Person-Environment Interaction: A Challenge Found Wanting Before it was Tried

TLDR

Abstract

Cronbach's well-known APA presidential address in 1957 recommended a new paradigm for psychologists: the coordination of individual differences and environmental effects. Following his suggestion, psychologists in diverse areas have gradually begun to accept, sometimes grudgingly, the necessity for an interactive approach, e.g., personality (Sarason & Smith, 1971); social psychology (McGuire, 1973); experimental psychology, or, specifically, behavioral genetics (Vale & Vale, 1969). Cronbach's (1967) recommendations were made specifically to educational psychologists and restated in Lewinian terms by Mitchell (1969) as Education's challenge to psychology: The prediction of behavior from person-environment interactions. It is, therefore, ironic that there has been more resistance to accepting the person-environment paradigm among educational psychologists than among many other psychologists. Although there are more general reasons for resistance to the interactive paradigm, the most important source of resistance for educational psychologists has been an excessively restrictive definition of person-environment interaction. Following Bracht