Comments on: “Situation” Trumps “Disposition”- Part II

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:14:45 +0000

My concern with this series is that there is a lot of argument but little empirical evidence in support of the claim that situation trumps disposition. Lets look at the correlations between situational manipulation and behavior. In the case of milgram the proximity of the instructor and the shock victim only explained 30% of the variance or .3 correlation. Then look at Nisbets claim that the correlation ceiling for a trait disposition is .4 or 40% of the variance. Then look at findings on the CAPS model of personality where Mischel and Shoda found that aggressiveness explained 48% of the behavioral variance. The reason why social psychologists are hesitant to accept zimbardos claim is that situation does not trump character. If you look at the correlations they each explain roughly the same amount of behavioral variance.

By: Sample of Situationist Posts «

Sample of Situationist Posts « — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000

[...] Trumps “Disposition” – Part I & Part II (by Jon Hanson & Michael [...]

By: Grue

Grue — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 02:38:44 +0000

I’m not a psychologist, but it seems that the authors are defining “situation” and “disposition” in confusing ways. Clearly if people vote in different yet stable ways, when two different people enter a voting booth (the same situation in at least a basic sense), there is some internal factor causing them to act differently. And that is the basic sense of dispositionalism.

I’m sure the authors are right to critique naive dispositionalists, but there are presumably also naive situationalists. The argument seems to be over how much is disposition and how much situation.

We should also distinguish the nature vs nuture debate from the situational/dispositional. Suppose Bob was raised a religious conservative from birth, and now Bob has a life-long strong disposition to act in certain ways. You might reply that if Bob were raised an atheist he would act completely differently. This may be true, but it hardly refutes the fact that (because Bob was raised the way he was) he now has a strong internal factor/disposition which influences his behavior.

I don’t think the situational/dispositional vocabulary is useful for analyzing how Bob would have acted if he were raised differently. (This is more of the nature/nurture debate.)

By: Tom Clark

Tom Clark — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:34:59 +0000

“If we don’t like “bad apples” or their effects, shouldn’t we at least endeavor to examine the tree, it’s roots, the soil, the air quality, the parasites, the orchard, the toxins, and, in a word, the situation.”

Well, as you point out, people want to have someone in particular to blame, and this tendency militates against being too curious about causation. As New York Mayor Koch once said about the Central Park rapists (approximately, according to my recollection): “I don’t care why they did what they did, I want to see them punished.” Or as Governor Pataki once put it: “The root cause of crime is criminals.”

We have to explode the myth that people are self-caused in *any* respect, and do so explicitly. Your analyses of internal and external situations as determinants of motives and behavior are important contributions.

thanks as always,

Tom Clark