How shall we understand human behavior? Do people act as they do because of their
personalities or because of the situations in which they find themselves? Psychologists have observed that individuals evidence
a strong tendency to cite their own personalities as reasons for their positive
actions and their situations as reasons for their negative actions. By contrast, individuals tend to regard the
actions of other people in the opposite fashion, assuming that positive actions
are situation-based and negative actions are personality-based. The phenomenon is so common that it has its
own term—the fundamental attribution error.
Given the importance of situations, one would expect that
there is a well-established way to understand them. Unfortunately, that has not been the
case. So Scott Parrigon, Sang Eun Woo,
Louis Tay, and Tong Wang (2017) sought to remedy that deficiency by creating a
taxonomy (classification system) specific to the psychological aspects of
situations. They approached the issue by
using a lexical scheme, meaning one that relied on using the language by which
people describe psychologically relevant situations. To do so, they trained raters to evaluate situation
descriptor words and then subjected the experts’ opinions to rigorous
statistical factor analysis that “boiled down” 851 situation-describing adjectives
to six major dimensions. In effect
then, Parrigon et al. used the same basic method to describe psychological
situations as had been used successfully to create the widely celebrated Big Five system of personality
description.
After analyzing data from four studies, the researchers concluded that there are six critical dimensions that describe psychologically relevant situations: importance, complexity, adversity, humor, positive valence, and negative valence. Practically speaking, that means the most psychologically relevant features of any given situation would be explained by describing the extent to which the experiencing person regards it as important vs unimportant, complex vs simple, adverse vs favorable, humorous vs serious, and whether it has a positive or a negative emotional tone.
We can extrapolate loosely then that, psychologically speaking, the worst possible situation would be one that the experiencing person considers to be important, complex, adverse, serious, and with negative implications. One could imagine, for instance, a situation in which one returns home from vacation to discover that their house has burned down, and they have no fire insurance.
Hopefully, your house has not burned down and you do have fire insurance. So how does the situation classification system relate to your personality and to your health? Let's take one simple example.
Suppose you want to create or enhance an intimate interpersonal relationship. From a personality perspective, you might consider your own strengths and weaknesses and those of the person whom you seek. You imagine what about you would be alluring to that individual and what about that individual would be alluring to you. Having done so, you are ready to plan your relationship development strategy. That is where the situation becomes central.
From a psychological perspective, your relationship situation clearly is important and serious. Recognizing that, you structure your behavior accordingly. For instance, you make a mindful, concerted effort to speak and act in ways that facilitate the budding relationship. You also accept that because relationship building is complex, you take the time to imagine how the parts of the process interrelate to each other. You do your best to fashion the situation for maximum complementarity among it situational parts. Next, you ensure that you minimize all the potential negative emotional elements and maximize all the positive ones. Finally, you review the total situation and make any adjustments necessary to ensure that you have created a psychological situation that is as favorable to your goals as possible.
The lesson here is obvious: You can avoid the fundamental attribution error by always looking to both personalities and situations simultaneously. That is true whether you are scrutinizing your own behavior or that of other people. If you want to make healthful changes - whether physical or mental - do not fall for the latest, most thoroughly advertised "this strategy works for everybody" approach. Look to your unique self and to your unique situations, find the strengths and weaknesses within them, and use those understandings to develop and implement a plan that is just right for you.
Reference:
We can extrapolate loosely then that, psychologically speaking, the worst possible situation would be one that the experiencing person considers to be important, complex, adverse, serious, and with negative implications. One could imagine, for instance, a situation in which one returns home from vacation to discover that their house has burned down, and they have no fire insurance.
Hopefully, your house has not burned down and you do have fire insurance. So how does the situation classification system relate to your personality and to your health? Let's take one simple example.
Suppose you want to create or enhance an intimate interpersonal relationship. From a personality perspective, you might consider your own strengths and weaknesses and those of the person whom you seek. You imagine what about you would be alluring to that individual and what about that individual would be alluring to you. Having done so, you are ready to plan your relationship development strategy. That is where the situation becomes central.
From a psychological perspective, your relationship situation clearly is important and serious. Recognizing that, you structure your behavior accordingly. For instance, you make a mindful, concerted effort to speak and act in ways that facilitate the budding relationship. You also accept that because relationship building is complex, you take the time to imagine how the parts of the process interrelate to each other. You do your best to fashion the situation for maximum complementarity among it situational parts. Next, you ensure that you minimize all the potential negative emotional elements and maximize all the positive ones. Finally, you review the total situation and make any adjustments necessary to ensure that you have created a psychological situation that is as favorable to your goals as possible.
The lesson here is obvious: You can avoid the fundamental attribution error by always looking to both personalities and situations simultaneously. That is true whether you are scrutinizing your own behavior or that of other people. If you want to make healthful changes - whether physical or mental - do not fall for the latest, most thoroughly advertised "this strategy works for everybody" approach. Look to your unique self and to your unique situations, find the strengths and weaknesses within them, and use those understandings to develop and implement a plan that is just right for you.
Reference:
Parrigon, Scott; Woo, Sang Eun; Tay, Louis; and Wang, Tong
(2017). CAPTION-ing the situation: A
lexically-derived taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Vol 112, 4, April, 642-681. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000111
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