SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING AND PERSONALITY BEHAVIOR IN NEW SITUATIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46763/Keywords:
person, situation, social interaction, informationAbstract
This paper examines the complex relationship between person, situation, and social information processing in explaining human behavior. What people do depends, to a large extent, on the situation they find themselves in. But while this fact has been discussed and sometimes contested over the past few decades, situations rarely receive the focused scrutiny they deserve. What is known about the socio-psychological characteristics of situations? Are persons, situations, and behaviors so hopelessly intertwined that they can never be separated? How can a situation be defined and what are its characteristics? The key question is: what causes people to behave the way they do? The stakes are high when the protagonists of the “person-situation debate” argue about whether behavior is primarily determined by the individual’s personality traits, or by his/her immediate situation. The very definition of a situation is a "complex issue". One problem concern where to set the boundaries.
Among other implications, the debate appears to turn the two major subfields of psychology against each other: personality psychology, which generally emphasizes the influence of the person, and social psychology, which emphasizes the situation. The main idea is that behavior cannot be understood solely through the characteristics of the person, nor solely through the influence of the situation, but through their constant interaction.
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