If
stable if … then … , situation – behavior patterns are meaningful reflections
of the personality, they also should be linked to the person’s self-perceptions
about his or her own consistency. The relationship between the stability of the
person-situation profile that characterizes an individual in a particular
domain of behavior and the self-perception of consistency has been closely
examined. The results directly speak to Bem’s classic “Personality paradox”
which, as you saw earlier, has motivated much of the research agenda in studies
at the trait level. As bem pointed out in the 1970s, while our intuitions
convince us that people have broad behavioral dispositions that we believe are
seen in extensive consistency in behaviors across situations, the research
results on cross-situational consistency in their behavior persistently
contradict our intuitions.
