| Abstract: | Motivated by calls from interactional psychology for theories and studies involving both personality and situation variables, two achievement motivation theories of personality-by-situation interaction illustrated by data are presented. It is shown how a pure personological or situational approach can lead us astray, how differences in behavior from situation to situation or over time can be predicted from personality and situation variables incorporated in achievement motivation theory, and how achievement motivation research bears on issues of interactional psychology like situation analysis, the consistency issue, situations as activators of motivational forces, and stored/situational information in the mediating process. The mechanistic/dynamic interaction distinction is discussed, and it is asserted that there is not necessarily a contradiction between these conceptualizations. |
