The Purpose of Contingencies in Personality Psychology

Julian Zelizer: I was wondering, so you just described this idea of contingencies, like person, x, x in situation, y in that manner and so on. And so I wonder, so what's the whole purpose of that exercise? Would you want to collect as many contingencies as possible to describe the person or are you interested in the association between these contingencies and something else? It started from a more theoretical exercise. What is the practical use are you asking, I think? And how would you go about sampling these contingencies? The first approach that I took, but it's certainly not the last word or it should not be the last word, is trying to