The Person-Situation Debate
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The Debate
One of the main reasons why we are interested in understanding someone's personality is because we believe that it will predict their behavior. While personality traits are important factors, there is one more variable that is very important in predicting a person's behavior. It is the situation that the person is in. The question that some psychologists ask is, "which is more important in predicting behavior? Is it their personality or the situation they are in?"
Many of us living in relatively more individualistic cultures often assume that a person's behavior is caused by his/her personality or attitudes (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). Some research in psychology suggests that we do this to the extent that we underestimate the influence of the situation the person is in. This is commonly referred to as the fundamental attribution error. In the field of personality psychology, various psychologists such as Walter Mischel (1968) questioned this assumption that personality traits are good predictors of behavior. He suggested that the situation that the person is in has a much strong influence on behavior that understanding a person's personality has little use when predicting behavior.
Mischel (1968) reviewed the research on personality traits predicting behavior and concluded that the correlation between personality and behavior was on average about .30. He considered to be very is small. He used this finding to suggest that the role of personality in predicting behavior was not all that important and that much of behavior must be caused by the situation the person is in. Later researchers have revised this correlation between personality and behavior to .40 but this was still considered to be low (Nisbett, 1980). This view emphasizing the power of the situation to predict behavior is known as situationism. When we look at a correlation like this, we often square the correlation to figure out what percent of our behaviors can be attributed to personality. If we square.40, it is .16 so this could mean that 16% of our behavior is caused by our personality.
Of course, there are many personality psychologists who still argue that personality traits are very important in predicting behavior (Kenrick & Funder, 1991). They argue that research on situational variables often fail to predict behavior better. In fact the low personality-behavior correlations do not necessarily imply that situational variables are more powerful in predicting behavior. Other personality traits that were not measured, as well as measurement error may also contribute to predicting behavior. They also argue that even though personality is not a strong predictor of an individual's behavior at a specific time in a specific situation, it is a powerful predictor of behavior across situations. For example, conscientiousness may not be a great predictor for a particular test score of a student but is a great predictor of the student's overall grade point average over four years. It is also argued that people choose their situations, and these choices are caused by the individual's personality. In real life (as opposed to laboratory experiments) people choose situations that suit their personality and therefore their behaviors are more in line with their personality. Compared to an extravert, an introvert may be less likely to go to large social gatherings so they may have much less opportunity to speak to twelve people in a one hour time span. This debate between the situationists and the personality psychologists is commonly known as the person-situation debate.
Interactionism
A perspective to resolve this debate is known as interactionism (Endler & Parker, 1992). The interactionist perspective suggests that personality traits and situations interact to influence behavior. They assume that reality is complicated. Behavior is the result of an interaction between the person's personality and the situation the person is in. Both of these variables have an influence on how powerful the other variable is as a predictor of behavior.
The person's individual personality traits may have an influence on how powerful it is as a predictor of behavior. For example, let's think about people who are either not very self-conscious or very independent. For these people, the situation they are in has some influence, but their personality is more important in predicting behavior. They do not care too much about what other people think or expect. For others who are more self-conscious and less independent, the situation may be more important in predicting their behaviors. They are more concerned about who is around them and how they will respond.
The situation also has an influence on how much it predicts behavior. For instance, some situations are very powerful in predicting behavior. For example, if you are in an army bootcamp, the situation is going to be a very strong predictor of behavior. These types of situations are called strong situations. In a strong situation, you have very little freedom to express your unique personality characteristics. One the other hand, if you are sitting by yourself in your room, your personality is going to be a strong predictor of your behavior. These are called weak situations. In weak situations, you have freedom to do what you like and what you like to do will most likely reflect your personality traits.
This complicated view is known as interactionism. Most research using this perspective examine both the personality of the individual and then place the individual in a particular situation to see how they react (e.g., Geen, 1984).
References
Endler, N. S., & Parker, J. D. A. (1992). Interactionism revisited: Reflections on the continuing crisis in the personality area. European Journal of Personality, 6, 177-198.
Geen, R. G. (1984). Preferred stimulation levels in introverts and extraverts: Effects on arousal and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 1303-1312.
Kenrick, D. T., & Funder, D. C. (1991). The person-situation debate: Do personality traits really exist? In V. J. Derlega, B. A. Winstead, & W. H. Jones, W. H. (Eds.) Personality: Contemporary Theory and Research (pp. 150-174). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment. New York: Wiley.
Nisbett, R. E. (1980). The trait construct in lay and professional psychology. In L. Festinger (Ed.), Retrospections on social psychology (pp. 109-130). New York: Oxford University Press.
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I. Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108, 291-310.