Situationism in psychology: An analysis and a critique.

Bowers, Kenneth S.

doi:10.1037/h0035592

Cited by 1,017 publications

(558 citation statements)

References 81 publications

(73 reference statements)

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“…In the professional enterprise of personality psychology, however, making sense of persons is or should be the very raison d'etre ofthe discipline. From the time of Allport (1937) and Murray (1938), through the anxious days of the "situationist" critique (Bowers, 1973;Mischel, 1968), and up to the present, upbeat period wherein we celebrate traits (John, 1990; Wiggins, in press) while we offer a sparkling array of new methods and models for personality inquiry (see, for example, McAdams, 1994a;Ozer & Reise, 1994;Revelle, 1995), making sense of persons was and is fundamentally what personality psychologists are supposed to do, in the lab, in the office, even on the drive home. But how should we do it?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do We Know When We Know a Person?

McAdams¹

1995

Journal of Personality

855

741

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Individual differences in personality may be described at three different levels. Level I consists of those broad, decontextualized, and relatively nonconditional constructs called "traits," which provide a dispositional signature for personality description. No description of a person is adequate without trait attributions, but trait attributions themselves yield little beyond a "psychology ofthe stranger." At Level II (called "personal concems"), personality descriptions invoke personal strivings, life tasks, defense mechanisms, coping strategies, domain-specific skills and values, and a wide assortment of other motivational, developmental, or strategic constructs that are contextualized in time, place, or role. While dispositional traits and personal concerns appear to have near-universal applicability. Level III presents frameworks and constructs that may be uniquely relevant to adulthood only, and perhaps only within modern societies that put a premium on the individuation of the self. Thus, in contemporary Western societies, a full description of personality commonly requires a consideration of the extent to which a human life expresses unity and purpose, which are the hallmarks of identity. Identity in adulthood is an inner story of the self that integrates the reconstmcted past, perceived present, and anticipated future to provide a life with unity, purpose, and meaning. At Level III, psychologists may explore the person's identity as an internalized and evolving life story. Each of the three levels has its own geography and requires its own indigenous nomenclatures, taxonomies, theories, frameworks, and laws.One of the great social rituals in the lives of middle-class American famihes is "the drive home." The ritual comes in many different forms.

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confidence: 99%

What Do We Know When We Know a Person?

McAdams¹

1995

Journal of Personality

855

741

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“…As regards all contemporary theories of human behavior, they strike us as naively simple and grossly uniform. In our defense we cite Cronbach (1975), Bowers (1973), andGergen (1973). ,…”

Section: The Uniformity Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

An apology for research integration in the study of psychotherapy.

Glass¹,

Kliegl²

1983

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

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Criticisms of the integration of psychotherapy-outcome research performed by Smith, Glass, and Miller (1980) are reviewed and answered. An attempt is made to account for the conflicting points of view in this disagreement in terms of certain issues that have engaged philosophers of science in the 20th century. It is hoped that, in passing, something useful is learned about research of many types on psychotherapy.We wish to acknowledge the helpful criticisms of Robert Cummins, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado, who assisted in the early stages of thinking about this article.Requests for reprints should be addressed to Gene V Glass,

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“…POB authors have thus applied a situationist approach to explain and instil desired behaviours. In trouble to explain why is it that different persons behave differently within the same environmental features (what would challenge them to accept a trait perspective), situationists justified that fact with the past history of contingencies that each individual has undergone [31]. However, this is a justification for individual regular behaviour, what accordingly to our definition would be a justification for traits (that have been developed through the lifespan).…”

Section: Unbalanced Charactermentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Instead of a materialistic view of traits, we can look at them as behavioural regularities that help us to explain the behaviour, and thus traits must not be necessarily seen as neither innate, nor unchangeable [31]. This is a similar perspective as that of Mischel who came to view traits as conditional probabilities that a particular action will be evoked [32].…”

Section: Immutability Of Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dialectical Approach to Positive Organizational Studies

Lopes¹

2013

AJIBM

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Over the last decade, an academic movement emerged towards the study of positive phenomena in management and organization studies. Since then, two different scientific research streams have emerged in line with this positive approach to management: 1) positive organizational scholarship (POS), which proposes a trait approach view of positive virtues and strengths and sees the environment as a moderator variable which facilitates or not the exhibition of corresponding positive behaviours; and positive organizational behaviour (POB), which defends a state-like perspective of positive characteristics, thus putting a strong emphasis on situational factors as determinants of positive behaviour, leaving a marginal role to positive psychological traits. As a critical comparison between these two different research streams is yet to be done, in this paper I propose a dialectical approach to study positivity in organizations and contrast these two different ontological approaches to positivity in organizations. I presented arguments to demonstrate that each of these approaches alone constitute quite a limited proposal in that each of them seems to misleadingly assume that: traits cannot be changed; they show incongruence between assumptions and purpose and; they constitute biased viewpoints. A dialectical approach makes possible to overcome these shortcomings by assuming both personality characteristics and environmental features relate each other in an intertwined complex way to produce positive behaviour in organizations. I finally present some practical implications that a dialectical approach would have to organizations and managers.

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Situationism in psychology: An analysis and a critique.

Cited by 1,017 publications

References 81 publications

What Do We Know When We Know a Person?

What Do We Know When We Know a Person?

An apology for research integration in the study of psychotherapy.

A Dialectical Approach to Positive Organizational Studies

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