CONSISTENCY IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Columbia Univ New York Morningside, New York NY

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

This project investigates the consistencies that characterize the individual's social[unreadable] behavior across situations and over time. It has found a theoretically significant but[unreadable] previously unidentified type of consistency: behavioral signatures, consisting of[unreadable] characteristic, distinctive patterns of variability in the person's behavior in relation[unreadable] to particular types of situations. Clues about the person's underlying qualities (e.g.,[unreadable] goals, motives) may be seen in when and where a type of behavior, such as helpfulness,[unreadable] occurs, not just in its overall frequency. These patterns, in the form of the person's[unreadable] stable profiles of if ..then... relationships (e.g., she does X if A but Y if B) are[unreadable] linked to dispositional judgments and to perceptions of consistency. The behavioral[unreadable] signatures distinctive for a person vary in their structural characteristics (e.g., in[unreadable] discriminativeness and responsiveness to differences in situational features). The[unreadable] structure and determinants of these signatures will be investigated with populations[unreadable] ranging from toddlers, to inner city school children, to 35 year-olds first assessed when[unreadable] they were in preschool and who will now again be followed-up. Methods range from large[unreadable] scale but highly controlled field studies (cross-sectional and longitudinal), to[unreadable] experimental studies. A typology of persons, situations, and behaviors will be developed,[unreadable] based on behavioral signatures in selected domains of social behavior. The structural[unreadable] characteristics of the signatures of selected sub-types, and their consequences for[unreadable] flexible adaptive behavior and coping, will then be investigated. The single unifying[unreadable] theme is to assess and clarify the determinants and health-relevant consequences of the[unreadable] different types of signatures found. Related studies of the development of these[unreadable] signatures are revealing long-term consistencies in the individual's patterns of[unreadable] goal-directed attentional-control strategies (e.g., to enable delay of gratification) over[unreadable] the course of development. These strategies, visible in diagnostic pre-school situations,[unreadable] are predicting significant outcomes decades later. Further, the attentional strategies[unreadable] used to enable such self-control (e.g., via strategic self-distraction to "cool" the[unreadable] aversiveness and frustrativeness of the delay) seem to be central for the development of[unreadable] flexible, adaptive behavioral signatures that facilitate social-cognitive functioning and[unreadable] coping.