Lecture 6 - Persons and Situations Flashcards
What are some experiments that were done to show that situations make good people do bad things in the mid 20th Century? And, what was the motivation behind these types of experiments?
Milgram’s experiment.
Standford Prison Experiment.
Asch’s conformity studies (three lines test).
These types of experiments were conducted as there was a boom in interest in how situations can influence behaviour in people after what was seen during world war II.
What did Walter Mischel (1968) propose in his book Personality and Assessment?
He proposed that measures of personality predict behaviour obly weakly, and that behaviour varies considerably over situations. He concluded then that behaviour is largely driven by situation and the concept of a stable personality trait is “untenable.”
What was one of the experiments that Mischel (1968) relied on heavily in his book Personality and Assessment?
The experiment on children and lying on tests.
What is the Fundamental Attribution Error proposed by Ross in 1977? And what was one of the experiments Ross did to support this phenomenon?
The idea that we attribute too much credence to personal disposition as the driver of action over situational factors.
He used participants from the Millgrim Obedience studies as example of the Fundamental Attribution Error. They thought that participants obedience in the study was a reflection of their personal dispositions as opposed to the situational pressures they were feeling.
What was some of the empirical data that was used in support of a critique of Mischel’s proposal of situation being the main cause of behaviour?
Richard et al. (2003) work that looked at correlations in social and personality psychology, finding that r = o.2 is the average correlation in this field.
What was Thomas Widiger’s (1982) response to Mischel’s proposal?
Cross-situational variablity of behaviour is not incompatible with effects of traits on behaviour.
What is the Principle of Aggregation?
Single instance measurements have a large degree of error and therefore low reliability. As the number of times a measure is taken increases the reliability of a measure increases. Internal consistency increases with aggregation.
How does the Aggregation Principle respond to Mischel’s two claims about behaviour and personality?
After the proliferation of research and experimental data in support of Personality traits, did Mischel revise his position of “situationism”?
Yes. He changed his view to “interactionism”.
What was Mischel’s idea of situational strength?
Mischel proposed in 1977 that in “strong” situations cancel out the effect of personality traits on behaviour.
According to Mischel (1977), what is considered a strong situation?
- Clear behavioural expectations
- Incentives for compliance
- Individual ability to meet the demands of the situation.
In a meta-analysis looking at situational strength and personality traits done in 2021 by Furr and Funder, what were some of the findings discussed in the lecture?
What were some of the different conceptualisations discussed in lecture of how personality and situations interact/transact? We discussed five conceptualisations of transactions.
What is one way that Situation Perception is measured?
The DIAMONDS model can be used. In this type of assessment participants rate situations based on the DIAMONDS questions.
In a study done by Jonason and Rauthman (2020) what did they find in regards to B5 and Situation Perception?
Those high on E tended to perceive situations more positively and those high on N tended to perceive situations more negatively.
Authors propose that more important than a situation’s effects on people’s behaviour is how the situation is perceived.
