Situationism in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
refers to an approach to personality that holds that people are more influenced by external, situational factors than by internal
traitTrait may refer to:* Trait, a characteristic or property of some object.* Biological traits, which involve genes and characteristics of organisms.* Trait theory, an approach to the psychological study of personality.In computing...
s or
motivationMotivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. Motivation may be internal or external. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
s.
It therefore challenges the position of trait theorists, such as
Hans EysenckHans Jürgen Eysenck was a British psychologist of German origin, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...
or Raymond B. Cattell. The term is popularly associated with
Walter MischelWalter Mischel is an American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.-Early life:...
, although he himself does not appear to like the term. Empirical evidence upon which situationists base their claims take the form of cross-situational measures of traits such as extraversion, in which only low correlations of the same trait taken in different situations have been found.
Situationism in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
refers to an approach to personality that holds that people are more influenced by external, situational factors than by internal
traitTrait may refer to:* Trait, a characteristic or property of some object.* Biological traits, which involve genes and characteristics of organisms.* Trait theory, an approach to the psychological study of personality.In computing...
s or
motivationMotivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. Motivation may be internal or external. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
s.
It therefore challenges the position of trait theorists, such as
Hans EysenckHans Jürgen Eysenck was a British psychologist of German origin, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...
or Raymond B. Cattell. The term is popularly associated with
Walter MischelWalter Mischel is an American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.-Early life:...
, although he himself does not appear to like the term. Empirical evidence upon which situationists base their claims take the form of cross-situational measures of traits such as extraversion, in which only low correlations of the same trait taken in different situations have been found. However, in response to such evidence, Hans Eysenck has pointed out that the correlations, while low, are typically still high enough to reach
statistical significanceIn statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....
. A midrange position, which holds that personality is best understood as resulting from subtle interplay of internal and external factors, is known as "interactionism".
Some notable situationist studies include:
ZimbardoPhilip George Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is known for his Stanford prison study and his authorship of introductory psychology textbooks for college students.- Early years :...
's
Stanford prison experimentThe Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University...
,
BystanderThe bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders...
experiments,
Obedience Obedience, in human behavior, is the quality of being obedient, which describes the act of carrying out commands, or being actuated.ef>Abate, Frank R. . . The Oxford Pocket Dictionary and Thesaurus...
experiments like
Milgram experimentThe Milgram experiment was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience...
and Heat and
AggressionIn psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause pain or harm. Predatory or defensive behavior between members of different species is not normally considered "aggression." Aggression takes a...
experiments.