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The Socio-Cultural
Level of Analysis
Socio-cultural Cognition
A Work Book
The role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour.
Psychologists differ in many ways in terms of the ways in which they explain our behaviour. One difference is whether they tend to offer explanations or theories which focus on dispositional factors or situational factors as the major determinant of human behaviour.
Personality theorists have developed theories which explain behaviour in terms of enduring qualities or traits, some genetic, others developed through experiences in childhood and indeed across the lifespan. In contrast, social psychologists, such as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, have conducted studies with dramatic findings which have emphasised the power of the social situation as extremely powerful in eliciting behaviours from people who would never have thought themselves capable of such behaviour and for whom personality tests would never have predicted such behaviour.
Such studies have been very helpful in understanding real-life situations such as behaviour of German guards in the death camps of WW2, the Hutus slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda and the ghastly behaviour of American soldiers against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
|Personal characteristics |Behaviour |Situational characteristics |
| |Helping another person | |
| |Passing a test | |
| |Hitting another person | |
Dispositional Factors
Psychologists who believe that our personality causes individual differences assume that we will behave in a way which is consistent across different social situations. They believe that there are a range of personality traits upon which we can be measured and that doing so will help to predict how we will behave in a given situation.
|Describe the personalities of ... |
|The soldiers in the death camps (WW2) | |
| | |
| | |
|The soldiers at Abu Ghraib who set up and| |
|took the photos | |
| | |
|Wesley Autry | |
| | |
| | |
Psychologists have explored many personality traits and a few are listed in the table below. For each trait give an example of two or three different social situations in which the person might behave in a similar way.
How do you think a person who is high on a test measuring each trait would behave in each situation?
|Personality trait |Situation |Resulting Behaviour |
|Anxiety |1. | |
| | | |
| |2. | |
| | | |
| |3. | |
|Extroversion |1. | |
| | | |
| |2. | |
| | | |
| |3. | |
|Authoritarian personality |1. | |
| | | |
| |2. | |
Psychologists who emphasise dispositional factors believe that our behaviour will exhibit cross-situational consistency, and will remain stability over time. For example, if you are high on trait anxiety today, you will be anxious tomorrow and still be anxious this time next year!
Situational Factors
Situationalists such as Mischel (1968) reject the idea of cross-situational consistency. He believes that an analysis of the social situation is far more important in revealing the causes of individual behaviour. But is this explanation supported by the evidence from research studies.
Look at each of the studies below and indicate whether it supports the role of situational factors (S) as suggested by the likes of Mischel or dispositional factors (D) as suggested by personality theorists such as Eysenck. Once you have made your decisions colour code the psychologists names using the same colours that your used before for situational and dispositional factors.
|Study |Outline |Implication: |
| | |S or D |
|Hartshorne and May, (1929)|School children who behaved dishonestly in one school setting were not necessarily | |
| |likely to be dishonest other settings | |
|Mischel, (1968) |There was only a very modest correlation between student conscientiousness in some | |
| |situations such as attending classes on time and being conscientiousness in other | |
| |situations such as submitting homework on time. | |
|Epstein (1983) |Studied college students for about a month. His findings showed a lot of behavioural | |
| |variability. How the participants behaved in a particular situation on one day could not| |
| |predict their behaviour in similar circumstances on another day. | |
| | | |
| |However, when the participants’ behaviour was aggregated over a 2-week interval it was | |
| |highly predictive of their behaviour in similar circumstances over another 2-week | |
| |interval. | |
| | | |
| |This finding is fairly reliable and has been replicated in other studies, (e.g. | |
| |Moskowitz, 1988). | |
|Roberts and Del Vecchio |A meta-analysis of 152 long-term longitudinal studies, found a high correlation between | |
|(2000) |personality measures obtained for groups of participants at a particular point in time | |
| |and the measures obtained from the same individuals seven years later. | |
|McCrae and Costa, (2003) |Significant personality changes beyond early adulthood are rare. | |
Focusing on dispositional factors
The five-factor model of personality
(McCrae and Costa, 1999)
This theory of personality comprises five measurable personality factors or traits (Table 4.1) and is supported by a good deal of empirical evidence.
|Factor |Low scorers are... |High scorers are... |
|Openness to experience |Imaginative and creative |Down-to-earth and practical |
|Conscientiousness |Organised tidy and striving |Easy going, unreliable and sloppy |
|Extroversion |Outgoing active and sociable |Reserved, serious and passive |
|Agreeableness |Kind, trusting, warm and altruistic |Hostile selfish and cold |
|Neuroticism |Relaxed and even tempered |Emotional, moody and impulsive |
Ozer and Benet–Martinez (2006) have shown that scores on these
five factors have been shown to be predictive of...
• level of happiness
• physical and psychological health
• quality of relationships with peers, family, romantic partners
• occupational choice, work satisfaction, work performance
This suggests that dispositional factors should not be ignored as significant determinants of behaviour and should always be considered when explaining behaviour, especially when that behaviour seems to vary significantly to that of other individuals in similar situations. As you will see below 35% of participants did not obey in Milgram’s famous study and it is hard to explain the behaviour of real life heroes such as Paul Rusesabagina, who saved 1000s of his his fellow citizens from the ravages of the Rwandan Genocide.
Once you have watched the clips, and preferably the whole film, fill in the FFM traits (without looking!) and then give Paul a score for each, where 10 is high and 1 is low.
|How do you think Paul would score on each of the following traits? |How do you think you might score-could you be a hero? |
|O | |
|C | |
|E | |
|A | |
|N | |
The claim is not that personality is in general the most important determinant of behaviour, much less that we can predict with great accuracy how a particular individual will behave in a specific situation. On the contrary, the associations are almost always modest enough to allow for significant situational influences.
The links provided above to further reading about the heroism are particularly interesting as they open a debate about explanations for heroic behaviour such as that of Paul in hotel Rwanda by suggesting that this type of behaviour should not be seen as the super-human rare behaviour of unique individuals, but something that is underpinned by socio-cultural influences. The second link is an important article – read it and make detailed notes as we will revisit this article in subsequent parts of the topic.
An Interactionist Approach
Reciprocal Determinism (Bandura, 1986, 2006)
Using your handout from Law and Dayal (2010) give two examples of ways in which situations/environment as disposition/personality interact:
|Example 1 | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|Example 2 | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
The idea here is that disposition and situation should not be seen as conflicting explanation, they can work together and be used to explain, control and predict behaviour. While it is true that we are influenced by social situation, much of the time (although not always), we choose the situations into which we find ourselves. Complete the important quote by Pervin (2003)
Complete the table which refers to Mischel’s concepts of strong and weak situations and give an example of two similar situations one weak, one strong where outcomes for an individual’s behaviour may vary...
|Strength of situation |Impact of individual disposition |Degree of consensus of behaviour |
|Strong | | |
| | | |
|Weak | | |
Example: ..........................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................
The power of the social situation
| |
|Create a PowerPoint presentation or short films about... |
|Milgram’s (1963) Study of Obedience |
|Zimbardo’s (1973) Stanford Prison Experiment (beware this is not really an experiment but has been called one!) |
| |
|Include details of the aim, procedure, results and conclusions and refer to... |
|situational and dispositional factors in explaining human behaviour |
|strong and weak situations |
| |
|Be sure to use Law and Dayal’s chapter in conjunction with other sources, e.g. |
| |
| |
| |
-----------------------
IB Psychology [pic]
Describe...
the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behaviour.
Discuss ...
two errors in attributions
• fundamental attribution error
• self-serving bias
Evaluate...
social identity theory, making reference to relevant studies
Explain...
the formation of stereotypes and their effect on behaviour.
[pic]Using two colours, code the words which are most associated with situational factors and those that are most associated with dispositional factors. You are not expected to colour all of the words.
[pic]
Explain what is meant by situational factors as determinants of behaviour (3)
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Explain what is meant by dispositional factors as determinants of behaviour (3)
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Something to watch: BBC Child of our time special on personality; the ‘you tube’ link is on the VLE.
Something to read;
The Lucifer effect: Philip Zimbardo
Heroism:
The banality of heroism:
“safkfgb afgkjf.,bsf;glj.f,b smgfh”
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