The description of situations: Towards replicable domains of psychological situation characteristics.

Abstract

Using the most comprehensive lexical approach with English adjectives to date, Parrigon et al. (2017) found 7 major dimensions of psychological situation characteristics (CAPTION: Complexity, Adversity, Positive Valence, Typicality, Importance, humOr, Negative Valence). Researchers using or studying situations may be interested in how well these dimensions empirically overlap with dimensions from other taxonomies, such as the DIAMONDS (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Deception, Sociality). This comment highlights empirical and theoretical convergences between CAPTION and DIAMONDS scales, yielding evidence for 5 replicable dimensions. In general, average convergent correlations were substantial (.47-.69), much larger than discriminant ones (.18-.30), and as high as or higher than those typically found for Big Five scales. We highlight the opportunity to integrate different situation characteristics taxonomies and conclude with the plea for large-scale, cross-cultural research that can further expand our knowledge on the structures of situation characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record

Psychological situations illuminate the meaning of human behavior: Recent advances and application to social influence processes

“…These commonalities notwithstanding, there are also substantial differences between the DIAMONDS and CAPTION models, as others before us have noted (Parrigon et al, ; Rauthmann & Sherman, ). In terms of content coverage, for example, Deception emerged as a distinct dimension only in the DIAMONDS model, whereas Humor emerged as a distinct dimension only in the CAPTION model.…”

“…Reality typically constrains individuals' mental representations of their circumstances in discernable ways, and groups of individuals are often able to achieve consensus around a shared interpretation of their common situation. However, current models acknowledge meaningful variability in mental representations of the same real situation (e.g., a bilateral negotiation: Halevy, Chou, & Murnighan, ; an intergroup conflict: Halevy, Sagiv, Roccas, & Bornstein, ), reflecting the view that “psychological experiences of situations matter” (Rauthmann & Sherman, , b, p. 367; see that paper also for a more thorough discussion of different objective and subjective approaches to the study of situations).…”

“…Fourth, the DIAMONDS and CAPTION dimensions show overlaps specifically in domains that mirror the Big Five personality dimensions (Rauthmann & Sherman, ), suggesting that individuals may perceive persons and situations along similar dimensions. And fifth and finally, the DIAMONDS and CAPTION dimensions are relevant for understanding how individuals perceive multiple challenges related to successful goal pursuit in social contexts.…”

Brokering Orientations and Social Capital: Influencing Others’ Relationships Shapes Status and Trust

“…Given the central role that positive and negative affect play in both frameworks (Rauthmann & Sherman, 2018), and our interest in the emotions that individuals associate with different brokering behaviors, we also assessed multiple discrete emotions that previous research has linked to social and moral behavior.…”

Autonomous, yet Aligned: Challenges of Self-Leadership in Context

“…webs (Elsbach, Barr, & Hargadon, 2005). The same individual may act differently in different situations, and what is seen as "objectively the same" situation by one person may be strongly perceived as a different situation by someone else (Rauthmann & Sherman, 2018). A variety of individual predispositions, knowledge, understanding; what has been termed schemas; interact with, and bias what will be perceived as, salient cues in the environment (Elsbach et al, 2005;Nayak, Chia, & Canales, in press;Rauthmann, Sherman, & Funder, 2015).…”