Is Consistency a Domain-General Individual Differences Characteristic?

ABSTRACT

We explored randomness in responding in two ways across six experiments. First, we predicted that people would differ from each other in randomness in a stable way when tested in the same domain across two sessions; people who responded more randomly in a particular domain in one session also should respond more randomly in a second session whereas people who responded less randomly in one session also should respond less randomly in a second session. Second, we predicted that there would be some domain general randomness; people's randomness in one domain should predict their randomness in another domain. We used consistency coefficients across blocks of a session as an inverse measure of randomness and found (a) consistency coefficients correlated across sessions within the same domain and (b) consistency coefficients in one domain correlated with consistency coefficients in other domains.

Keywords:

• consistency coefficient
• generalizability
• randomness
• within-persons consistency

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Trafimow

Dr. David Trafimow is a Distinguished Achievement Professor of psychology at New Mexico State University, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Executive Editor of The Journal of General Psychology, and also for Basic and Applied Social Psychology. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. His current research interests include attribution, attitudes, cross-cultural research, ethics, morality, methodology, and potential performance theory.

Stephen Rice

Dr. Stephen Rice is an Associate Professor of Human Factors and Chair of the Graduate Programs in the College of Aeronautics at the Florida Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 2006. His research interests include aviation psychology, trust, automation, and aviation consumer perceptions.