Principles of Situation Research: Towards a Better Understanding of Psychological Situations

Abstract

in Berlin (Germany). We also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions as well as the editor, Wendy Johnson, for her outstanding support, comments on, and patience with our manuscript. Any opinions and remaining errors are solely our own.Researchers interested in situations and person  situation may become associated members of the Situation Research Network (SRN) to be found at http://www.situation-research.com/. The website is intended to (a) compile information on all kinds of situation research, (b) grant access to practical resources (e.g., R codes, scales, etc.), and (c) provide interested researchers a platform for communication and collaboration.Correspondence: John Rauthmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin, Germany. Phone: 0049-30-20930049-30- -18360049-30- . Fax: 0049-30-2093 jfrauthmann@gmail.com. Principles of Situation Research 2 AbstractThere is currently no consensus on how to study psychological situations, and situation research is still riddled with problems of conceptualization (What is a situation, what is it not?) and measurement (How can situational information be assessed?). This target article formulates three core principles (with corollaries) to provide a foundation for psychological situation research:The Processing, Reality, and Circularity Principles. These principles build upon each other, ranging from basic to more complex issues (e.g., how to study situations in both objective and subjective terms). They are intended to guide and spur more coherent research programs that produce cumulative knowledge on psychological situations. We conclude with a plea for reallife, multi-method, multi-situation, multi-time, multi-group designs that can illuminate the interwoven dynamics between persons (with their personalities and behavior) and situations. Furnham, & Graham, 1981; Edwards & Templeton, 2005; Endler, 1993;Frederiksen, 1972;Funder, 2006Funder, , 2008Funder, , 2009Furr & Funder, 2004;Hogan, 2009; Kenny, Mohr, & Levesque, 2001; Magnusson, 1981a,b;Rauthmann et al., 2014;Rauthmann, 2012;Reis, 2008;Ross & Nisbett, 1991;Rozin, 2001;Swann & Seyle, 2005;Saucier, Bel-Bahar, & Fernandez, 2007;Sherman, Nave, & Funder, 2010 ten Berge & de Raad, 1999, 2002Wagerman & Funder, 2009;Yang, Read, & Miller, 2006. Principles of Situation Research 4This target article is an outgrowth of that meeting. Based on its wide-ranging and stimulating discussions, we set out our views on how to move the field of psychological situation research forward. After clarifying terminological issues, we formulate our ideas of the core principles of what situations are (and what they are not), how they operate, and how they may be studied, pursuing two broad aims. First, we hope to raise awareness and alert those interested in conducting research to thorny issues that have bedeviled situation research (and continue to do so). Second, we offer some principles for organizing, guiding, and unifying future research on situations. Third, an important purpose of ...

Person-Situation Transactions across the Lifespan

“…That is, consistent with the DIAMONDS framework (Rauthmann et al, 2014) and our meta-theoretical assumptions, features of the social environment -especially other people -are associated with particular psychological characteristics of situations. Not all children evoke similar amounts of adversity for parents.…”

“…An interactionist perspective is also becoming more prominent in social/personality psychology because of the resolution of the person-situation debate (Buss, 1987;Ickes, Snyder, & Garcia, 1997;Kenrick & Funder, 1988;Synder, 1983) and the increased attention in the literature to the psychological dimensions of situations (e.g., Rauthmann, Sherman, & Funder, 2014). Given these converging intellectual developments, we propose that a developmental perspective can supplement recent efforts to revitalize the concept of the situation in social/psychology.…”

“…For instance, children can evoke particular parental reactions and thereby influence the parenting they receive from caregivers (e.g., Bell & Chapman, 1986), and youth prone to alcohol use may select into groups of likeminded peers thereby coupling social selection and social influence processes (e.g., Scalco, Trucco, Coffman, & Colder, 2015). Indeed, examples of evocative person-situation transactions and selection effects are prevalent in developmental science.An interactionist perspective is also becoming more prominent in social/personality psychology because of the resolution of the person-situation debate (Buss, 1987;Ickes, Snyder, & Garcia, 1997;Kenrick & Funder, 1988;Synder, 1983) and the increased attention in the literature to the psychological dimensions of situations (e.g., Rauthmann, Sherman, & Funder, 2014). Given these converging intellectual developments, we propose that a developmental perspective can supplement recent efforts to revitalize the concept of the situation in social/psychology.…”

“…The breadth of perspectives on these seemingly foundational variables has been sizable, and at least historically, there has been little in the way of a comprehensive framework to conceptualize situations or contexts from a psychological perspective. Situations have been viewed as qualitatively distinct classes (e.g., work vs. social situations), and when attempts have been made to quantify situational features, researchers have used a dizzying array of attributes such as the presence of particular physical cues (e.g., number of other people), occurrence of certain activities (e.g., doing chores), behavioral affordance (e.g., allowing expression of certain traits), and many more (Rauthmann, Sherman, & Funder, 2014).…”

“…The DIAMONDS model (Rauthmann et al, 2014;Rauthmann et al, 2015) Only a handful of studies have begun to collect data concerning the developmental unfolding of DIAMONDS. A recent paper investigated age related changes in DIAMONDS dimensions over the lifespan (Brown & Rauthmann, 2016).…”