Does personality provide unique explanations for behaviour? Personality ascross-person variability in general principles

I propose that personality does not provide unique explanations for human b ehaviour. Two principles, accessibility as a 'cognitive' principle and regu latory focus as a 'motivational' principle, are used to illustrate how pers onality can be reconceptualized as a cross-person source of variability in the functioning of general psychological principles that have situational s ources of variability as well. For each of these principles, evidence is pr esented that 'persons' and 'situations' as sources of variability have simi lar effects. I then provide some other examples of psychological principles having similar effects when either persons or situations are the source of variability. I discuss the utility of a 'general principles' perspective f or understanding the many ways that persons, groups, and situations can con tribute to manifesting the same pattern of principles, and how some pattern s are more adaptive than others. The implications of there being multiple w ays of manifesting the same pattern are then considered for the classic iss ues of when personality is revealed and what is its range of applicability. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.