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Essay On Situationist Theory

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In the person-situation debate two sides battle it out to prove that they have the best method of predicting human behavior, the situationists versus the proponents of personality. If the personality perspective is correct then an individual's personality traits should provide a constant guide for their behavior during one or more situations. If the situationists are correct, a person's behavior is entirely dependent on the situation. There are gray areas and questions remain unanswered for both sides of the person-situation argument. Situationists believe that personality traits cannot be used to predict behavior because behavior is largely dependent upon the situation. Since there are limits to how well behavior can be predicted using personality traits, they believe situations are more useful in predicting behavior. Supporters of the situationist approach believe that …show more content…

After all, if evil was entirely up to personality, how do situations like Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prison Experiment occur? It is very unlikely that the randomly selected students that drew the role of prison guard all had some secret desire to dominate their classmates. It is even less likely that all of the prisoner classmates were weak-minded and submissive. What if Zimbardo is right in that we all have the potential to dominate or submit ourselves to being dominated if the situation and social forces demand it? Would a person who is prone to committing charitable acts and helping others really be able to transform into a ruthless prison guard just because they aren't being held accountable for their actions? The answer seems rather obvious. There's no doubt that individual values and experiences do provide armor against the influence of social forces and stress, but personality traits have to be of relative importance or strength if they fail to persevere in all

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