ABSTRACT

Our goal in writing this book has been to discover a theoretical framework that might explain the coherence in adaptive human behavior. The result of many years of work on personality and social behavior has produced such a substantial body of information that it is now possible to develop a theory of interactions between personality and situational variables that is rich enough to account for a wide range of human behavior and explicit enough to be put to an empirical test. Although few of the basic processes have been completely explored, the findings from many important programs seem ready to be integrated into a broader framework that might stimulate research throughout the discipline. In other words, this seems to be the time to use the generalist’s approach to continue to generate broad models to guide the next wave of empirical research.