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The “consistency” controversy and the accuracy of personality judgments
Author(s) -
Funder David C.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1983.tb00337.x
Subject(s) - consistency (knowledge bases) , psychology , personality , nothing , social psychology , sort , position (finance) , cognitive psychology , epistemology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , finance , economics , information retrieval
Areas of clear and acknowledged disagreement in the personality literature's “consistency controversy” are surprisingly difficult to pin down. The present essay suggests that one basic and real disagreement nowadays is the admissability of subjective judgments of personality as data: Personologists are willing to use them, and situationists are not. Situationists generally regard judgments as so influenced by error as to be essentially unusable, and instead prefer direct measurements of specific behaviors. The relative uses and limitations of global judgments and specific measures are considered. It is concluded that any position that judgments reflect “nothing but” error is untenable. It is further concluded that each sort of data has distinct uses and limitations, provides a check on the other, and is indispensable.