States that the behavior of the individual (e.g., a child's coping with perceived rejection) is a function of the interaction between self, other, and context. "Self" characteristics include the child's
mental representations and other internal and external (
personality) characteristics. "Other" characteristics include the personal characteristics of the loving or rejecting parent(s), along with the form, frequency, duration, and severity of such behaviors. "Context" characteristics include other significant persons in the child's life, along with social-situational characteristics of the child's environment. The multivariate model is often written in quasi-mathematical form: B
I =
f[SOC]. Where B
I refers to the behavior of the individual,
f refers to "a function of,"
S refers to "self,"
O refers to "other," and
C refers to "context." The parentheses indicate an interaction among elements within their bounds.
