ABSTRACT
Years ago, B.F.Skinner (1956/1968, p. 29) wrote, “…control your conditions and you will see order,” a command that echoed with each orderly prediction he made. How does a personality psychologist control conditions so as to improve prediction? Skinner would encourage us to control external influences. An alternative approach, but of potentially equal promise, is to control internal conditions: personality. Controlling internal conditions is plainly not what Skinner had in mind. To Skinner, observable behavior was all important and most things mental, and hence unobservable, were part of a black box to be ignored. Aside from Skinner’s objections, controlling the internal conditions of personality may seem impractical simply because personality parts exist that cannot be readily manipulated by the experimentalist: life history, intelligence, models of the future, and so forth.
