ABSTRACT
In 1977, I completed the first assignment for a desultory course on contemporary personality research by doing a paper on Jane Loevinger’s concept of ego development. Those familiar with the history of personality psychology as an academic discipline will know that 1977 was not an especially good year in my field. As a second-year graduate student, I was all too aware of the conventional wisdom of the day: Behavior is situationally specific rather than consistent across situations; personality dispositions do not predict behavior; personality resides more in the eyes of the observer than in the lives and behavior of people observed (Magnusson & Endler, 1977; Mischel, 1968, 1973; Sechrest, 1976; Shweder, 1975). If there is such a thing as personality, we learned in that class, its influence is small and variable, and it can only be studied by employing the humblest constructs (Mischel, 1977) and the most circumscribed measures (Fiske, 1974), and we must do so with the greatest caution and defensiveness.
