
standard self-report measure of relationships satisfaction.) Note that in
this example, the independent variable—who was holding the partici-

pant’s hand—was also behavioral.
Another widely used neuroscience method (although one with rela-
tively few applications so far to relationships) is evoked response poten-
tial (ERP). ERP measures the brain’s electrical activity from the scalp,
focusing on the pattern of response over fractions of a second to repeated
stimuli of a given type. For example, in a study exploring responses to face
images of a new beloved, Langeslag, Jansma, Franken, and Van Strien
(2007) found significantly larger responses (late positive potentials) for a
beloved partner versus a familiar control or another unknown beautiful
face, suggesting increased motivated attention for the beloved. That is, in
this study, the particular pattern of response, known from other research
to be an indicator of attention, served as an implicit, objective operatio-
nalization of attention.
Other widely used neuroscience methods, such as single cell
recording, have been used primarily with nonhuman animals and have
been minimally applied to relationship contexts. (However, I will briefly
mention some relevant work using some of these methods in the section
on manipulation of independent variables.)
Detailed Example
To illustrate the possibilities, I will describe in a bit more detail some of

the research my collaborators and I have been doing on romantic love. In
the initial study (Aron et al., 2005), we sought to address the question of
whether passionate love should be understood as a particular emotion like
anger or happiness versus as a strong desire like intense hunger or an
ardent quest for fame. This emotion-versus-motivation issue is one of
longstanding interest to emotion and relationship researchers. On the one
hand, love is certainly highly emotional, in lay understanding it is a
prototypical example of an emotion, and it is included in many standard
lists of basic emotions. On the other hand, unlike particular emotions,
passionate love has no specific facial expression; and like most motiva-
tions (goal-oriented states), passionate love is especially hard to control,
yields diverse emotions according to whether or not it is satisfied, and is
very highly focused on a specific outcome. There are also considerable
theoretical implications to this distinction, including whether one should
apply to love the various things we know about emotions (e.g., emotion
regulation processes) or the various things we know about motivations
(e.g., abstract vs. concrete mindsets). However, this issue has been quite
hard to sort out using existing methods, both because the differences in
behavior between emotions and motivations are relatively subtle (and
overlapping) and because in a case such as love, self-reports are likely to

be especially biased by one’s lay beliefs about how it operates. In contrast,
neuroscience methods offered us a strong opportunity to address this
issue because emotions and motivations are associated with the activity
of quite distinct brain regions.
A second longstanding issue this research sought to address was
whether passionate love is just a fancy name for sexual desire.
Passionate love has been defined as an intense desire for a highly intimate,
close relationship with specific other; sexual desire, as an intense drive to
have sex with someone. On the one hand, the two are typically corre-
lated, although people sometimes report experiencing one without the
other (especially sexual desire without passionate love). Other relevant
evidence is that young children report intense passionate love (without
sex), and some animal research (see Fisher, 1998) suggests the sex drive
evolved to motivate sexual union with any appropriate other, but the
equivalent to passionate love (focused attraction to a particular other)
evolved to promote pursuit of a specific mating partner. However, like
the emotion/motivation issue, this is-love-just-sex issue has been parti-
cularly difficult to sort out using existing social psychological methods
given the difficulty of people distinguishing these experiences subjec-
tively (as well as their questionable ability or willingness to report on
them without bias). But once again, neuroscience methods seemed like a
hopeful way to address this issue, as there have been clearly identified
brain regions associated with sexual arousal.
More generally, neuroscience methods may be particularly useful for
addressing issues of these kinds (emotion vs. motivation, love vs. sex).
Neuroscience methods have been particularly successful in other domains
for evaluating whether two related processes are qualitatively the same or
different (Posner & DiGirolamo, 2000). For example, it was neuroscience
methods that finally permitted a clear, persuasive answer to the question
of whether implicit and explicit memory are really different. (It turns out
they are different in that they engage quite different brain regions.) And it
was neuroscience methods that clearly and persuasively sorted out the
extent to which subjectively visualizing something is basically the same as
actual visual perception of an external object. (It turns out they have a lot
in common in that they largely engage the same central brain regions,
though peripheral regions that first process stimuli are clearly different.)
In the present example, neuroimaging seemed likely to be very
helpful for addressing the emotion versus motivation question because,
as noted, there is good evidence from multiple sources that quite different
brain regions are engaged. Emotion is known to engage areas such as the
amygdale, orbital frontal cortex, and the insular cortex. For example,
these regions have been found to be active in human neuroimaging studies
when viewing emotional faces or pictures of scenes known to create

positive or negative feelings. Motivation (reward and seeking reward),
on the other hand, is known to engage quite different areas, notably the
ventral tegmental area (VTA), caudate, and related areas especially asso-
ciated with dopamine. For example, in human studies, these areas are
active following cocaine ingestion or when anticipating or receiving a
monetary reward.
Similarly, while little was known about what areas are engaged by
passionate love, there was good evidence from some previous human
fMRI studies, as well as from extensive work with animals, as to what
brain regions are involved in sexual arousal (e.g., the hypothalamus). For
example, these areas have been found to be active when people view
erotic versus neutral pictures, and to correlate with bodily indicators of
sexual arousal.
Finally, we had one additional question: How valid are subjective
reports of passionate love? The Passionate Love Scale (PLS; Hatfield &
Sprecher, 1986), the most widely used measure, is clearly reliable and
yields theoretically appropriate results in correlational and experimental
studies. However, social desirability and other response biases seem
highly likely to affect reports of such a quintessentially subjective experi-
ence. Neuroimaging provides a unique opportunity to assess convergent
validity of self-report scales. That is, in the present case, if we did find
regions that were clearly associated with passionate love from the overall
mean comparisons across conditions, it would be possible to see if activa-
tion in these regions were most strongly activated for those whose scores
were highest on the PLS.
Thus, to address these three questions (motivation/emotion, sex/
love, PLS validity), we conducted an fMRI study (Aron et al., 2005).
We recruited 10 women and 7 men who reported they were ‘‘madly in
love’’ and thought about their partner at least 80% of their waking hours,
and who also seemed to be intensely in love based on interviews and
questionnaire responses. Relationship length in our sample ranged from a
month to a little over a year, with a mean of 7 months.
We asked these intensely in-love individuals to provide us with a
photo of their beloved and of an equally familiar person of the same age
and sex as their beloved, but about whom they had no special feelings.
These pictures were the basis of the key experimental manipulation. In
the fMRI scanner, participants alternatively viewed pictures of their
partner and of the familiar neutral person for 30 seconds each, inter-
spersed with a countback task. (The countback task was a standard
serial subtraction task in which participants were given a high number
and asked to count back by sevens. The countback task was interspersed
between the two types of photos to prevent carry over from one picture to
the next. It also provided an additional condition that permitted us to

control for attentional demand.)
The whole 2-minute series—partner, countback, neutral-familiar,
countback—was repeated six times for a total of 12 minutes. (Whether
each series started with the partner photo or neutral-familiar photo was
counterbalanced across participants.) Using standard social psychological
terminology, this was a within-subject design in which the independent
variable consisted of the three experimental conditions (viewing partner,
viewing familiar-neutral, and countback), and the dependent variables
were activation in the various focal brain regions known to be associated
with emotion, motivation, and sexual arousal.
The results were quite straightforward. Planned contrasts of partner
versus familiar-neutral and also of partner versus countback both showed
significant, strong activations in motivation areas (VTA and caudate) but
virtually no mean difference across subjects between conditions in brain
areas known to be associated with emotion or sexual arousal.
Interestingly, in light of the arguments about love being a motivation
that leads to diverse emotions, there were indeed significant effects
within individual subjects in emotion areas. However, the particular
emotion areas differed from subject to subject, while the motivation
areas were quite consistent across subjects.
Because the participants were selected for high levels of passionate
love, there was minimal variation in PLS scores. All subjects had means of
at least 7 on a 9-point scale. Nevertheless, even within this restricted
range variance, there was a strong, significant correlation between PLS
scores and activation (that is, the difference in activation between viewing
the partner minus either of the control conditions) in focal areas of the
caudate.
Thus, this study is an example of how neuroscience methods were
used to operationalize dependent variables (and to provide validation of a
self-report measure) in the context of addressing important social psy-
chological issues in a way that, like traditional behavioral measures, is
implicit and objective.
Further, as is typical in social psychology, once a paradigm has been
developed, it is often applied to extend the original findings into new
contexts. This has also proven true in relationship neuroscience (and in
social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience more generally). Two exten-
sions of the Aron et al. early-stage love paradigm provide examples. First,
Xu et al. (2008) recently replicated the exact Aron et al. (2005) study in
Beijing, China. The purpose of the study was to provide for the first time a
direct assessment of the cross-cultural similarities or differences in pas-
sionate love using a method that does not rely primarily on language or
subjective report. That is, again, neuroscience methods served the
function that behavioral measures do of being nonobvious and objective

(and in this case, not even relying on language—a particularly important
feature in cross-cultural work). The findings were a very close replication
overall, but also some interesting correlations with questionnaire mea-
sures in which the degree of effect in particular brain regions was corre-
lated with Chinese traditionalism.
As yet another example, Acevedo, Aron, Fisher, and Brown (2008)
replicated the basic Aron et al. (2005) design, but with long-term
(mean = 21 years) married individuals recruited because they claimed to
have very high levels of passionate love. This was yet another case in
which the ability of neuroscience methods to function as nonobvious and
objective indicators was especially important. That is, relationship theor-
ists, like the general public, have generally assumed that intense passio-
nate love inevitably dies out over time and that claims of a few individuals
in long-term involvements to have achieved it are probably due to either
trying to make a good impression or to self-deception. Thus, Acevedo et
al. sought to see if the pattern of neural responses to the partner in these
cases would be the same as had been found in the Aron et al. study of
newly in love participants. Preliminary findings suggest that, surprisingly,
results are remarkably similar. There were also some interesting differ-
ences. The findings from the long-term in-love participants compared to
the original short-term findings showed (a) somewhat less activation in
some secondary regions associated with obsession and (b) somewhat
greater activation in regions associated in animal studies with long-term
connection and bonding. However, the overall basic pattern seems the
same—and consistent with the claim of these people to be intensely
engaged with their partner, including strong attraction, a lively sex life,
and a general sense of passion associated with their relationship.
Presuming final results confirm the initial analyses, it is hard to imagine
that any self-report methods would be nearly as convincing. Of course,
more traditional nonobvious, objective behavioral measures might also be
convincing, but in the present case the brain-based measures seem the
most straightforward.
Variables of Ultimate Interest
In the case of behavior, we noted that in some cases behavior was not just
an especially apt operationalization of a conceptually interesting variable,
but that behavior may be a variable of ultimate interest—such as forming
or ending a relationship. This may be a case in which neuroscience
methods less often serve a parallel role to behavioral measures.
However, there are a few possible exceptions, such as brain function
disability, enhancement, or other permanent change due to relationship

factors (e.g., possible effects of social support, support for self-expansion,
stress from conflict, violence, or abandonment). For example, it is pos-
sible that high quality relationships may slow Alzheimer’s or other
dementia or facilitate ‘‘rewiring’’ neural systems after brain injuries; or,
at the other extreme, that traumatic relationships may undermine brain
system development in children or adolescents.
Neural Activity as an Intervening Variable
We saw that a key role of behavior in social psychology, and perhaps

particularly in relationship research, involves its function as a central step
in some multistep process. In this context, there are some clear parallels
with the role of neural activity. That is, the operation of the nervous
system mediates between external stimuli and action, and presumably
between external stimuli and experience and between experience and
action. Understanding brain response to stimuli (such as a partner’s
actions) can in principle tell us about expected response and experience.
There has been relatively little work of this kind directly in the relation-
ship domain. But an interesting example of the possibilities from a related
domain is a study by Knutson, Wimmer, Kuhnen, and Winkielman,
(2008), in which exposure to sexual stimuli (erotic pictures) yielded
activation of a key reward area (nucleus accumbens), which in turn led
to more risky decisions in a monetary choice task. That is, a mediational
analysis showed that, for example, controlling for the accumbens activa-
tion, there was no increase in risky decisions.
Brain Manipulations as Operationalizations of Independent

Variables
In principle, manipulation of brain states (like manipulation of own or

relevant other’s behavior) provides an exciting opportunity to test impor-
tant theoretical questions. This is in part because, like behavioral manip-
ulations, such manipulations are likely to be powerful and minimally likely
for the participant to be aware of the purpose of the study or what is being
manipulated. In practice, there has been almost no such research to date
with humans. There are several methods that are starting to be used in
human work in cognitive and perceptual domains (e.g., see Pascual-Leone,
Davey, Rothwell, Wassermann, & Puri, 2002) that could well be adapted
to the social and relationship context. These include transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS), in which a cerebral region is safely deactivated for a
fraction of a second during which focal stimuli can be introduced), drugs

that increase (agonists) or decrease (antagonists) the functioning of key
neural chemicals, and possibly even neural stimulation during surgery. In
animal research, including importantly for relationship researchers the
influential work done on prairie voles (a rare monogamous mammalian
species), more drastic methods are proving quite productive (e.g., Curtis,
Liu, Aragona, & Wang, 2006). Such methods include focused brain lesions,
genetic manipulations, and brain stimulation.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I suggest (and provide illustrative examples) that the key
roles of behavior in social psychology, particularly in its study of close
relationships, are a means to create objective, nonobvious operationaliza-
tions of dependent variables (including for validation of measures and
occasionally as important outcomes in their own right); intervening steps
in theoretical articulations of multistep processes; and a particularly
powerful way to manipulate independent variables. I also argue, and
provide some relatively detailed illustrative examples, that neuroscience
methods often fill these same roles. That is, methods that focus on brain
functioning have been applied to the social psychology of close relation-
ships largely as objective, nonobvious operationalizations of key depen-
dent variables and are conceptualized as intervening steps in multistep
processes, and there is some potential even of using them as a means to
create powerful manipulations of independent variables.
As neuroscience methods become increasing common in social psy-
chology, they promise to offer triangulation with existing methods,
including behavioral methods. More importantly, they promise to be an
important supplement to behavioral methods, permitting us in some
cases to do what we often use behavioral methods to do, but opening
up opportunities in contexts in which behavioral methods are not optimal
or available for the specific variables at hand.
It seems a miracle that social psychologists would pay attention again
to behavior after ignoring it ever since the reign of behaviorism ended
decades ago. Yet this miracle is happening all the time in our field,
perhaps quietly, yet surely, even in the midst of the reign of (social)
cognition that replaced it. In particular, we have used behavior very
effectively and creatively to operationalize dependent and intervening
variables in ways that are uniquely objective and nonobvious, and also
to construct uniquely powerful manipulations of independent variables.
It may seem even more miraculous if social psychologists today can use
neuroscience methods effectively as another way to accomplish these
things for which behavioral methods have served us so especially well. My

goal in this chapter has been to use examples from relationship research to
be explicit about some ways this Step 2 miracle might happen.
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16 The Relationship Context
of Social Behavior
Harry T. Reis
The individualistic orientation of Western psychology is well known.

Within this tradition, psychologists investigate processes governing the
behavior of individuals, on the assumption that the most important
mechanisms for understanding human behavior reside within the indivi-
dual. Even social psychology, the subdiscipline within the psychological
sciences that is most concerned with the external environment, relies on
perceptual, cognitive, affective, and motivational systems that reside
exclusively within the individual.
There is little reason to question the integrity of the individual person
as a biologically based organism composed of integrated operating sys-
tems that act in concert to produce adaptive responses to environmental
events. No comparable larger units possessing similar levels of organismic
integrity or motivational coherence have yet been identified, at least with
direct tangible evidence of their impact. Even culture, the most systemic
concept in the behavioral sciences, is understood by Western psycholo-
gists largely in terms of its impact on the individual, an understanding that
represents the mind of the individual as a mediating variable between
culture and behavior.
This individualistic orientation presents something of a challenge to
social psychology. If the causal mechanisms for behavior reside within the
individual, how do we conceptualize the fact that situations—factors
external to the person—have strong influence on behavior? Even more
challenging, how do we account for the fact of interdependence—that
many, if not most, important human behaviors involve interacting indi-

viduals who influence each other, and that the outcome of a given inter-
action often depends on the behavior of both, as well as how well those
behaviors fit together?
This chapter reviews concepts central to one way in which social
psychology might address this challenge. To provide historical context,
I first review definitions of the scope of social psychology. I then discuss
several lines of evidence and theory suggesting why the relationship
context of behavior ought to be a focal construct in social psychology.
This section includes a selective review of diverse phenomena showing
how behavior varies systematically as a function of relationship contexts.
The next and final section provides a brief overview of one conceptually
based approach for understanding relationship contexts, based on the
interdependence analysis of situations. Throughout, the larger goal of
this chapter is to suggest that social psychology’s traditional mission of
articulating the impact of situations on behavior would be best served by
emphasizing their fundamentally interpersonal nature.
DEFINING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Although the details vary, most textbooks define social psychology in

terms of people’s impact on one another. For example, Gilovich, Keltner
and Nisbett define social psychology as ‘‘The scientific study of the feel-
ings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations’’ (2006,
p. 5)1. Taylor, Peplau, and Sears describe the field by stating that ‘‘Social
psychologists use scientific methods to study how we perceive people and
social events, how we influence others, and the nature of human relation-
ships’’ (2000, p. 3). Myers refers to social psychology as ‘‘the scientific
study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another’’
(1999, p. 3). Smith and Mackie offer a similar characterization: Social
psychology is ‘‘the scientific study of the effects of social and cognitive
processes on the way individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others’’
(2000, p. 3). Common to these (and most other) definitions is the idea
that what people think, feel, and do is affected by other people. Or, as
Roger Brown wryly put it, ‘‘roughly speaking, social psychology is con-
cerned with the mental processes (or behavior) of persons insofar as these
are determined by past or present interaction with other persons . . . this is
not a definition that excludes very much’’ (1965, p. xx).
1
The New American Heritage Dictionary defines ‘‘social’’ as ‘‘living in an organized group or similar
close aggregate.’’
THE RELATIONSHIP CONTEXT OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 301
These definitions can be seen as emerging from the field’s historical

roots. In one of the first two textbooks traditionally cited as inaugurating
the birth of social psychology, Edward Alsworth Ross defined social psy-
chology as dealing with ‘‘uniformities due to social causes, i.e., to mental
contacts or mental interactions ... It is social only insofar as it arises out of the
interplay of minds’’ (1908, p. 3). What Ross called ‘‘uniformities’’ attribu-
table to the ‘‘conditions of life’’—features of the environment not subject to
mental interplay between persons, such as the physical setting, visual cues,
culture, or race—were explicitly excluded. The other inaugural volume, by
William McDougall, was somewhat less explicit, charging social psy-
chology with the task of showing ‘‘how, given the native propensities and
capacities of the individual human mind, all the complex mental life of
societies is shaped by them and in turn reacts upon the course of their
development and operation in the individual’’ (1908, p. 18).
About a half-century later, Solomon Asch borrowed elements from
both McDougall and Ross, albeit without offering a formal definition of
the field: ‘‘To discover the full potentialities of men we must observe
them in the social medium . . . the basic problems of psychology require
the extension of observation into the region of social processes’’ (1952,
p. 34). At roughly the same time, in the first edition of the Handbook of
Social Psychology, Gordon Allport proposed a definition that has been
more influential among contemporary researchers: ‘‘Social psycholo-
gists regard their discipline as an attempt to understand and explain
how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced
by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings’’
(1954, p. 5).
Although all of these definitions mention how people are
affected by other people, over the years a subtle shift occurred,
codifying the social psychological mission in terms of situationism,
or in a phrase that Ross and Nisbett (1991) made famous, as showing
‘‘the power of the situation.’’ This shift reflected the pervasive influ-
ence of Kurt Lewin’s ‘‘life space’’ theorizing on the field. Lewin
coined what is probably the second-most cited equation of the 20th
century, B = f (P, E)2. To Lewin, behavior was the result of two sets
of causal factors, some rooted in the Person and others in the
Environment, more precisely the psychological environment, or in
other words, the psychological significance of the ‘‘total concrete
situation’’ for the individual. Somewhat ironically, Lewin appears
not to have intended for P and E to be independent causal agents
2
Unlike the first-most cited equation, Einstein’s E = mc2 , this one has yet to demonstrate mathema-
tical rigor.
whose effects could be isolated from each other in the statistical

analysis of variance sense. Rather, he theorized that E = f (P) and
P = f (E), or in other words: ‘‘The person and his environment have
to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors’’
(Lewin, 1951, pp. 239–240). Nevertheless, the dualism of person
and situation as distinct, separable factors became entrenched as the
field grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, following the influence of
Lewin and his students.
This dualism has had certain epistemological advantages. As shown
in Figure 16.1, the Lewinian equation positioned social and personality
psychology squarely between traditional ‘‘macrolevel’’ disciplines that
examine complex, systemic processes whose explanations depended on
units greater than the individual (such as political science, economics,
and sociology) and ‘‘microlevel’’ sciences that investigate more elemen-
tary mechanisms residing within the person (such as biology and the
disciplines that have come to be known as cognitive science and neu-
roscience). That is, by focusing on external, environmental factors, the
social psychological level of explanation pointed to the ways in which
the outside world operates on individuals. Personality explanations
were, in a complementary manner, concerned with the ways in
which the individual acted on the outside world, partly as a function
of accumulated experiences. Both were closer to the idea of the indi-
vidual as an integrated nexus of explanatory mechanisms for under-
standing behavior than any other discipline. In the conceptual
hierarchy of disciplines, this niche allowed social-personality psy-
chology to provide a novel and useful level of explanation for behavior.
(See Hinde, 1997, and Myers, 1999, for related examples of explana-
tory hierarchies.)
Political Science Neuroscience

Economics Biology
Cultural Anthropology Social-Personality Biochemistry
Sociology Psychology Cognitive Science
situation BEHAVIOR person
Integrative, complex, Elemental, “micro”

“macro” system, system, inside-of-
outside-of-the-person the-person
explanations explanations
Figure 16.1. The Social-Personality Psychology Level of Explanation.

WHICH ASPECTS OF THE SITUATION SHOULD SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGY STUDY?
If situations and their influence on behavior are the identified province for
social psychological inquiry, it might be asked, which aspects of situations
should social psychologists study? If the Lewinian metaphor were a guide,
any and all conditions and circumstances external to the individual would
have to be considered (cf., Pervin, 1978; Magnusson, 1981), although this
seems overly inclusive. Mischel and Shoda (1995) proposed a useful
distinction between nominal and psychological situations. Nominal situa-
tions describe basic features of the context in which behavior occurs, such
as place and activity (similar to Roger Barker’s, 1965, pioneering work on
behavior settings, the foundation of what he named ecological psy-
chology, but became better known as environmental psychology).
Psychological situations, in contrast, concern those features of situations
that give rise to the expression of basic psychological processes. It is not
surprising that the vast majority of social psychological research has
focused on these.
My premise in this chapter is that social psychological research has
been too much focused on nonsocial aspects of situations (the above-
mentioned definitions notwithstanding) and not enough focused on a
particular fundamentally social aspect of situations, the relationship con-
text. As Reis, Collins, and Berscheid (2000) explain, who one is with,
one’s history with this and similar partners in related situations, and what
one is trying to accomplish with this partner, exert a potent causal impact
on behavior. Many lines of theory and evidence converge to support this
principle, a few of which will be briefly mentioned here.
• Many of people’s most common goals and motives involve other

people, especially those with whom they have an ongoing
relationship, either as the target of those goals or motives (e.g., to
initiate, develop, modify, or terminate a relationship with that
person), or as an agent who facilitates or constrains the
attainment of personal goals (e.g., support or interference from
parents, romantic partners, teachers, or work supervisors).
• Because most human activity involves coordinating one’s actions
with the actions of others, success or failure in those processes of
coordination are a principal determinant of achievement,
productivity, and well-being.
• Relationships figure prominently in attention and thought, both in
consciously controlled cognition and also in cognition that takes
place outside of awareness. Cognition is an action control system
designed to facilitate goal-directed behavior (Fiske, 1992;
Gollwitzer & Moskowitz, 1996), and coordination with

relationship partners is often required (Bugental, 2000).
• In an influential review, Ekman and Davidson concluded that
‘‘emotions are brought into play most often by the actions of
others, and, once aroused, emotions influence the course of
interpersonal transactions’’ (1994, p. 139). Many theories stress
the social regulating functions of emotion (for example, to
communicate internal states to others) and, in turn, the influence
of relationship partners on emotional experience and regulation.
• Abundant evidence indicates that the ability to relate successfully
to others is a principal determinant of success in nearly all domains
of human activity and during all stages of the life cycle (Hartup &
Stevens, 1997). Most, if not all, theories of life span development
assign central roles to relationships.
• Early relationships (primarily with caregivers during the first two
years of life) exert profound and pervasive effects on development,
evidence of which can be seen throughout the life span. These
effects, which follow from the effects of interactions with
caregivers on the maturing infant’s brain structures and psyche,
span cognitive, affective, and personality development.
• Evolutionary theorists increasingly recognize that social life
provided the principal mechanisms for human adaptation, and that
many of the human mind’s most important processes evolved for the
purpose of regulating social interactions and relationships (e.g., Buss
& Kenrick, 1998; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).
Smith and Semin’s recent (2004, 2007) model of socially situated

cognition suggests a somewhat more abstract rationale for the impor-
tance of relationships as a context for behavior. Their analysis brings
together two highly influential lines of research, that of situated cogni-
tion—that cognition emerges from the interaction of agents and their
environment, rather than existing purely in the mind of the agent—and
of social cognition, arguably the dominant theme in social psychology
during the past two or three decades. In their theoretical synthesis,
social-cognitive processes ‘‘constitute an adaptive regulatory process
that ultimately serves survival needs’’ (2004, p. 56)—that is, social
cognition is the natural vehicle for self-regulation, or in other words,
the individual’s attempts to interact effectively with the social envir-
onment. Behavior is the action expression of these adaptive efforts.
Most relevant for present purposes is the idea that socially situated
cognition is based on transactions between actors and their social
environment, which, most typically, means interactions with relation-
ship partners.
Smith and Semin offer four themes as guiding principles for the study
of socially situated cognition. These principles illuminate the need for
social psychology to understand relationship contexts:
1. Social Cognition Exists to Further Adaptive Action.
Although adaptive action takes many forms, most important life activities
involve coordinating one’s actions with the actions of others. Thus, human
adaptive action is rarely conducted solus ipse (alone, by oneself). For
example, school and work tasks are commonly distributed across multiple
persons, and success or failure depends on how well these persons synchro-
nize and carry out their activities. Similarly, family life usually requires that
family members coordinate their instrumental, social, and affective activ-
ities. In most circumstances, the others with whom adaptive action is
coordinated are relationship partners—friends, lovers, coworkers, school-
mates, neighbors, teammates, family members, and so on. The nature of
those affiliations, including one’s history and imagined future with them, is
likely to influence how activities are coordinated.
2. Social Cognition is Embodied in Our Neural-Physical

Architecture.
Because relationships provided the context for most reproductive and

survival-oriented activities in human evolutionary history, our species has
evolved numerous biologically based mechanisms geared toward the tasks
of living, working, and reproducing with others. Increasing evidence
identifies many genetic, neural, and hormonal systems that underlie
diverse social behaviors, including empathy and synchrony, attachment,
emotion regulation and contagion, face recognition, love, sexual attrac-
tion, warmth and affection, trust, loneliness, coping with stress, stereo-
typing, helping, and dominance and submission. These mechanisms are
central to everyday interactions within relationships, emphasizing the
role of relationships in shaping the human mind during evolution and
suggesting that functional analyses of these social behaviors should
consider how their expression varies across relationship contexts.
3. Social Cognition Involves a Dynamic Process of Continuous

Reciprocal Influence Between the Self and the Social/Physical
Environment.
The transmission of information among interacting persons represents some

of the more common and potent of these dynamic influences, including
relatively direct mechanisms such as communication, persuasion,

leadership, and self-presentation, and also more subtle examples such
as situated identity, social referencing, shared construction of reality,
social comparison, and behavioral confirmation. In each case, actors
construct meaning or understanding out of their interactions with the
social environment. Relationship partners are in most instances more
salient and influential in these processes than strangers; and, more
importantly, the nature of the relationship often dictates the manner
in which these processes unfold. For example, persuasion and social
comparison processes differ among close friends than among acquain-
tances (Beach, Tesser, Fincham, Jones, Johnson, & Whitaker, 1998;
Cialdini & Trost, 1998).
4. Social Cognition is More Than Individual Cognition; It Is

Distributed Across Tools, People, and Groups.
Not all useful knowledge is stored in our heads; some of it resides in tools
(e.g., books, the internet), some in other people (e.g., a spouse or friend),
and some in groups of people (e.g., statistical consultants). What people
know is thereby distributed throughout the social and physical environ-
ment, and our ability to use this knowledge effectively depends on tools
and skills for accessing it (e.g., computers, language, telephones).
Distributed information processing is most often studied in work settings,
such as studies of how members of a task-oriented group with different
expertise interact. These systems may be profoundly influenced by the
nature of the relationship between team members (e.g., Moreland,
Argote, & Krishnan, 1996; Thompson & Fine, 1999). Socially shared
knowledge is also common in more personal relationships. For example,
spouses and family members often rely on each other for specialized
information, as has been shown experimentally in several studies of
transactive memory (e.g., Hollingshead, 1998; Wegner, Erber, &
Raymond, 1991). Key to accessing socially shared information is knowing
who knows what and believing that they will openly share their knowl-
edge. Both of these factors reflect the nature of relationships.
DO RELATIONSHIP CONTEXTS REALLY AFFECT SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES?
My premise to this point has been that social psychological research on

the impact of situations would benefit from greater attention to the
relational aspects of situations. That is, I argue that the explanatory power
of social psychological theories would gain by considering the impact of
who else is present or who else is affected by, or has an effect on, the
individual. Social psychologists are by nature skeptical; exhortations (even
those as well-grounded as this one!) are less compelling than demonstra-
tions. The question then becomes, to what extent do the findings of
existing social psychological research depend on relationship contexts?
Note that this question asks something more complex than whether
relationships affect behavior. That relationships affect behavior seems
unquestionable; people behave differently when interacting with their
lovers, best friends, subordinates, in-laws, teenage daughters, rivals,
insurance agents, and neighbors (Reis et al., 2000). The more conse-
quential question being asked here is whether the processes that define
well-known social psychological theories might vary as a function of the
relationship context in which they are studied. For example, consider
attributional egotism, the tendency to take credit for success and deny
responsibility for failure. Does this tendency vary as a function of whose
success and failure one’s own is being compared to? If it does, then the
relevant finding, considered a staple of the field in most textbooks,
would need to be qualified in theoretical accounts of when and why it
occurs. In other words, if relationship contexts moderate so-called
‘‘basic’’ social psychological findings, then our theories will need to
view these phenomena less as general (i.e., acontextual) human tenden-
cies and more as reflections of processes that are grounded in relation-
ship circumstances.
A few examples selected from differing areas of social psychological
research may help illustrate this general point.
1. As mentioned above, people typically take credit for success and

deny responsibility for failure. Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, and
Elliot (1998) found this pattern in self-rated personal responsibility
for test results, but only in distant dyads. In close dyads, no such bias
was evident, suggesting that self-serving attributional biases may not
dominate when they imply comparisons with close others. Beach
et al. (1998) similarly found that self-evaluation maintenance
processes such as jealousy when being outperformed and pride at
outperforming others were attenuated when the other was a
romantic partner (see also Scinta & Gable, 2005).
2. Memory is enhanced when information is encoded with regard to
the self compared to others. However, meta-analysis of 65 studies
indicates that the magnitude of this effect is twice as large for distant
others than it is for intimate others (Symons & Johnson, 1997).
3. All other things being equal, there is said to be an asymmetry in

explanations for the behavior of self and others: People tend to
explain their own behavior with situational explanations and other
people’s behavior with dispositional (person) explanations.
Malle’s (2006) meta-analysis showed that this asymmetry occurs
only for close others (romantic partners, friends, parents); when
the other is a stranger or acquaintance, there is no evidence of such
an asymmetry.
4. Gender differences in language-related behavior are commonly
cited in textbooks. Leaper and Ayres’s (2007) recent meta-
analysis indicated that some of the most popular of these gender
differences are moderated by the relationship among
conversational partners. For example, women are more talkative
in studies of classmates and families (i.e., parents with their
children), whereas men are more talkative in studies of romantic
partners, mixed-familiarity groups, and strangers. Also, women
are more likely than men to use affiliative speech with strangers
but not with close others, whereas men are more likely than
women to use assertive speech with strangers but not with close
others.
5. An oft-stated reason for helping another person is to remedy their
sad mood. Consistent with this idea, Clark, Ouellette, Powell and
Milberg (1987) found that the sadder the needy recipient’s mood,
the more help participants offered—but only when there was a
communal relationship between them. When they had an
exchange relationship, the recipient’s mood had no effect on the
amount of help offered.
6. Attachment security is reflected in the capacity for and comfort
with closeness. Tidwell, Reis, and Shaver (1996) supported this
hypothesis in a diary study of college students’ everyday social
interactions. Secure people reported higher levels of intimacy
than anxious people, who in turn reported higher levels of
intimacy than avoidant people, but only in interactions with
romantic partners. In interactions with nonromantic opposite sex
others, the pattern was reversed: avoidant individuals reported
higher levels of intimacy than anxious individuals, who in turn
reported higher levels of intimacy than secure individuals. Tidwell
et al. explain this reversal by noting that security may involve
differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate partners
for intimacy (consistent with research showing that
institutionalized children may indiscriminately seek soothing
from anyone available; Rutter et al., 2007).
7. Narcissism predisposes individuals to be sensitive to ego threat. In

one study, high-narcissism individuals were more aggressive
(levels of noise delivered) than low-narcissism individuals toward
a partner who had negatively evaluated their work but only when
that partner was described as having a different birthday from
themselves (Konrath, Bushman, & Campbell, 2006). When the
critical partner shared one’s birthday, the level of aggression
delivered by high narcissism individuals did not differ from that
of low-narcissism individuals in either condition, suggesting that a
sense of shared identity may alter the perception of ego threat by
narcissistic individuals.
Many other examples exist, cutting across nearly all of the phenomena
that social psychologists traditionally study. (Table 1 in Reis, 2008,
provides further examples.) Of course, this listing is highly selective and
more systematic scrutiny is needed. I suspect that the impact of relation-
ship contexts may be more widely appreciated, albeit implicitly so, than is
acknowledged. That is, researchers design studies to be run in settings that
are likely to activate certain processes—for example, studies designed to
test hypotheses about self-centered egotism, competition, dominance, or
intergroup threat may create contexts in which participants are distant
from one another, whereas studies designed to test hypotheses about
empathy and perspective taking, cooperation, belongingness, security,
and trust may be more likely to create contexts in which participants are
able to identify and/or feel a sense of connection with one another. If so,
this is a legitimate and important part of theory building, but it should
become an explicit part of the field’s theories, by specifying boundary
conditions for phenomena. The failure to identify contextual conditions
that contribute to a given effect or process means that a theory is under-
specified and lessens the likelihood that its findings can be successfully
generalized in other research or in applied settings.
A THEORY OF INTERDEPENDENT SITUATIONS
Another approach to thinking about the role of situations in social psy-

chology is more conceptually grounded. Interdependence theory ( Kelley
& Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) proposes that situations be
described and understood in terms of abstract properties that define how
partners must interact in order to achieve desired outcomes. That is, in a
given interaction, interacting partners influence each other’s actions as
they pursue whatever outcomes are most salient at the moment.
Situations structure this influence in certain ways; for example, inter-

acting partners’ outcomes might correspond (both succeed if either one
succeeds) or conflict (one’s success dictates the other’s failure). The
interdependent nature of situations creates an adaptive problem: A
person must determine not merely what to do oneself but also how to
coordinate with interaction partners in order to arrive at the most favor-
able outcomes. How this coordination is accomplished, and to what
effect, will vary according to the properties defining the situation.
Importantly, in interdependence theory, the key features of situations
are defined interpersonally—the nature and kind of interdependence that
partners have, what they know about each other and the situation, and
the behavioral options that are open to them.
An important element in interdependence theory analyses is that situa-
tional causes are not isolated from personal causes but rather are inextric-
ably linked (which, as noted above, is what Lewin intended). Situations
present individuals with behavioral options, thereby making certain beha-
viors more likely, others less likely, and still others irrelevant. This occurs
because situations activate within the individual relevant cognitive and
affective processing systems for selecting among them (Mischel & Shoda,
1999). Situations, in other words, offer a kind of ‘‘affordance’’ (to use
terminology introduced by Gibson, 1979, in a different context). This
analysis begins with the actual properties that define interdependence in a
given situation (these will be discussed below; see Holmes & Cavallo,
Chapter 17, Figure 17.1). Particular situations afford certain responses
and preclude others. For example, when one is likely to benefit personally
from a partner’s goal attainment, one can show encouragement but not
benevolence (In as much as benevolence requires benefitting the other at
some cost to the self). Which of the available options is enacted reflects the
actor’s choice (made with or without deliberate awareness), depending on
several types of ‘‘person variables’’: stable personal attributes (e.g., traits,
values), transitory moods and beliefs, relational qualities (e.g., trust of the
partner), or social norms. The situation thereby does not ‘‘cause’’ behavior,
as many other models suggest, but rather alters the likelihood of a given
behavior by making certain alternatives more relevant and others irrelevant.
To illustrate this principle, consider the well-known experiments on
obedience to authority, conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s
(Milgram, 1974). This research is often used as the protoype for demon-
strating ‘‘the power of the situation’’—that is, for showing how situations
‘‘cause’’ obedience. The interdependence analysis is more nuanced. Two
key features of this situation are the aura of scientific legitimacy that
Milgram’s paradigm painstakingly created, and the experimenter’s per-
sistent demands that the participant continue delivering increasingly
intense shocks to the confederate. These afford the participant at least
two behavioral options: to obey or to resist (which about 40% of partici-

pants did). To interdependence theorists, the participant’s interaction
with a domineering authority figure is seen as activating certain motives
and goals (to please the experimenter, to do no harm, and so on),
affording him or her an opportunity to select between the options of
obedience or resistance. The situation, in other words, contributes to the
causal analysis but is not itself causative independent of person factors.
Earlier in this chapter I argued that relationship contexts were central
to understanding human behavior. Supplementing this contention with
the insights of interdependence theory suggests that relationship contexts
be analyzed in terms of their abstract properties of interdependence,
describing the particular ways in which interacting partners influence
each other’s outcomes and goal-directed behavior. In An Atlas of
Interpersonal Situations, Kelley, Holmes, Kerr, Reis, Rusbult, and Van
Lange (2003) describe 20 common interpersonal situations that can be
differentiated according to various combinations of six key properties,
four of which concern interdependence directly (the other two concern
timing and information). These six properties are as follows:
• The extent to which an individual’s outcomes depend on the

actions of others. High independence indicates that a person’s
outcomes are strongly affected by the other’s behavior, whereas
low interdependence means that the partner’s behavior has little or
no effect on one’s outcomes.
• Whether individuals have mutual or asymmetric power over each
other’s outcomes. Mutual (equal and nontrivial) dependence
implicates processes such as reciprocity and sharing, whereas
asymmetric dependence, in which one partner is more dependent
on the other for outcomes, implicates displays of dominance or
benevolence by the more powerful person, and submission or
reactance by the less powerful person.
• Whether one individual’s outcomes correspond or conflict with the
other’s. Corresponding interests encourage cooperation and harmony,
whereas competing interests foster competition, although it also
provides an opportunity for partners to demonstrate caring by
placing the partner’s interests above one’s own.
• Whether partners must coordinate their activities to produce
satisfactory outcomes, or whether each one’s actions are sufficient
to determine the other’s outcomes. In coordination situations,
interacting parties must synchronize their activities, prioritizing
processes relevant to communication and social coordination (e.g.,
perspective taking, negotiation, responsiveness). In contrast,
exchange situations allow each person to effectively control the
other’s outcomes, giving rise to norms about responsibility and not

hurting others, as well as equity.
• The situation’s temporal structure: Whether the situation is a one-
time occurrence whose outcomes are immediately available, or
involves interaction over the long-term. Time-extended situations
allow individuals to forego immediate rewards in anticipation of
later gains, implicating self-regulatory skills such as delay of
gratification and allowing investment in the relationship.
• Information certainty: Whether partners have the information
needed to make good decisions, or whether uncertainty exists
about the future. When information is adequate and public,
decisions can usually be made on that basis. On the other hand,
uncertainty often requires risk—a choice between loss avoidance and
gain seeking—and provides an opportunity for examining how
partners adjudicate discrepant preferences (e.g., by invoking
procedural norms, by negotiating, or by exerting power and control).
To illustrate the value of this analysis for social psychological

research, I will explain two of these dimensions in somewhat more
detail. The first illustration shows how the first of these dimensions,
degree of interdependence, has already yielded many findings in the
social-psychological literature, although not in an integrated way. In the
second example, I discuss a dimension that has received relatively little
explicit attention, although it underlies several important social psycho-
logical constructs, basis of control (also see Holmes and Cavallo, Chapter
17, for discussion of another dimension: correspondence of outcomes). In
passing, I note briefly that most real-world situations are best character-
ized not along a single dimension but rather in terms of permutations of
several factors (e.g., high, asymmetric interdependence). Although the
application of this analysis to actual research situations requires consid-
ering these more complex permutations, for clarity the present analysis
examines only single dimensions. Readers interested in the more complex
analysis are referred to the Atlas (Kelley et al., 2003).
Example 1: Degree of Outcome Interdependence
When outcome interdependence is low, parties exert little or no influence

on each other’s outcomes; each person does what makes the most sense to
him or her, on a personal basis, with little regard to the other. On the
other hand, when outcome interdependence is high, one person’s out-
comes are strongly influenced by the other’s actions. This would be the
case, for example, when people work together on a task to which both
must contribute; when family members share instrumental and socio-

emotional life tasks; and when friends depend on each other for support,
advice, recreation, and satisfaction of relatedness needs.
The social-psychological literature includes many studies documenting
changes in social behavior that reflect varying degrees of outcome interde-
pendence. For example, all other things being equal, when outcome inter-
dependence is high, people pay more attention to interaction partners and
are more attracted to them (Berscheid, Graziano, Monson, & Dermer,
1976); make more individuated, less stereotypic judgments about others
(Fiske, 1993); are more generous in attributions for the other’s performance
(Sedikides et al., 1998); identify more closely with the other person (Rabbie,
Schot, & Visser, 1989); enact a greater number of prosocial acts to benefit
the other (Batson, 1998) and display lesser aggression (Geen, 1998); are less
prejudiced and engage in fewer discriminatory acts (Pettigrew, 1998); make
more attempts to persuade the other or induce conformity, and are in turn
more persuasible (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Mackie et al., 1990); and are more
committed to close relationships (Rusbult, 1983).
These studies show that high interdependence predicts greater invol-
vement with, interest in, and positivity toward others. Importantly, the
foundation shared by these various findings is rarely seen or mentioned in
theoretical analyses or textbooks. By highlighting the role of abstract
properties of interdependence, their conceptual linkage, as well as the
possibility that this is a foundational principle for understanding social
behavior, becomes apparent.
Example 2: Basis of Control: Exchange Versus Coordination
In exchange situations, outcomes are determined by the other’s actions,

the value of which is fixed irrespective of one’s own actions; typically,
outcomes in exchange situations have similar value regardless of who
provides them. For example, it usually doesn’t matter who provides a
ride to pick up one’s car at the repair shop. Exchange situations encourage
trading and reciprocity and are often impersonal. In coordination situa-
tions, on the other hand, outcomes depend on what both partners do and
how they coordinate their actions. Collaborating on research with a
colleague, for example, depends on each partner contributing specific
and interlocking expertise so that the resulting project is optimally con-
ceptualized and designed. In this case, value tends to be partner specific
because the project would likely look different if one were to collaborate
with a different partner. Effective coordination depends on the fit
between each partner’s expertise, whether they have common goals,
how well they communicate, and so forth.
Coordination situations are not often studied in social psychology,

although there are examples, notably in organizational settings. Steiner
(1972) distinguished two forms of process loss that occur in work groups,
one regarding motivational deficits, the other concerned with poor orga-
nization and deployment of resources. These two forms correspond to
exchange and coordination situations, respectively. Coordination situa-
tions are far more common in everyday social life than the research
literature implies. For example, friends and romantic partners often
interact (either with each other or with third parties) in ways that reflect
shared knowledge about each other (e.g., Hardin & Higgins, 1996;
Hollingshead, 2001), and juggling household and family responsibilities
is a major task that couples face. The ability to manage coordination
situations effectively is key to social life.
Coordination situations may also be more subtle. Consider self-dis-
closure. Effective self-disclosure requires ascertaining suitable targets
(e.g., others likely to be receptive to one’s openings) and appropriate
timing and contexts. For example, highly self-disclosing statements are
normative with close friends but not with strangers (Wortman, Adesman,
Herman, & Greenberg, 1976). Whether or not self-disclosure meets its
goals (e.g., promoting intimacy, obtaining information or advice; Miller &
Read, 1987) depends on the listener’s response, which is in turn a func-
tion of various dispositional (e.g., perspective-taking skill, warmth) and
situational (e.g., willingness to be supportive to the discloser at this time)
(Reis & Patrick, 1996; Reis & Shaver, 1988). For example, an offer of
tangible assistance may be experienced as comforting in one context, and
as a sign of perceived inadequacy in another (Burleson, 1994). Thus, as
shown in Figure 16.2, the intimacy process involves synchronizing one
Intimacy
Intimacy
Open Sensitive & appropriate
self- listening (or not)
disclosure No intimacy
Attachment
Felt security
Infant’s Available & appropriate
expression of caregiving (or not)
need, fear, etc. No security
Figure 16.2. Interdependence Analysis of Two Coordination Situations.

partner’s openness with the other partner’s responsiveness, coordinating

the discloser’s goals and abilities with those of the responder.
Importantly, success in this process is determined less by individual
properties of the persons involved and more by their willingness to be
open or responsive, respectively, with that partner at that moment—in
other words, by relational and situational factors. Miller and Kenny
(1986) showed that the large majority of variance in self-disclosure is
attributable to relationship variance rather than to actor or partner
effects—that is, most people have some partners to whom they disclose
little and others to whom they disclose a lot.3 Self-disclosure, like friend-
ship in general, is a highly particularistic resource (Foa, Converse,
Tornblom, & Foa, 1993).
A similar analysis applies to other well-known phenomena. For
example, in attachment theory, a secure attachment relationship develops
when an infant’s expressions of need or fear are met by a caregiver’s
sensitive and appropriate responses. Caregivers who ignore the infant’s
needs, or alternatively who are overprotective or intrusive, are both con-
sidered nonresponsive and tend to foster insecure attachments. The key, in
other words, is for caregivers to be perceptive in assessing the infant’s
needs, and willing and able to respond appropriately to them. Caregiving
motivated primarily by the caregiver’s own needs (for example, to be seen
by others as a good caregiver) is likely to be mistimed, ill matched to the
particular distress, or insensitive to the infant’s emerging autonomy (Stern,
1985). Similar arguments have been made for caregiving in adult attach-
ment relationships (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2004). At the most general
level, numerous processes relevant to interaction in close relationships
depend on this kind of coordinated behavior, in which effective interaction
depends on partners’ attention to each other’s signals, and their mutual
ability and willingness to respond sensitively and appropriately—processes
such as empathy, communication (including nonverbal synchrony and
certain types of conversational interaction), supportiveness, and sexuality,
to name only a few, come readily to mind.
Let me conclude this section by reiterating the purpose of this ana-
lysis. In each case, the nature of the interpersonal situation, characterized
in terms of the abstract properties of interdependence between inter-
acting partners, shapes the social and personality processes that regulate
behavior. Thus, this model provides a systematic and useful framework
for organizing and understanding the ways in which interpersonal situa-
tions affect behavior. Rather than a more or less listlike accumulation of
3
I am aware of no studies that conduct the same sort of analysis on responsiveness, though I would
expect a similar result.
findings, as situational effects are commonly reported, this framework

offers a systematic and theoretically grounded scheme for organizing
research on relationship contexts as situations.
CONCLUSION
Social psychology has a long and venerable history of investigating the

impact of situations on behavior. One hundred and one years after the
publication of McDougall’s and Ross’s seminal volumes, the field has
accumulated a wealth of important and influential studies, well-known
not only among behavioral researchers but by most educated persons.
Nearly every college-educated American is at least superficially aware of
the classic Asch and Milgram studies and the Stanford Prison Study; and
many know about Darley and Latané’s helping studies (e.g., Darley &
Latane, 1968), learned helplessness, and the Implicit Association Test
(IAT). Social psychological studies are reported often by most major
media, and there is even a situationist website, thesituationist.word-
press.com, managed by a group called the Project on Law and Mind
Sciences at Harvard Law School.
Yet little systematic theory, or even a comprehensive descriptive tax-
onomy, about situations exists (see Reis, 2008, for elaboration; Kenny,
Mohr, and Levesque, 2001, and Rozin, 2001, reach a similar conclusion),
giving most accounts a somewhat happenstance or idiosyncratic tone. Part
of the reason for this lacuna is the need to identify just which types of
situations are most important, and what their conceptual properties are.
Although there are a great many situational factors that influence behavior
and that therefore ought to be the subject of social psychological research,
the premise of this chapter is that social-psychological situations are at their
core interpersonal. (Apparently, based on the definitions cited at the
beginning of this chapter, most textbooks agree.) Thus, to fail to consider
the role of interpersonal factors in behavior, arguably the focal feature of
the situational context from the individual’s perspective, is to underesti-
mate situational influences on behavior.
The ‘‘miracle’’ in the Sidney Harris cartoon that provides the theme
for this book, then, is the miracle by which individuals band together in
dyads, groups, and social networks to form interdependent entities that,
in one way or another, together go about performing the important
behaviors of living, learning, working, playing, and reproducing. Further
attention to the inherently interpersonal nature of human behavior is
likely to advance the validity and usefulness of social-psychological
theory and research.
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17 The Atlas of Interpersonal Situations: A
Theory-Driven Approach to Behavioral
Signatures
John G. Holmes
Justin V. Cavallo
Social psychologists are lost in their heads. It is our contention that the
main reason that behavior has been neglected in social psychological
research is that most theoretical frameworks have adopted a social con-
strual focus that orphans behavioral prediction. We will argue that our field
needs a return to more classical S–R models that link external situational
features to actual behavior. The Mischel and Shoda (1995) behavioral
signature model is one such approach and we will describe its virtues for
advancing our understanding of behavioral responses. The weak link in the
model is that one needs a ‘‘theory of situations’’ to predict a priori which
goals will be activated and what behavior will subsequently be enacted.
We describe in some detail one attempt to create such a theory, the
Atlas of Interpersonal Situations (2003) by H. H. Kelley and colleagues.
We suggest that the application of ideas from this framework would
increase the precision of behavioral prediction substantially. We discuss
the advantages of this logic by focusing on an important dimension of
situations, the extent of correspondence between two persons’ potential
interaction outcomes, otherwise known as the degree of conflict of
interest. We suggest that this feature of situations triggers particular
concerns and goals in people who are uncertain about others’ prosocial
motivations toward them, resulting in a predictable set of self-protective
behavioral reactions. We then illustrate these dynamics by describing
research in both the attachment and risk regulation traditions that
shows the power of this form of analysis.
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUAL FOCUS: OR, HOW BEHAVIORAL

PREDICTION WAS LOST
Whatever happened to traditional S–R theories that dominated thinking

in psychology for so many years? The theory was central to early versions
of learning and reinforcement theories, which linked stimulus features in
the environment to actual behavior and its subsequent reinforcement.
Little attention was given to cognition, and in the case of Skinner, cogni-
tion was seen as an ‘‘epiphenomenum,’’ brain activity that shadowed
behavior but had no effect on it. This ‘‘black box’’ perspective clashed
forcefully with the cognitive revolution zeitgeist in social psychology in
the 1970s, resulting in social construal processes becoming the central
focus within the field. During this time, social psychologists began to
assume that the ‘‘miracle’’ that linked situations with behavior could be
explained by social construal processes and, like the characters in the
cartoon that accompanies this volume, focused intently on elucidating it.
Two different paradigms marked this ‘‘all in the head’’ perspective. The
first focused on social perception and explored how people perceived and
interpreted external events. For instance, researchers in the interpersonal
relations field studied the types of social experiences that were experienced
as ‘‘rejection’’ (e.g., Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998; Murray,
Rose, Bellavia, Holmes, & Kusche, 2002). Other researchers devoted con-
siderable energy to investigating perceptions of discrimination, stereotypes
of social targets, and attributions for another’s behavior. Indeed, these
topics constitute a large part of the content of social psychology. The
common thread is that the end point of research is typically the cognitive
reaction to features of a social situation. The second paradigm involves
theories that start with a social construal and then link it to a pattern of
behavior. For example, researchers examine how hurt feelings and percep-
tions of rejection result in hostile behavioral reactions and distancing from
others (e.g., Downey et al., 2000; Murray, Bellavia, Rose, & Griffin, 2003).
They might also explore how stereotypes of a particular racial group
influence behavioral reaction times to an ambiguous image of a possible
gun (Payne, 2001). Behavior is indeed the focus in this paradigm, but no
link is made to an external reality. The result is an inability to predict
actions a priori.
MISCHEL AND SHODA’S BEHAVIORAL SIGNATURE MODEL
Clearly one could reconstitute a sophisticated S–M–R model out of these

two paradigms, where M represents the cognitive-affective mechanisms
intervening between the external stimulus and behavioral response.
THE ATLAS OF INTERPERSONAL SITUATIONS 323
Surprisingly, this approach was not common until Mischel and Shoda’s
(1995) development of a theoretical model for the cognitive-affective
personality system (CAPS). The CAPS framework has had a strong
influence on the field of personality psychology in recent years. Their
conceptualization incorporates a person-by-situation interactionist per-
spective (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Endler & Hunt, 1969) into a more
general social-cognitive interpretation of the meaning of ‘‘personality.’’
Mischel and Shoda (1995) present impressive evidence that an indivi-
dual’s behavioral signature is typically quite stable over time if behavior is
examined within the context of specific situations. A person’s signature is
comprised of ‘‘if-then’’ patterns of situation–behavior associations (see
Figure 17.1). The CAPS model contends that specific features of situations
activate subsets of cognitive mediating units, which in turn generate
responses to the different situations. That is, individuals are seen to have
a distinctive behavioral signature or style of adapting to features of their
social environment. In this regard, Mischel and Shoda suggest that situa-
tions need to be considered in abstract terms, redefining them ‘‘to capture
their basic psychological features, so that behavior can be predicted across a
broad range of contexts that contain the same features’’ (p. 248).
We strongly concur with this principle that features of situations need
to be categorized a priori in terms of their psychologically critical, ‘‘active’’
ingredients (and indeed Holmes, 2002, developed this as a major theme in
his paper on the structure of interpersonal cognition). If instead we focus
on concrete or nominal details of situations, we easily become lost in the
Cognitive-Affective Personality
Objective System (CAPS)
qualities of
Situation as Behaviors
situations
construed
1
A
a 2
B
b
3
C c
4
D d
e 5
E Behavior
Encoding Generation
Process Process
Behavior shapes subsequent situations
Figure 17.1. The Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS; Mischel & Shoda,
1995).
minutiae of everyday life and lose predictive power. However, Mischel

and Shoda’s definition of the situation, the if in their ‘‘if-then’’ model, has
not been particularly abstract, but instead has focused largely on another
person’s behavior as the context for the actor’s behavior. For example,
one situation in their famous summer camp study was, ‘‘Adult warned the
child.’’ This perspective is certainly not unreasonable given that focusing
on what people see and hear in the social world is the most common usage
of the term ‘‘situation’’ in social psychology (Ross & Nisbett, 1991).
However, it is difficult to know what an abstract depiction of this situa-
tion would be. For instance, is the counselor giving an authoritative
command (with possible consequences)? Criticizing the child’s behavior?
Or trying to coordinate swimming activities? In this situation, we might
predict very different responses from the child depending on our theore-
tical depiction of it.
The problem is that we need a ‘‘theory of situations’’ if we are to
create a model that starts with specifying abstract features of external
situations and then predicts a priori which elements in the cognitive-
affective system will be activated to adapt to or cope with the opportu-
nities or challenges the social situation affords by its structure. The
activated elements can then be related to goal processes that predict the
behavior generation process. Put another way, explaining the link
between situations and behavior may not require the occurrence of a
‘‘miracle’’ at all. Rather, understanding the features of situations that
precede behavioral responses may allow for behavioral prediction
without any mediating variables, wondrous or otherwise. We turn to
recent developments in interdependence theory to explore how this
top-down theory of situations might provide a theoretical classification
of situations and an analysis of the particular cognitive and motivational
processes functionally related to dealing with the specific problems each
situation entails.
INTERDEPENDENCE THEORY
This description of recent theoretical work on interdependence theory is

adapted from An Atlas of Interpersonal Situations by Kelley et al., (2003).
This book analyzes 20 of the most prototypical social situations in detail
and presents propositions linking each to particular cognitive and goal
processes. It expands upon the long intellectual tradition of social
exchange analysis first presented by Thibault and Kelley (1959). Other
ideas come from a book being developed by Kelley & Holmes (2003)
before Hal Kelley died in 2003. Further, some of the implications of this
general theory for social cognitive processes have been developed in a

paper by Holmes (2002).
Generally speaking, interdependence theory (IT) expands the formula
proposed by Lewin (1946) that behavior is a function of the person and the
environment. In the context of a social relationship, the behavioral inter-
action (I) that occurs between persons A and B is a function of both
persons’ respective goal tendencies in relation to each other in the parti-
cular situation of interdependence (S) in which the interaction occurs.
Each situation specifies the ways in which two persons are dependent
on and influence each other with respect to their potential outcomes in an
interaction (hence the term interdependence). The theory attempts to
identify the kinds of interpersonal dispositions of persons A and B—their
attitudes, motives, goals—that are functionally relevant to dealing with
decisions in each particular type of situation. Then the type of situation S,
together with the relevant dispositions of A and B, determine the inter-
action, I (in symbols, the SABI elements; Kelley & Holmes, 2003). As this
model implies, interdependence theory adopts a person-by-situation
interactionist approach with a strong social psychological focus on the
nature of ‘‘situations.’’ Each paradigmatic situation is viewed as pre-
senting the two persons with a unique set of problems and opportunities.
The Person and the Situation
To give the reader some understanding of how a situation is defined in IT

terms, an example of a 2 2 outcome matrix is presented in Figure 17.2.
This well-known situation involves ‘‘Exchange with Mutual Profit’’ (also
known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma). The particular numbers used to repre-
sent the consequences for the two persons of any pair of behavioral choices
are intended to provide a symbolic representation of individuals’ satisfac-
tion or dissatisfaction with an interaction event, rather than concrete out-
comes of any particular kind. The abstract pattern of numbers represents
the essential social problem that a situation poses, the ‘‘dilemma’’ that
individuals face. Thus, the abstract features of a situation as in Figure
17.2 are intended to capture the essence of many concrete interdependence
problems.
Figure 17.2 is classified as an exchange situation because each person
has the ability to reward or help the other (by giving 10 units through
choosing option 1). If both individuals cooperate and conclude such a
reciprocal exchange, they will both profit equally and benefit from ‘‘gains
in trade’’ by dividing up a larger ‘‘pie’’ (20 units) than is available by any
other pair of choices. Such gains in trade are so ubiquitous in everyday
social life that evolutionary psychologists have even suggested that the
Person A
a1 a2
(Dishes) (Not)
10 15
b1
(Dishes)
10 0
Person B
Cooperative,
communal motivation
0 5 is complicated by
selfish temptation
b2
(Not)
15 5
Figure 17.2. Outcome Matrix of an ‘‘Exchange with Mutual Profit’’ Situation.
rewards from reciprocal cooperation may have resulted in cooperative,

prosocial motivations being as heritable as aggressive, selfish ones (Tooby
& Cosmides, 1996).
What complicates the situation and leads to the dilemma is that each
person’s personal preference (of 5 units) favors the other behavioral
choice, option 2. Thus, each person is tempted to defect from the coop-
erative exchange and to choose the second option, which could result in
the most individual gain and the greatest competitive advantage (if the
other person chooses option 1). For example, a husband and wife both
dislike cleaning the dishes, but if both pitch in, the task is quickly accom-
plished and they reap the benefits of cooperation. Of course, each would
be sorely tempted, if the other started the job, to just let the partner finish
the unpleasant task. That way, the dishes are done and the dreaded task is
once again avoided!
A central idea in the theory is that situations differ in terms of the
particular interpersonal dispositions relevant to coping with the specific
problems they represent. Thus, the linkages between the situation and
person domains are ones of logical relevance or affordance. Essentially,
interpersonal dispositions reflect people’s preferences, or valuations, for
the different interaction possibilities afforded by a particular situation.
We conceptualize this process of evaluating behavioral options and
making choices as the application of rules. By distinguishing the valuation
rules logically applicable to various situations, we essentially summarize
the various attitudes, motives, and goals that guide interpersonal behavior
in each of them.
For instance, the Exchange with Mutual Profit situation in Figure
17.2 provides the opportunity through the choice of a rule for ‘‘being’’ a
certain type of person, but not other types. This situation provides the
opportunity for expressing cooperative or prosocial goals because
selecting option 1 would follow valuation rules to ‘‘maximize joint
profit’’ or ‘‘achieve equality.’’ Alternatively, a person might have a valua-
tion rule that specifies ‘‘maximize one’s own competitive advantage’’ or
‘‘maximize own outcomes.’’ However, this situation does not allow
people to express a variety of other possible interpersonal goals, such as
being dominant or submissive, showing initiative, being loyal or depend-
able, and so on.
Thus, the situation and person domains exist in close, complemen-
tary relation to each other. One way to describe this relation is to say
that each disposition can be defined abstractly as a tendency to psycho-
logically transform one situation into another one, or using Lewin’s
(1946) concept, to ‘‘restructure the field.’’ In our current example, a
cooperative person would thus be someone who turned this inherently
ambiguous (i.e., mixed-motive) situation into a cooperative one by
attaching particular value to the cooperative pair solution. From this
perspective, one can only identify the person as a figure against the
ground of the situation.
As we hope the reader will grasp intuitively from this example,
however, the actor’s (A) choice of rules does not occur in a vacuum.
The goal person A pursues is likely to depend heavily on expectations
about the other’s goals and motives (B), especially the extent to which the
other is expected to be responsive to one’s needs (Reis, Clark, & Holmes,
2004). Indeed, Holmes (2002) has suggested that expectations about the
other person’s goals are the single most important and basic consideration
in interpersonal relations, one that probably has evolutionary roots. Thus,
not only may two partners be behaviorally interdependent, but they will
frequently be rule interdependent as well, especially in long-term close
relationships. That is, an actor’s rule may be contingent on the rule the
other person is expected to choose.
Put another way, the type of person one can ‘‘be’’ is often constrained
by the type of person a partner is expected to be. In Kelley and Stahelski’s
(1970) pioneering research exploring the social dilemma depicted in Figure
17.2, for instance, cooperative individuals typically held contingent rules
for the goal they would pursue, following a cooperative rule only if they
expected the other person to reciprocate. Faced with someone they
believed had a competitive goal, they could not ‘‘be themselves’’ and
instead engaged in more competitive behaviors. Competitive individuals,
in contrast, rather uniformly expected others to be self-concerned and out

for themselves. Their typical response was to react in kind to the expected
competitive behavior of the other person, whether it were true or not.
A Taxonomy of Situations
A group of scholars recently developed a systematic taxonomy of situa-

tions, described in An Atlas of Interpersonal Situations (Kelley et al.,
2003). By applying analysis of variance logic to the 2 2 matrix depiction
of situations, they demonstrated that each such situation can be charac-
terized by four dimensions. The first dimension involves the degree of
interdependence between two persons, the extent to which each has
influence over the other’s outcomes. A high degree of interdependence
defines one sense of the term ‘‘closeness’’ (Berscheid, 1983). The second
dimension involves the extent to which dependence is mutual or unequal,
with one person having less power than the other. The third dimension
involves the degree of correspondence of the two persons’ outcomes,
ranging from corresponding to conflicting interests. The fourth dimen-
sion involves the distinction between exchange and coordination pro-
blems. These two types of problems constitute the basis of
interdependence and differ as to whether the main problem people
must deal with concerns justice in terms of who gets what, or instead,
mutual control and initiative in coordinating actions.
The situation depicted in Figure 17.3 is an example of the important
category of situations involving coordination (rather than exchange) pro-
blems. Such situations are extremely common in close relationships. For
example, the numbers in the matrix closely mirror the preference ratings
from a study of dating couples deciding which movie to attend (Kelley,
1979). The large numbers in the diagonal make it clear that the two
persons have a strong mutual desire to coordinate their actions so they
can enjoy doing things together. However, they have different personal
preferences (of five units) for which movie to attend and have to find a
way to determine whose preferred movie they will attend jointly.
This situational structure is typically given the name ‘‘Hero’’ because
it affords the opportunity for either person to show initiative and say,
‘‘let’s do it your way,’’ exerting a type of leadership by stepping forward
and selecting the movie preferred by the partner. Though this initiative
furthers joint goals, it is clearly considerate of the partner’s feelings and
benefits the partner the most. On the other hand, behavioral pre-emption
could also be used in a controlling fashion by selecting one’s own pre-
ferred movie, either for somewhat selfish reasons or as a result of egocen-
trically assuming the partner wants what you want.
Person A
a1 a2
(Preferred Activity: (Not)
My Movie)
12 0
b1
(Not)
8 0
Person B Strong mutual desire

to do same activity is
b2 4 8 complicated by
(Preferred difference in preferred
Activity: activity
My
Movie) 4 12
Figure 17.3. Outcome Matrix of a ‘‘Coordination’’ Situation.
Kelley et al. (2003) extended their analysis to include two further

dimensions. The fifth dimension involves the temporal structure of the
decision process (which is represented technically by a ‘‘transition list’’).
Some interactions have immediate consequences, whereas others are
extended in time, such that the problem to be solved— the ‘‘goal’’ in the
situation—is reached only at the end of a required sequence of intermediate
steps. Two prototypical examples are delay of gratification and investment
situations. Finally, a sixth dimension involves the extent to which uncer-
tainty about outcomes is an essential feature of the situation. Whereas
many situations involve quite complete information, others involve incom-
plete information about the other’s outcomes, or uncertainty about what
the future holds. The six dimensions are listed in Table 17.1.
An Interactionist Perspective on Dispositions
The analysis of situations by Kelley et al. (2003) suggests that there are
approximately two dozen prototypical situations like Exchange with
Mutual Profit or Hero that have distinctive and interesting properties in
terms of the type of problem or opportunity that they pose for the
persons. By analyzing each of these prototypical situations, Kelley and
Table 17.1. Dimensions of Situations and Interpersonal Dispositions
Dimension of Situation Function of Rule Interpersonal Disposition
1. Degree of 9 Increase or decrease Avoidance of

interdependence >
> dependence on partner interdependence/Comfort
>
>
2. Mutuality of ; with dependence
interdependence
8
3. Correspondence of Promote prosocial or : Cooperative/competitive
outcomes self-interested goals Responsive/unresponsive
Expectations about Anxiety about
partner’s goals responsiveness/Confidence
or trust
8
4. Basis of control Control through : [Dominant/submissive
Exchange (promise/ Assertive/passive
threat) or Coordination
(initiative/follow)
8
5. Temporal structure Promote immediate or : [Dependable/unreliable
distant goal striving Loyal/uncommitted
8
6. Degree of uncertainty Cope with incomplete >
>
[Need for certainty/
information or >
: openness Optimism/
uncertain future pessimism
Holmes (2003) attempted to logically derive the full set of rules relevant
to making choices within all the situations in our taxonomy. Clusters of
rules that appear to have a common interpersonal theme or function can
then be identified. (Some of these decisions would, of course, be open to
interesting debate.) A quite limited number of such rule clusters or
‘‘dispositions’’ seems necessary for describing the set of possible adapta-
tions to the problems encountered in prototypical social situations. Thus,
through such functional analysis, we can essentially deduce an interac-
tionist theory of interpersonal dispositions.
Such dispositions could be regarded as the dimensions of personality
if they described people’s consistent response tendencies across interac-
tion partners. Or they could be regarded as relational dispositions if they
were limited to a specific close relationship. (Interestingly, two partners’
set of dispositions would be one way of describing the nature of their
‘‘relationship.’’) We believe there is much value in being able to describe
personality and relational dispositions in commensurate terms so that the
association between the two can be explored.
Kelley and Holmes (2003) reached some tentative conclusions about
a possible set of interpersonal dispositions. The dispositions, not surpris-
ingly, have an analogical correspondence to the dimensions of situations
themselves. We have tried to make this correspondence apparent by the
cross-listing in Table 17.1. The reader will note that the six dimensions of
personality derived from our analysis have a rough correspondence to an
integrated version of the Big Five and the two Attachment Style dimen-
sions (with the anxiety dimension of attachment roughly corresponding
to an interpersonal version of the neuroticism dimension from the Big
Five). When the exact rule clusters that are the basis for the dimensions
are examined in detail, they include facets of the traits that are quite
different from the existing literature as well as novel interpersonal per-
spectives on the various dispositions.
In this paper we are not trying to persuade the reader of the virtues of
this particular taxonomic system. Rather, we are using it to illustrate two
crucial points. First, we need to have some means of classifying the
specific content of people’s interpersonal goals. The dispositions listed in
Table 17.1 can be used not only to classify the goals of an actor (A), but
also the interpersonal themes central to the actor’s expectations about the
interaction partner’s goals (B). Second, the theory is built on the interac-
tionist premise that situations and dispositions have a complementary
relation. This suggests that features of situations should be responsible for
selectively activating expectations about relevant dispositions. Situations
are thus a key organizing principle for one’s own goals as well as expecta-
tions about others’ goal tendencies.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST SITUATIONS
To illustrate the situational affordance logic of IT we will describe several

more detailed examples of research exploring the importance of one of
the six dimensions of situations—conflict of interest or noncorrespon-
dence of outcomes. Conflict of interest situations are those where the
interests, preferences, or goals of two partners are not fully compatible.
Most of these situations are mixed motive, meaning that there is some
reason to cooperate and respond to a partner, but there are also tempta-
tions to look out for oneself and one’s own interests. In our example in
Figure 17.2, for instance, both partners dislike doing the dishes or house-
work and would prefer to avoid doing them; if either cares about the
sensibilities of the other, however, he or she will not shirk the duties but
will be communal minded and help. Such situations raise the issue of trust
in the other’s motivations to benefit the self. Because conflicts of interest
present a partner with the temptation to avoid the costs of helping, and
instead be self-interested, they represent situations marked by higher
levels of interpersonal risk.
Sensitivity to situations involving risk occurs for the obvious reason of
self-protection in the face of vulnerability, but also because partners’
behavior in such situations is diagnostic of their orientation. That is,

situations that tempt a partner to ignore the person’s needs in favor of
pursuing self-interested goals are the very platform for forming confident
attributions (Holmes, 1991). Thus, the problem is that the goal of
learning about a partner competes against the goal of protecting the self
in particular situations—situations that are most diagnostic of another’s
motives also present the greatest risk of being hurt.
In summary, conflict of interest situations afford the opportunity for
partners to demonstrate their caring and responsiveness or to act in a self-
interested way that ignores one’s needs. Thus, they highlight the issue of
the extent of a partner’s caring and are likely to activate any concerns a
person might have about trust.
ATTACHMENT THEORY AND BEHAVIORAL SIGNATURES
Bowlby (1982) contended that the attachment system will only be acti-
vated to deal with circumstances involving threat, fear, and interpersonal
conflict. That is, in concert with our behavioral signature perspective, he is
suggesting a ‘‘stress-diathesis’’ analysis, whereby individuals only reveal the
true colors of their personality in circumstances that are functionally
relevant to the syndrome. For example, individuals high on the anxiety
dimension are marked by anxiety and worry about whether significant
others care for them, or instead, will reject them by not responding to
their needs. Therefore, they should be schematic for identifying situations
that highlight the possibility of rejection. They should be very sensitive to
types of situations that test the strength of partners’ bond, the extent of
their caring and responsiveness.
Such diagnostic situations are especially likely to include those where
there is a conflict of interest, where the partner might choose to follow his
or her own preferences and not take the actor’s interests into account.
Certain prototypical situations present this dilemma quite baldly, others
more subtly. For instance, the situation might be one where help from a
partner would be particularly costly, creating a serious temptation not to
support the person. Or the situation might be one where the partner
would have to delay personal rewards and be persistent and loyal in order
to reach dyadic goals, focusing on the question of whether the relation-
ship is worth such efforts. Alternatively, the person might need the
partner to provide costly help now, without knowing if or when such
help will be reciprocated in the future.
Impressively, a number of attachment style studies have directly
compared the behavior of anxious individuals in high-conflict situations
to that in low-conflict control conditions and have been able to show that
insecure attachment styles involving a lack of trust have a signature
closely linked to such diagnostic situations. For example, Simpson,

Rholes, & Phillips (1996) brought dating couples to the laboratory and
asked them to discuss an issue in their relationship for 15 minutes. They
were asked to discuss either a high-conflict issue as determined by a
preliminary questionnaire, or a low-conflict, less contentious issue.
Trained observers coded the quality of the couple’s interaction (see
Figure 17.4). The results for the low-conflict situation are quite fasci-
nating: It is impossible to distinguish the secure individuals from the
anxious ones when the situation does not provide any strong affordance
for concerns about caring. This evidence suggests that poor behavior
exhibited by anxious individuals in the high-conflict situation is clearly
not reflective of a lack of skill, but of some other cause.
The cause seems to be the set of pessimistic expectations about
being valued that were strongly activated by the high-conflict, diag-
nostic situation—Anxious individuals reported that their partner was
treating them in a rejecting and nonresponsive way in this condition,
even though observers saw no signs of that. Apparently their expecta-
tions of being rejected had been activated by the situations and then
darkly colored their perceptions of the interaction. Their subsequent
bad behavior was an angry response to the experience of rejection. On
the other hand, when the high-conflict context activates beliefs in
secure individuals about how much they are valued, they, paradoxically,
feel more momentarily valued than controls, and react in a more posi-
tive, constructive way. When they face threatening situations that lead
them to consider how they are valued by a partner, their sense of
security about their partner’s caring serves as a resource which promotes
more closeness and interpersonal risk taking.
This research by Simpson et al. (1996) is a dramatic example of the
idea that people only reveal their ‘‘true colors’’ when they encounter
situations that are functionally relevant to the personality trait and that
put stress on it to be displayed. The behavioral signature model is not only
pertinent to personality, however. Research on the risk regulation model
Non-anxious Anxious
33
Quality of Interaction
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
Minor Problem Major Problem
Figure 17.4. Results from Simpson, Rholes, & Phillips (1996).

(Murray, Holmes, & Collins, 2006) attests to the value of the model for
predicting behavior from more social psychological variables, such as
trust in a specific partner’s caring and responsiveness.
THE RISK REGULATION MODEL
Given multiple layers of interdependence, people routinely find them-

selves in situations where they need to choose how much dependence
(and thus how much potential for rejection) they safely can risk (Kelley,
1979). Throughout the course of the relationship, partners need to make
iterative and often implicit choices between self-protection (decreasing
dependence) and relationship promotion (increasing dependence).
Consequently, to risk being in the relationship, people need a system in
place that functions to keep them feeling reasonably safe in a context of
continued vulnerability (Murray et al., 2006).
Optimizing Assurance: Three If-Then Contingencies Rules
The goal of the risk regulation system is to optimize the sense of assurance
that is possible given one’s relationship circumstances, that is, given the
chronic level of confidence one feels in a partner’s overall responsiveness
and the level of risk inherent in particular interdependent situations. This
sense of assurance is experienced as a sense of safety in one’s level of
dependence in the relationship—a feeling of relative invulnerability to
hurt. To optimize this sense of assurance, this system functions dynami-
cally, shifting the priority given to the goals of avoiding rejection and
seeking closeness so as to accommodate the perceived risks of rejection.
The model proposes three ‘‘if-then’’ contingency rule systems people
need to gauge the likelihood of a partner’s acceptance or rejection and
make the general situation of being involved in a relationship feel suffi-
ciently safe (see Gollwitzer, Wieber, Myers, & McCrea, this volume, for
more on ‘‘if-then’’ contingency rules). These rules involve: (1) an
‘‘appraisal’’ rule system that links situations of dependence and risk to
the goal of gauging a partner’s acceptance, (2) a ‘‘signaling’’ rule system
that links perceptions of a partner’s acceptance or rejection to the experi-
ence of gratified or hurt feelings and coincident gains or losses in self-
esteem, and (3) a ‘‘dependence regulation’’ rule system that links percep-
tions of a partner’s acceptance or rejection to the willingness to risk future
dependence. These rule systems operate in concert to prioritize self-
protection goals (and the assurance that comes from maintaining psycho-
logical distance) when the perceived risks of rejection are high or relation-
ship promotion goals (and the assurance that comes from feeling
connected) when the perceived risks of rejection are low.
The appraisal rule is essentially the first step in the CAPS model (see
Figure 17.1), linking external cues to cognitions. A self-protective orienta-
tion would result in the rule, ‘‘If there are signs of risk in a particular
situation, such as a conflict of interest, appraise a partner’s motivations and
be vigilant for rejection.’’ A promotive orientation would link the percep-
tion of risk or threat to activating memories of a partner’s typical caring and
responsiveness and then looking for ways to connect more closely.
The signaling or alarm rule links cognitions about rejection to affect,
within the CAPS internal units. It importantly reflects a basic assumption
of the sociometer model of self-esteem. Leary and his colleagues believe
that the need to protect against rejection is so important that people
evolved a system for reacting to rejection threats (Leary & Baumeister,
2000). They argue that self-esteem is simply a gauge—a ‘‘sociometer’’—
that measures a person’s perceived likelihood of being accepted or
rejected by others. The sociometer is thought to function such that
signs that another’s approval is waning diminish self-esteem and motivate
compensatory behaviors (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995).
Given all that is at stake, the signal that is conveyed by this rule system
needs to be sufficiently strong to mobilize action (Berscheid, 1983). The
self-protective response is, ‘‘If I feel rejected, then internalize as social
pain and reduced esteem.’’ By making rejection aversive, this signaling
system motivates people to avoid situations where relationship partners
are likely to be unresponsive and needs for connectedness are likely to be
frustrated. In contrast, perceiving acceptance should affirm people’s sense
of themselves as being good and valuable, mobilizing the desire for greater
connection and the likelihood of having one’s needs met by a partner.
The dependence regulation rule links cognition and affect to the
behavior generation or response system, completing the chain of events
that starts with the perception of an external situation and ends with a
response to it. The self-protective adjustment is ‘‘If feel rejected, then
increase psychological distance in the service of risk management.’’ This
implies feeling less close to partners, playing down their virtues, and
avoiding situations of interdependence where one puts one’s fate in
partners’ hands. In contrast, a promotive adjustment would result in
finding constructive ways to connect to the partner through increasing
interdependence and closeness in the face of risk.
How Perceived Regard Controls Rule Sensitivity
For a relationship risk regulation system to be functional, it needs to adapt

itself to suit specific relationship circumstances. If Sally generally per-
ceives Harry to be responsive to her needs, distancing herself from Harry
at the first sign of his insensitivity is not likely to be the optimal means of
sustaining the needed sense of assurance. If Sally generally perceives

Harry to be unresponsive, however, such a response might be Sally’s
best available means of sustaining some minimal sense of safety from
harm. Accordingly, to respond dynamically and adaptively to ongoing
events, the regulatory system needs a heuristic means of estimating the
level of risk inherent in specific situations. People’s general or cross-
situational sense of confidence in a partner’s positive regard and love
acts as such an arbiter or barometer—telling people whether it is safe to
put self-protection aside and risk thinking and behaving in relationship-
promotive ways (Murray et al., 2006). Specifically, feeling more or less
positively regarded by a partner interacts with specific event features to
control the sensitivity of the appraisal, signaling, and dependence regula-
tion rules people adopt in specific situations.
At the first stage of this process, chronic perceptions of a partner’s
regard interact with specific event features to control the extent to
which people categorize or code specific events as situations of risk.
To the extent that Sally is unsure of Harry’s regard, even the mundane
choice of one movie over another could make concerns about depen-
dence salient. However, to the extent that Sally is more confident of
Harry’s regard, she might only begin to entertain thoughts about her
vulnerability to his actions when they try to negotiate more serious
decisions in their relationship, such as deciding whose financial philo-
sophy to follow.
The Daily Diary Study
How might this set of dynamic rules display itself in the everyday life of
married couples? To illustrate, we turn to research by Murray and collea-
gues using a daily diary approach to studying the lives of newlyweds. This
study utilized a direct measure of expectations of a specific partner’s
regard and tracked how couples negotiated a wide variety of dependent
situations over 21 days (Murray, Griffin, Rose, & Bellavia, 2003).
Participants rated how they believed their partner saw them on positive
and negative interpersonal attributes (i.e., perceived regard), such as
warm, critical, and responsive (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 2000). In
each diary, participants indicated which specific situations of dependence
had occurred that day (e.g., ‘‘had a minor disagreement,’’ ‘‘partner criti-
cized me’’) and completed state items tapping self-esteem (e.g., felt ‘‘good
about myself’’), how rejected or accepted they felt by their partner (e.g.,
‘‘rejected or hurt by my partner,’’ ‘‘my partner accepts me as I am’’),
perceptions of the partner’s responsiveness (e.g., ‘‘my partner is selfish’’),
and closeness (e.g., ‘‘in love with my partner’’).
What would we expect to find in this study in terms of the

appraisal rule? Imagine that Sally comes home to find Harry in an
irritable mood, grumbling about the lack of food in the fridge, and the
fact that Sally had promised to replenish the fridge’s contents by day’s
end. If Sally trusts Harry’s continuing positive regard, such situations
might activate appraisal contingencies that link Harry’s irritation to a
ready excuse. She might even find some way to see such foibles as
signs of Harry’s acceptance and love, a motivated reconstrual of the
evidence (e.g., ‘‘If Harry grumbles, he’s just showing he can be himself
around me’’). However, if Sally generally feels less valued by Harry,
she may have difficulty attributing such negative events to some
specific feature of the situation, such as Harry’s fatigue. Instead,
Sally may attribute such grumbling to an interpersonal disposition—
his broader displeasure with her (e.g., ‘‘If Harry grumbles, he’s upset
with me’’).
Following this logic, in the daily diary study, married intimates who
generally felt less positively regarded by their spouse read decidedly more
rejection-related meanings into negative situations than intimates who
generally felt more positively regarded (Murray, Bellavia et al., 2003). For
instance, people who generally felt less valued by their partner felt more
rejected on days after their partner had simply reported being in a worse
than average mood, a mood that had nothing to do with them or the
relationship (see Figure 17.5). These feelings of rejection were especially
acute after the partner reported he or she has behaved badly or a conflict
had occurred. Such sensitivity to rejection was not at all characteristic of
people who generally felt more positively regarded. Instead, they actually
recruited more feelings of being loved and accepted by their partner on
days after they reported more than their usual amount of conflict or
negative partner behavior (and thus had greater actual reason to distrust
their partner).
HSE LSE
28
Behavior toward partner
26
24
22
20
18
16
14
12
10
Neutral days Conflict days
Figure 17.5. Results from Murray, Bellavia, Rose, & Griffin (2003).
What was found for the signaling system? For people who gen-
erally feel less valued by their partner, detecting drops in acceptance
poses a greater proportional loss to a limited resource. For them, the
signal conveyed by this rule needs to be especially strong. Relative to
people who feel more positively regarded, people who feel less
valued should be hurt more readily, questioning their worth in the
face of perceived rejections (i.e., ‘‘If feeling acutely rejected, then
internalize’’).
In the diary study, global perceptions of the spouse’s regard deter-
mined how much daily concerns about a partner’s rejection deflated state
self-esteem (Murray, Griffin et al., 2003). People who generally felt less
positively regarded by their partner felt worse about themselves on days
after they experienced greater than usual level of anxiety about their
partner’s acceptance, such as after a conflict (as compared to low-anxiety
days). In contrast, for people who generally felt more positively regarded,
one day’s anxieties about acceptance did not turn into the next day’s self-
doubts.
Finally, consistent with our ideas about the behavioral response
system, people who felt less valued by their partner indeed responded
to perceived rejection by reducing dependence (i.e., ‘‘if rejected then
reduce dependence’’). In the daily diary study (Murray, Bellavia et al.,
2003), people who generally felt less positively regarded responded to
feeling acutely rejected by their partner one day by treating their partner
in more cold, critical, and negative ways the next day (according to both
their and their partners’ reports). For lows, feeling rejected activated the
behavioral contingency ‘‘distance myself from my partner.’’ These reac-
tions emerged even though the partners of people who felt less valued
were not actually upset with them when lows felt most rejected.
Instead, people who felt less valued responded to an imagined rejection
by treating their partner badly, according to both the person and the
partner, leading their partners to then actually become annoyed with
their bad behavior.
For people who generally feel more positively regarded, feeling
acutely rejected activates ‘‘if-then’’ contingencies that link situations of
dependence to relationship promotion goals. In the daily diary study,
intimates who generally felt more positively regarded actually drew
closer to their partner on days after they felt most rejected, such as the
day after a conflict, a relationship-promotive response (Murray, Bellavia
et al., 2003). The graph of the behavioral results for days after a conflict or
control days with no conflict (Figure 17.5) has a strong resemblance to the
earlier graph for Simpson et al.’s (1996) research on anxious attachment
(Figure 17.4).
The Long-Term Consequences
By putting self-protection at a greater premium than relationship promo-

tion, people who feel less positively regarded may create long-term
interpersonal realities that defeat their hopes and confirm their fears.
Supporting this analysis, the longitudinal part of the daily diary study
suggests that the chronic activation of self-protective appraisal, signaling,
and behavioral response rules has a corrosive effect on relationships over
time (Murray, Bellavia et al., 2003; Murray, Griffin et al., 2003). In this
sample, relationship difficulties were more likely to arise when the ‘‘if-
then’’ contingencies underlying people’s cognition, affect, and behavior
mirrored the ‘‘if-then’’ contingencies evident among people who feel less
valued by their partner.
First, satisfaction declined when people’s online systems for
appraising rejection threats were calibrated in a more self-protective
fashion. In particular, when women linked their own personal self-
doubts to their husband’s lessened acceptance, their husband reported
relatively greater declines in satisfaction over time (Murray, Griffin
et al., 2003). Conversely, when women compensated for self-doubts
by embellishing their partner’s acceptance, their husband reported rela-
tively greater satisfaction (Murray, Griffin et al., 2003). Second, satis-
faction declined when people’s signaling systems were more sensitive to
rejection. When people reacted to anxieties about rejection by reporting
diminished self-esteem the next day, their partner reported significantly
greater declines in satisfaction. Third, when women’s behavioral
response to feeling rejected was to self-protect and behave negatively,
their husband’s satisfaction declined over the year (Murray, Griffin
et al., 2003).
In summary, research exploring the chain of if-then rules linking
external events to actual behavioral responses is not simply an academic
exercise in studying arcane procedural rules. Through focusing on the
three steps in the Mischel and Shoda (1995) CAPS model, and using an a
priori understanding of the affordances of conflict of interest situations,
this research demonstrates how appropriate models linking external
situations to behavior can predict important real world outcomes.
CONCLUSION
We have argued that the lack of research in social psychology predicting

behavior from identifiable stimulus features has largely resulted from a
social construal approach that either begins or end in people’s heads.
Attempts to uncover the ‘‘miraculous’’ intermediary between situations
and behavior have somewhat obscured the direct link between the two. In
this paper we have tried to demonstrate that one possible remedy for this
problem is to develop a ‘‘theory of situations’’ that categorizes social
situations and specifies the psychologically active ingredients each situa-
tion affords. We believe that the Atlas of Interpersonal Situations (Kelley
et al., 2003) provides one such theoretical taxonomy that will prove
useful in predicting interpersonal behavior. Research on one critical
dimension of situations, the degree of conflict of interest, illustrated the
power of the analysis to move from features of the social environment to
predicting patterns of behavior functionally relevant to coping with the
challenges such situations create.
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18 Mind–Behavior Relations in Attachment
Theory and Research
Phillip R. Shaver
Mario Mikulincer
The assignment given to us by the editors was to consider the ‘‘miracle’’

that links the mental processes studied by contemporary relationship
scientists with behavior. The framework that guides our research—
attachment theory (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby,
1973, 1980, 1982)—makes this assignment easy. Attachment theory is
one of the few conceptual frameworks in psychology that integrates
evolutionary biology, primate ethology, psychodynamic conceptions of
personality, lifespan cognitive and social developmental psychology, and
the study of adolescents’ and adults’ relationships. It was constructed
originally from a combination of primate ethology (see Burkhardt,
2005, for a historical overview), naturalistic and laboratory observational
studies of human infants (Ainsworth, 1967; Ainsworth et al., 1978),
cognitive developmental psychology (Piaget, 1953), and psychoanalysis
(see Fonagy, Gergely, & Target, 2008, for an overview). This combination
of intellectual influences runs the gamut from behavioral observation
to clinical probing of hidden motives and idiosyncratic subjective
experiences and perceptual distortions.
Attachment theory posits reciprocal relations between mental pro-
cesses and behaviors, and between what Bowlby (1982) called the attach-
ment behavioral system (guided by a need for protection in times of
threat) and other behavioral systems, such as those involved in explora-
tion (guided by curiosity), caregiving (guided by affection and empathy),
and sex (guided by attraction and desire). If we use M to indicate mental
MIND–BEHAVIOR RELATIONS IN ATTACHMENT THEORY & RESEARCH 343
states and B to indicate behavior, we can imagine breaking into the endless
M ! B ! M ! B ! M stream at any point, focusing either on the way
mental processes select and guide behavior or the way behaviors and
behavioral outcomes influence subsequent mental states. Just as evolu-
tionary biologists sometimes view genes as influencing animals’ bodies
and behavior, and at other times view bodies and behavior as mere
‘‘vehicles’’ used by genes to reproduce themselves (Dawkins, 2006), we
social and relationship scientists can view mental states as influencing
behavior or view behavior as a vehicle for creating certain mental states:
‘‘I’m feeling worn down and sad; I think I’ll call my wife for some uplifting
encouragement.’’ ‘‘I gave him a big dose of affection and support, but I’m
not sure he was satisfied.’’
In this chapter we explain Bowlby’s (1982) behavioral-system con-
struct and describe how it has been applied in the study of attachment
behavior and mental processes of people at different ages. We then
focus on a model of attachment-system activation and functioning in
adulthood (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003, 2007) and assess its usefulness
in explaining behavior, including proximity- and support-seeking, and
the ways in which attachment security and insecurity manifest them-
selves in close relationships and small groups. At first our discussion is
fairly abstract and theoretical, because the general conceptual issue of
mind–behavior relations is inherently abstract, but later we present a
sampling of empirical studies to show what the abstractions refer to and
explain.
BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS DEFINED
Although Bowlby (1982) focused mainly on the formation of attachment

bonds in early childhood and the self-protective and affect-regulatory
functions of proximity to care providers in times of need, he also con-
sidered how evolution has shaped other kinds of human behavior, such as
exploration, parenting, affiliation, and sex. For this purpose he relied on
the concept of behavioral system, a species-universal neural program that
organizes an individual’s behavior in ways that increase the likelihood of
survival and reproduction in the face of environmental demands.
Responding to these demands—for example, dealing with threats to life
and well-being by relying on what Bowlby (1982) called ‘‘stronger, wiser’’
caregivers, exploring environments and learning how to master them, and
caring for sexual partners and dependent offspring—resulted in the evo-
lution of distinct but interrelated behavioral systems, each with its own
primary functions and characteristic behaviors.
According to Bowlby (1982), a behavioral system governs the choice,

activation, and termination of behavioral sequences aimed at attaining
particular ‘‘set-goals’’—states of the person–environment relationship
that have adaptive advantages for individual survival and genetic repro-
duction. The adaptive behavioral sequences are ‘‘activated’’ by certain
kinds of stimuli or situations (e.g., sudden loud noises, pain, darkness,
the presence of a stranger or predator) that make a particular set-goal
salient and are ‘‘deactivated’’ or ‘‘terminated’’ by other stimuli or out-
comes that signal attainment of the desired goal state (emotional support
or protection, in the case of the attachment system). In Bowlby’s theory,
‘‘behavior’’ is functionally defined in terms of its set-goal. A particular
behavior, such as moving physically or psychologically closer to another
person, is defined as an attachment behavior if it is intended to secure
comfort, protection, or relief from stress. The same action is defined as
sexual if it moves a person toward sexual intercourse and is viewed as
caregiving if it occurs in the service of comforting a needy or distraught
relationship partner. Similarly, the termination of one kind of behavior
and the initiation of another are not defined primarily by particular motor
or physical events but rather by the seeking or attainment of a particular
set-goal.
According to this framework, a person’s mental processes—for
example, his or her hierarchy of set-goals and the chronic and contextual
accessibility of a particular set-goal—govern the activation, choice
among, and termination of particular behavioral sequences. Moreover,
the psychological meaning of a motor or perceptual act is determined by
the intrapsychic state that organizes and governs it. Although this account
of Bowlby’s theory probably seems to emphasize mental states rather
than behavior, it can be used just as easily to analyze the influence of
behavior on mental processes. For example, moving physically closer to a
relationship partner and being comforted often feels good, enhances
security, reduces the emphasis on security seeking, and allows other
goals and mental states to arise and guide behavior. Moreover, as we
show later, repeated failures of intentional actions (such as proximity
seeking) to attain their set-goal (e.g., protection and security) changes the
attachment system’s goal structure, along with the cognitions and emo-
tions that accompany and guide the system’s functioning.
Conceptually, a behavioral system has (a) a biological function, which
in the environment of evolutionary adaptation increased the likelihood of
survival or reproductive success; (b) a specific set-goal, a change in the
person–environment relationship that terminates the system’s activity;
(c) a set of activating triggers; (d) a set of interchangeable, functionally
equivalent behaviors that constitute the primary strategy of the system
for attaining a particular goal; (e) an internal architecture that includes
if-then scripts (Gollwitzer, Wieber, Myers, & McCrea, Chapter 8, this

volume), schemas, and internal working models based on past experi-
ences; and (f) specific excitatory or inhibitory neural links with other
behavioral systems. While akin to the evolutionary psychological con-
struct of mental ‘‘module’’ (as used, for example, in the influential
volume edited by Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992), the behavioral
system construct is more complex, applies to a broader range of beha-
viors, and is more evident in its behavioral effects. For example, evolu-
tionary psychologists have postulated mental modules that reason in
certain ways, detect cheaters, cause people to be attracted to sexual
partners with ‘‘good genes,’’ or arouse jealousy of particular kinds.
In contrast, Bowlby (1982) focused on complex and flexible behavior
patterns such as seeking proximity to a caregiver (e.g., by crying, smiling,
reaching, crawling, or doing whatever is necessary to attain the goal);
exploring the environment curiously and, as a result, building up a useful
repertoire of physical and mental skills; and empathizing with people in
distress and making an effort to comfort them.
Bowlby also assumed that behavioral systems include learned
elements that reflect a person’s history of behavioral system activation
in particular contexts. Although behavioral systems are initially innate
and presumably operate mechanistically at a subcortical level, their
ability to achieve desired set-goals depends on the extent to which their
operational parameters can be adjusted to fit with contextual affordances
(Baron, Chapter 13, this volume) and demands. One of Bowlby’s most
important observations, which increased his confidence in the notion of
‘‘goal-corrected’’ rather than merely habitual behavior, is that particular
behavioral sequences often get altered to put a person, even an infant,
back on the track of goal attainment. Bowlby assumed that actual beha-
viors and the experiences that result from them can alter both future
behaviors and mental states. Borrowing from feedback control theories
developed after Bowlby wrote his attachment trilogy (e.g., Carver &
Scheier, 1990), we can say that behavioral systems involve self-regulatory
feedback loops that shape the systems’ primary strategies and influence
whether a person persists in or disengages from these strategies after
discovering that they fail under certain conditions.
Over time, after operating repeatedly in the same social environment
(e.g., in interactions with a primary caregiver or other emotionally sig-
nificant relationship partners), a person’s behavioral systems become
molded so that their neural and behavioral subroutines fit better with
relational constraints. These constraints can be viewed clinically as more
or less optimal for long-range development—that is, as ‘‘healthy’’ or
‘‘unhealthy.’’ According to Bowlby (1973), the residues of such experi-
ences are stored in mental representations of person–environment
transactions (working models of self and others), which organize memories

of behavioral system functioning and guide future attempts to attain a
behavioral system’s set-goal. These representations, which operate partly
unconsciously and partly consciously, become integral components of a
behavioral system’s programming and are responsible for both differences
between individuals and within-person continuity over time.
The introduction of reciprocal relations between working models,
goal-oriented behaviors, and perceptions of the results of behaviors
allows us to see how a behavioral system’s goals, strategies, and cognitive
parameters can (a) result in still more differentiated goals and strategies,
(b) create conflicts among goals, and (c) even result, at times, in confusion
or dissociation between mental states and behaviors. If the primary
strategy of a behavioral system repeatedly results in the attainment of
its set-goal (e.g., gaining protection and comfort by seeking proximity to a
relationship partner), the working models that get constructed corre-
spond well with the normative functioning of the system (e.g., ‘‘When
I encounter difficulties, I can call on my attachment figure for comfort
and support, and I will then feel better and can return to other activities
with a renewed sense of confidence’’). This kind of working model, or
script (Waters & Waters, 2006), helps to activate and organize the pri-
mary attachment strategy (optimistic proximity seeking) whenever the
system’s set-goal becomes salient. However, if the primary strategy
repeatedly fails to attain its set-goal, the resulting working models will
alter the system’s strategies and some of its goals (e.g., ‘‘When I try to rely
on others, they are unreliable or outright punishing’’). For example, a
person may become overly vigilant, intrusive, sometimes hysterical or, in
contrast, wary about relying on relationship partners, emotionally closed
to them, and rigidly committed to self-sufficiency.
THE ATTACHMENT BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM
During infancy, primary caregivers (usually one or both parents, but also
grandparents, older siblings, daycare workers, and so on) are likely to
serve as attachment figures. In adulthood, friends and romantic partners
often become primary attachment figures, such that maintaining physical
and psychological proximity to them in times of need becomes an impor-
tant source of protection, emotional support, and reassurance (e.g., Fraley
& Davis, 1997; Hazan & Zeifman, 1999). However, not every relation-
ship partner becomes a primary attachment figure. In fact, the transfor-
mation of a relationship partner into an attachment figure is a gradual
process that depends on the extent to which the person functions as
(a) a target of proximity seeking; (b) a source of protection, comfort,

support, and relief in times of need (a ‘‘safe haven,’’ in the terms of
attachment theory); and (c) a ‘‘secure base’’ for exploration and pursuit
of important achievement goals within the context of the relationship
(e.g., Ainsworth, 1991; J. A. Feeney, 2004; Hazan & Shaver, 1994; Hazan
& Zeifman, 1999).
The set-goal of the attachment system is a subjective sense of protec-
tion or security (called by Sroufe & Waters, 1977, ‘‘felt security’’), which
normally terminates the system’s activation. (This is an example of a
mental state—a desire for protection or comfort—activating a behavior
that results in another mental state, which in turn terminates the
behavior.) The goal of attaining protective or comforting proximity is
made salient by encounters with actual or imagined threats and by
appraising an attachment figure as not yet sufficiently near, interested,
or responsive. In such cases, the attachment system is activated, and the
individual is driven to seek and reestablish actual or symbolic proximity to
an external or ‘‘internalized’’ attachment figure. (We say more about
internalized attachment figures in the next paragraph.) When the set-
goal of felt security is attained, bids for proximity are terminated and the
individual returns to nonattachment activities governed by other beha-
vioral systems.
During infancy, attachment system activation includes nonverbal
expressions of need and a desire for proximity, such as crying and pleading
while looking at the attachment figure’s face, as well as active behaviors
aimed at reestablishing and maintaining proximity, such as moving
toward the caregiver, reaching up, and clinging after being picked up
(Ainsworth et al., 1978). In adulthood, the primary attachment strategy
does not necessarily entail actual proximity-seeking behavior. Instead, felt
security can be attained by calling upon soothing, comforting mental
representations of relationship partners who regularly provide care and
protection, or even by relying on self-representations (and self-soothing)
associated with these partners (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2004). These cog-
nitive-affective mental representations help a person deal successfully
with threats and allow him or her to continue pursuing nonattachment
goals without having to interrupt goal-seeking activities to engage in
actual proximity bids.
Beyond considering normative features of the attachment system,
Bowlby (1973) described individual differences in the system’s func-
tioning. Interactions with significant others who are available in times of
need, sensitive to one’s attachment behavior, and responsive to one’s bids
for proximity (aspects of attachment figure availability) support the
normal functioning of the system and lead to a dispositional sense of
attachment security. That is, positive expectations about others’
availability and positive views of oneself as competent and valued are

formed and get reinforced throughout early development, and affect-
regulation strategies are organized around these positive beliefs.
However, when significant others are unavailable or unresponsive to
one’s needs, proximity seeking fails to relieve distress, and a dispositional
sense of attachment security is lost or never attained. As a result, negative
representations of self and others are formed (e.g., worries about others’
goodwill and doubts about one’s own worth), and strategies of affect
regulation other than proximity seeking (called conditional or secondary
attachment strategies; Main, 1990) are developed.
Most empirical tests of these ideas by personality and social psychol-
ogists who study adolescents and adults have focused on a person’s
attachment style, the systematic pattern of relational expectations, emo-
tions, and behavior that results from internalizing a particular history of
attachment experiences and consequent reliance on a particular attach-
ment-related strategy of affect regulation (Fraley & Shaver, 2000;
Mikulincer & Shaver, 2004; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). Initially, research
on attachment styles was based on Ainsworth et al.’s (1978) typology of
attachment patterns in infancy—including secure, anxious, and avoidant
attachment—and Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) conceptualization of parallel
adult styles in the domain of romantic relationships. However, subsequent
studies (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Brennan et al., 1998;
Simpson, 1990) revealed that attachment styles are best conceptualized
as regions in a two-dimensional space and that the two dimensions, attach-
ment anxiety and avoidance, could be measured with reliable and valid self-
report scales. Scores on these scales are, in line with Bowlby’s theory,
associated with relationship functioning and affect regulation (see
Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007, for a review)—and not only in dyadic relation-
ships but in group and organizational settings as well (Davidovitz,
Mikulincer, Shaver, Izsak, & Popper, 2007; Rom & Mikulincer, 2003).
In the two-dimensional (anxiety by avoidance) space, secure attach-
ment is indicated by low scores on both anxiety and avoidance. This
region is characterized by a sense of attachment security, comfort with
closeness and interdependence, and reliance on support seeking and other
constructive strategies for dealing with stress. The region that parallels
Ainsworth et al.’s (1978) conception of anxious attachment is defined by
a high score on the anxiety dimension and a low score on the avoidance
dimension. This region is characterized by a lack of attachment security, a
strong need for closeness, frequent worries about relationships, and fear
of being rejected. People located in this region exhibit both mental states
and behaviors focused on worries about rejection and abandonment and
strong efforts to gain proximity and support from relationship partners.
There is, in our opinion, no ‘‘mystery’’ or ‘‘miracle’’ involved in the
relation between the mental states and behaviors, because the two are so
closely intertwined.
The attachment pattern that Ainsworth et al. called ‘‘avoidant’’
corresponds to the region of the two-dimensional space in which avoid-
ance is high and overt anxiety is low. This region, like the anxious region,
is characterized by a lack of attachment security, but people with scores in
this region are compulsively self-reliant and prefer to remain emotionally
distant from others. The links between their mental states and behaviors
are fairly circuitous and have taken clever research to uncover, but there is
no ‘‘miracle’’ involved.
The fourth region of the space, where scores on both dimensions are
high, corresponds to what Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) called
‘‘fearful avoidance,’’ which is, in some respects, similar to a fourth pattern
of infant attachment, disorganized/disoriented, identified by Main and
Solomon (1990) subsequent to the work of Ainsworth et al. (1978).
People residing in this region of the two-dimensional space are especially
low in trust and have often been abused, neglected, or otherwise rendered
uncertain and frightened by parents or other attachment figures (Shaver
& Clark, 1994).
A MODEL OF ATTACHMENT SYSTEM FUNCTIONING IN

ADULTHOOD
In summarizing the hundreds of empirical studies of adult attachment

processes, we (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003, 2007) created a flowchart
model of the activation and dynamics of the attachment system. This
model integrates research findings with the theoretical ideas of Bowlby
(1973, 1982), Ainsworth (1991), Cassidy and Berlin (1994), Cassidy and
Kobak (1988), and Fraley and Shaver (2000). The model (Figure 18.1)
includes three major components. The first involves the monitoring and
appraisal of threatening events and is responsible for activation of the
primary attachment strategy—proximity seeking. The second component
involves monitoring and appraisal of the availability of external or inter-
nalized attachment figures and is responsible for individual differences in
the sense of attachment security and the development of what we call
security-based strategies. The third component involves monitoring and
appraisal of the viability of proximity seeking as a means of coping with
attachment insecurity and distress. This component is responsible for
individual differences in the development of specific secondary attach-
ment strategies (anxious hyperactivating versus avoidant deactivating stra-
tegies). The model includes excitatory and inhibitory pathways that result
Figure 18.1. Mikulincer and Shaver’s (2007) Model of the Activation and Dynamics
of the Attachment System in Adulthood. (Adapted here by permission.)
from recurrent use of secondary attachment strategies. These pathways in

turn affect the monitoring of threatening events and attachment figure
availability.
In building this model, we (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003, 2007)
assumed that the monitoring of mental and environmental events results
in activation of the attachment system whenever a potential or actual
threat is encountered. That is, during encounters with physical or
psychological threats, the attachment system is activated, and the primary

attachment strategy is set in motion. This strategy leads adults to turn to
internalized representations of attachment figures or to actual supportive
others, and to maintain symbolic or actual proximity to these figures. We
assume that age and development result in an increased ability to gain
comfort from symbolic representations of attachment figures and interna-
lized self-soothing routines based on interactions with attachment figures
(Mikulincer & Shaver, 2004), but like Bowlby (1982, 1988) we also assume
that no one of any age is completely free of actual reliance on others.
Once the attachment system is activated, an affirmative answer to the
question, ‘‘Is the attachment figure literally or symbolically available?’’
results in a sense of attachment security and what we, following
Fredrickson (2001), call a ‘‘broaden and build’’ cycle of attachment
security. This cycle bolsters a person’s resources for maintaining mental
health in times of stress and broadens his or her perspectives and capa-
cities. As a person gains experience and develops cognitively, more of the
role of a security-enhancing attachment figure can be internalized and
become part of personal strength and resilience. In adulthood, the ques-
tion about literal attachment figure availability becomes transformed into
a question about the adequacy of internal as well as external attachment-
related resources for coping with stress. In many cases, internal resources,
which were created originally with the help of security-providing attach-
ment figures, are likely to be sufficient, but when they are not, the person
with a secure attachment history is willing and able to depend on actual
attachment figures for support.
Attachment figure unavailability results in attachment insecurity,
which compounds the distress anyone might experience when
encountering a threat. Shaver and Mikulincer (2002) claimed that this
state of insecurity forces a ‘‘decision’’—conscious or unconscious—about
the viability of proximity seeking as a means of self-regulation, which in turn
leads to activation of a specific secondary attachment strategy. The appraisal
of proximity seeking as a viable option can result in very energetic, insistent
attempts to attain proximity, support, and love. In the literature on attach-
ment, these active, intense secondary strategies are called anxious
hyperactivating strategies (Cassidy & Berlin, 1994); they require constant
vigilance, concern, and effort until an attachment figure is perceived to be
available and a sense of security is attained. Hyperactivating strategies
include a strong approach orientation toward relationship partners,
attempts to elicit their involvement, care, and support through clinging
and controlling responses, and cognitive and behavioral efforts aimed at
minimizing distance from them (Shaver & Hazan, 1993). Hyperactivating
strategies are characteristic of people who score relatively high on the
attachment anxiety dimension (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).
The appraisal of proximity seeking as nonviable can cause

deactivation of proximity seeking, abandonment of the quest for support,
and a decision to handle threats and distress alone. These secondary
strategies of affect regulation are called avoidant deactivating strategies
(Cassidy & Kobak, 1988) because their primary goal is to keep the
attachment system deactivated to avoid frustration and further distress.
Adopting this goal results in denial of attachment needs; avoidance of
closeness, intimacy, and dependence in close relationships; maximization
of cognitive, emotional, and physical distance from others; and strivings
for self-reliance and independence. These deactivating strategies are char-
acteristic of people who score high on the avoidant attachment dimension
(Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).
Both hyperactivating and deactivating strategies cause qualitative
changes in the goal structure and functioning of the attachment system.
Moreover, they sometimes produce motivational conflicts and dissocia-
tions between the set-goal of proximity seeking and actual attachment-
related behavior. For example, hyperactivating strategies make the goal of
controlling others’ behaviors salient, which causes relationship partners
to withdraw and reject the person instead of getting closer to him or her.
Moreover, hyperactivating strategies include doubts about others’ good-
will and supportiveness, which in turn can block proximity-seeking beha-
viors despite the hunger for love, comfort, and protection that anxiously
attached people chronically experience (Holmes & Cavallo, Chapter 17,
this volume). In contrast, deactivating strategies often require inhibiting
proximity-seeking tendencies despite the fact that threats and dangers
automatically tend to activate the attachment system.
Having completed this admittedly abstract account of a theory to
which Bowlby (1973, 1980, 1982) devoted three long, densely referenced
volumes, we can now turn to empirical studies of mental and behavioral
processes related to the functioning of the attachment behavioral system
in adults. In particular, we will discuss studies of the ways in which mental
states, such as activation of the attachment system and global attachment
orientations, are manifested in relational behavior. We will also discuss
studies of the ways in which relational behaviors affect a person’s mental
states regarding attachment.
ACTIVATION OF THE ATTACHMENT BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM
Both attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982) and Ainsworth’s (1973) beha-

vioral observations suggest that perceived threats cause a person’s attach-
ment system to be activated. In infancy, this activation is assessed
behaviorally by observing a child’s reactions to sudden noises, to a
stranger, or to separation from his or her mother. In adulthood, there is

ample evidence that encountering a serious danger or threat elicits beha-
viors aimed at gaining proximity to and support from other people (e.g.,
Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1988; Schachter, 1959; Shaver & Klinnert, 1982).
For example, Fraley and Shaver (1998) unobtrusively observed couples
waiting in the departure lounges of a public airport and found that
couples who were separating were more likely than couples who were
not separating to seek and maintain physical contact (e.g., by mutually
gazing at each other’s faces, talking intently, and touching). Theoretically
speaking, the threat of separation activated these people’s attachment
systems and caused them to engage in proximity-seeking behavior.
The connection between experiencing stress and seeking support
from attachment figures has also been documented in a diary study of
couples (Collins & Feeney, 2005). Both members of each couple com-
pleted a nightly diary for 3 weeks, recording stressful life events, support-
seeking behaviors, predominant mood, and thoughts and feelings about
the relationship. In line with attachment theory, participants reported
seeking more instrumental and emotional support from their partner on
days when they experienced more stress. Another behavioral manifesta-
tion of attachment system activation was observed by Wisman and Koole
(2003), who exposed participants to a severe existential threat—thoughts
of their own mortality—and observed how they seated themselves for a
group discussion. Death reminders caused people to sit closer to others,
even if this seating preference required exposing their worldviews to
potential attack (they knew that other participants would disagree with
their beliefs).
However, these typical or normative behavioral manifestations of
attachment system activation are moderated by attachment style. For
example, Simpson, Rholes, and Nelligan (1992) invited heterosexual
dating couples to a laboratory, told the woman in each couple that she
was about to experience a scary, painful laboratory procedure, and then
asked the woman to wait with her partner for 5 minutes while the
experimenter prepared the apparatus. During this ‘‘waiting period,’’ par-
ticipants’ behavior was unobtrusively videotaped, and raters later coded
the extent to which each participant sought her partner’s support.
As expected, higher scores on the avoidance dimension were associated
with less support seeking mainly when avoidant women seemed to coders
to be quite distressed. These women often attempted to distract them-
selves by reading magazines instead of seeking comfort and support from
their partner. In a subsequent study, Collins and Feeney (2000) coded
support-seeking behavior while members of dating couples talked about a
personal problem in the laboratory. Again, avoidance was associated with
less frequent seeking of proximity or support. In addition, although
attachment anxiety did not affect direct requests for support, it was
associated with indirect methods of seeking support, such as conveying
a need for help through nonverbal distress signals common among young
children (crying, pouting, or sulking).
Interestingly, in some of our laboratory studies (Mikulincer,
Birnbaum, Woddis, & Nachmias, 2000; Mikulincer, Gillath, & Shaver,
2002), we have found that these attachment-style differences in support-
seeking behavior are not directly parallel to the unconscious activation of
attachment-related mental representations when a person is threatened.
That is, insecurely attached people show a degree of dissociation between
the automatic, unconscious activation of the first step toward proximity
seeking—for example, increasing the mental accessibility of an attach-
ment figure’s name—and the carrying out of subsequent steps in a beha-
vioral sequence. Specifically, we found that subliminal priming with a
threat-related word (e.g., illness, failure, separation), as compared with a
neutral word (e.g., hat), increased the cognitive accessibility of attach-
ment-related mental representations regardless of attachment style. This
heightened activation was indicated by faster lexical decision times for
proximity-related words (e.g., love, closeness) and names of people
nominated by a participant as security-providing attachment figures
(e.g., a parent, spouse, or close friend). These effects were obtained
from both secure and insecure participants.
However, despite the fact that attachment style did not moderate the
link between subliminal priming with a threat-related word and cognitive
accessibility of attachment-related mental representations, attachment
style did affect other aspects of attachment system activation. Anxious
attachment was associated with hyperactivated access to attachment-
related mental representations even without threats, and it was also
associated with activating not only positive attachment-related represen-
tations or working models but also negative ones (e.g., words such as
rejection and alone). This mental process is part of hyperactivated beha-
vioral strategies, such as remaining hypervigilant to a partner’s where-
abouts and potential infidelity and expressing anger following conflicts
and disagreements (Simpson, Rholes, & Phillips, 1996). Avoidant attach-
ment was associated with deactivated access to attachment-related repre-
sentations when the subliminal threat word was ‘‘separation.’’ That is,
more avoidant people took longer to access attachment-related concepts
following exposure to ‘‘separation,’’ suggesting that they have learned not
to activate attachment behavior when a partner threatens separation or
abandonment. In several laboratory studies (Mikulincer, Dolev, & Shaver,
2004), we found that imposing a cognitive load, such as remembering a
7-digit number, interferes with avoidant defenses and makes avoidant
individuals function more like anxious ones. In more naturalistic studies
(e.g., Berant, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2008) we found that a continuing

stressor that cannot be ignored, such as giving birth to a child with a
congenital heart defect, also disrupts usual avoidant strategies and results,
over a period of years, in worsening mental health, increased marital
distress, and poorer psychological outcomes for the child.
ATTACHMENT STYLES AND RELATIONAL BEHAVIOR
The studies reviewed so far show that attachment patterns can be assessed
by self-report and are related to microcognitive processes and support-
seeking behaviors and behavioral tendencies. In this section, we review
findings from studies showing that individual differences in attachment
are evident in behavior within dating and marital relationships and in
small groups.
Couple Relationships
Attachment-style differences in relational behavior have been observed in

studies of conversations between dating partners. For example, Guerrero
(1996) videotaped couples who were discussing personal problems and
found that avoidant attachment was associated with lower levels of facial
gaze, facial pleasantness, vocal pleasantness, general interest in the con-
versation, and attentiveness to the partner’s comments. Guerrero (1996)
also found that anxious attachment was associated with more vocal and
physical signs of distress during taped conversations. In another study,
Tucker and Anders (1998) videotaped dating couples while they dis-
cussed positive aspects of their relationship and found that more avoidant
people laughed less, touched their partner less, looked less often at their
partner, and smiled less during the interaction. More anxious people were
rated as displaying less enjoyment during their conversations.
Attachment researchers have also assessed partners’ behaviors
during actual conflicts and have noticed attachment-style differences in
conflict management difficulties. For example, Simpson et al. (1996),
J. A. Feeney (1998), and Campbell, Simpson, Boldry, and Kashy (2005)
found that insecurely attached men and women exhibited greater distress
and less skillful communication tactics while discussing a major disagree-
ment with their dating partner. J. A. Feeney (1998) also found that
attachment insecurities were associated with fewer displays of warmth
and affection during conflict discussions. Similar findings have been
obtained in studies based on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), an
interview focused on memories of childhood attachment relationships

(e.g., Creasey, 2002; Creasey & Ladd, 2005; Crowell et al., 2002).
In short, many studies converge to show that insecure attachment, mea-
sured with questionnaires or interviews, is associated with more negative
behavior during conflicts in both dating and married couples.
Laboratory studies of couples have also revealed insecure people’s
deficiencies in providing care to a partner. In a study mentioned earlier,
Simpson et al. (1992) unobtrusively videotaped dating couples while the
female partner waited to undergo a frightening experience, and judges
later rated (from video recordings) the female partners’ expressions of
distress and the male partners’ caregiving behavior. Secure men recog-
nized their partner’s worries and provided greater support as their partner
showed higher levels of distress, but men who scored high on avoidance
actually provided less support as their partner’s distress increased—a
pattern also seen in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation studies of avoidant
mothers and their infants. In another study, Simpson, Rholes, Orina, and
Grich (2002) exposed male members of couples to the threat of under-
going a frightening procedure and found that more avoidant female
partners provided less support regardless of their partner’s expressions
of distress.
Observational studies by Collins and her colleagues have documented
some of the deficiencies in anxious adults’ approach to providing care to
their partners. Collins and Feeney (2000), for example, videotaped dating
couples while one partner disclosed a personal problem to the other
partner (the ‘‘caregiver’’). Caregivers scoring higher on attachment
anxiety were coded (by independent judges) as less supportive during
the interaction, especially when a partner’s needs were not very clear (i.e.,
when the partner engaged in less obvious support seeking). In two sub-
sequent laboratory experiments, B. C. Feeney and Collins (2001) and
Collins, Guichard, Ford, and Feeney (2006) found that more avoidant
and anxious participants were less supportive precisely when the partner
most needed support.
Two observational studies of interactions between romantic relation-
ship partners also show that attachment anxiety is associated with expres-
sions of anger toward a romantic partner (Rholes, Simpson, & Orina,
1999; Simpson et al., 1996). In Simpson and colleagues’ (1996) study,
anger reactions were observed during conflictual interactions in which
romantic partners were asked to identify an unresolved problem in their
relationship, discuss it, and try to resolve it. Attachment anxiety was
associated with the display and report of more anger, hostility, and dis-
tress during the conversation. In Rholes and colleagues’ (1999) study,
behavioral manifestations of anger were assessed among women who
interacted with their romantic partners while waiting to engage in an
anxiety-provoking activity. In this study, as mentioned earlier, self-

reports of attachment anxiety were associated with more intense obser-
vable anger toward partners after the couples were told that the women
would not have to perform the stressful activity. This association was
particularly strong when women were more upset during the waiting
period or when they sought more support from their partners.
Daily diary studies of couple interactions provide important informa-
tion about attachment-style differences in everyday relational behaviors.
For example, Bradford, Feeney, and Campbell (2002) found that more
avoidant participants reported fewer and less intimate disclosures in their
everyday conversations with dating partners and felt less satisfied with the
disclosure process. Attachment-anxious individuals made more negative
disclosures, and their partners rated these disclosures as relatively unsa-
tisfying and negative in tone. In another diary study, Lavy (2006) found
that more anxious participants typically reported more daily intrusive
behaviors and were perceived by their partners as engaging in more
intrusive behaviors, but this association was moderated by relationship
satisfaction on the previous day. That is, anxious people reported rela-
tively high levels of intrusive behavior mainly when they had been dis-
satisfied with their relationship the previous day. This implies that
anxious intrusiveness is part of anxious people’s efforts to create or
restore a desired level of closeness. Like other anxious behaviors, these
closeness regulation efforts are likely to backfire if they cause a partner to
feel intruded upon.
This kind of closeness regulation in dating couples was also observed
in a diary study assessing daily variations in seeking reassurance from a
partner (Shaver, Schachner, & Mikulincer, 2005). Participants who
scored higher on attachment anxiety were more likely, across the
2-week study period, to seek reassurance from their partner. In addition,
anxious men sought more reassurance following days on which they
experienced relationship conflicts than following days on which little or
no conflict was reported.
Small Group Interactions
Attachment styles, viewed as fairly stable personality constellations, are

likely to have effects that extend beyond romantic and other dyadic
relationships to behavior in small groups (a topic area reviewed by
Moreland, Fetterman, Flagg, and Swanenburg, Chapter 3, this volume).
Exploring this possibility, Rom and Mikulincer (2003) studied small
groups of new military recruits in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF),
whose performance in combat units was evaluated during a 2-day
screening session. Attachment anxiety was associated with poor

instrumental performance during group missions, and avoidant attach-
ment was associated with lower levels of both instrumental and socio-
emotional functioning during group missions (as assessed by observers’
ratings). Interestingly, group cohesion improved the socioemotional and
instrumental functioning of group members and reduced the detrimental
effects of attachment anxiety on instrumental behavior during group
missions. From an attachment perspective, a cohesive group can be
viewed as a group-level provider of approval and security, which makes
anxious behavioral strategies less necessary and enables attachment-
anxious soldiers to engage more fully and effectively in instrumental
tasks. A sense of group cohesion, like a sense of being ‘‘close’’ in dyadic
relationships, signals that closeness, support, consensus, and approval—
all prominent goals of attachment-anxious people—have been attained,
thereby freeing resources for task performance.
Attachment-related impediments to smooth group functioning have
also been observed in the context of group psychotherapy. In a study by
Shechtman and Rybko (2004), Israeli university students completed a
self-report attachment measure before beginning a series of 12 or 13 two-
hour group counseling sessions in which they were expected, with the
help of a counselor, to share personal information, listen empathically to
others, and help other group members deal with interpersonal problems.
Both attachment-anxious and avoidant participants were rated after the
first group session as sharing less intimate personal information than
secure participants shared. In addition, whereas avoidant participants
were rated as displaying lower levels of self-disclosure and empathy
than secure ones at the end of the counseling process, anxiously attached
participants were rated as working less constructively than secure ones
during group sessions.
ATTACHMENT INSECURITIES AFFECTED BY OBSERVABLE

PARTNER BEHAVIOR
So far, we have reviewed research findings showing that people’s

attachment-related mental states shape their behavior in couple relation-
ships and small groups. We should also consider, however, whether, as
Bowlby and Ainsworth maintained, mental states such as attachment
security, anxiety, and avoidance are affected by relationship partners’
behavior. Ainsworth and her followers have demonstrated that infants’
attachment behaviors are definitely shaped by parents’ behavior in their
role as attachment figures (see, for example, the review by van IJzendoorn
& Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2004). From early on, Ainsworth et al. (1978)
provided persuasive evidence for the impact of parental behavior on the

formation of an infant’s attachment style. Behavioral observations in
families’ homes were closely linked with infants’ later behavior in the
Strange Situation. For example, mothers of securely attached infants
were more emotionally available in times of need; they were sensitive
and responsive to their children’s proximity-seeking behavior (Ainsworth
et al., 1978). In contrast, mothers of avoidant infants were uncomfortable
with physical closeness and were emotionally rigid, often angry, and
observably rejecting of their infants’ bids for close proximity. Mothers
of anxious infants were inconsistently sensitive and responsive, perhaps
because of their own self-preoccupation, uncertainty, and anxiety
(Ainsworth et al., 1978). In subsequent decades, dozens of studies have
followed up Ainsworth et al.’s (1978) findings and revealed other rele-
vant parental behaviors, such as expressions of positive affect, helpful
discussions of emotion (as the child acquires language), and encourage-
ment of exploration, that contribute to the formation of a secure attach-
ment and security-related patterns of behavior and affect regulation (see
Atkinson et al., 2000; De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; and Thompson,
2008, for reviews).
Moreover, longitudinal studies document the formative influence of
attachment figures’ behavior on offsprings’ later adult attachment orien-
tations. For example, Beckwith, Cohen, and Hamilton (1999) found that
maternal sensitivity and responsiveness during early childhood were asso-
ciated with fewer avoidant and more secure AAI classifications in late
adolescence. Relying on data from the Minnesota longitudinal study
(Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005), Roisman, Madsen,
Hennighausen, Sroufe, and Collins (2001) found that more sensitive
and responsive parenting when study participants were 13 years old was
associated with more secure attachment at age 19. Similarly, Allen and
Hauser (1996) found that secure attachment to mother at age 25 was
associated with mother’s encouragement of relatedness and autonomy
during videotaped social interactions when the study participants were 14
years old.
In a recent longitudinal study, Dinero, Conger, Shaver, Widaman,
and Larsen-Rife (2008) examined associations between the quality of
observed interaction patterns in the family of origin during early adoles-
cence (rated by trained observers from video recordings of a structured
interaction task) and self-reported romantic attachment style and
observed romantic relationship behaviors in adulthood (at ages 25
and 27). Both self-reported romantic attachment orientations and coded
behavioral interactions with romantic partners were predictable from
early adolescent interactions with parents. Moreover, as romantic rela-
tionships endured and led to marriage, one partner’s social behaviors
measurably influenced changes in the other’s partner’s attachment style.

Thus, even in young adults, the attachment behavioral system is affected
by observable behavioral interactions with relationship partners.
In another examination of the influence of one romantic partner’s
relational behavior on the other partner’s attachment style, Lavi (2007)
conducted a prospective 8-month study of young couples who had been
dating for no more than 3 to 4 months. At the beginning of the study, Lavi
randomly selected one partner in each of 100 couples to serve as the study
‘‘participant’’ and the other partner to serve as the ‘‘attachment figure.’’
From the ‘‘participants’’ Lavi (2007) collected self-reports of relationship
satisfaction, dispositional attachment anxiety and avoidance, and attach-
ment insecurities within the specific relationship under study. She also
observed interactions between the participants and their attachment
figures and coded the attachment figures’ sensitivity and supportiveness.
Measures of sensitivity included accuracy in decoding emotional facial
expressions and accuracy in decoding negative and positive emotions that
participants displayed in a nonverbal communication task. Measures of
supportiveness included actual supportive behaviors, coded by indepen-
dent judges, during a video-recorded dyadic interaction in which partici-
pants disclosed a personal problem. Four and eight months later,
participants who were still dating the same romantic partner (73% of
the sample) once again completed self-report measures of within-
relationship attachment orientations.
Participants’ reports of within-relationship attachment anxiety and
avoidance gradually decreased over the 8-month period, implying that
maintenance of a dating relationship contributed to a decrease in relation-
ship-specific attachment insecurity. However, these positive changes
depended greatly on the attachment figure’s previously observed sensi-
tivity and supportiveness. Partners who were more accurate in decoding
facial expressions and nonverbal expressions of negative emotions and
were coded by judges as more supportive toward their partner in the
dyadic interaction task brought about a steeper decline in within-
relationship attachment anxiety and avoidance over the 8-month
period. In fact, participants did not exhibit a significant decrease in
within-relationship attachment insecurities if their partners scored rela-
tively low on behavioral measures of sensitivity and supportiveness at the
beginning of the study. These long-term changes in within-relationship
attachment organization were not explained by variations in baseline
relationship satisfaction and were independent of participants’ general
attachment orientations at the beginning of the study. That is, a partner’s
sensitive and supportive behaviors predicted prospective decreases in
within-relationship attachment insecurities in both chronically secure
and chronically insecure participants. Overall, these findings highlight
the importance of a romantic partner’s behavior in changing a person’s

attachment-related mental states.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The findings reviewed here, as well as many more reviewed in our

comprehensive book about adult attachment (Mikulincer & Shaver,
2007), flesh out the claim that social life, which means human life in
general, is a very long chain of mental states and observable behaviors—a
chain in which the links often involve reciprocal causal arrows. A person’s
mental representations of self and relationship partners—both specific
partners and generalized ‘‘others’’—are residues of actual experiences in
relationships, sometimes amplified or shaped by imagination, rumina-
tion, worries, and wishful thinking. These mental representations color
subsequent concerns, goals, and action plans, which influence actions,
which shape joint self-partner situations, which are again interpreted,
remembered, and ruminated upon in ways colored by pre-existing scripts
or models, but which can also alter those scripts or models (usually only
slightly, unless similar information is repeatedly incorporated).
Many of the details of this process have been demonstrated, at con-
scious and unconscious levels (and even in the brain; Gillath, Bunge,
Shaver, Wendelken, & Mikulincer, 2005), using many different methods
and measures. As a result, there is no ‘‘miracle’’ left to explain. In the same
sense that a person goes to a closet and picks up an umbrella before leaving
home in a rainstorm, a person who is anxious about attachment foresees
rejection and abandonment and maintains vigilance for signs of partner
disaffection or disloyalty, and a person who is avoidant foresees unplea-
sant entanglements and impositions and therefore refuses to self-disclose
or become highly dependent or interdependent. For some reason, psy-
chologists seem perversely impelled to focus on one feature of human
existence at a time. Thus, behaviorism, which deliberately neglected
thoughts, motives, and emotions, was supplanted by the ‘‘cognitive
revolution,’’ which proceeded to ignore motives and emotions (or, if
not ignore them, try to explain them in largely cognitive terms).
Eventually, emotions and motives made their way back into the story,
resulting in the creation of new journals, such as Emotion. Now, thanks to
an influential article by Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007; see also
Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder, Chapter 2, this volume), social-
personality psychologists are worrying about the neglect of behavior.
We will know we have achieved full scientific self-confidence when all
of these very real aspects of human life and experience form a seamless
conceptual whole, just as genes, bodies, and behavior do in biology.
It’s interesting that the cartoon used by this volume’s editors to

highlight the supposed gap between relationship cognitions and feelings,
on the one hand, and social behavior, on the other, showed what appear
to be two mathematical physicists contemplating a long equation with a
‘‘miracle’’ inserted at a foggy area in the middle of the chain of numerical
expressions. Psychologists have long felt inadequate in comparison with
their idealized conception of physicists because it seemed that physicists
had a much more complete picture of the phenomena they study than
psychologists have of what we study. The cartoon about the mathema-
tical physicists is funny partly because the sophistication implied by the
complex equation doesn’t fit with a need to postulate a miracle. We don’t
expect physicists to invoke miracles, even though ordinary people have,
for eons, been explaining the physical world and their own experiences in
terms of spirits and miracles. Behaviorally oriented psychologists have
wanted to get away from spirits and miracles and focus on good old rock-
solid behavior. But behavior is no more real than mental states, and
behavior would not be very interesting if it took place robotically, without
mental states and human meanings. It might be worthwhile, from time to
time, to view behavior as just a vehicle that moves us from one mean-
ingful mental state to another. This is no better and no worse than viewing
mental states as phenomena that carry us from one behavior to another.
Oddly enough, in present-day physics it is necessary to postulate the
existence of dark matter and dark energy, which no one has yet seen or
measured. ‘‘Dark matter’’ and ‘‘dark energy’’ might as well be called
miracles because they are cognitive placeholders for something that phy-
sicists’ equations require but that observations and measurements do not
yet reveal. In this sense, the study of attachment-related aspects of human
relationships relies less on miracles than physics and cosmology do. There
are obviously many details yet to be discovered and to be better measured,
but it is already clear that mental states and behaviors are equally real and
are reciprocally related, and we need postulate no miracles to explain why.
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19 Grounding Social Psychology in Behavior
in Daily Life: The Case of Conflict and
Distress in Couples
Niall Bolger
Gertraud Stadler
Christine Paprocki
Anita DeLongis
The challenge put to participants at the Purdue Symposium was to

discuss and perhaps remedy social psychology’s neglect of behavior as a
focus of research and theory. We the presenters were asked to use the
‘‘And Then a Miracle Occurs’’ New Yorker cartoon as a point of
departure for our contributions. Not surprisingly, different presenters
took different sources of mirth from the cartoon. For our group, the
humor derived from the absurdity of social psychology’s ignoring of
behavior, of its taking for granted that internal states such as thoughts
and feelings have clear implications for behavior. We believe that this
is especially true when one considers behavior in the real world as
opposed to the laboratory. A social psychology worthy of its name
should not only encompass behavior, it should encompass behavior in
the real world. Our contribution to the symposium and the edited
volume is to demonstrate what social psychology has to gain by
adding to its research methods the use of intensive longitudinal designs
to study behavior in daily life (e.g., Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003).
One of the most consequential behaviors for well-being in daily life
is interpersonal conflict. For example, in a large community sample of
married couples, interpersonal conflict accounted for over 80% of the
explained variance in negative mood (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, &
Schilling, 1989). Negativity and distress in intimate relationships are
GROUNDING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN BEHAVIOR IN DAILY LIFE 369
also key predictors of relationship satisfaction and divorce. In a 10-year

longitudinal study, Huston, Caughlin, Houts, Smith, and George
(2001) found that couples who later divorced had higher levels of
negativity and distress early in their marriage than did couples who
stayed happily married. Marital conflict has been associated with the
onset of depressive symptoms, eating disorders, and alcohol abuse
(Fincham, 2003). And although married persons generally enjoy better
health than do their unmarried counterparts, marital conflict is asso-
ciated with poorer physical health. It has been shown that marital
conflict alters hormone levels (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1997; Malarkey,
Kiecolt-Glaser, Pearl, & Glaser, 1994), decreases immune responses
(Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1994), and raises blood pressure (Ewart,
Taylor, Kraemer, & Agras, 1991). Over time, these negative marital
interactions can lead to chronic health problems (for reviews, see
Burman & Margolin, 1992; Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001). Indeed,
marital conflicts have repeatedly been found to even predict poorer
health in the children of these couples (Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman,
2002; Troxel & Matthews, 2004).
As costly as conflicts are to couples, they seem to serve an impor-
tant function. Two studies of newlywed couples over their first 4 years
of marriage indicate that marital conflict can allow couples to address
problems in the relationship and provide an opportunity to solve them
(McNulty, O’Mara, & Karney, 2008). When partners in troubled mar-
riages used benevolent strategies that minimized the impact of negative
experiences, instead of addressing them directly, they showed steep
declines in relationship satisfaction by allowing problems to worsen
over time. Because of these serious and varied implications of conflict,
it is important to obtain a detailed picture of conflict behavior as it
occurs in daily life.
Conventional measures of marital conflict are often far removed
from the actual conflict behaviors. When measures of conflict are
obtained, they are typically retrospective summary reports of conflict
frequency that are used as components of global marital satisfaction.
However, it has been found that even such summary reports of conflict
frequency can be more highly predictive of well-being outcomes than
the overall satisfaction scales themselves (Johnson, White, Edwards, &
Booth, 1986; McGonagle, Kessler, & Schilling, 1992). For example,
frequency of marital arguments has been shown to be associated with
the onset and remission of clinical depression (Hooley & Teasdale,
1989; Paykel, Myers, & Dienelt, 1969) and daily distressed mood
(McGonagle et al., 1992). Despite these far-reaching implications,
there has been no rigorous documentation of the temporal patterning
of conflicts.
Using Diary Methods
One problem that arises when studying any recurring behavior,

including marital conflict, is the tendency for individuals to forget
when or to what extent they enacted the behavior. It is known, for
example, that retrospective frequency reports can suffer from con-
siderable bias (Schwarz, 1999). Concurrent measurement of behavior
using structured daily diaries has been proposed as an alternative that
can minimize limitations of memory, problems of estimation, and bias
in recall (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003; DeLongis, Hemphill, &
Lehman, 1992). Diary measures can capture characteristics of beha-
vior such as timing, frequency, and emotional reactivity that are hard
to assess with conventional self-report measures. As Tennen, Affleck,
Coyne, Larsen, and DeLongis (2006) point out, emotions are rapidly
changing phenomena, and as such, can be assessed reliably only if they
are measured close to their real-time occurrence. They argue that
although end-of-day recollections of emotional experiences are vul-
nerable to the retrieval biases that affect episodic memory (Stone,
Shiffman, & DeVries, 1999) and are likely to overestimate real-time
affective reactions (Barrett, 1997), same-day recollections show high
accuracy when compared with more frequent online reports (Thomas
& Diener, 1990; Tugade, Conner, & Barrett, in press).
Bolger and Kelleher (1993) recommended that researchers use daily
diaries in characterizing the quality of interpersonal relationships.
Although a great deal of research has indicated the importance of marital
conflict for well-being, how conflict plays out in the day-to-day lives of
couples is unclear. A critical aim of daily diary data is to represent a
universe of occasions, just as cross-sectional data aim to represent a
population of individuals (Tennen et al., 2006). If the behavior is rela-
tively rare, such as conflict episodes in couples, sampling at random
moments during the day is inefficient and likely to miss the behavior of
interest. Relatively infrequent behaviors like marital conflict can be
recorded reliably, however, at day’s end.
In addition to their descriptive capacity, diaries can address a variety
of research questions that are relevant for understanding and predicting
behavior such as (a) how often the typical person engages in a certain
behavior on average, (b) the extent to which the typical person’s behavior
varies over time, and (c) whether people differ from one another in mean
levels and variability over time. In looking at behavioral variability both
within and between subjects, researchers are equipped to test theories
explaining a particular behavior’s antecedents and effects. In the case of
marital conflict, for example, some couples seem to never get into a
conflict while others fight frequently. It is likely that the typical couple
does not represent this diversity well. Variability in and of itself is rarely
explored, and yet it can be quite consequential for all stages of the
research process. Since a goal of social psychology is to describe and
explain social behavior in general, across a diversity of individuals, it
makes sense to examine variability as closely as we examine mean
levels. Until recently, this sort of analysis proved difficult to do, but
later on in this chapter we will demonstrate how current statistical
techniques allow us to more thoroughly examine variability in our
sample of couples.
A Dyadic Perspective
When studying marital processes, it is important to take not only the

individual into account but rather both spouses’ perspectives because
these perspectives can differ radically (Jacobson & Moore, 1981; Keefe &
Porter, 2007; Lam, Lehman, Puterman, & DeLongis, in press). For example,
within a period of stress and tension, partners might differ on the days they
report that a marital conflict has occurred. Gable, Reis, and Downey (2003)
explored the question of congruence and divergence in partners’ percep-
tions of their daily interactions and found that when one partner reports a
negative interaction, even if the other partner does not report such an
interaction, there are significant effects on daily mood and relationship
satisfaction for both partners. Yet very little research on the effects of marital
conflict on well-being has obtained reports from both partners, instead
relying on one partner’s perceptions of marital tension and conflict. Given
this, the pathways through which marital conflict exerts its influence on
well-being is unclear. When relying exclusively on one partner’s percep-
tions, our assumption that the conflict is critically important to the couple as
a whole could be false. Indeed, such conflict and tension may exist only in
the eye of the beholder. Examining concordance between spouses in reports
of marital conflict and tension affords a better understanding of the influ-
ence of marital conflict on the mood of both partners.
Gender is another key variable in studying conflict processes. For
example, it has been shown that there are gender-typical patterns in
conflict style across husbands and wives. One such pattern that has been
studied extensively is the ‘‘wife-demand/husband-withdraw’’ pattern,
in which the wife desires a change in the relationship involving some
action on the part of the husband, who responds by withdrawing from
the conflict and becoming noncommunicative (Sullaway & Christensen,
1983). These findings have been replicated in both clinically distressed
couples and community samples (Christensen & Heavey, 1990).
However, recent findings suggest that this cycle may be less gender
dependent than previously thought, and more dependent on who in the

relationship wants the change (Fincham, 2003). It is the spouse who
desires change, regardless of gender, who tends to approach, while the
other spouse withdraws. Women more often want change, so more
often approach. Women also tend to report more distress in general
relative to men, and this increased reporting seems to be due to genu-
inely higher levels of distress, rather than a reporting bias or artifact
(Mirowsky & Ross, 1995). From these findings, we might expect that in
looking at frequency of reported conflicts and daily distress in couples,
wives will report more conflicts than husbands, or at least report more
distress related to them.
Daily Diary Study of Marital Conflict
It has now been 20 years since Bolger et al. (1989) published their report
on daily stressors in a large sample of married couples. In the intervening
years there have been major developments in statistical modeling that can
usefully be applied to this data set. The goal of this chapter, therefore, is
to revisit the Bolger et al. (1989) diary data set to provide a more fine-
grained analysis of marital conflict than was possible using the statistical
methods available two decades ago. The 1989 paper focused on mean
levels of conflict and mood but left unaddressed the question of variability
and covariability across spouses. With modern analytic methods, rigorous
assessment of variability in conflict frequency and emotional reactivity
can now be considered.
The specific questions that can be addressed now that could not be
addressed then are (a) to what extent do couples differ from one another
in their levels of marital conflict and their emotional reactivity to those
conflicts, and (b) to what extent are husbands who show high levels of
marital conflict exposure and reactivity paired with wives who show
corresponding levels.
In our study, each partner independently filled out a background
questionnaire and then a diary over a maximum period of 42 consecu-
tive diary days. Husbands and wives were mailed their diaries separately
and returned them in separate envelopes. Each partner was asked to
apply adhesive strips to seal the day’s diary after completion to ensure
confidentiality. The diary study itself was part of the Detroit Area
Study, which comprised a random community sample of 778 married
couples in metropolitan Detroit. Of these, 400 couples were invited to
be in a supplementary diary study. The final sample for this study is the
150 couples in which both partners filled out at least seven daily diaries
regarding marital conflicts and daily distress. Further details on the
sample can be found in Bolger et al. (1989). We assessed marital con-

flict with the item: ‘‘We would like to know about any tension or
argument you had with any of these people during the past 24 hours.
Please check each box that applies.’’ If a subject had checked the box for
‘‘Your wife/husband,’’ then we coded the day as a marital conflict day.
The diary also included an inventory of 18 mood items from the Affects
Balance Scale (Derogatis, 1975) designed to measure clinical levels of
anxiety (e.g., nervous, tense, afraid), hostility (e.g., irritable, angry,
resentful), and depression (e.g., helpless, worthless, depressed). On
the basis of their emotional state over the previous 24-hour period,
respondents were asked to rate each of the 18 items on a 4-point scale
ranging from ‘‘not at all’’ to ‘‘a lot’’ with the instruction: ‘‘Circle the
number that best describes your feelings during the past 24 hours.’’
Responses to all items were combined and rescaled to create a summary
measure of distressed mood, which ranged from 0 (all items endorsed
‘‘not at all’’) to 1 (all items endorsed ‘‘a lot’’). The scale had high internal
consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ¼ .91). The mean was .09, and the stan-
dard deviation was .14.
New Findings on Exposure to Daily Conflict
Although previously published papers using this data set have

reported on exposure to daily conflict (Bolger et al., 1989), and
heterogeneity in exposure as a function of personality (Bolger &
Schilling, 1991), our approach here is in some respects more and
less ambitious than the previous work. It is less ambitious in the
sense that we do not attempt to explain why couples differ in
exposure. It is more ambitious, however, in attempting to estimate
the full extent of the heterogeneity. To do so we use each husband’s
and wife’s independent report of marital conflict each day as data
and estimate a multilevel logistic regression model that specifies a
population distribution of probabilities of reporting conflict across all
days, separately for husbands and wives. The model provides esti-
mates of the mean and variance of these distributions and their
correlation. The reader may wonder why, given that husbands and
wives are reporting on the same event, we do not first of all attempt
some reconciling of the reports prior to data analysis. We could have,
for example, taken the average, the union, or the intersection of the
two reports. We chose instead to allow the results of the multilevel
analysis to tell us the extent to which husbands and wives agree or
disagree about the typical level of conflict between them.
Details on the multilevel logistic model estimation are presented in

the Appendix. We focus here on the key results. First, on average do
husbands and wives agree on the level of conflict between them? For
husbands, the log-odds of a marital conflict for any given day is 3.3,
which corresponds to a probability of .036 (95% CI: .028, .046). For
wives, the log-odds is 3.1, which corresponds to a probability of .043
(CI: .034, .054). Although the estimated probability of conflict for wives
is somewhat higher than that for husbands, the estimates do not differ
significantly (t(148) ¼ 1.38, p ¼ .17), and therefore we cannot rule out
the hypothesis that husbands and wives are in agreement about their
engagement in marital conflict. If we use the average of the two partners’
estimates as the best guess as to the overall level of marital conflict, we
obtain an estimate of .041, which corresponds to a little over one conflict
per month. This is consistent with what others have reported, with
Fincham (2003) pointing out in his review that about 80% of couples
report having less than one overt disagreement per month.
A second way to assess agreement between husbands and wives is
through calculating the correlation between their average reports across
couples. Specifically, do husbands who have relatively high log-odds of
conflict tend to be paired with wives who are also relatively high? Using
the multilevel analysis we observed that the degree of correlation
between husbands and wives across couples was very high, r(148) ¼ .86
(CI: 0.81, 0.90), sufficiently high to meet typical standards in psycho-
metrics for parallel measures (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Note, how-
ever, that the confidence interval allows us to exclude population values
greater than .90. Thus, while the correlation is impressive, we can none-
theless be very confident that the correlation between spouses is not
perfect in the population. This discrepancy is interesting in its own right
and deserves further investigation.
Although the key results of multilevel analyses involve estimates of
population means, variances, and correlations of random effects, further
insight into the data can be gained by obtaining what can be called
posterior estimates of the random effects for the sample (also known as
empirical best linear unbiased predictors, or EBLUPs; Littell, Milliken,
Stroup, Wolfinger, & Schabenberger, 2006). In this way it is possible to
see what the model’s best guess is for—in the present example’s case—the
probability of conflict for each of the husbands and wives in each of the
150 couples in our sample. Figure 19.1, therefore, displays a scatterplot
of model-estimated probabilities of marital conflict for husbands (on the
y-axis) and wives (on the x-axis).
Figure 19.1 shows that although the average probability of conflict is
approximately .04, there is large variability in that probability across
couples. The predicted conflict engagement probabilities in the sample
0.27
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Husband’s Average Exposure to Conflict

0.20
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375
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0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.10 0.11 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.19 0.20 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25
Wife’s Average Exposure to Conflict
Figure 19.1. Husband’s and Wife’s Average Exposure to Conflicts Over 42 Diary Days: Model-Based Estimates. (Note: Each point represents
one couple).
range from .01 to .24 for women and from .01 to .26 for men. Recall that
these are model predictions for the sample. Consistent with these values,
the estimated 95% range of population values based on the model is .004
to .25 for wives and from .006 to .25 for husbands. There is no evidence of
population gender differences in the between-person variability
(t(148) ¼ .63, p < .53).
Figure 19.1 also shows a line of perfect agreement between spouses.
Although it appears that more points fall below the line than above, a test
of whether the regression lines of husband scores on wife score differs
from 1.0 was nonsignificant. Similarly, a test of whether the regression of
wives’ scores on husbands’ scores differed from 1.0 was also not statisti-
cally significant. Thus, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the means for
husbands and wives are identical and also that scores are distributed
evenly around a line of perfect agreement.
In summary, we have found that although rates of marital conflict
reported in the diaries are low, there is substantial between-couples
heterogeneity in those rates, and there is a high level of agreement
between spouses regarding those rates. This high level of agreement
supports the idea that the diary reports are revealing actual behavioral
episodes visible to both partners. If people were not able to accurately
recall the events of the day, or if they were reporting on internal states
rather than behaviors they enacted, one would not expect such agreement
across partners.
Daily Distress in a Dyadic Context
The second goal of this paper is to document between-couple hetero-

geneity in reactivity to marital conflict, and we move now to a statistical
model that incorporates daily conflicts as a predictor of daily distress.
Such a model allows us to distinguish days on which individuals reported
that no marital conflict occurred and days on which they reported that a
conflict occurred. Using that information we will focus on two outcomes:
First, how distressed are husbands and wives on no-conflict days? Given
that conflicts occurred approximately once a month on average, these
correspond to the vast majority of days. Second, how much more dis-
tressed are husbands and wives when they experience a conflict, defined
as how much more distressed they were on days when they reported
having a marital conflict than on days when they did not. As in the case of
the occurrence of conflicts, we will also determine the correlation
between the two outcomes across couples. The appendix contains the
details on the statistical model used.
Average distress on no-conflict days. The multilevel analysis produced

estimates of means and standard deviations of distress on no-conflict days
for husbands and wives. Overall, distress levels were very low, and we
found no evidence of gender differences in distress. The average husband
was estimated to have a mean distress (on a 0 to 1 scale) of 0.085 (CI:
0.073, 0.097); the average wife also had a mean distress of 0.085 (CI:
0.074, 0.096; tdiff(146) ¼ .02, p < .99).
Although husbands and wives in our sample had identical distress
levels on average, there was evidence of a gender difference in variability:
The between-couple standard deviation was larger for husbands (SD ¼
.075, CI: .066, .084) than for wives (SD ¼ .063, CI: .055, .070;
tdiff(146) ¼ 2.06, p < .041). The confidence interval for the difference
ranged from essentially no gender difference to husbands having a stan-
dard deviation of .024 greater than wives.
Figure 19.2 shows a scatterplot of the posterior estimates of the
random effects for husbands’ and wives’ average distress on no-conflict
days. They show only a slight tendency for distressed husbands to be
paired with distressed wives. The between-couple correlation between
these random effects is small (r ¼ .27, t(146) ¼ 2.84, p < .0045). There
are plenty of examples of relatively distressed husbands who have wives
who show low distress and vice versa. These findings are somewhat
surprising given multiple theoretical models that posit an interrelation-
ship in mood between members of a couple. Primary among these are
models of mood contagion (Joiner & Katz, 1999), which argue that one
spouse’s negative affect would ‘‘infect’’ the other. Second, negative affect
in both partners has been posited to coexist due to assortative mating. For
example, evidence suggests that depressed individuals may select a simi-
larly depressed mate (Maes et al., 1998; Mathews & Reus, 2001). Yet our
findings suggest that in examining couples’ mood at a day-to-day level,
evidence for both mood contagion and assortative mating appears to be
small.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a relative absence of couples who are
both relatively high on distress. High distress levels in both partners could
indicate that the couple is going through a mutual life stressor, or that
their relationship is troubled. Such couples are likely to choose not to
participate in a study of this nature because the time and commitment
needed might be overwhelming. Furthermore, it could be that marriages
characterized by the presence of high distress in both members of the
couple are unstable and less viable in the long-term, making these couples
more rare in a sample.
Reactivity to Daily Conflict. Consistent with the original Bolger et al.

(1989) report, both husbands and wives show strong reactivity to marital
0.41
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Husband’s Average Distress 0.28
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0.25
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0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.20 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28 0.30 0.32 0.34 0.36 0.38
Wife’s Average Distress
Figure 19.2. Husband’s and Wife’s Average Distress on No-Conflict Days Over 42 Diary Days: Model-Based Estimates (Note: Each point
represents one couple).
conflict on the same day. The average coefficient for husbands is 0.110
units (CI: 0.088, 0.131); the equivalent for wives is 0.139 (CI: 0.111,
0.167). Bolger et al. concluded that wives were more reactive to marital
arguments than were their husbands. Using the current statistical frame-
work we do not have sufficient power to be confident of that claim. The
confidence interval for the difference ranges from 0.002 indicating no
difference in reactivity to 0.062 indicating that females could be twice as
reactive as males (t(146) ¼ 1.81, p < .071).
A question that was not posed by Bolger et al. (1989)—and could
not have been posed given their statistical model—was whether
husbands as a group were more or less variable in their reactivity
than wives as a group. The standard deviation in reactivity for hus-
bands was 0.091 (CI: 0.071, 0.111) and for wives was 0.127 (CI:
0.105, 0.149). Based on these estimates we conclude that wives are
more heterogeneous than husbands in their reactivity to marital
conflicts (tdiff(146) ¼ 2.48, p < .014). Finally, as in the case of dis-
tress on no-conflict days, there is only a weak positive relationship
between husbands’ and wives’ reactivity, r(146) ¼ .26, t(146) ¼ 1.56,
p < .120.
Figure 19.3 shows a scatterplot of the posterior estimates of hus-
bands’ and wives’ conflict reactivity in our sample. The univariate dis-
tributions are both positively skewed, and we have separated the plot into
quadrants based on the median values in the sample. To give the reader a
better understanding of the diary records for these combinations of reac-
tivity, we present in Figure 19.4 plots of the occurrence of conflict and
levels of daily distress in a selection of specific couples highlighted by
circles in Figure 19.3.
By looking at the level of individual couples (see Figure 19.4), we are
able to detect patterns that at the between-couples level would not be
evident. For example, we can see that although on average agreement
about conflict days is high, couples do not always agree on the specific
days on which they argued with each other. Often, we see a pattern in
which there is an overall agreement on a period of conflict, though the
partners may report their conflicts a day or two off from each other. We
hope to examine this further, to determine whether broad conflict per-
iods are more highly predictive of distress than particular conflict days.
This might be expected because we are able to see that at times a wife may
report a conflict that her husband does not (or vice versa), but both of
them experience an increase in distress on that day.
In Figure 19.4, for each of four combinations of husband-wife reactivity
(high-high, low-low, average-average, high-low/low-high), two represen-
tative couples are displayed. For each couple, there is a husband panel
above a corresponding wife panel. Within each panel, the higher line
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Husband’s Average Reactivity 0.25
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Wife’s Average Reactivity
Figure 19.3. Husband’s and Wife’s Average Reactivity to Conflicts Over 42 Diary Days: Model-Based Estimates (Note: Each point represents
one couple).
plots daily distress (on a scale from 0, no distress reported, to 1, maximum

distress), and the lower line plots reports of marital conflict (on days when a
conflict is reported, the lower plot spikes up from its baseline value of no
conflict). This structure allows us to compare husbands’ and wives’ timing
of conflict reports, and to compare husbands and wives on their emotional
reactivity to reported conflicts.
In Figure 19.4a, the pattern represented is of a highly distressed
response in both partners to a marital conflict. It can be seen that in
both couples, partners agree on some of the conflict days, but not on all
of them. For Couple 1 there seems to be agreement on a general period of
conflict, which the husband reports on and off, and the wife reports as a
multiple-day spell. In Couple 2, we see that the wife reports two days of
conflict at the end of the diary period that the husband does not report,
though he does have a corresponding rise in distress. Figure 19.4b displays
examples of the opposite pattern of reactivity—both partners are low in
(a)
Couple 1 Couple 2
Both High Both High
1.00 Husband Husband
Conflict
Conflict
Distress
0.00
yes yes
no no
1.00
Wife Wife
Conflict
Conflict
Distress
0.00
yes yes
no no
0 7 14 21 28 35 42 0 7 14 21 28 35 42
Day Day
Figure 19.4. Distress and Conflict for Eight Couples. (a) Both partners show high
reactivity on conflict versus nonconflict days. (b) Both partners show low reactivity on
conflict versus nonconflict days. (c) Both partners show average reactivity on conflict
versus nonconflict days. (d) Couples with mixed reactivity on conflict versus
nonconflict days.
(b) Couple 3 Couple 4

Both Low Both Low
1.00
Husband Husband
Conflict
Conflict
Distress
0.00
yes -- yes
no -- no
1.00
Wife Wife
Conflict
Conflict
Distress
0.00
yes -- yes
no -- no
0 7 14 21 28 35 42 0 7 14 21 28 35 42
Day Day
(c) Couple 5 Couple 6

Both Average Both Average
1.00
Husband Husband
Distress
Conflict
Conflict
0.00
yes yes
no no
1.00
Wife Wife
Distress
Conflict
Conflict
0.00
yes yes
no no
0 7 14 21 28 35 42 0 7 14 21 28 35 42
Day Day
Figure 19.4. Continued.
(d) Couple 7 Couple 8

Husband Low, Wife High Husband High, Wife Low
1.00
Husband Husband
Distress
Conflict
Conflict
0.00
yes yes
no no
1.00
Wife Wife
Distress
Conflict
Conflict
0.00
yes yes
no no
0 7 14 21 28 35 42 0 7 14 21 28 35 42
Day Day
Figure 19.4. Continued.
reactivity to conflict. We can see that both of these couples are low in
distress overall, and that they do not show a distressed response on days of
reported conflict. Figure 19.4c displays examples of couples in which
both partners have average reactivity to conflict. Finally, Figure 19.4d
shows examples of two couples in which the partners are discordant on
reactivity—one partner is highly reactive to conflict, while the other
partner is not.
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION OF KEY FINDINGS
This reanalysis of the Bolger et al. (1989) data yielded two new sets
of findings. The first concerned exposure to marital conflicts. We
found striking heterogeneity across couples in exposure to conflict,
and at the same time strong overall consensus between husbands and
wives about their typical exposure. This high agreement between
partners supports the claim that conflict reports correspond to
actual daily interpersonal behaviors. Further, couples in the current
study also showed evidence of multiday periods of tension, in which
one or both partners reported conflicts over several days. This finding
deserves further attention as it may indicate that couples need several
attempts to resolve a marital conflict before they find a satisfactory
solution (McNulty et al., 2008).
The second set of new findings concerned emotional reactivity to
conflicts. Here again there were large between-couple differences, but
there were also large within-couple differences. We documented these
reactivity results by providing daily profiles of conflict and distress for
couples with similar and different combinations of reactivity.
Interestingly, we did not find an equal distribution of couples within
these groups. There were very few high-high reactivity couples, perhaps
due to the fact that two people who both react to conflict with a great
degree of distress may not be able to function as a couple over the long-
term. Ineffective coping with conflict has been shown to be predictive of
divorce (Gottman & Levenson, 1999).
Note that there was also both between- and within-couple heteroge-
neity in distress on days of no conflict (the vast majority of days for most
couples). The within-couple heterogeneity may surprise some readers in
that there were approximately equal numbers of couples in which hus-
bands were more distressed than their wives as there were couples in
which wives were more distressed than their husbands on no-conflict days.
Contrary to the findings of Bolger et al. (1989), we did not find a
significant gender difference in reactivity to conflict, although the con-
fidence interval for the effect just barely included zero. Earlier research
led us to expect a more highly distressed reaction to conflict in wives than
in husbands, but the current results present a picture of great heteroge-
neity across both husbands and wives, so much so that they tend to dwarf
average differences between husbands and wives. The fixed-effects ana-
lysis approach used in the 1989 study had ignored this within-group
heterogeneity.
When researching behavior, how the typical person behaves and reacts
is one important piece of information. Equally important, however, is the
question of how much people differ in behavior and reaction (Bolger et al.,
2003). The individuals in the current study varied vastly in conflict occur-
rence and also in distress on conflict and no-conflict days. In this case,
taking into account how much individuals and couples differ is essential to
describing what is actually going on in the sample. With adequate statis-
tical models in place to describe typical levels and variability in behavior,
the next step in research will be to get at the sources of variability (e.g.,
relationship satisfaction, communication patterns, personality).
Further research with similar designs including diary reports from
both partners will help to shed light on the mechanisms explaining how
marital conflict influences health (Burman & Margolin, 1992; Kiecolt-
Glaser & Newton, 2001). For example, DeLongis, Capreol, Holtzman,

O’Brien, and Campbell (2004) found that only couples with low marital
satisfaction tended to evidence mood disturbance when there was an
absence of positive interactions with the spouse. Those high in marital
satisfaction appeared to weather the natural ups and downs of married life
without distress.
One limitation of the current study is that the question of the causal
relation between conflict and distress cannot be answered based on the
available data. Although it is highly likely that conflicts cause distress,
high distress might also make conflicts more likely. Because conflict and
distress were measured at the same time, we cannot be sure about the
causal direction between them. To address this limitation, a study design
where partners report on their distress before one or both come home
from work and then again at night before going to bed would allow
researchers to parse apart the contribution of distress to conflict and
conflict to distress. In a study examining the effects of marital interactions
on mood (DeLongis et al., 2004), negative interactions with the spouse
were associated with same-day declines in mood. However, they had a
significant effect on next-day mood only when there was also a dearth of
positive interactions with the spouse.
A second limitation is that the behavior in question—conflict—was
not directly observed. Although we have not directly observed husbands
and wives in their daily arguments, we can be fairly confident that our
daily diary reports are capturing actual behavior due to the level of
agreement in couples on the average frequency of their conflicts.
Supplementing diary data like the ones we have used for this analysis
with lab sessions (e.g., conflict discussions) will allow us to further under-
stand and describe behavior by supplementing individual reports with
objective measures like observation and psychophysiological methods.
However, adequately capturing behavior is an ongoing challenge for
researchers. Although it has been argued that studying what couples say
about themselves is not a substitute for studying how they behave (Raush,
Barry, Hertel, & Swain, 1974), studies that rely exclusively on laboratory
enactments of marital conflict may be anything but natural. Combining
daily diary reports of behavior with observational research may be one
way to find such a balance.
The most noteworthy implication of the analyses conducted here is
the support they lend to the call to move beyond a focus on the typical
person and to allow for a closer examination of the heterogeneity across
persons. In following people across time using daily diary methods, we
can study the person in a variety of naturally occurring contexts, exam-
ining how their behavior changes from day to day and from situation to
situation. With new methods of data collection and analysis that allow
this broader view, social psychologists are better able to ground their
theories in the realities of daily behavior.
APPENDIX
This data set, based on the sample of 150 couples and 28 days, was structured
such that variables from each daily report for each partner were placed on a
separate data line, giving a maximum of 2 42 ¼ 84 observations for each
couple. The data set also contained two dummy variables, husband (coded 1
when a data line came from the husband and 0 when it came from the wife),
and wife (coded 1 when a data line came from the wife and 0 when it came
from the husband). Laurenceau and Bolger (2005) provide more details on
data organization of this type.
To model average exposure to marital conflict, we used a multilevel
logistic regression model where each husband and wife had his or her own
log-odds of reporting a marital conflict. The level 1 equation was:
pit
log ¼ hi Hit þ wi Wit :
1 pit
The log odds for husband in couple i, hi , and wife in couple i, wi , were
assumed to vary across individuals, and this variation was assumed to be
normally distributed with mean

h
w
and covariance matrix

2h hw
;
wh 2w
where 2h is the variance of h , 2w is the variance of w , and hw ¼ wh is the

covariance between husband and wife log-odds.
Using the data structure described above, this model can be estimated
using the NLMIXED procedure in SAS (SAS Institute, 2002). The key SAS
commands required are shown below.
PROC NLMIXED DATA ¼ diarydataset;

b0h ¼ g0h þ u0h;
b0w ¼ g0w þ u0w;
eta ¼ b0h*husband þ b0w*wife;
p ¼ 1/(1þ EXP(-eta));
MODEL conflict~BINARY(p);
RANDOM u0h u0w ~ NORMAL([0,0],[s2uh,chw,s2uw])

subject ¼ coupleid;
PARMS g0h ¼ 3 g0w ¼ 3 s2uh ¼ 1 chw ¼ .9 s2uw ¼ 1;
To model reactivity to conflict in the same data set, we used the fol-
lowing multilevel model
Yit ¼ hi Hit þ wi Wit þ chi CHit þ cwi CWit þ it :
We assume that the four s are normally distributed with mean vector
2 3
h
6 w 7
6 7
4 ch 5
cw
and covariance matrix
2 3
2h hw hch hcw
6 wh 2w wch wcw 7
6 7;
4 chh chw 2ch chcw 5
cwh cww cwch 2cw
Given that there are a maximum of 84 observations per couple, there are also
a maximum of 84 observed values for it . We assume that these are normally
distributed with a mean of 0 and an 84 84 covariance matrix that is a
Kroneker product of (i) a 2 2 covariance matrix representing variances and
covariances of husband and wife scores on an given day and a 42 42
covariance matrix for across time dependencies. We assume the latter to
have an AR(1) structure. The error specification, therefore, is
2 3
1 2 . . . 41 42
6 .. 7
6 1 . 41 7
6 7
6 2 .. .. .. 7
2h hw 6 1 . . . 7
6 . 7 :
wh 2w 2 2 6
6 .. .. .. .. 7
2 7
6 . . . 7
6 .. 7
4 41 . 1 5
42 41 ... 2 1 42 42
See Bolger and Shrout (2007) for more details on this approach to
modeling dyadic data.
The model can be estimated using the MIXED procedure in SAS (SAS
Institute, 2002). The key commands required are:
PROC MIXED data ¼ diarydataset covtest;

CLASS coupleid sex diary_day;
MODEL distress ¼ husband wife conflict*husband conflict

*wife /noint solution;
RANDOM husband wife conflict*husband conflict
*wife /subject ¼ coupleid type ¼ un s g gcorr;
REPEATED sex diary_day /subject ¼ coupleid type ¼ un@ar(1);
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20 Communication, Coordinated Action,
and Focal Points in Groups: From Dating
Couples to Emergency Responders
What do dating couples, families, emergency responders (police,

firefighters, and emergency medical technicians), project teams, and
guilds in the popular multiplayer online game World of Warcraft have
in common? For one, members of these groups have both individual and
collective tasks to perform. To perform them successfully, members must
coordinate their knowledge, their resources, and their actions. Effective
coordination may require all individuals to take the same action, for
example, finding a meeting place when family members get separated
from one another at a museum. Other times, effective coordination may
require members to take different actions such as police securing the
perimeter of a burning building while firefighters search for victims
inside. In each of these situations, group members need to be on the
same page (i.e., be in cognitive synchrony) to accomplish their collective
goal. In some cases, members must coordinate without visual access or
otherwise being able to communicate with other members.
COORDINATED ACTION, COGNITIVE SYNCHRONY, AND

COMMUNICATION
This chapter investigates the relations between coordinated action, cog-

nitive synchrony, and communication. Coordinated action is ‘‘the regula-
tion of diverse elements into an integrated and harmonious operation’’
(The Free Dictionary, 2008; http://www.thefreedictionary.com/.) The

‘‘diverse elements’’ are interdependent individuals working toward a
collective goal that involves taking some sort of action. Thus, each indi-
vidual’s actions affect their own outcomes and the outcomes of the other
group members (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978.)
Synchrony is the concurrency of events in time (Webster’s Revised
Unabridged Dictionary, 1996.) Cognitive synchrony refers to ‘‘being in
synch’’ or ‘‘on the same page’’ about what others are thinking.
Individuals do not have to be thinking about the same things in the
same way at the same time (although they might be) to have cognitive
synchrony, but they do need to have a shared and accurate representation
of what they are thinking relative to others in the group. To my knowl-
edge, the term cognitive synchrony has not been used previously in the
literature. I am using it here as an umbrella term for related concepts that
address its different facets, precursors, processes, and consequences.
Researchers have examined other types of synchrony among individuals:
behavioral, emotional, and physiological, and it is helpful to have an
analogous term to describe cognitive processes.1 Although it is beyond
the scope of this chapter, future research should address the interrelations
between these different systems (cf. Levenson & Ruef, 1997).
Much research investigates different aspects of cognitive syn-
chrony: expectations, knowledge content, knowledge structures, and
processes (see also: socially shared cognition, Resnick, Levine, &
Teasley, 1996.) With regard to expectations, convergent expectations
occur when members have similar predictions about how others will
behave (Schelling, 1960). Relevant research on the knowledge content
includes: habitual routines (Gersick & Hackman, 1990), shared mental
models (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994)), perspective taking (Krauss &
Fussell, 1991) and group norms (Feldman, 1984.) With regard to knowl-
edge structures, transactive memory, a group level memory system that
often develops in close relationships and groups has two components:
(1) an organized store of knowledge contained entirely in the individual
systems of group members, and (2) a set of knowledge-relevant trans-
active encoding, storage, and retrieval processes that occur among
group members (Wegner Guiliano, & Hertel, 1985). And finally
about processes: tacit coordination is coordination among individuals
that occurs based on unspoken expectations or intentions, whereas
explicit coordination occurs based on verbal agreements or formally
adopted plans that designate who is to do what and how they should
do it (Wittenbaum, Vaughan, & Stasser, 1998). Grounding is the pro-
cess by which people establish mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and
mutual expectations through communication, which they use for
coordinating actions (Clark & Brennan, 1991).
FROM DATING COUPLES TO EMERGENCY RESPONDERS 393
Communication is the process by which information is exchanged

between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or
behavior (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2008; http://www.
merriam-webster.com/.) Communication can be intentional or uninten-
tional, occur through a variety of channels, including verbal, nonverbal,
paralanguage, text, or tactile, and through direct and indirect means, for
example, by a third party. It can involve the imposition of a set of
procedures on a group in a top-down fashion such as the structure that
a manager might provide to project team, or it can involve free-flowing
discussion.
This volume is about the role of behavior in social psychology.
I define behavior as observable reactions of individuals to their external,
social, and internal environments. In this case both communication and
coordinated action would qualify as behaviors.
Communication is perhaps the most important social behavior in
which humans engage. It is the medium by which people express how
they see the world, how they want it to be, and how they convince others
to share their worldview. It is the means by which people create, main-
tain, and end relationships; display their thoughts, feelings, and inten-
tions; and learn of their social standing relative to others. Although
communication is implicated in almost every aspect of social behavior,
it generally is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks
about behavior in social psychology.
There may be many reasons for the relative lack of focus on com-
munication by social psychologists. Communication is very difficult
and time consuming to study. It is multifaceted and has verbal, para-
verbal, and nonverbal components. Communication is hard to opera-
tionalize and measure as it serves many different functions in social
settings from emotional expression to persuasion to collective informa-
tion processing to conflict resolution. Many individual differences exist
regarding how people communicate their thoughts, feelings, and their
goals (and research shows that people are not very accurate at inter-
preting the communicated thoughts, feelings, and goals of others).
Often researchers who initially set out to study communication do
not observe a consistent relation between communication processes
and behavior. This may in part be due to equifinality as there can be
many different communication paths leading to the same behavior or
outcome. For example, some groups may experience severe conflict
and produce outstanding work because the most capable member
stepped in and saved the day whereas other groups can be highly
committed to their task, participate equally, and get along wonderfully
but produce a mediocre product because no members had the requisite
skills and abilities to perform the task.
This discussion leads me to the cartoon ‘‘Then a Miracle Occurs’’ by

Sidney Harris, which all contributors to this volume were asked to inter-
pret by the editors. As can be seen in the cartoon, two scientists are
discussing some sort of mathematical proof or equation—they have the
first initial step and the third final step but have not figured out the second
intermediary step. So in place of the second step, the scientists have
inserted the words ‘‘Then a miracle occurs.’’ My interpretation is that
most social psychologists would agree that communication is a social
behavior and influences many other social behaviors, yet we do not
know much about how that happens. Although social psychologists gen-
erally measure psychological states and some sort of behavior (broadly
defined), very few studies explicitly measure the social processes that
connect psychological states to overt behaviors, which often unfold
through communication. Thus, I view communication as the inter-
mediary ‘‘then a miracle occurred’’ step linking psychological states to
social behaviors in many social psychological theories and studies.
Although communication can perform many different functions in
social settings, the research program that I describe in this chapter exam-
ines the coordination function of communication. The central research
questions are: What is the role of communication in coordinated action?
When is communication essential, when is it beneficial, and when is it
detrimental to coordinated action? And how might cognitive synchrony
mediate the relation between the need for communication and coordinated
action? I begin by posing these questions to a set of simple coordination
problems, and then I present data from a research program that examines
these questions empirically in increasing complexity beginning in the lab
with dating couples and ending in the field with emergency responders.
Four Coordination Problems
The fundamental processes underlying collective action can be abstracted,

simplified, and modeled as coordination problems. I begin by describing
four coordination problems, each of which requires individuals to coordi-
nate their actions to accomplish a collective goal. The first two are what
Abele and Stasser (2008) call ‘‘matching’’ coordination problems: they
require all individuals to engage in the same action simultaneously. The
second two are ‘‘mismatching’’ coordination problems: they require indivi-
duals to engage in different actions simultaneously (Abele & Stasser, 2008).
Coordination Problem 1. Suppose that 100 strangers are in a room and

are shown the five numbers as depicted in Figure 20.1a. They are told by a
facilitator that if all 100 individuals choose the same number, they will
Focal Point
1 1
4 3 2 4 2
5 5
(a) (b)
Figure 20.1. Focal Point Example.
each receive a prize. If any individual chooses a different number then no

one will receive a prize. The catch is that they cannot communicate
before making their choice.
I’ve run a similar exercise many times in my classes, and not surpris-
ingly, all students choose the number ‘‘3’’. Not only is ‘‘3’’ is located at the
center of the figure, but it is different color, and it is obvious that others
would reach the same conclusion. Thus, ‘‘3’’ serves as what Schelling
(1960) called a focal point. Mutual recognition of the focal point enables
individuals to tacitly coordinate their expectations of what others will do
(Schelling, 1960, p. 54). Thus, communication is not necessary for the
group to figure out the solution.
Now consider a similar coordination problem with a few
modifications.
Coordination Problem 2. Many aspects are kept the same (everyone must
choose the same number, no communication, same prize); however, in
this problem, the number of individuals in the room is reduced from 100
to only five individuals, and the number of decision alternatives is reduced
from five to four, as depicted in Figure 20.1b. Rather than becoming an
easier task with the reduction in the number of individuals and alterna-
tives, the coordination task becomes much more difficult. There is no
longer a focal point, so individuals are unable to coordinate their actions
and reach a common solution. In this situation, communication is essen-
tial to ensure they are on the same page before making their choice.
Coordination Problem 3. A group of five individuals is given the five

numbers as depicted in 1a. However, instead of instructing all individuals
to choose the same number, the facilitator asks them each to choose a
different number, again without communication. Like Coordination

Problem 2, this problem does not have a focal point, and communication
is essential in this situation for effective coordination.
Coordination Problem 4. This problem is the same as Problem 3 (five

members must each choose a different number in Figure 20.1a without
communication) with one additional element. Before the five individuals
enter the room, each individual is given a T-shirt to wear with a different
number from 1–5 displayed in the same font, colors, and exact style as in 1a.
In this situation, the correspondence between the number on each T-shirt and
in Figure 20.1a serves as a focal point, and the individuals are able to coordi-
nate their actions by choosing the number depicted on each of their shirts.
In summary, when there is a focal point, group members are able to
coordinate their actions successfully without communication. When
there is no focal point, group members need to communicate to coordi-
nate their actions. Figure 20.2 outlines the relations between focal points,
cognitive synchrony, communication, and collective action based on
these four problems. In the next section, I discuss the qualities and
types of focal points involved in coordinated action.
Focal Points
Focal points tend to have two characteristics: prominence and uniqueness

(Schelling, 1960). Focal points can be based on attributes of the people,
situation, or norm and conventions. Of course, what is prominent or
conspicuous depends upon the people, the time, and the place.
Cognitive Coordinated
Focal Point
Synchrony Action
Communication is not necessary
No Common No Cognitive Coordinated

Focal Point Synchrony Action
Communication is necessary
Figure 20.2. Communication, Focal Points and Coordinated Action.

In matching problems, focal points highlight what is most similar

among individuals whereas focal points in mismatching problems highlight
what is most different. Cultural norms and conventions can serve as focal
points and enable people to coordinate their actions, for example, crossing
a crowded street, driving in traffic, standing in an elevator, having a discus-
sion, and so on (cf. Schelling, 1960). People who know one another well
often develop their own conventions that become focal points when mem-
bers have to coordinate their actions (cf. Hollingshead, 1998b). These
conventions, when successful, can spread to other groups. For example,
many large families in the United States have adopted the convention of
the first person to say ‘‘shot gun’’ to determine who will sit in the front seat
with the driver. This works well when family members are within hearing
distance of one another and less well when they are not. Unexpected events
can also serve as focal points and rallying points for groups. For example, a
fire alarm provides a signal to team members that they should immediately
end their meeting and leave the building.
In mismatching problems, characteristics of how people differ from
one another may serve as focal points. Group member roles and stereo-
types can serve as focal points. For example, in a patient advocacy team,
members may look to the physician on the team when questions about a
patient’s medical condition arise. It is important to keep in mind that
prominence and salience are features of the social context. For example,
dimensions of demographic diversity (such as one’s gender, race, or age)
may be less likely to serve as focal points in highly diverse than in
moderately diverse groups (Lau & Murnighan, 1998).
Most of the studies that I will describe in this chapter involve mis-
matching coordination problems (Abele & Stasser, 2008) such as
Coordination Problems 3 and 4 above. That is, the collective task involves
a division of labor, and members must perform different rather than
similar actions to successfully achieve their group goal. For example,
life partners often divide responsibility for household tasks, and work
groups often assign members to different subtasks on team projects. In the
first set of studies, I and some of my colleagues explore when and how
social stereotypes can serve as focal points for coordination among newly
formed groups and their cognitive and affective consequences.
Social Stereotypes as Focal Points
We examined diversity as a social context in a series of laboratory studies

among newly formed dyads that had to coordinate their actions while
working on a knowledge-pooling task. Members of new groups are likely
to form initial impressions on the basis of group members’ outstanding
physical characteristics (Fiske & Newberg, 1990). We hypothesized that

social stereotypes about relative knowledge would serve as a focal point in
diverse dyads. (In all of the studies, the dimension underlying the dyad’s
similarity or diversity was made salient to participants.) This should give
diverse dyads a performance advantage over similar dyads when they are
not able to communicate as they work together.
For example, a group member of White European descent may
judge a member of Asian descent to be more knowledgeable in math
based on a cultural stereotype about Asians and expect the Asian
member to perform the math-related tasks in the group. The Asian
member may also think she is better able to perform math-related tasks
than the white member based on the same cultural stereotype and, as a
result, may expect to be assigned the math-related tasks in the group.
Thus, group members are in cognitive synchrony that the Asian
member will perform math-related tasks. This can happen regardless
of whether the Asian member actually knows more about math than
other group members, and without communication. We also tested a
similar hypothesis about the role of experience in the creation of a focal
point. We expected that dating couples would be able to coordinate
their actions better than strangers without communication and would
use their perceptions of each person’s relative expertise as a focal point.
(This hypothesis was also consistent with transactive memory theory,
cf. Wegner et al, 1991.)
In contrast, communication should enable similar dyads to develop
their own conventions and to coordinate their actions more effectively
than when they cannot communicate. Thus, communication should
enhance the performance of similar dyads more than diverse dyads. See
Figure 20.3. And similarly, communication should enhance the
Social Stereotypes as Focal Points
Stereotypes
Diversity
Cognitive Coordinated
Synchrony Action
Similarity
Communication
Figure 20.3. Social Stereotypes as Focal Points.

performance of strangers relatively more than dating couples. Strangers

can use communication to create a common focal point regarding who
will do what, which should lead to a significant performance improve-
ment for strangers relative to their noncommunicating counterparts. In
contrast, because dating couples already have a focal point—their pre-
vious knowledge of each person’s relative expertise, communication
should serve to reinforce their knowledge of each person’s expertise and
should impact performance significantly less than strangers.
We tested these hypotheses in a series of studies that examined
different dimensions of diversity, which included gender (Hollingshead
& Fraidin, 2003), culture (Yoon & Hollingshead, 2008), organizational
role (Hollingshead, 2000), and interest diversity (Hollingshead, 2001).
All used a similar research methodology. Participants were told they
would be working with another person in the study on a knowledge-
pooling task and whether they would be able to interact with their partner
(depending on the study and the experimental condition to which they
had been assigned.) First, participants rated their own knowledge on
different knowledge categories in which they would later learn informa-
tion. Some knowledge categories were consistent with stereotypes; some
were not. Afterward, they were ‘‘assigned’’ a partner, ostensibly another
participant in the study. In some studies, unbeknownst to participants,
participants were not assigned a real partner but instead were given the
assumed partner’s name (which indicated the partner’s gender, culture,
or organizational role depending on the study.) They were told they
would be presented with information in different knowledge categories
to learn and would later recall and pool it with their partner. The dyads
that remembered the most information collectively received cash prizes.
The main measures were the total recall of the dyad and the amount of
stereotypical information recalled by individuals.
All studies showed the same effects: namely, diverse dyads coordi-
nated their tasks and performed better on the task than similar dyads
when members could not communicate. Members of diverse dyads
learned and remembered significantly more stereotype-consistent infor-
mation than similar dyads, signaling that they used stereotypes as a focal
point to coordinate each member’s actions. In the gender study, partici-
pants paired with an opposite partner were more likely to learn informa-
tion consistent with their own gender stereotype than participants paired
with a same-sex partner. In the culture study, participants paired with a
partner from a different culture were more likely to learn information
consistent with their own cultural stereotype than paired with a same-
culture partner. In the organizational role study, participants were more
likely to learn information related to their own functional role at the
university when paired with someone with a different than with a similar
functional role. And finally in the interest diversity study, participants

remembered more information consistent with their own hobbies and
interests when paired with someone with different than with similar
hobbies and interests. All of these findings involved participants who
could not communicate with their partners. Next I will describe the
findings of two studies that also manipulated communication to highlight
some of its benefits and costs in coordinated action.
Dating Couple and Stanger Study. Heterosexual couples that had been
dating for at least 6 months participated in the study (Hollingshead,
1998). Each participant was assigned a partner, either their significant
other or an opposite-sex stranger from another couple, and worked
together on a knowledge-pooling task similar to the one described above.
As expected, dating couples remembered more information collec-
tively than strangers. However, this effect was reversed when dyads could
communicate: dating couples recalled less collectively than strangers.
This is a counterintuitive and important finding because it suggests
that, under some conditions, communication can actually impede
coordination.
A closer examination of coordination strategies used by dyads
revealed why dating couples performed worse in the communication
than in the no-communication condition. The task used in this study
was an additive task, where contributions of each member are combined
into a collective group response (Steiner, 1972.) Thus, the most effective
strategy for maximizing performance on the task was to divide responsi-
bility for knowledge categories so that each member was assigned a subset
of categories that they knew better than their partner. Dating couples in
the no-communication category generally reported doing this in a post-
task survey, but most dating couples in the communication condition did
not do this. Instead, they reported using a more collaborative strategy,
together creating a story, sentences, or acronyms with the information
that they would not be able to recall later. This strategy was not particu-
larly effective. They also disagreed more about who was responsible for
which knowledge categories than dating couples in the no-communica-
tion condition. It appears that communication led couples to disregard or
to forget about their relative expertise as an effective coordination
strategy. It is important to mention that dating couples in the commu-
nication condition expressed the highest levels of enjoyment, although
participants across the conditions enjoyed the experiment very much.
Their coordination strategy while not as effective was more fun.
In contrast, communication facilitated the coordination of learning
new information among strangers. When strangers communicated, they
were able to delegate responsibility for different knowledge categories
explicitly. An inspection of the self-reported learning strategies indicated

that strangers were much more likely to delegate responsibility for dif-
ferent knowledge categories in the communication condition than in the
no-communication condition. In fact, no dyads in the strangers,
no-communication condition mentioned that they considered their part-
ners at all: each individual attempted to learn all the information across all
categories in every case. Although participants met their opposite-sex
partner very briefly at the beginning of the experiment, they did not use
stereotypes based on their partner’s gender or another observable char-
acteristic as a focal point. This finding supports the caveat described
earlier in the chapter: that a stereotype must be salient and that groups
members must be aware that it is salient to others before it will be used as
a focal point.
Culture and Communication Study. The participants in this study were

undergraduate students of white European and of Asian descent (Yoon &
Hollingshead, 2008). Participants were randomly paired with a partner of
the same gender. This was done to isolate the effects of cultural stereo-
types. The knowledge pooling task was similar to the one described
above. The design was a 2 2 factorial, manipulating dyad composition
(same culture or mixed-culture dyads) and whether dyads could commu-
nicate during the knowledge area assignment phase (yes or no). All
participants interacted and performed the task via computer using
Instant Messenger.
The results confirmed the general hypotheses. As described earlier,
culturally diverse dyads performed better than similar dyads when they
could not communicate. However, the performance advantage of cul-
turally diverse dyads was mitigated when dyads could communicate on
the task. The data showed that communication served to reinforce
cultural stereotypes in culturally diverse dyads rather than to lead
members to uncover one another’s true expertise—culturally diverse
dyads learned a large amount of information consistent with cultural
stereotypes regardless of the communication condition. In the commu-
nication conditions, dyads were explicitly instructed to share expertise
and assign categories to the most knowledgeable member rather than
simply to communicate with their partners. Although reliance on
cultural stereotypes led to a performance advantage for culturally
diverse dyads in the no-communication condition, it also had negative
affective consequences. Participants were more satisfied and trusted
their partners more when they were assigned knowledge areas consis-
tent with their expertise rather than consistent with cultural stereo-
types. The results also suggest that the mere opportunity to
communicate and exchange knowledge in diverse work groups may
not be an effective intervention to alleviate the effects of cultural

stereotypes on coordinated action.
Summary. Taken together, these studies suggest that stereotyping may

lead to a self-reinforcing cycle in diverse dyads. Stereotypes begin the
cycle by serving as a focal point about who is likely to know most about
different knowledge areas. This focal point leads to stereotypical task
assignments, and those assignments can lead to members gaining knowl-
edge consistent with stereotypes. That improvement in stereotypical
knowledge may justify future stereotypical task assignments, since mem-
bers in fact become experts in areas consistent with stereotypes even
though they may not have had that expertise previously (cf. Fraidin &
Hollingshead, 2005.) The findings of the culture study demonstrated how
relying on focal points can also have negative affective consequences.
It is important to note several aspects of the research design that may
limit the generalizability of these findings. The laboratory setting con-
trolled many features of the context, which certainly could have contrib-
uted to the salience of stereotypes as a focal point. Demographic
differences other than the one of interest in the study were held constant
among participants to isolate the influence of stereotypes on individual
perceptions and performance. Although this type of procedure is
common in the social stereotyping literature, real-life work groups are
likely to have diversity across multiple categories, and multiple stereo-
types may operate simultaneously or differentially across group members.
The unit of analysis was the dyad, and it is important to examine how
these findings might scale in larger groups. Finally, the coordinated action
of interest in this set of studies involved cognitive, but not physical,
action. Some of these limitations were addressed in a preliminary study
of communication and coordination among emergency responders,
which will be described next.
MOVING INTO THE FIELD: COMMUNICATION AND

COORDINATED ACTION AMONG EMERGENCY
RESPONDERS
Coordinated action becomes much more difficult in the field, especially

in the case of emergency responders. The 9–11 Commission Report
(available at: http://www.911commission.gov) detailed communication,
information sharing, and other coordination problems experienced
within and between emergency response agencies (fire department,
police department, Port Authority police, and the Office of Emergency
Management and Interagency Preparedness). While many problems
seemed to be the fault of obsolete and faulty technology (e.g., issues with
the on-site repeater system, problems with radio equipment and/or
channels), others were the result of coordination difficulties across the
various agencies involved in the emergency response.
Emergency responders face many challenges to coordinated action.
In most U.S. states, there are no formal coordination mechanisms such as
common databases or communication systems between the different
agencies (although that seems to be changing.) Emergency responders
operate in a stressful and often very dangerous environment during emer-
gencies, which can impair information processing and decision-making
abilities (Keinan, 1987). Emergency responders have different roles,
goals, and information needs in emergency situations. Police secure the
area. Fire fighters put out fires and rescue trapped victims. Emergency
medical technicians stabilize hurt victims. The cultures of emergency
responder groups are also different. For example, firefighters have a
communal culture that is built on camaraderie and trust. They spend
many hours eating, talking, training, and otherwise passing the time
between calls while on duty at the firehouse. During emergencies, they
rely on one another for their lives. Police, on the other hand, have a
culture that emphasizes security and protection—sharing information
and trusting people who are outside their immediate group is not part
of their culture. Common focal points do not seem to exist across the
various emergency responder agencies given their different goals, cul-
tures, and practices. As a result, effective communication is essential for
effective coordination.
As part of a large interdisciplinary project supported by the National
Science Foundation (NSF: ITR-0427089), we are working to gain a better
understanding of coordination barriers from the perspective of emer-
gency responders themselves. We believe this knowledge will better
inform the design of training programs, policies, procedures, and tech-
nologies to facilitate information sharing and coordination during
emergencies.
Our approach is informed by theory and research on transactive
memory (e.g. Brandon & Hollingshead, 2004). A transactive memory
system is a group level memory system that often develops in close
relationships, work teams, and other groups with interdependent mem-
bers. It involves the division of responsibility among group members with
respect to the encoding, storage, retrieval, and communication of infor-
mation from different knowledge areas, and a shared awareness among
group members about each member’s knowledge responsibilities (or
‘‘who knows what’’) (Hollingshead, in press). In transactive memory
systems, this shared awareness of ‘‘who knows what’’ serves as a focal
point enabling individuals to coordinate ‘‘who will do what’’ often
without communication. Of course, these systems are not perfect and

errors can and do occur (Hollingshead, 2005).
Research on transactive memory shows that when group members
have accurate and shared views of one another’s knowledge and respon-
sibilities, they coordinate information better, perform tasks more effec-
tively, and trust one another more. Thus, our research strategy was to
compare participants’ perceptions of their own expertise and responsi-
bilities during disasters, and their perceptions of the expertise and respon-
sibilities of other responder groups (firefighters from their department,
firefighters from other departments, local police, state police, emergency
medical technicians, civil engineers). We also asked about the coordina-
tion barriers that responders experienced during emergencies and exam-
ined the relations between communication, coordination, and trust
among the different groups.
We conducted online surveys with 95 firefighters across the state
of Illinois who participated in the annual Fire College of the Illinois
Fire Service Institute in Champaign, Illinois in June 2005 (Jacobsohn,
Beck, & Hollingshead, 2007.) Most firefighters in our sample were
male (94%), young (mean age 32), and worked in small communities
(80% lived in towns with a population under 25,000). About 40% had
leadership experience as head of incident command (the highest
ranking firefighter arriving first on the scene takes charge of coordi-
nating and managing the response). It is also important to note that
relatively few emergencies to which the firefighters in our sample
responded were fires—only 8% on average. (Most were in fact false
alarms and medical emergencies.)
The results showed that firefighters experienced environmental and
technological coordination barriers more often than intergroup and inter-
personal barriers during emergencies. More specifically, difficulty seeing
due to smoke, hearing due to environmental noise and equipment, and
quality of radio communications were mentioned most frequently.
Interpersonal barriers, such as problems with the chain of command,
ineffective procedures, working with incompetent people, and not
knowing the location and activities of other members were also viewed
as barriers but were less frequently mentioned.
We also discovered that the amount that firefighters communicated
with other responder groups during emergencies was positively related to
trust. Figure 20.4 shows the positive correlation between communication
and trust among different responder groups (7-point scale: 1 ¼ low;
7 ¼ high.) Firefighters reported more communication with fellow fire-
fighters and EMTs than with police. They also reported having greater
trust in the information received from fellow firefighters and EMTs than
with police and civil engineers. Thus, the degree of previous contact may
7.00
6.00 5.78
5.32
5.00 4.85
4.52
4.13
4.00 3.84
3.55
3.35 3.28
3.00
Trust of information
2.00
1.49
1.00 Level of Interaction during
large-scale emergencies
0.00
FFs (same EMTs FFs (other Police Civil Engineers
department) departments) (n = 40)
Figure 20.4. Relations between Communication and Trust in Firefighter Sample.
have had a bigger impact on trust than role similarity, as evidenced by a

quote from a firefighter:
Firefighter A: ‘‘We work with our local EMTs enough to know what
they ask for, what they really need. They have always given us enough
information for us to do our job, and to help them get their job done.’’
Unfortunately, the sentiments reported in the quote above were not

the norm in our sample. A more common finding was that firefighters
did not feel that responders from other agencies had a good under-
standing of their responsibilities, task requirements, and information
needs during emergencies. They, in turn, did not feel they had a good
understanding of the knowledge, task requirements, and responsibil-
ities of the other responder groups. Participants indicated that this
lack of experience with and knowledge of the other groups had an
impact on the degree to which they trusted the information given by
members of these agencies during emergencies. In fact some of the
firefighters in our sample reported distrust in their relationships with
police officers:
Firefighter B: ‘‘We don’t know what information they need, ‘cause we

do not understand their job. We do not train in their manner and what
they do is foreign to us.’’Firefighter C: ‘‘The police in our town don’t
listen very well sometimes. Their information can get mixed up and
turn out completely wrong.’’Firefighter D: ‘‘In past experience, some

information has been withheld (by police officers) that would have
been helpful to know.’’
Although it seems intuitive that individuals who communicate more

frequently would also have higher levels of trust, it is important to
consider that many emergency situations involve individuals from agen-
cies who may not communicate frequently. Training and continuing
education programs for firefighters, police, and EMTs should be designed
to teach each group about the roles and responsibilities of the other
groups so that they can develop shared expectations about the goals and
behaviors of each group during emergencies (cf., Liang, Moreland, &
Argote, 1995.) As shown in the laboratory studies on social stereotypes
described earlier in the chapter, diverse groups can perform their tasks
well without communication when they have a common focal point
based on shared expectations about expertise. It is also important to
include simulated emergencies (and social events afterward) in training
and continuing education programs to give members of different groups
an opportunity to build trust and relationships and to create other focal
points that may depart from role-based stereotypes. As the cultural
stereotype study showed, relying solely on stereotypes to assign respon-
sibility for tasks can lead to resentment, less trust, and lower group
satisfaction.
Conclusions and Future Research Directions
Now I will return to the research questions asked at the beginning of the
chapter and provide a few tentative answers. It is important to keep in
mind that all studies presented in this chapter concerned mismatching
problems (Abele & Stasser, 2008), the collective task involved a division
of labor, and members had to perform different rather than similar actions
to successfully achieve their group goal. Taken together, the studies
showed that stereotypes and member roles can serve as focal points in
diverse groups when members are not able to communicate as they
perform their collective task.
The first question was: What is the role of communication in
coordinated action?
On a cognitive level, communication can create, change, or reinforce
cognitive synchrony. One consistent finding across experiments was that
similar groups need communication to create cognitive synchrony and to
coordinate their actions effectively. With respect to change, in the dating
couple study, dating couples in the no-communication condition tended
to use perceptions of each person’s relative expertise as a focal point.

In the communication condition, dating couples appeared to abandon this
natural focal point and instead created a shared mnemonic for remem-
bering task-relevant information. In contrast, communication tended to
reinforce cognitive synchrony in the cultural stereotypes study.
Culturally diverse dyads tended to use cultural stereotypes to assign
responsibility to each member in both the no-communication and
communication conditions.
On an emotional level, direct interpersonal communication can
increase trust. As the firefighter study showed, interpersonal communi-
cation with other responder groups was positively associated with trust of
those groups. But it can also lead to negative reactions as shown in the
cultural stereotypes study when communication reinforces cultural
stereotypes rather than promotes increased understanding of members’
unique attributes and skills.
The second question was: When is communication beneficial?
The studies showed that communication is most beneficial to groups
when there is no focal point, in the case of similar groups, or when
subgroups have different goals, as in the case of the emergency respon-
ders. Communication enables groups to learn about one another and to
establish conventions so they are better able to coordinate their actions.
Although not the focus of these studies, communication is also likely to
help groups correct misunderstandings and reduce the future likelihood
of errors of omission and commission as members can confirm whether
they are actually on the same page about each member’s responsibilities.
The third and final question was: When is communication detrimental?
Communication can be detrimental when it interferes with preex-
isting modes of coordination that are effective as was shown in the dating
couples study. It can also be harmful to relationships when it reinforces
rather than reduces the negative influences of social stereotypes, as shown
in the cultural stereotypes study.
Future Directions
There are many related topics ripe for future research. Some of the most
exciting are in the area of technology and coordination. For example,
there are many online contexts that relate to work, political action, social
networking, and entertainment where members must coordinate to
achieve individual and collective goals. One example is the popular multi-
player online game World of Warcraft. Players self-organize into guilds, in
which players complete missions as a team. Players are able to choose the
gender and race of their avatar. Different races have different attributes
and abilities. This is a fascinating context in which to study the interplay

of stereotypes and conventions in the creation of focal points by groups.
Another is technology as an intervention. As described earlier, emer-
gency responders experience technological, cultural, and interpersonal
barriers that impede their ability to coordinate their actions within and
between agencies during emergencies. The preliminary results of the
firefighter study suggested that a lack of direct interpersonal communica-
tion between different responder groups was positively associated with
coordination problems experienced during emergencies. It may be pos-
sible to develop technologies that could bypass the need for interpersonal
communication to facilitate coordination among responder groups. For
example, networked sensors on uniforms could transmit and receive GPS
positionings of members, communicate physical conditions such as tem-
perature and building vibrations to others, or signal members to imme-
diately vacate their current position and gather at a prespecified meeting
point.
However, communication and other information technologies can
and do fail during catastrophic events when those technologies are
needed most, such as in 9/11 (9–11 Commission Report) and Hurricane
Katrina (Majchzrak, Javenpaa, & Hollingshead, 2007.) When technolo-
gies fail, emergency responder groups may need to go to Plan B or to
improvise on the fly. It is likely that those responders who have interacted
during previous emergencies will coordinate more effectively when tech-
nological support fails. Direct interpersonal communication does more
for emergency responders than promote cognitive synchrony—it also
serves as a conduit for developing trust and relationships that also enhance
coordinated action.
AUTHOR NOTE
1
Concepts that relate to behavioral synchrony include: Behavioral
entrainment, the processes whereby one person’s behavior is adjusted or
modified to coordinate or synchronize with another’s behavior (Kelly,
1988.) Interpersonal synchrony or coordination involves individuals coor-
dinating movements with the rhythmic behavior or others, for example,
ballroom dancing or walking while talking with friends (Richardson,
Marsh, Isenhower, Goodman, & Schmidt, 2007). Interactional synchrony
is the coordination of movements between speaker and listener in both
timing and form during conversation (Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991).
Concepts that relate to emotional synchrony include: Spontaneous emo-
tional mimicry, the tendency to spontaneously mimic the emotional expres-
sion seen in another face (Achiabou Pourtois, Schwartz, & Vuilleumier,
2008.) Emotional rapport refers to the emotions of one person being in synch
with another (Levenson & Ruef, 1997.) Emotional contagion is the tendency
to express and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of
others (cf. Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994.)
Research on physiological synchrony has examined the synchrony
across individuals of neuroendocrine, autonomic, and somatic systems
(for a review, Levenson & Ruef, 1997).
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21 Nonverbal Behavior in Social Psychology
Research: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Judith A. Hall
As a nonverbal behavior researcher for the past 30 years, I can take some
comfort from the fact that my field is undeniably built on the study of
behavior. This behavior is measured not just in laboratories but very often
in naturalistic settings. Even in the laboratory, the behavior that is studied is
often high on naturalism because observation is likely to be unobtrusive.
Furthermore, nonverbal behavior—by which I mean both emitted beha-
viors and measured skills in nonverbal communication—has obvious social
psychological relevance. On these points, no defenses need be made, and
no soul-searching examinations of what we mean by ‘‘behavior’’ are
required. Still, there is much to be said about the place of nonverbal
behavior research in the field of social psychology, as well as about
unresolved problems and difficulties.
The goal of this chapter is to give a short overview of nonverbal research
within social psychology. Of course, there is far too much accumulated
knowledge about nonverbal communication to attempt much of a summary.
The chapter starts with definitions and moves to a description of the two
main research traditions—describing behavior and measuring communica-
tion accuracy. Then it moves to the themes of ‘‘the good, the bad, and the
ugly’’ to convey the mixture of blessings and curses that confront researchers
who take on nonverbal communication as their topic.
The ‘‘And Then a Miracle Occurs’’ cartoon helps us to see why
nonverbal communication has broad relevance within social psychology.
Understanding the process by which a phenomenon unfolds—that is,
NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH 413
identifying mediating variables—often requires consideration of nonverbal

behavior. An excellent example is interpersonal expectancy effects. How
does it happen that one person’s expectation can produce a change in
another person? Following the path of cause and effect often leads to
nonverbal cues that are inadvertently conveyed by the expecter and
nonconsciously received and acted on by the target (Harris & Rosenthal,
1985). Nonverbal behavior plays a ubiquitous role in mediating many
social psychological phenomena, including conformity, persuasion,
bystander effects, and many more. As social psychology has matured as a
field, it has progressed from simply documenting phenomena to trying to
understand exactly what happens in the causal stream—that is, filling in the
‘‘Step 2’’ in the cartoon. Nonverbal behavior has an important place there,
as well as elsewhere within social psychology.
DEFINING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
Nonverbal cues can be defined as all potentially informative behaviors that

are not purely linguistic in content. Visible nonverbal cues include facial
expressions, head movements, posture, body and hand movements,
self-and other-touching, leg positions and movements, interpersonal
gaze, directness of interpersonal orientation, interpersonal distance, and
synchrony or mimicry between people. Auditory nonverbal cues include
discrete nonlinguistic vocal sounds (e.g., sighs) as well as qualities of the
voice such as pitch and pitch variation, loudness, speed and speed variation,
and tonal qualities (e.g., nasality, breathiness). Several additional behaviors
are often included among nonverbal cues even though they are closely
related to speech: interruptions, pauses and hesitations, listener responses
(such as ‘‘uh-huh’’ uttered while another is speaking), and dysfluencies in
speech. Clothing, hairstyle, and adornments, as well as physiognomy (such
as height or facial features) are also typically considered to represent
nonverbal information channels.
The distinction between nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communica-
tion is important (Wiener, Devoe, Rubinow, & Geller, 1972), but not easy
to apply in practice. Nonverbal behavior is simply emitted and is subject to
interpretation by others even if the expressor (encoder) is not trying to
communicate. In contrast, nonverbal communication refers to a more con-
scious active process whereby encoder and decoder emit and interpret
behaviors according to a shared meaning code. Making this distinction
often founders on the researcher’s and even the expressor’s inability to
know what was intended and what was not. Enactments of nonverbal
behaviors are often not in the conscious awareness of either the expressor
or the decorder. The unintentional conveyance of veridical information

through nonverbal cues is called ‘‘leakage’’ (Ekman & Friesen, 1969).
Because it is so difficult to identify degrees of intentionality, I use the
terms nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication interchangeably
in this chapter, even though conceptually this is an important distinction.
TRADITION #1: THE STUDY OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR
The first of the two main research traditions involves describing non-
verbal behavior. Once it is described, it can be studied with respect to its
meaning (intended or perceived) and in relation to countless different
person and situation variables. Nonverbal behavior is measured using
naı̈ve raters, trained coders, and instruments. There are few standardized,
‘‘off the shelf’’ measurement systems. Most often, researchers decide on
what to measure and how to measure it based on the nature of the
research question being investigated. This section can give only a very
broad picture of methodology; for a more comprehensive account see
Harrigan, Rosenthal, and Scherer (2005) and Rosenthal (1987).
Methodology
Naı̈ve Raters. Sometimes naı̈ve raters are used to measure specific

cues, and when this is done it may take more raters, whose ratings are
aggregated, to achieve adequate interrater reliability (see Hall, Horgan, &
Carter, 2002, for an example in the case of measuring smiling). Just as
with the internal consistency reliability of a set of items on a test, the
reliability of a set of raters is a joint function of the average interrater
correlation and how many of them there are (Rosenthal, 1987). Though
untrained raters may have more random error and therefore lower
interrater correlations than would be the case for trained coders, this
can be compensated for by adding more untrained raters.
Though naı̈ve raters can be used to measure specific behaviors, the
most common use for naı̈ve raters is to gather their impressions. This is
done when the researcher wants to take advantage of a viewer’s or
listener’s inferential abilities so that the measurements tap into dimen-
sions of meaning. The use of naı̈ve raters implies that the researcher is
interested in how ‘‘ordinary’’ people would respond to the nonverbal
stimuli, that is, to approximate nonverbal impression formation as it
might take place in ‘‘real life.’’ Such ratings occupy positions on a
continuum in terms of how much inference is asked for. To give
illustrations, at a low level of inference would be ratings of speed

of speech or pitch (subjective renditions of objective parameters); at
a somewhat more inferential level would be ratings of fidgetiness
or hurriedness of behavioral style (subjective amalgamation across
different cues); at a higher level of inference would be ratings of affect
such as anger or happiness (translation of perceived cues into the percep-
tion of an immediate psychological state); and at an even higher level
inference would be ratings of personality (translation of perceived
immediate states into inferences about latent psychological characteris-
tics). At each advancing level of inference, information from a lower level
is integrated, entailing more guesswork and/or more influence of
perceivers’ individual characteristics. Different raters could integrate
differently or apply different judgment policies. The choice of level of
inference must follow from the research question. Naı̈ve perceivers’
ratings can have high validity in terms of capturing the conveyed meaning
of cues, assuming of course that interrater reliability is satisfactory.
Trained Coders. When the researcher wants to describe specific cues,

without an interest in how they are interpreted, the likely choice is to
use coders who are trained according to standard criteria, with the goal
being that they apply the criteria in a homogeneous fashion. Examples
would be timing the duration of gaze at an interaction partner, counting
the frequency of smiles, or calculating the angle at which two people
interact. Ideally, the choice of behaviors to measure is guided by theore-
tical concerns; however, researchers sometimes measure an extensive
catalogue of behaviors in order to be comprehensive, sometimes without
clear-cut ideas about what to expect for each of them.
Many nonverbal behaviors are rather easy to measure and do not
require extensive training. An exception is FACS, the Facial Action
Coding System (Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997), an anatomically based
system which requires the coder to identify the action and intensity of
movements of the facial muscles. Extensive training is required and
coders receive certification of competence. Other systems based on
muscle movements also exist (Cohn & Ekman, 2005).
Instrumentation. Finally, instrumentation can be used to measure some

kinds of nonverbal cues. Computers can quantify an assortment of
acoustic variables, such as fundamental frequency, amplitude, and dura-
tion of silence, and these can be averaged over time or analyzed in terms of
temporal contours or variability (Juslin & Scherer, 2005). Another kind of
automation involves measuring facial EMG as a way to detect facial
muscle activation that is not visible to the naked eye (Dimberg,
Thunberg, & Grunedal, 2002). Finally, work is progressing on artificial
intelligence approaches to recognition of emotion from nonverbal cues

(Cohn & Ekman, 2005).
Choices About Measurement. Regardless of which of the approaches just

listed is used, the researcher still faces choices and, unfortunately, often
comes to realize that there is little established wisdom to guide these
choices. Consider the researcher who wants to measure smiling. Should
she measure overall smile frequency, smile frequency separately while
listening versus speaking, rate of smiling, total smile duration, smile
duration per smile, different kinds of smiles (e.g., those with eye and
mouth muscles engaged versus only mouth muscles engaged; Ekman,
Davidson, & Friesen, 1990), smile intensity, or overall ‘‘how much’’
smiling the person displayed (which could subsume frequency, duration,
and intensity)? Should she measure smiling cumulatively for the recorded
interaction, or should she measure smiling within successive bins (e.g.,
first 30 seconds, second 30 seconds, and so forth) so that temporal trends
can be examined? If so, how long should the bins be? Or, should she code
only samples and not the whole interaction? If so, how long should the
samples be and how should they be chosen?
All too often, researchers feel that they are stabbing in the dark when
making these decisions. Perhaps the field will someday be advanced
enough so that answers can be found in a textbook, but probably this
will not happen. And this is not entirely bad, because measurement
should be guided by theory rather than by formulas or by past tradition.
The design choices made by others may not be appropriate for one’s own
research.
Meanings and Functions of Nonverbal Behavior
Some nonverbal behaviors are discrete (i.e., have distinct on-off properties),
examples being nodding, blinking, pausing, and gestural emblems (see
below). Others are continuous, such as the fluid movements of the hands
while speaking (called speech-dependent gestures), vocal qualities, and
movement style. Nonverbal cues often accompany spoken words, and
when they do the nonverbal cues can augment or contradict the meanings
of the words as well as combine with the words to produce unique messages,
as in sarcasm, which involves the pairing of contradictory messages through
verbal and nonverbal channels. Research has explored the impact of mixed
verbal and nonverbal messages (Argyle, Alkema, & Gilmour, 1971).
Some nonverbal behaviors have distinct meanings, most notably the
hand gestures called emblems that have direct verbal translations (such as
the ‘‘A-okay’’ sign or the ‘‘thumbs up’’ sign in North American usage)
(Morris, Collett, Marsh, & O’Shaughnessy, 1979). However, most non-

verbal cues have multiple and often ambiguous meanings that are depen-
dent on other information for correct interpretation (associated words,
situational context, antecedent events, other nonverbal cues, etc.). There
is, alas, no ‘‘nonverbal cue dictionary’’ in existence and likely there will
never be one.
The face and voice have been extensively studied in terms of
emotional expression, with seven or so emotions having characteristic
configurations of facial muscle movements and a variety of acoustic
correlates (Ekman, 1982; Laukka, Juslin, & Bresin, 2005; Scherer,
Banse, & Wallbott, 2001). Nonverbal cues can also contribute to a per-
son’s emotional experience and self-regulation via physiological feedback
processes; engaging in certain behaviors can produce the associated
emotions (Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988). Although it is commonly
assumed that the main function of nonverbal behavior is to convey
emotions, this is only one of several important purposes served by
nonverbal behavior in daily life. Nonverbal cues are used to convey
interpersonal attitudes, such as dominance, affiliation, or insult
(Andersen, 1985; Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). Nonverbal cues
of the face, eyes, voice, and hands are used in the regulation of turn taking
in conversation, and also for purposes of providing feedback regarding
comprehension and interest to a speaker. Face and hand movements serve
dialogic functions, for example to illustrate, comment, refer, and drama-
tize (Bavelas & Chovil, 1997). Speech-dependent gestures also contribute
to fluent speech by facilitating word retrieval; speakers lose fluency and
complexity if they are constrained from gesturing while speaking (Krauss,
1998). Nonverbal cues can also reflect ongoing cognitive activity (Barroso
& Freedman, 1992).
The coordination of nonverbal behavior between people helps to
produce and maintain desired levels of arousal and intimacy (Argyle &
Dean, 1965; Patterson, Jordan, Hogan, & Frerker, 1981). People often
mimic or reciprocate others’ behavior, or adapt their movements and
speech style to match an interaction partner. Such behavior matching can
contribute to rapport (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). However, behavioral
compensation is also a common occurrence; one person adjusts his or her
behavior to compensate for another’s behaviors, for example by gazing
less at another, or backing up, if the other is standing too close.
Another important function of nonverbal behavior is self-presentation,
that is, to represent oneself in a desired way (e.g., as smart, honest, nice,
brave, or competent; DePaulo, 1992). Related to self-presentation are
societal display rules, conventions regarding what kinds of expressions
are appropriate at what times and by whom (Ekman, 1982). Examples
are norms for how to behave nonverbally in different social situations
(when disappointed, at a funeral, etc.) and norms that produce different

degrees of outward emotional expressiveness in men and women.
At one extreme of self-presentation is deliberate deception (DePaulo
et al., 2003).
Nonverbal cues convey information, both intentionally and uninten-
tionally, about emotions, attitudes, personality traits, intelligence, inten-
tions, mental and physical health, physical characteristics,
sociodemographic characteristics, social group membership, relation-
ships, deception, dominance and status, and social roles, to give a few
examples. Nonverbal cues play a role in social influence, as in persuasion
and interpersonal expectancy effects.
TRADITION #2: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

ACCURACY
The second major tradition in nonverbal studies, one that originated early
in the 20th century, concerns the accurate expression and judgment of
nonverbal cues. Individuals and groups differ in the accuracy with which
they convey information via nonverbal cues (called encoding, expression,
or sending accuracy) and interpret others’ nonverbal cues (called decoding
or receiving accuracy, or nonverbal sensitivity).
Encoding Accuracy
Researchers measure encoding accuracy using several different para-

digms, which include asking expressors to imagine or pose the intended
message, observing them in specific situations that arouse an intended
state, or observing them displaying their characteristic behavior styles
(Friedman, Riggio, & Segall, 1980; Wagner, Buck, & Winterbotham,
1993). The cues that form the basis of generating encoding accuracy
scores may be purely nonverbal or may be mixed with verbal cues. The
cues may be deliberately or spontaneously conveyed. In any case, criteria
must be developed so that it is clear what a ‘‘right answer’’ should be, such
as the emotion that was intended (on an emotion recognition task), or the
encoder’s score on a personality scale (on a personality judgment task).
Typically, observers make judgments about the encoders, which are
scored for accuracy according to the criterion, and then averaged across
observers for each encoder. This value becomes the operational definition
of how accurate the encoder is (i.e., how well he/she can be judged).
Encoding accuracy can be related to individual difference characteristics
of the encoders (e.g., gender, personality) or to experimental manipula-

tions (e.g., social power role). The measurement of encoding accuracy is
laborious and methodologically nonstandard.
Decoding Accuracy
Accuracy in decoding nonverbal cues is studied far more often than

encoding accuracy because it is far less individualized and time consuming
in its measurement. Decoding tests can be standardized, making them
easy to administer in groups and easy to score. Decoding accuracy
is measured by asking perceivers to watch and/or listen to nonverbal
behaviors, either live or recorded, and to make assessments of the
meanings of the cues (or to recall what behaviors occurred) (Hall,
Bernieri, & Carney, 2005). The content of such assessment is most
often emotional or affective states, but it can also be personality, intelli-
gence, social or ethnic group membership, deception, relationships,
kinship, and hierarchical position, among others (Bernieri, 2001). If the
definition of nonverbal behavior is extended beyond the physical person,
then one would also include accuracy at judging manifestations of self
such as are reflected in living environments and offices (Gosling, Ko,
Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002).
Accuracy of interpersonal judgment is measured by researchers in a
variety of ways, but, as with measuring encoding accuracy, such a test
requires a criterion against which judgments can be scored as right or
wrong. Thus, for example, on a test of judging the extraversion of a set of
persons (targets) shown on videotape, the researcher must have a good
measure of the targets’ actual extraversion in order to score the test.
Nonverbal decoding tests vary in how many target persons are shown,
how many different kinds of content are represented, and what cue
channels are included. As an example, such a test might present six
targets each expressing four different emotions using facial expressions,
for a total of 24 test items. On some tests, perceivers judge a full
audiovisual stimulus, while on others they judge single channels such
as face only or voice only. The test stimuli are typically short, ranging
from less than a second to a few minutes in duration. Accuracy can be
high, even when exposure to the stimulus is very brief, though this
depends on what is being judged. Accuracy levels depend on many
factors and are notably low for judging deceptiveness (Bond &
DePaulo, 2006) and high for judging prototypical facial expressions of
emotion (e.g., happy, sad, angry) (Ekman et al., 1987).
Most research on decoding accuracy is based on administering tests
using recorded stimuli such as described above. A variety of validated
tests of this kind are available (e.g., Costanzo & Archer, 1989; Nowicki
& Duke, 1994; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979).
Some research is quite different in that it is based on judgments made
during or right after a live interaction. In one such method, called
the empathic accuracy paradigm, a person watches a video replay of
one’s own interaction with a partner and makes inferences about the
partner’s thoughts and feelings, which are scored against the partner’s
self-described thoughts and feelings (Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, &
Garcia, 1990). In a variation of this method, the video is turned into a
standardized test that new viewers can take. In the empathic accuracy
paradigm, decoding accuracy has been shown to be based much more
on verbal than nonverbal cues (Gesn & Ickes, 1999; Hall & Schmid
Mast, 2007).
Nonverbal decoding skills advance during childhood and are typically
higher in females than in males (Hall, 1984). There is also evidence for
cultural expression ‘‘dialects’’ that allow expressions of emotions to be
more accurately judged by other members of that culture, or by people
with greater exposure to that culture, than by outsiders (Elfenbein &
Ambady, 2002). Research shows that nonverbal decoding skills are
higher in individuals with healthy mental and social functioning (Davis
& Kraus, 1997; Hall, Andrzejewski, & Yopchick, in press). This includes
higher empathy, affiliation, extraversion, dominance, conscientiousness,
openness, tolerance for ambiguity, need to belong, better personal rela-
tionships, and internal locus of control. Decoding skill is negatively
related to neuroticism, shyness, depression, and an insecure attachment
style. Such individuals are also less likely to be prejudiced against minority
groups (Andrzejewski, 2009).
Persons with higher decoding skill are rated by acquaintances as more
interpersonally sensitive. Higher self- and acquaintance ratings of social
and emotional competence are also positively related to decoding skill, as
are indices of competence in workplace and clinical settings, according to
supervisor or peer ratings as well as more objective indices of performance
(e.g., Byron, Terranova, & Nowicki, 2007; Elfenbein, Foo, White, Tan, &
Aik, 2007).
RESEARCH DESIGNS USING NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR AND

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION ACCURACY
Depending on the research question, nonverbal variables are independent

or dependent variables, mediator variables, or are used in correlational
designs.
Independent Variable Designs
Nonverbal behavior can be an experimentally manipulated independent

variable in judgment studies (e.g., where photos or experimentally cre-
ated videos are shown to participants), in confederate designs, or in
studies where participants are led to position facial or body parts
according to the experimenter’s wishes. In most such studies, it is gen-
erally important for the participants not to realize that the manipulation
has taken place or not to be consciously aware of the psychological
significance of the manipulated behavior. In the confederate paradigm
one has to worry whether confederates are actually able to vary certain
desired nonverbal behaviors without unintentionally varying others, too
(Lewis, Derlega, Shankar, Cochard, & Finkel, 1997).
Some illustrative studies from social psychology can be briefly men-
tioned. If persons in photographs are shown touching another person,
they are perceived as more dominant and more friendly than if they do
not touch (Major & Heslin, 1982). If waitpersons in restaurants touch
their customers, they receive higher tips (Hubbard, Tsuji, Williams, &
Seatriz, 2003). If participants in a dyadic interaction sit with postural
complementarity suggestive of high and low power (sitting in an
expanded vs. constricted posture, respectively), they feel more comfort
in the interaction than if the postures match (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). If
children are required to use hand gestures while learning new material,
they learn it better (Cook, Mitchell, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008). If people
are induced to activate the Zygomaticus major muscle (i.e., the ‘‘smile’’
muscle) while viewing cartoons, they rate the cartoons as funnier (Strack
et al., 1988). If White job applicants are treated according to how Black
job applicants were observed to be treated (e.g., larger interpersonal
distances, more speech dysfluencies), they perform more poorly in the
interview (Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974). And if negotiators are
instructed to mimic the movements of their partner, they achieve more
favorable negotiation outcomes (Maddux, Mullen, & Galinsky, 2008).
Dependent Variable Designs
Nonverbal behavior also serves as a dependent variable in social psycho-

logical experiments. Occasionally the coding of behavior is done by live
observers, but the more common approach is to record the behavior and
analyze it later. When participants are assigned to have low power in a
dyadic interaction, they suffer expressive deficits that make their affective
state harder to judge (Hall, Rosip, Smith LeBeau, Horgan, & Carter,
2006). If participants are subtly primed with the concept of elderly

persons, they walk more slowly when leaving the experiment (Bargh,
Chen, & Burrows, 1996). If participants experience cognitive load while
taking a nonverbal sensitivity test, it may or may not affect their accuracy,
depending on which test they are taking (Phillips, Tunstall, & Channon,
2007; Tracy & Robins, 2008a). And when participants tell lies, their faces
are less pleasant than when telling the truth (DePaulo et al., 2003).
Correlational Designs
Many studies using nonverbal variables are correlational, with no experi-

mental manipulations. Though there are ambiguities about causal inter-
pretation, these studies are often very interesting and provocative. As
examples, physicians’ and patients’ voices are correlated in terms of anger
and anxiety (Hall, Roter, & Rand, 1981). Higher nonverbal sensitivity
predicts better negotiation outcomes (Elfenbein et al., 2007). Implicit
anxiety as measured with a reaction time task is correlated with speech
dysfluencies, nervous mouth movements, and fidgeting (Egloff &
Schmukle, 2002). And persons with more dominant personalities are
better at expressing various facial emotions than persons with less domi-
nant personalities (Friedman et al., 1980).
Mediator Designs
The self-fulfilling prophecy has already been mentioned as a preeminent

(and very well studied) example of how nonverbal behavior can be the
medium through which social influence occurs. Teachers with high
expectations for a pupil, for example, behave more warmly through
nonverbal cues than teachers with lower expectations, and such behavior
can, in turn, influence performance. The research of Word et al. (1974)
mentioned above falls within the mediator tradition, for those authors’
goal was to show that White interviewers engage in certain nonverbal
behaviors towards Black interviewees which, in turn, produce deficient
performance in those interviewees.
One type of design, the lens model (Brunswik, 1956), is intrisically
mediational in that it measures both accuracy of communication and the
cues themselves, in order to understand the process by which accuracy is
achieved. Using this approach, one can find out whether accuracy exists
for judging a given construct (such as a personality trait or an emotion),
whether a given nonverbal cue is or is not diagnostic of that construct, and
whether perceivers use a given nonverbal cue in making inferences about
the construct. Putting these elements together can shed light on how
perceivers are able to achieve accuracy.
The study by Murphy, Hall, and Colvin (2003) illustrates this
approach for the trait of intelligence as measured by a standard IQ test.
Perceivers achieved a significant degree of accuracy in judging intelligence
from 1-minute excerpts of conversational behavior. Though many non-
verbal cues were measured in the investigation of mediation, the fol-
lowing three serve to illustrate the approach. Fast speech was not a
mediating cue because although perceivers rated fast speakers as being
more intelligent, that cue was not in fact diagnostic of higher measured
intelligence. Less fidgeting was not a mediating cue because although it
was diagnostic of higher intelligence, perceivers did not rate it as such. But
responsive gazing was a mediator: It was diagnostic of measured intelli-
gence and was recognized as such by accurate perceivers.
Having provided a quick description of nonverbal methods and some
illustrative findings, I now return to the tripartite theme of the chapter
whereby the nonverbal field is evaluated for its qualities that are good,
bad, and ugly.
THE GOOD
It Is Truly About Behavior
As already said, it is good that in this field we do study behavior. There is

very little paper-and-pencil research in this field. Researchers and lay-
people alike would agree that nonverbal behavior, both what we engage
in ourselves and what we see others do, is difficult to describe in words
and is often not processed at a high enough level of consciousness to
justify an introspective or self-descriptive approach to its study. The
relatively rare instances of paper-and-pencil research typically address
questions that either intrinsically require such an approach or that
cannot ethically or practically be handled otherwise. As examples, one
can ask people about their patterns of intimate interpersonal touching
(Jourard, 1966), about their personal liking or disliking of being touched
(Andersen & Leibowitz, 1978), about how they would behave in situa-
tions too numerous or far-flung to be captured experimentally or obser-
vationally (Hall & Schmid Mast, 2009; Nagashima & Schellenberg, 1997),
about their knowledge of nonverbal communication (scored for accuracy
against findings in the literature; Rosip & Hall, 2004; Vrij & Semin, 1996),
or about their stereotypes regarding nonverbal behavior (e.g., men versus
women, Briton & Hall, 1995; persons high versus low in social power,
Carney, Hall, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). Sometimes the self-reports are of
interest only in relation to behavioral measurements, as when assessing

how accurately people can report on their own nonverbal behavior (Hall,
Murphy, & Schmid Mast, 2007) or how accurately they can appraise their
own nonverbal skills (Ames & Kammrath, 2004; Patterson, Foster, &
Bellmer, 2001).
It Is Interesting
But, going beyond the good fact that the nonverbal field is based on
behavior, there are many other good things to be said about it. For
starters, practically any finding involving nonverbal communication is
interesting. Articles about nonverbal communication are hardly ever
dull. Perhaps we are reminded of how close we are to our animal cousins,
or perhaps we feel we are reaching towards the experience of ‘‘real life.’’
Perhaps we are simply fascinated by the possibility of getting an empirical
grip on phenomena that seem so elusive. Or, perhaps the often noncon-
scious or semiconscious nature of nonverbal behavior makes us believe
(or hope) that it is a window into people’s true inner states or character.
For whatever reason, people are attracted to the topic.
It Is Widely Relevant
Researchers’ interest in nonverbal communication stems from many

theoretical and substantive directions. Nonverbal communication is
seen as important to many different disciplines, not just psychology but
also sociology, anthropology, communication studies, medicine, and
ethology (to name some). Examples are the role of nonverbal cues in
self-presentation (sociology: Goffman, 1959, 1979), cultural differences
in nonverbal behavior (anthropology: E. T. Hall, 1966), the process of
interpersonal deception (communication: Burgoon, Buller, Floyd, &
Grandpre, 1996; Knapp, 2006), nonverbal communication in the social
life of primates (ethology: de Waal, 2005), and the design of lifelike
avatars for human–computer interaction (computer science: Bickmore
& Picard, 2005).
Within psychology, though nonverbal behavior is more closely iden-
tified with social psychology than with other areas, the topic is actually
studied in all areas of the discipline. This includes personality, develop-
mental, industrial/organizational, comparative, cognitive, clinical/coun-
seling, educational psychology, and neuropsychology. Across psychology,
the list of topics related to nonverbal behavior is extremely long, but the
following provides a sampling: emotions, social influence, ongoing
cognition, speech production, learning, psychotherapy, psycho-

pathology, gender differences and gender roles, cultural differences,
social attitudes, relationships, interpersonal expectancies, conversational
regulation, brain function, parent–child bonding, social adjustment, and
individual differences of all kinds.
Its Star Is Rising
There is no question that nonverbal communication is gaining promi-

nence as a research topic. Table 21.1 shows results from a PsycINFO
search of a few relevant terms, by decades. Clearly, there is a surge in the
current decade. This research appears in a huge assortment of different
journals, many of which are not in social psychology per se, and it is
conducted by many kinds of scholars, not just social psychologists. This
wide diversity of publication outlets, reflecting the wide relevance of
nonverbal communication within the behavioral sciences, is perhaps
one reason why Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007) did not mention
nonverbal behavior in their review of behavioral variables reported on in
one mainstream social psychology journal, the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology. (In fact, nonverbal behavior appears regularly in that
journal as well as in all social psychology journals.)
Other evidence for the progress of nonverbal communication as a
scientific discipline is the appearance of integrative chapters and books.
There is a chapter on this topic in the Handbook of Social Psychology
(DePaulo & Friedman, 1998). Integrative books include The New
Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (edited by Harrigan
et al., 2005), The Sourcebook of Nonverbal Measures (edited by Manusov,
2005), the Handbook of Nonverbal Communication (edited by Manusov &
Patterson, 2006), and Interpersonal Sensitivity: Theory and Measurement
(edited by Hall & Bernieri, 2001). Many other monographs and edited
Table 21.1. Results of PsycINFO Search

Decade ‘‘Nonverbal ‘‘Facial ‘‘Emotion
Communication’’ Expression’’ Recognition’’
1950–59 41 48 20
1960–69 176 75 27
1970–79 1,505 206 74
1980–89 1,875 530 241
1990–99 1,814 856 381
2000–09* 2,456* 1,988* 1,361*
* Projected
books also exist, as well as textbooks (Hickson, Stacks, & Moore, 2004;
Knapp & Hall, 2005).
Another potent indicator of a field’s progress is the publication of
meta-analyses. These exist in abundance, on many nonverbal communi-
cation topics including predictive validity of thin slices of behavior
(Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992), culture of perceivers and targets
(Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002), gender (lie detection, Aamodt & Custer,
2006; interpersonal sensitivity and various nonverbal behaviors, Hall,
1978, 1984; smiling, LaFrance, Hecht, & Levy Paluck, 2003; face proces-
sing, McClure, 2000), power, status, and dominance (interpersonal sen-
sitivity, Hall, Halberstadt, & O’Brien, 1997; various nonverbal behaviors,
Hall et al., 2005), deception (accuracy of lie detection, Bond & DePaulo,
2006; cues to deception, DePaulo et al., 2003), psychosocial correlates of
interpersonal sensitivity (Davis & Kraus, 1997; Hall et al., in press),
personality correlates of expressiveness (Riggio & Riggio, 2002), and
anti-Semitism and accuracy in distinguishing Jews from non-Jews
(Andrzejewski, Hall, & Salib, 2009).
Finally, though the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior is not new (it has
been in existence for 30 years), its impact factor is the highest it has ever
been as of this writing.
Why Is Its Star Rising?
One reason for the growing recognition of nonverbal studies is the general
maturation of the field. A second reason, especially relevant for social
psychology, is that nonverbal behavior is relevant to many of the currently
important themes within the discipline. Thus, what was once a topic of
slightly oddball interest is now more than respectable, and young inves-
tigators with skills in nonverbal research are now in demand. Some of the
new interest in nonverbal behavior can be traced to the ‘‘warming up’’ of
mainstream social psychology (that is, interest in motivation and emo-
tion, not just ‘‘cold’’ social cognitive processes). Examples of such main-
stream work include emotional expression (Tracy & Robins, 2008b),
emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2003),
attitude formation (Wells & Petty, 1980), manifestations of racial atti-
tudes (McConnell & Leibold, 2001), contagion/mimicry (Chartrand &
Bargh, 1999), and power/dominance (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003). Some
mainstream research that includes nonverbal behavior reflects efforts to
unite cognition with more emotional and motivational themes; examples
include implicit versus controlled processes (Dovidio, Kawakami, &
Gaertner, 2002), embodied cognition (Niedenthal, Barsalou,
Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005), and ideomotor processes
(Wegner, 2002). Evolutionary social psychologists are also interested in

nonverbal behavior (Floyd, 2006).
THE BAD
Clearly, nonverbal communication has a large role to play in the future of

social psychology. However, there are some elements that can be called
‘‘bad,’’ at least from some perspectives.
How Do We Fit In?
Despite a growing place for nonverbal research in social psychology, there

are ambiguities about how it fits in, which has implications for profes-
sional identity. At this stage in the development of social psychology as a
field, there is great emphasis placed on theory development and theory-
driven research. Theory-driven research is considered prestigious, and the
suggestion that a piece of research is ‘‘not theoretical enough’’ dooms it in
mainstream journals. Nonverbal communication research, within this
evaluative framework, can sometimes come up short because, speaking
broadly, it is more bottom-up than top-down—that is, it is more likely to
start with the exploration of interesting phenomena (nonverbal behavior
or nonverbal communication skills) rather than with testing a theory.
Bottom-up research, though essential in the production of knowledge
and in hypothesis generation and theory generation, is not held in the
highest esteem in social psychology. Thus, we are confronted with the
ironic situation that, all too often, our reward for studying actual behavior
is to be told by reviewers and editors that our research is deficient on
theoretical grounds, or, at least, that it can’t stand on its own but should
rather serve the validation of higher-level theories.
Another issue for the field’s identity and reputation stems from the
fact that nonverbal researchers might be seen mainly as the providers of
behavioral measures to be used as dependent variables in social psycho-
logical research. While not diminishing the value of this service to social
psychology, I would not want the nonverbal field to be defined mainly in
terms of its methodological toolbox. Nonverbal communication as a field
has much more substance to offer than this.
The fact that nonverbal behavior is relevant in so many disciplines and
to so many questions within social psychology creates a challenge to
professional identity and to the definition of the field. The field does
not have core questions or core theories; these tend to be particular to the
nonverbal phenomenon being studied. Therefore, nonverbal behavior

researchers may have more trouble finding common ground than those
who identify as, say, social cognition researchers or as attitude
researchers. This, in fact, may be a negative by-product of being a field
that is defined in terms of the behavior it studies. If I study gazing, it could
be in relation to many different substantive issues (e.g., physiological
arousal, dominance, attraction, conversational regulation, emotion,
affiliation, culture, gender, race, personality, or psychopathology).
Nonverbal behavior thus cuts across substantive areas and theoretical
traditions, creating ambiguity over where it belongs. Indeed, this tension
is manifest in nonverbal communication textbooks because the authors
have to decide whether to divide the chapters up by cue channels (face,
body, voice, etc.) or by thematic topics (e.g., attraction, deception,
relationships, social influence, gender and culture, etc.).
Labor Intensiveness
It is an understatement to say that nonverbal research can take a lot of

time and effort. It can take years to complete a study that involves
nonverbal coding. Sometimes extensive formal training and certification
are required (as with the FACS), but even training research assistants in
one’s lab to do relatively simple coding is very time consuming.
Furthermore, they find the work to be boring so it is hard to retain
assistants. And because coding takes a long time, turnover among assis-
tants (between semesters, for example) can set a project back because
they leave before the coding is done, and new ones need to be recruited
and trained. Even those supervising the assistants find the process
exhausting and aversive. And if graduate students are involved, they
may be reluctant to commit to studies that take a long time to complete,
and if they do, they may end up sorry that they did.
Fortunately, there are indications that to some extent this process can
be streamlined. Though much more research is needed, it is now clear
that valid results can be obtained from coding less than the total amount
of behavior at one’s disposal. Ambady and Rosenthal (1992), in a meta-
analysis, reviewed many studies showing that meaningful outcomes can
be predicted from very short ‘‘slices’’ of behavior (5 minutes or less,
sometimes much less). Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) showed that rat-
ings and nonverbal coding made on excerpts of teacher behavior as short
as six seconds predicted end-of-semester student evaluations and school
principals’ evaluations. Murphy (2005) showed that 3 minutes of coded
nonverbal behavior (smiles, nods, gazing, self-touching, and gesturing)
correlated highly with the same behaviors coded for 15 minutes, and that
for some behaviors 1-minute excerpts were adequate. And Carney,

Colvin, and Hall (2007) showed that accuracy for judging various person-
ality traits was often as good for 1-minute as for 5-minute clips, and in
some cases as good for five seconds as for 5 minutes.
Other evidence that long durations of behavior are not necessarily
required stems from tests of judging the meanings of nonverbal cues, such
as described in an earlier section. Some of the most widely used tests
present stimuli for only two seconds. Matsumoto et al. (2000) based a
reliable and predictive test on stimulus exposures of far less than one
second. Of course, how much information is required to measure beha-
vior adequately cannot be standardized. It will depend on what one is
seeking to measure.
Finally, it has to be added that the measurement of nonverbal beha-
vior or nonverbal skill is not a perfected science. Often, we measure
behavior crudely or shallowly; for example, we might simply count the
frequency of occurrence without measuring qualitative nuances or more
complex temporal relations. Reliability is not always good; this is often
true of tests of nonverbal decoding accuracy (Hall, 2001). Even if we
measure a collection of discrete behaviors well, we are not good at
reassembling them to form a coherent picture of a behaving person.
The behaving person is emitting many behaviors all at once, and they
occur in relation to each other, unfolding in patterns over time. The
behaving person is not, therefore, simply the sum of how often she
smiles, gestures, fidgets, and so forth.
THE UGLY
By ‘‘ugly’’ I mean complex and confusing. That is how I would describe

the challenge of assigning meaning to nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues
gain meaning in context, as discussed earlier. The same behavior can mean
different things or serve different functions, depending on what the
expressor’s inner state or intention is, or on what else is happening in
the situation. Even if contextual factors are known, establishing meaning
is hard because often there is no gold standard. The expressor’s own
opinion on the subject is hardly a gold standard, considering that often
people are not aware of their own nonverbal behavior.
Furthermore, does the criterion of a cue’s meaning lie in the expres-
sor’s intention or in how it is interpreted by others? To illustrate, a White
person might attempt to show respect to an African American by keeping
a large interpersonal distance, but this same behavior may be interpreted
by the African American as a sign of rejection. The behavior ‘‘means’’
different things, depending on whose perspective is taken. Even when it is

possible to develop a general or normative understanding of the meaning
of cues, there can still be great uncertainty in specific cases.
The fact that nonverbal behavior often takes its meaning from context
means that one may need to know far more than morphology and a few
rules of thumb, and this is a much broader and more demanding research
endeavor. Understanding the meaning of nonverbal behavior often takes
us into the territory of motives and goals—why is the person putting on
this expression? For example, observing that women smile more than
men do tells us something, but not much (LaFrance et al., 2003). Are
women happier than men? Are they behaving submissively? Are they
simply responding to others’ pleasant behaviors directed at them? Are
they displaying their higher level of social communication skill? Are they
trying harder to appear physically attractive? The fact that nonverbal
behavior can be deliberately used for many purposes including self-pre-
sentation and deception makes the determination of ‘‘meaning’’ an even
more complex issue.
Thus, it is all too common for a researcher to go to a great deal of trouble
to measure nonverbal behaviors, only to find that their meaning is obscure.
Perhaps it is partly because researchers often have to be agnostic about
meaning that their work sometimes appears to be ‘‘not theoretical
enough.’’ In pointing out these difficulties, I do not intend to discourage
researchers from measuring cues. But I am suggesting that they should not
fall victim to behavioral reductionism, by which I mean making the assump-
tion that measuring behavior is the only way to be scientific and rigorous.
What, then, is the alternative to behavioral reductionism? Can one
study nonverbal behavior without measuring behavior? I suggest that
often—depending, of course, on the research question—a researcher is
more interested in imputed or observed meaning than in the behavior per
se. A researcher interested in marital quality, for example, might gain much
more from gathering naı̈ve raters’ impressions of anger in a videotaped
interaction than from training coders to measure facial muscle movements
or having a computer spit out a long list of acoustic measurements. If the
researcher desires more channel specificity, she can gather these ratings
based on silent video, voice only, or electronically filtered speech if no
linguistic input is desired. As long as interrater reliability is achieved, raters’
impressions can sensitively index a wide range of perceived psychological
states. Authors have discussed the tradeoffs involved in the choice between
a molecular approach on one hand, where you know what you’ve measured
but are uncertain what it means, and a molar approach on the other, where
you know what it means—at least from a perceiver’s point of view—but
you don’t know exactly how the different behaviors contribute to the
impression (Cohn & Ekman, 2005; Juslin & Scherer, 2005).
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have tried to convey some of the excitement, as well as

problems, associated with studying nonverbal communication. It is a field
that is far from burned out; there are still many questions to be investi-
gated; and there is still much room for methodological development. In
one way or another, nonverbal communication is connected to virtually
all of social psychology.
Although Baumeister et al. (2007), as well as Patterson (2008), who
performed a similar analysis for the Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, were certainly correct in noting a dearth of behavioral measures
in contemporary social psychology, at least one category of behavior—
nonverbal behavior—is on the rise. Furthermore, by looking only at two
highly selective, mainstream journals, they may have underestimated
how often nonverbal behavior appears in social psychology journals, or
in studies done by social psychologists that are published in other types of
journals. And, of course, all of this is just a fraction of the volume of
nonverbal research that is done by scholars outside of social psychology.
The nonverbal field may be fragmented, but it is large.
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INDEX
Note: Page Numbers followed by f denotes figures and t denotes tables
Aarts, H., 69–72, 80–81, 101 lock and key model, 255–59
Abele, S., 394 role-based, 253–55, 260–65
Abstraction in coding systems, in setting/personality development,
193–94 259–60
Acevedo, B., 294 social vs. nonsocial, 250–52
Achtziger, A., 138 visual perception basis of, 248,
Action Sequence Study, 145 250–51
Action verbs, 96 Aggression research, 125–27, 257, 309
Adaptation Agnew, C. R., 3, 275, 276, 286
behavioral systems in, 343–46 Ainsworth, M. D. S., 348, 349, 352,
in relationships, 304, 305 358–59
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), Ajzen, I., 8, 59, 74, 168
355–56 Allen, J. P., 359
Affective forecasting research, 133 Allport, G., 22, 62, 162, 301
Affects Balance Scale, 373 Alquist, J., 119, 131
Affleck, G., 370 American Psychological Association
Affordances, 5–6, 60, 66, 266–67. (APA), 13, 25
See also Behavior settings Amygdale, 291
assessment methodology, 265–66 Analytic reasoning research, 138, 147
collective, 248, 253, 260–67 Anders, S. L., 355
collectively/selectivity in, 258 Anger research, 126–27
cooperativeness, 256 Anxiety research, 76, 332–33, 333f,
defined, 249–50 348–49
evolution of, 261–65 Anxious hyperactivating strategies, 351,
group size and, 260–61 352
interdependence theory, 309–16, Aron, A., 276, 284, 286, 294
314f Aron, E. N., 286
INDEX 439
Aronson, E., 267 in planned behavior theory, 164–65

Arousal-attraction-effect research, in reasoned action theory, 164–65
287–88 stability of, 169
Asch, S. E., 287–88, 301 tripartite theory of, 162
Asendorpf, J. B., 192 Attitude strength research, 164, 165
Associations Attractiveness, behavioral response and,
attitude-behavior, 163–64, 167–69 21
emotion in, 128, 130 Attributional egotism, 307
Atlas of Interpersonal Situations, An Automaticity
(Kelley et al.), 311, 321, 324, 328 in habit, 60, 74–78, 82
Attachment anxiety, 348, 351, 354–55 in implementation intentions, 149–50
Attachment behavioral system, 346–49 in unconscious behavior, 91, 97
activation of, 350–51, 350f Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire
adult functioning, 348, 349–52, 350f (ATQ), 75, 77
couples, 285 Avocation interests, 210–12
partner behavior effects on, 351f, Avoidant deactivating strategies, 348,
358–61 349, 352–55
small group interactions, 357–58 Ayres, M. M., 308
Attachment security, 308, 347–48, 350f
Attachment style, 348, 353–54 Bakeman, R., 192–93, 196
Attachment theory, 278, 342–43 Banse, R., 192
avoidance in, 348, 349, 352–56 Bargh, J. A., 9, 60, 61, 97, 100
in behavioral signatures, 332–34, 333f Barker, R., 248, 253–55, 256, 261, 303
behavioral systems in, 343–46 Baron, R. M., 59, 60, 65, 66, 252,
in couples relationships, 347–48, 255–57, 260, 261–62, 262n, 265
353–57 Bartholomew, K., 349
interpersonal dispositions in, 329–31, Baumann, D. J., 126
330t Baumeister, R. F., 6, 7, 28, 34, 36–37,
styles, development of, 287, 315 46–49, 58–59, 61, 119, 121, 124,
Attention attraction, goal striving and, 125, 127, 425
141–42 Beach, S. R. H., 307
Attitude-behavior consistency, 21–22, Beckwith, L., 359
179 Behavioral assessment practices
associations, 163, 168–63 accuracy in, 14, 14n
introspection in, 173–79 diary studies in, 279, 285
measurement of, 191 history of, 16–18, 16n
MRPI (See Mechanisms responsible for issues in, 6–7, 13, 18–25, 19n, 20n,
prediction and influence (MRPI)) 36–37, 37n
research, historical context, 162–65 perspectives on, 4–5, 205–6
Attitudes procedures, 9–11, 13–16
as behavioral response mediator, real behavior defined, 7–8
62–63, 76 small group (See Small group
complexity in, 173, 178–79 interactions)
concept, validity of, 22, 62 Behavioral confirmation, 276, 287–88
defined, 162 Behavioral entrainment, 408
evaluative systems in, 92–93, 92f, Behavioral frequency, habit and, 71, 73
96–98 Behavioral intentions model, 59
instability of, 168 Behavioral observation, direct
MODE model, 165, 169, 170n avocation interests, 210, 214t
nonverbal conveyance of, 417 benefits of, 189
440 INDEX
Behavioral observation, direct Behavior change interventions, 80

(Continued) Behavior–environment congruence, 248,
closeness research, 284 256
coding systems, 188, 192, 191t Behavior settings. See also Affordances
cost of, 187–89 affordances, collective, 248, 253
knowledgeable informant assessments, as causal factor, 301–2
210–15, 214t development, personality in, 259
vocational interest scale items, 217–19 as influencing factor, 249–50, 252–53
Behavioral outcomes, factors affecting, interdependence theory, 309–16, 314f
311–12 lock and key model, 255–59
Behavioral residue assessment, 17 nominal vs. psychological, 303
Behavioral response, 8–9 programs in, 253
actual vs. hypothetical, 21–22 regulation of, 260–67
anxiety in, 332–33, 333f roles/situations in, 253–55
attitude in, 167, 167t taxonomy of, 328–29, 329f, 330t
attitudes as mediator, 62–63, 76 Berlin, L. J., 349
behavioral signature model, 277, Berntson, G. G., 98
322–24, 323f Berscheid, E., 287, 303
black box model of, 57–58 Big-Five Inventory (BFI), 213–15
cognition in (See Cognition) Big Five Mini-Markers (SMM), 213–215
deliberate vs. habitual mode, 70 Big School, Small School (Barker/Gump),
deliberative behaviors, 167t, 171–73, 255
177–79 Bird, L., 254
emotion in (See Emotions) Black box model, 57–58
hypothetical, issues in, 20 Block, J./J., 24
interference, implementation Body image research, 76–77
intentions as, 61–62 Body language. See Nonverbal behavior
interpersonal dispositions in, 328, 330t research
Michelangelo Effect, 287 Boldry, J., 355
neuronal activity as intervening Bolger, N., 278–79, 370, 372–73, 379
variable, 295 Boudreau, L., 255–56, 260
nondeliberative behaviors, 167t, Bouffard, D. L., 258
169–71, 170n Bowlby, J., 278, 287, 332, 342–45, 347,
perceptual systems in, 92–96, 92f 351, 358
predicting, events vs. meaning in, 38–39 Bradford, S. A., 357
repetitive thinking in, 74–75 Bradley, J., 3
unconscious (See Unconscious Brain processes, study of, 13
behavior production systems) Brandstätter, V., 150
Behavioral signature model, 277, Breastfeeding interactions research, 252
322–24, 323f. See also Brown, L., 294
Interdependence theory Brown, R., 300
attachment theory in, 332–34, 333f Brown, T. J., 21
daily diary study, 336–38, 337f Buber, M., 249, 250
risk regulation in, 278, 334–39, 337f Bushman, B. J., 125, 127
Behavioral systems
attachment (See Attachment Cacioppo, J. T., 98
behavioral system) California Adult Q-Set (CAQ), 64
in attachment theory, 343–46 Calvin, W. H., 105–6
unconscious (See Unconscious Campbell, D. T., 10, 97, 252
behavior production systems) Campbell, J., 385–86
INDEX 441
Campbell, L., 355, 357 Cognition

Campbell, W. K., 307 behaviorist perceptions of, 322
Caporeal, L. R., 261–62, 262n in counterfactual thinking, 152–55
Capreol, M. J., 385–86 development, social scaffolding in,
Caregiver interactions, effects of, 304, 309 262
Carey, D. P., 93 ecological approach to, 247–50
Caring functions research, 252, 278, in emotional states, 122, 124,
308, 358 127–32
Carlston, D. E., 3, 57 if-then conditionals in, 145–46
Carney, D. R., 429 implementation intentions in, 138
Car Race Study, 142–43 measurement of, 188
Cassidy, J., 349 relationships in, 303–4
Categorical thinking, development of, role expectations in, 253–55, 261
249 socially situated model of, 304–6
Caudate, 292, 293 Cognitive-affective personality system
Caughlin, J. P., 369 (CAPS) model, 277, 323–24,
Cavallo, J., 277, 278 323f
Chaiken, S., 73 appraisal rule, 334
Chartrand, T. L., 95 dependence regulation rule, 335
Chen, M., 97 rule sensitivity controls, 335–36
Cialdini, R. B., 126 signaling/alarm rule, 335, 338
Clark, A., 106 Cognitive psychology, 12, 247–48, 268
Clark, M. S., 308 Cognitive synchrony, 391–94, 406–8
Clore, G. L., 123, 124, 128 Cohen, S. E., 359
Close relationship research, 276. See also Cole, M., 262
Couples relationships Collins, N. L., 353–54, 356
adaptation, 304, 305 Collins, W. A., 303, 359
anxiety, 330–31, 333f Colvin, C. R., 196n, 423, 429
behavior’s role in, 283–88, 296–97 9–11 Commission Report, 402
conflict in (See Marital conflict) Communication
daily diary studies, 336–38, 337f, 357 in coordination situations (See
dependent variable operationalization, Coordination situations)
284–86, 289 culture/communication study data,
emotions in, 304 401–2
exchange situations, 311, 313–16, dating couple/stranger study data,
314f, 325–28, 326f 401–2
goal-seeking behaviors in, 303 defined, 394
independent variable emergency responders, 402–8, 405f
operationalization, 287–88, 295–96 focal points in, 396–402, 395f, 396f,
intervening variables, 295 398f
manipulations, 287–88, 295–96 interdependent nature of, 279–80
motivational guidance systems in, 303 nonverbal (See Nonverbal behavior
neuroscience methods in, 12, 188, research)
288–96 role of, 406–7
variables, intervening, 286–87 Competitiveness research, 193, 258
variables of ultimate interest, 294–95 Conflict of interest situations, 331–32
Coan, J. A., 289–90 Conflict within groups research, 33.
Coding systems, 188, 192–96, 191t See also Marital conflict
Co-evolution in setting/personality Conformity research, 39, 263, 287
development, 259–60 Conger, R. D., 359
442 INDEX
Conscientiousness research, 139–40, Darwin, C., 92n

257, 264 Dating couple/stranger study data,
Content, process vs., 74–75 400–1
Contexts, observational, 190–92 Davidson, R. J., 289–90, 304
Convergent expectations, 392 Davis, A., 80
Cooperativeness affordances, 256 Dawkins, R., 94
Coordination situations ‘‘Decade of Behavior’’, 13, 19, 25
cognitive synchrony in, 391–402, ‘‘Decade of the Brain’’, 13, 16–17
406–7 Decision making research, 13
communication in (See Decoding accuracy, 419–20. See also
Communication) Nonverbal behavior research
emergency responders, 402–6, 405f Degree of outcome interdependence,
focal points in, 396–402, 395f, 396f, 312–14
398f DeLongis, A., 370, 385–86
interdependence theory, 311–16, Dennett, D. C., 107
314f, 328–29, 329f, 330t Dependability research, 139–40, 257,
terminology, 392, 408–9 264
Counterfactual thinking. See also Depression research, 76
Stereotyping/prejudice Detroit Area Study, 372–76, 375f
assigned, 153–54 Deviants, regulation of, 261, 263
emotion in, 130–31 DeWall, C. N., 119, 130
implementation intention in, Dieting behavior research, 147–48
152–55 Dijksterhuis, A., 80–81
self-set, 154–55 Dinero, R. E., 359
Couples relationships. See also Close Direct causation theory, 122–27,
relationship research 134
anxiety in, 332–33, 333f Disgust condition, 102
approach-withdrawal patterns in, Dominance studies, 251, 264, 420
372–73 Dopamine, 292
attachment behavioral system in, 285 Downey, G., 371
attachment theory in, 347–48, Drigotas, S. M., 287
353–57 Dual task research, 150–51
conflict of interest situations, 331–32 Duckworth, K. L., 98
(See also Marital conflict) Dunbar, R. I. M., 261
daily diary study, 336–38, 337f Dutton, D. G., 284
Coyne, J. C., 370 Dysfunctional Attitude Scale, 76
CPI, 209
Cue detection, goal striving and, 140–41 Eagleman, D. M., 103–4
Culture/communication study data, Eagly, A. H., 73
401–2 Effort mobilization theories, 153
Custers, R., 100–1 Ekman, P., 304
Elaboration likelihood model (ELM),
Dabbs, J., 24 169, 170n
Daily diary studies Electronically Activated Recorder
in behavioral assessment practices, (EAR), 191
279, 285 Electrons, 250
close relationships, 336–38, 337f, 357 Elliot, A. J., 307
limitations of, 385 Emblems, 416
marital conflict, 279, 370–71 Emergency responders, 402–9, 405f
Darley, J., 16 Emotional rapport, 409
INDEX 443
Emotions, 58–61, 101, 120–21, 131–33 Feeney, B. C., 353–54, 356

anticipated emotion, 132–33 Feeney, J. A., 355, 357
in associations, 128, 130 Fight or flight response, 122
in counterfactual thinking, 130–31 Fincham, F., 374
direct causation theory, 122–27, 134 Finger/thumb movements, 7, 14
facial muscle/acoustic correlates in, 417 Fishbein, M., 8, 59, 168
feedback theory, 127–29, 130, 132, 134 Fisher, H., 294
habits and, 61, 131 Flanker paradigm, 141
learning, 130–32 fMRI (functional magnetic resonance
measurement of, 370, 420 imaging), 188, 289, 292
processes, types of, 120–21 Focal points, 391–402, 395f, 396f, 398f
relationships, 304 Ford, M. B., 356
in unconscious behavior production Fourneret, P., 94
systems, 92–93, 92f, 106–7 Fraley, R. C., 24, 285, 349, 353
Emotion-versus-motivation research, Franken, I. H. A., 290
290–91 Fredrickson, B. L., 351
Empathic accuracy paradigm, 420 Freitas, A. L., 147
Empirical best linear unbiased predictors Freud, S., 92n
(EBLUPs), 374 Fruit and Vegetable Promotion
Encoding accuracy, 418–19. See also Intervention Study, 146
Nonverbal behavior research Funder, D. C., 6, 7, 28, 34, 36–37, 46–49,
Endowment effect, 102 58–59, 61, 64, 196–97, 196n, 425
Environmental dependency syndrome, Furr, R. M., 59, 64, 194–95, 196n
98–99
Environmental psychology, 303
Ethics issues, 37, 37n Gable, S. L., 371
Eugene-Springfield Community Sample Gender interaction research. See also
(ESCS), 207–15, 207t, 208t Marital conflict
‘‘Evaluation-motivation-action’’ effect, marital conflicts, 371–72, 376–83,
91–93, 92f, 96–98 378f–83f
Evaluative guidance systems, 61–62 stereotyping, 399
Evaluative unconscious behavior talkativeness, 194–95
production systems, 92–93, 92f, 96–98 George, L. J., 369
Event activity tests (EATs), 256–57 Gestures, speech-dependent, 416, 417
Evoked response potential (ERP), 290 Gibson, J. J., 66, 248, 250–51
Exchange situations, 311, 313–16, 314f, Gilovich, T., 300
325–28, 326f Goal-seeking behaviors
Expectations terminology, 392 behavioral systems in, 343–46, 352
Experience, relational, 278 emotion-versus-motivation research,
Explanation asymmetry, self vs. others, 290–94
308 habits in, 80–82
if-then components, inclusive,
Fabrigar, L. R., 59, 62–63 142–43, 146, 155–56
Face image response research, 290 if-then-why implementation
Face-to-face interactions, 38 intentions, 146–49, 156
Facial Action Coding System (FACS), implementation intentions in, 137–39
192, 192, 415, 428 mindsets in, 149–52, 156
Fearful avoidance, 349 motivational systems in, 92–93, 92f,
Feedback theory, 127–29, 130, 98–101
132, 134 in relationships, 303
444 INDEX
Goldberg, L. R., 59, 64–65, 209, 213, 216 Handgrip trainer task, 149–50
Gollwitzer, P. M., 9, 61–62, 138, 147, HAP-axis, 289–90
147 Hauser, S. T., 359
Goodale, M. A., 93 Hazan, C., 348
Gottman, J. M., 192–93, 196, 284 Heath, C., 95
Graham, J. M., 285 Heatherton, T. F., 129
Granovetter, M. S., 263 Heft, H. H., 248
Grant proposals, 23 Helping behaviors research, 252, 277,
Graziano, W. G., 3, 57 308, 355
Grich, J., 356 Hennighausen, K. H., 359
Group cohesion research, 358 Heuristic-systematic model (HSM),
Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and 169
Practice, 31 Hogg, M. A., 30–32
Group emotions research, 46–47 Holden, R. R., 10, 59, 65–66
Group norms, 392 Holland, J. L., 210
Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Holland, R. W., 101
31 Hollingshead, A., 279–80
Grove, J. B., 10 Holmes, J. G., 277, 278, 311, 321–24,
Grucza, R. A., 209, 213 327, 330–31
Guerrero, L. K., 355 Holtzman, S., 385
Guichard, A. C., 356 Hönig, G., 146
Guilt research, 129 Horowitz, L. M., 348
Gump, P., 255 Horwitz, M., 267
Houts, R. M., 369
Habit Index of Negative Thinking HPI, 209
(HINT), 75–78, 76n, 82 Hsee, C. K., 123
Habits, 68, 83 Huston, T. L., 369
automaticity in, 60, 74–78, 82 Hypothalamus, 292
behavior as cause and effect of, 58–60
breaking/formation of, 79–80 Ickes, W., 260, 285
conceptualization of, 71 If-then components, inclusive, 142–43,
defined, 71 146, 155–56
emotion and, 61, 131 If-then-why format intentions, 146–49,
goals and, 80–82 156
location of, 78–79 Imitation of behavior research, 94–95
measurement of, 71–73 Implementation intentions, 155–57
mental, 74–78 as behavioral response interference,
metacognitive reflection on, 82–83 61–62
motivation, goals and, 60, 70 in counterfactual thinking, 152–55
negative self-thinking, 75–78 format, importance of, 145–57, 156
past behavior role in, 68–70 in goal-seeking behaviors, 137–39
research progress, 73–74 if-then components, inclusive,
residual variance effect, 68–69, 73–74 142–43, 146, 155–56
Habitual routines, 392 if-then-why format, 146–49, 156
Hains, S., 30–32 mindsets and, 149–52, 156
Hall, J. A., 280, 423, 429 past behavior role in, 68–70, 80
Hamilton, C. E., 359 unconscious behavior production
Hamilton, D., 30 systems in, 102–4
Handbook of Social Psychology (Allport), wording, effective, 139–45
301 Implicit Association Test (IAT), 77, 97
INDEX 445
Inference in coding systems, 193–94 closeness research, 284

Information certainty in behavioral cost of, 188
outcomes, 312 limitations of, 46, 65–66, 72–73, 206,
Information error technique, 162–63 370
Information seeking research, 257, 306 as predictor of behavior, 174–76
INGROUP, 28 validation of, 276, 286
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), 20, Intrusiveness, 357
20n, 37, 37n Isen, A. M., 125–26
Insular cortex, 291 Isenhower, R. W., 266
Intelligence (IQ) testing, 423 Item aggregation, 193
Intentional action control theory, 140
Interactional synchrony, 408 Jakobsen, L. S., 93
Interdependence research, 260–65, James, W., 58, 83
275–81 Jansma, B. M., 290
Interdependence theory, 311–12, Jealousy, 307
324–27 Jeannerod, M., 94
basis of control, 311, 313–16, 314f John, O., 213
conflict of interest situations, Johnson, M., 106
331–32 John-Steiner, V., 262
coordination situations, 311–16, 314f, Jones, E. E., 30
328–29, 329f, 330t Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
degree of outcome interdependence, 29, 35–36
312–13 Journal of Personality and Social
dispositions in, 329–31, 330t Psychology, 14, 15, 17, 19–20, 25,
exchange situations, 311, 313–16, 36, 125, 425
312f, 325–28, 326f JPI, 209
in relationship contexts, 260–65, 275–81 Jurasek, M., 80
situations, taxonomy of, 328–29, 330f, Kashy, D. A., 68, 70, 131, 355
331t Kaufman,, W., 64
Intergroup/intragroup relations research, Kean, K. J., 256
33, 37–45, 41f, 42f, 44f, 45f Kelleher, S., 370
Interpersonal expectancy effects, 413 Kelley, H. H., 259–60, 311, 321, 324,
Interpersonal interaction research, 327–28, 329–31
276–81 Kelly, J. R., 3, 275
Interpersonal situations, properties of, Keltner, D., 300
311–12 Kenny, D. A., 315
Interpersonal synchrony, 408 Kerr, N. L., 311
Intervention, technological, 408 Kight, T. D., 287–88
Intimacy model, 277, 287 King, J. E., 35
Intimacy research, 308, 314–15, 358, 417 Knee, C. R., 24
Introspection Knowledge, socially-shared, 306
act clusters in behavior prediction, Knowledgeable informant assessments,
208–9 209–15, 214t
aggregate development, 206–8, 207t, Knutson, B., 295
208t Kobak, R. R., 349
in attitude–behavior consistency, Koole, S. L., 353
173–79 Kuhnen, C. M., 295
avocation interests, 210–11, 214t
benefits of, 10, 14–21, 14n, 19n, 186, Lakoff, G., 106
206 Lally. P., 73
446 INDEX
Langeslag, S. J. E., 290 Markman, H., 194

Langston, C. A., 286 Married couples interaction research, 194
Language Marsh, K. L., 251, 265
body (See Nonverbal behavior Martz, J. M., 286
research) Matsumoto, D., 429
development of, 249 McArthur, L. Z., 257
gender differences in, 308 McCrea, S. M., 153
unconscious behavior production McDougall, W., 301, 316
systems, 105–6 Mechanisms responsible for prediction
Larsen, R. J., 370 and influence (MRPI)
Larsen-Rife, D., 359 approach, benefits of, 179–80
Latane, B., 16 by attitude, 167–69, 167t
Lavi, N., 360 deliberative behaviors, 167t, 171–73,
Lavy, S., 357 176–79
L-data (residue data) as measurement introspection, 173–79
tool, 10 nondeliberative behaviors, 167t,
Leaper, C., 308 169–71, 170n
Learning, emotions in, 130–32 prediction vs. influence, 166, 167t
Leary, M. R., 335 Mediating processes, 6–9
Lens model, 422–23 behavioral response, 62–63, 76
Lerner, J. S., 102 black box model of, 57–58
Levine, J. M., 30 deliberate vs. habitual mode, 70
Lewin, K., 97, 99, 278, 301–2, 325 in social cognition theory, 7
Lewinian behavior equation, 278, 302 Mehl, M. R., 24, 191
Libet, B., 103 Meltzoff, A. N., 94
Lifestyle differences as predictive tool, Memory research
64–65 bias in, 370
Lock and key model, 255–59 emotion in, 128, 130
Loewenstein, G. F., 102, 123 information encoding effects, self vs.
Lorenz, K., 89 others, 307
Lost-letter technique, 162–63 neuroscience methods in, 291
transactive, 392, 403–4
Mackie, D. M., 300
Mental habits, 74–78
Madsen, S. D., 359
Michelangelo Effect, 287
Main, M., 349
Mikulincer,M.,278,349–52,350f,357–58
Malle, B. F., 308
Milberg, S., 308
Manning theory, 256
Milgram, S., 16, 310
Manucia, G. K., 126, 129
Miller, L. C., 315
Marien, H., 101
Marital conflict Milner, A. D., 93
benefits of, 369 Mindsets, implementation intentions
daily diary study data, 372–73, 375f and, 149, 156
diary methods in study of, 279, 370–71 Minority influence research, 46–47
dyadic perspective in, 371–72 Mirror neurons, 96
health influences of, 369, 384–85 Mischel, W., 22, 189, 257, 277, 303,
measurement of, 369 321–24
predictive value of, 369 Misovich, S. J., 256–57
reactivity to, heterogeneity in, MODE model, attitudes in, 165, 169,
376–83, 378f–83f 170n
statistical analysis methods, 385–86 Mood-freezing manipulations, 126–27,
Mark, L. S., 250 129
INDEX 447
Moreland, R. L., 8, 30–33 Obedience to authority research, 310–11

Morsella, E., 9, 60, 61, 106 Object identification research, 93
Moscovici, S., 30, 46, 47 O’Brien, T. B., 385
Motivational guidance systems, Observer-report data (O-data)
61–62 benefits of, 64
environmental stimuli effects, 91 issues in, 42
in relationships, 303 as measurement tool, 9–10, 15,
unconscious behavior production, 17–18, 20
92–93, 92f, 98–101 Oettingen, G., 146
Motor awareness research, 93–94 Orbell, S., 72
Motor programs, 96 Orbital frontal cortex, 291
Mowrer, O. H., 101 Orina, M., 356
MPQ, 209 Osgood, C. E., 97
Mücke, D., 192 Ouellette, R., 308
Mullen, B., 30
Murphy, N. A., 423 Paprocki, C., 278–79, 368–69
Murray, S. L., 336 Parent–infant interactions research, 252,
Myers, A. L., 153 278
Myers, D. G., 300 Parks, C. D., 29n
Pascoe, A., 81
Narcissism research, 309 Passionate Love Scale (PLS), 292
National Merit Scholarship Corporation, Paulhus, D. L., 10, 59, 65–66
207 Pennebaker, J. W., 191
Naturalistic observation as Peplau, L. A., 300
measurement tool, 9 Perceiving–acting cycles, 248, 250
Neal, D. T., 81 Perceptual guidance systems, 61–62
Negotiation strategies research, 138 Perceptual unconscious behavior
Nelligan, J. S., 353 production systems, 92–96, 92f
Nemeth, C., 30 Perfectionism, goal striving and, 139–40
NEO-PI-R, 209 Personality
Neuroscience research, 12, 188, in behavioral signatures, 332–34, 333f
288–96 in behavior settings development,
Nisbett, R. E., 14, 15, 92n, 300, 301 259–60
Nonconscious-process models, 60–61 collectively/selectivity in, 258
Nonverbal behavior research, 8 constructs, behavior and, 63–66
accuracy in, 418–20, 429 couples conflicts and (See Marital
benefits of, 423–27, 425t conflict)
coders, trained, 415, 428 defined, 186
correlational designs, 421 interpersonal dispositions in, 329–31,
definitions, 413–14 330t
dependent variable designs, 421–22 inventories, act cluster evaluation of,
independent variable designs, 421 209
instrumentation in, 413–14 knowledgeable informant assessments
issues in, 9, 427–30 of, 210–15, 214t
meanings/functions of, 416–18 lock and key model, 255–59
measurement choices, 416 in role-based affordances, 253–55
mediator designs, 421–22 situation interactions, 251
naı̈ve raters in, 412 structure, measurement of, 188
traditions in, 280–81 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
Notarius, C., 194 29, 36
448 INDEX
Personality psychology, 12–13, 63 Reeder, G., 307

behavior’s role in, 64–66 Regret research, 132–33
history of, 17, 189–90 Reis, H. T., 255, 277, 287, 303, 307, 311,
Pessiglione, M., 99 371
Phillips, C. M., 127 Relationship Breakup, 276
Phillips, D., 333, 333f Relationship contexts
Planned behavior theory, 164–65 behavioral systems in, 343–46
Playing it safe behaviors, 132–33 close relationships (See Close
Positive identities, value of, 38 relationship research)
Powell, M. C., 308 cognition, socially situated model of,
Predictions of behavior 304–6
act clusters, 208–9 conflict in (See Marital conflict)
attitudes, 164, 165 effects of, 304–5
avocational interests, 212–15 as focus, 304
behavioral signature model, 277, interdependence theory, 260–65,
321–24, 323f 275–81, 309–16, 314f
deliberative behaviors, 167t, 171–73, intergroup/intragroup relations, 33,
176–79 37–45, 41f, 42f, 44f, 45f
influence mechanisms by attitude, social psychological process effects,
167–69, 167t 306–9
influence vs., 166, 167t Repetition in behavior, 68–70
introspection in, 174–76 Residual variance effect, 68–69, 73–74
nondeliberative behaviors, 167t, Residues, assessment of (L-data), 10
169–71, 170n Response Frequency Measure (RFM), 72
role vs. individual-based variables in, 263 Rholes, W. S., 333, 333f, 353, 356
social construal focus in, 321 RIASEC model, 210
strength of weak ties, 263 Richardson, M. J., 251, 254, 265
Prejudice. See Stereotyping/prejudice Risk regulation model, 278, 334–39, 337f
Price, R. H., 258 Rituals, synchronous, 95
Pride, 307 Riverside Accuracy Project Q-Sorter
Priester, J. R., 98 Program, 198–99, 199f
Priming effects Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort (RBQ-3.0),
in attachment seeking, 354 186, 191t, 196–99, 196n
in goal-seeking behaviors, 92–93, 92f, development of, 17, 64, 196n
98–101 items, 200–2
measurement of, 96 Roese, N. J., 130, 152
in perceptual activity, 94–95 Roisman, G. I., 359
Prisoner’s Dilemma, 311, 313–16, 308f, Rom, E., 357–58
325–28, 326f Romantic (passionate) love research,
Process, content vs., 74–75 290–94
Project on Law and Mind Sciences, 316 Ross, E. A., 301, 316
Purdue Symposium on Psychological Rothbart, M., 30
Sciences (PSPS), 3–4 Rubin, Z., 286
Rusbult, C. E., 286, 287, 311
Questionnaires, 17, 21–22. See also Rybko, J., 358
Self-report (S-data)
Quinn, J., 68, 70, 131 Sadness/helping behaviors research, 126,
129
Raven matrices, 147 Sanna, L. J., 29n
Reasoned action theory, 8–9, 164–65 Sassenberg, K., 141
INDEX 449
Saucier, G., 213 Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI), 60,

Schaefer, H. S., 289–90 72–74, 82
Schmidt, R. C., 251 Semin, G. R., 305–6
Schoggen, P., 256 Settings. See Behavior settings
School-related behaviors research, Sexual desire vs. love research, 291–94
207 Shared mental models, 392
Schwartz, R. D., 10 Shaver, P. R., 277, 278, 285, 287, 308,
Schwarz, N., 123, 124, 128 348, 349–52, 350f, 353, 359
Scrambled Sentence Test, 96 Shaw, R., 253
Scriber, S., 262 Shechtman, Z., 358
Sears, D. O., 300 Sheeran, P., 138
Sechrest, L., 10 Sherrington, C., 91
Security-based strategies, 349 Shoda, Y., 277, 303, 322–24
Sedikides, C., 307 Shortcut processes, 97
Self-categorization theory, 38 Simpson, J. A., 333, 333f, 353, 355, 356
Self-control, implementation intentions Situations theory, 277
in, 149–50 Skinner, B. F., 91, 322
Self-defeating behaviors Small, D. A., 102
emotions as cause of, 125–27, 132 Small group interactions, 28–29
habits in, 74–78 article methodologies, 33
implementation intentions in, 138 attachment behavioral system in,
Self-disclosure research, 277, 287, 357–58
314–15 concerns regarding, 45–47
Self-efficacy beliefs, goal striving and, data set, 29–36, 32f, 36f
139–40 European influences, 33, 37–40
Self-esteem face-to-face interaction, 38
attachment theory, 347–48 findings, 29–30, 29n, 32–33, 35–36,
research, 38, 75–77, 336–38, 337f 36f, 39–41, 40n, 41f, 44–45, 44f, 45f
Self-fulfilling prophecy, 422. See also literature reviews, 33
Self-defeating behaviors methodology, 29–31, 34–35, 34n, 40
Self-interest in behavioral outcomes, popularity, factors affecting, 36–45,
311 41f, 42f
Self-monitoring research, 168 popularity trends, 30–32, 32f
Self-predictions of behavior, accuracy of, publications, 31
21–22 research per article, 33, 42–44, 43f
Self-presentation, 417–18 social cognition influences, 38–40
Self-report (S-data) solutions, 47–50
act clusters in behavior prediction, statistical analysis, 32, 35, 35n, 40, 41
208–9 Small Group Research, 31
aggregate development, 206–8, 207t, Smith, E. R., 300, 304–6
208t Smith, S. E., 369
avocation interests, 210–11, 214t Smollan, D., 286
benefits of, 10, 14–21, 14n, 19n, 188, Snyder, M., 287
206 Social cognition theory, 7
closeness research, 284–86 Social constructs, behavior and, 59–63
cost of, 187 Social dominance research, 251, 264,
limitations of, 46, 65–66, 72–73, 206, 421
370 Social identity theory, 37–38
as predictor of behavior, 174–76 Socially situated model of cognition,
validation of, 276, 286 304–6
450 INDEX
Social perception research, 94–95 TCI, 209

Social psychology, 13, 300–2, 300n, 302f T-data (test data), 10
behavior’s role in, 64–66, 275–76, Temporal structure in behavioral
283–88 outcomes, 312, 329
cognitive revolution, 36–37 Temporal units in coding systems,
ecological approach to, 248–49 194–95
history of, 16–17, 186–87, 247–48 Tennen, H., 370
individualistic orientation in, 299–300 Thibault, J. W., 324
Social synergy, 252, 265 Tice, D. M., 125, 131
Solomon, J., 349 Tidwell, M. C. O., 308
Spontaneous emotional mimicry, 408–9 Time of intention research, 103
Sroufe, L. A., 359 Transcranial magnetic stimulation
Stadler, G., 278–79, 368–69 (TMS), 295–96
Stahelski, A., 327–28 Triandis, H., 69
Stasser, G., 394 Trope, Y., 147
Steiner, I. D., 30, 314 Tucker, J. S., 355
Stereotyping/prejudice Turner, J. C., 38
attitudes in, 167 Twenge, J. M., 125
cognitive processes in, 30
development of, 249 Unconscious behavior production
environmental stimuli effects, 91, systems, 9, 89–90, 92n, 106–7
95–96 automaticity in, 91, 97
focal points in, 396–402, 395f, 396f, emotional, 92–93, 92f, 101–2
398f environmental stimuli effects, 91
implementation intentions in, 132 evaluative, 92–93, 92f, 96–98
Stillwell, A. M., 129 as impulse source, 102–4
Stimulus environment, 5–6 interactions, 104–5
affordances in, 5–6, 60, 66 language, 105–6
attention attraction, goal striving and, motivational, 92–93, 92f, 98–101
141–42 perceptual, 92–96, 92f
in goal-seeking behaviors, 92–93, 92f, stimulus–response (S-R) reactions, 91
98–101
response mediation, 57–58, 70 VanderDrift, L. E., 276
unconscious behavior and (See Van Knippenberg, A., 72, 98
Unconscious behavior production Van Knippenberg, C., 72, 98
systems) Van Lange, P. A. M., 286, 311
Stimulus–response (S-R) reactions, 91 Ventral tegmental area (VTA), 292,
Strange Situation studies, 356, 359 293
Strength of weak ties, 263–64 Verbal behaviors, 8
Stress research, 289–90, 354–55 Verplanken, B., 8, 58, 59–60, 70, 72, 77
Strien, J. W. V., 290 Vohs, K. D., 6, 7, 28, 34, 36–37, 46–49,
Stucke, T. S., 125 58–59, 61, 72, 80, 130, 425
Suspension bridge arousal/attraction Vygotsky, L. S., 262
study, 284
Wagerman, S. A., 64
Synomorphy, 248, 256
Walker, I., 80
Warren, W. H., 253
Tacit coordination, 392 Water Jar Study, 144
Tajfel, H., 30 Webb, E. J., 10
Tanke, E. D., 287 Weber, E. U., 123
Taylor, S. E., 300 Webster, G. D., 48, 49
INDEX 451
Wegner, D. M., 42, 104 Wiltermuth, S. S., 95

Weiss, H., 3 Wimmer, G. E., 295
Weiss, R. L., 284 Winkielman, P., 295
Welch, N., 123 Wisman, A., 353
West, S. G., 21 Wittenbaum, G. M., 31–33
White, G. L., 287–88 Wood, W., 68, 70, 81, 131
Whitton, S. W., 287 Word, C. O., 421
Wicker, A. W., 22, 163 World of Warcraft, 407–8
Widaman, K. F., 359
Wieber, F., 141 Xu, X., 293
Wieselquist, J., 287
Wilder, D. A., 30 Zajonc, R. B., 121, 248
Wilson, J. E., 276 Zhang, L., 130
Wilson, T. D., 14, 15, 92n, 175, 176 Zone of proximal development, 262

Then A Miracle Occurs - Focusing On Behavior in Social - Christopher R - Agnew, Donal E - Carlston, William G - 1, 2009 - Oxford University Press - 9780195377798 - Anna's Archive

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Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

This book emerged as the result of the inaugural Purdue Symposium on

West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

I. Behavior in Social Psychological Theory and Research 1

1. Behavior and Miracles 3

2. Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements:

3. Behavioral Assessment Practices Among Social Psychologists

II. Behavior and Intra-Individual Processes 55

4. Individuals, Behavior, and What Lies Between the Two 57

5. Habit: From Overt Action to Mental Events 68

6. Unconscious Behavioral Guidance Systems 89

7. Does Emotion Cause Behavior (Apart from Making People

8. How to Maximize Implementation Intention Effects 137

9. Distinguishing Between Prediction and Influence: Multiple

10. Personality as Manifest in Behavior: Direct Behavioral Observation

11. Personality, Demographics, and Self-Reported Behavioral Acts:

12. Measuring Self-Enhancement: From Self-Report to

13. Developing an Ecological Framework for Establishing Connections

III. Behavior and Inter-Individual Processes 273

14. Behavior Between People: Emphasizing the ‘‘Act’’

15. Behavior, the Brain, and the Social Psychology of Close

16. The Relationship Context of Social Behavior 299

17. The Atlas of Interpersonal Situations: A Theory-Driven Approach

18. Mind–Behavior Relations in Attachment Theory and Research 342

19. Grounding Social Psychology in Behavior in Daily Life: The Case of

20. Communication, Coordinated Action, and Focal Points in Groups:

21. Nonverbal Behavior in Social Psychology Research:

Christopher R. Agnew Roy F. Baumeister

C. Nathan DeWall Judith A. Hall

Leandre R. Fabrigar Ronald R. Holden

Ezequiel Morsella Gertraud Stadler

In the Spring of 2007, the social psychology faculty at Purdue University

CARTOON AS RORSCHACH: DIVINING THE FOCUS ON

Clearly, the Harris cartoon is open to interpretation. Indeed, it appears to

Whether miraculous or not, we firmly believe that focusing attention

ISSUES REGARDING BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Psychologists commonly partition the behavioral chain into three parts

What Do We Know About the Stimulus Environment (and Why

At the root of most social psychological examinations of the causal

Why Don’t We Study Real Behaviors (or at Least Important

Baumeister, Vohs, and Funder (2007) succinctly captured one major

A second factor, according to many, was the emergence of social

What, Exactly, Counts as Behavior Anyway?

When critics of social psychology lament the field’s lack of emphasis on

What Kinds of Processes Mediate Behavior?

A main, take-home message of Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) theory of

behavior relationship. By making important theoretical distinctions

What Gets Measured, How, and Why?

may have special expertise and privileged information, which could

human life, with personality focusing on individual differences in those

LOOKING FOR BEHAVIOR