The person–situation debate in personality psychology refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that a person's personality is relatively consistent across situations. Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits. The debate is also an important discussion when studying social psychology, as both topics address the various ways a person could react to a given situation.
Background Interest in determining whether there were any generalities in behavior began in the 1920s and 30s. Gordon Allport and Henry Murray both supported the idea of a consistent personality with occasional situational influences. Allport noted that "traits become predictable to the extent that identities in stimulus situations are predictable." Others like Edward Thorndike viewed behavior as a composition of responses an individual has to situations. In 1968, Walter Mischel published a book called Personality and Assessment claiming that behavior is too cross-situationally inconsistent to be classified with personality traits. He stated: "...with the possible exception of intelligence, highly generalised behavioral consistencies have not been demonstrated, and the concept of personality traits as broad dispositions is thus untenable" His book was a non-systematic meta-analysis of some of the research on the relationship between behavioral and personality traits (assessed by either self-report or peer-report). The book also assessed studies regarding measurements of behavior from one situation to another. This book generated a formidable dispute between social psychologists and trait theorists because trait questionnaires had been used to measure personality for many decades. Behaviorism had dominated the field of psychology up until this time, making Mischel's claim devastating to the mainstream consensus amongst personality psychologists and causing many psychologists to question and doubt whether personality exists. According to David C. Funder, Mischel's book posed three main questions:
Is personality consistent and does it overcome situational influences? Are people's intuitions about each other's personalities generally flawed or generally correct? If personality is really that consistent, why are psychologists continuing to argue about this issue? More recently, Mischel has retracted some of his original claims, protesting that some psychologists misinterpreted his argument to mean he believes personality does not exist. One of the largest critiques of the person-situation debate is that it does not follow "modern science", as it studies specific people in specific situations and is difficult to replicate and generalize results.
Situationist argument Situationists had a number of arguments, but they can be generally summarized into four:
Low correlations between measures of behavior and personality: In psychological research, whether relationships between variables exist are compared by the correlation coefficient. Mischel argued that in his literature review of personality research, the correlation between personality and behavior, or behavior across situations, rarely exceeded .30-.40. Because the correlations are close to zero, Mischel concluded that personality traits have little to no relationship to shaping behavior. This claim was especially detrimental to personality psychology and continues to haunt many fields of psychology research today. The validity of self-report measures and clinical assessment procedures: Most of the studies that Mischel reviewed had taken place in laboratory settings. Rarely was behavior analyzed in natural settings. The claim was that trait psychologists did not adequately combat issues of method variance, social desirability and response sets, and construct validity when they constructed their measures of traits. The practical utility of trait measurements in predicting behavior was also questioned. Even when observation studies were conducted, there was observer bias (that is, traits are in the eye of the beholder). The type of behavioral assessment and treatment procedures that were becoming popular at the time: These treatments and behavioral assessment methods focused on the situational influences on behavior, rather than personality traits. Stability: behavior is not cross-situationally consistent, and any stability can be attributed to the consistency of the situation, not the person. Situationists questioned whether personality traits exist when behaviors are not consistent across situations; after all, why spend time studying a construct that has no validity? Because of the aforementioned points, situationists argued that the predictive ability of personality traits is severely lacking. Opponents of the trait approach claimed that the idea of personality traits is fundamentally flawed and that behavior would be better understood through conditioning and learning processes.
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