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Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside.
Address correspondence to David Funder, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521. E-mail: funder{at}citrus.ucr.edu
Abstract
The article by
Hooker and McAdams (2003)
challenges psychologists to rethink some of the theoretical distinctions used in everyday research. Although their theory aims to integrate approaches to gathering and understanding data, such an integration may or may not be all encompassing, or indeed, desirable. Nonetheless, the six foci provide a framework as valid as any for the exploration of personality across a lifetime.
THE six-foci of personality model attempts to bridge the various divergences that fragment personality psychologists. "Why can't we all just get along?" is certainly an admirable battle cry, and, in their model, Hooker and McAdams make a laudable attempt to piece together an integrative theory including all of the facets that comprise the study of individual differences. To what degree are the authors successful in their attempt to "[encompass] the full complexity of personality," and to what degree is such an attempt practical and desirable? Although the authors provide a well-organized framework within which to examine these complexities, the placement of conflicting paradigms at different levels of analysis does little to explicate how they might be made to complement each other. Further, although the authors do an excellent job of mapping out the empirical terrain for aging research, they offer a less distinct notion of how their proposed theoretical approach might be used to guide research.
A difficulty in attempting to reconcile the trait and social-cognitive approaches, in particular, is that the merger is frequently resisted by the parties involved. Whereas a number of trait theorists support such an integration (e.g., Funder, 2001; McCrae & Costa, 1996), some social-cognitivists exhibit an "almost dispositional reluctance" (Funder, 2001, p. 205), arguing that the very theoretical existence of their paradigm hinges upon its irreconcilable differences with trait theory (Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001). The mutual exclusivity of such thinking complicates the current authors' stated goal to provide a shared language leading to a "unified science of personality." If investigations at Level I may be said to represent the concerns of trait theory, and investigations at Level II represent the concerns of social-cognitive theory, the six-foci model may simply give researchers operating within each of these levels license to continue as they always have without engendering true integration.
In a similar fashion, Level III data—representing the idiographic perspective of life stories—serve to counterbalance the nomothetic methodology typified by other levels within the model. It could generally be said that a choice to gather data in one manner or the other is largely dependent upon what questions one is asking; however, life story data seem to be not as immediately comprehensible as Level I and Level II data. What should be done with these kinds of data? If a researcher chooses to code the data into nomethetic variables, one obvious solution, the data are then effectively reduced to Level I or Level II data, thus negating the purpose of using an idiographic approach. This may be a fundamental paradox inherent in attempting to generalize from Level III data.
The authors state that "late life provides the clearest palette on which to understand personality, as lives become more divergent from one another over long periods of time." This raises the following question: In what way is studying gerontological personality significantly different from studying personality in general? In many ways, we think the answer is this: It's not. Personality psychologists concern themselves with the degree to which a person's behavior is reflective of characteristics that are consistent over time and across situations; the span of time and the array of situations should not change this focus. With this in mind, perhaps the authors could have provided a more comprehensive plan of action for the implementation of their research program toward the goal of understanding personality and aging. We will readily agree that that traits are fairly stable, that goals may change, and that life stories get longer as we grow older, but a research agenda must provide direction to be useful.
The six-foci model is elegant in its simplicity of design: with so many different methods available for examining personality, the model suggests, why not simply gather the most prominent and encourage psychologists to look at all of them? Unfortunately, this solution is not so simple in its execution. Different methodological approaches address different substantive questions, and debates over methods often reduce to a debate over which questions are most important (Funder, 2000). If the six-foci model is inviting us as a community to "get along" and perhaps incorporate multiple methodologies, it's an invitation we heartily endorse. To the extent the model implies an attempt to combine questions at different levels of analysis, however, or is taken to encourage trying to look at everything at once, we would question its ultimate utility.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under Grant MH42427 to David C. Funder.
Received for publication July 8, 2003. Accepted for publication July 17, 2003.
References
This article has been cited by other articles:
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  K. Hooker and D. P. McAdams Personality and Adult Development: Looking Beyond the OCEAN J. Gerontol. B. Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci., November 1, 2003; 58(6): P311 - 312. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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