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Situational strength is defined as cues provided by environmental forces regarding the desirability of potential behaviors. [1] Situational strength is said to result in psychological pressure on the individual to engage in and/or refrain from particular behaviors. A consequence of this psychological pressure to act in a certain way is the likelihood that despite an individual's personality, they will act in a certain manner. As such, when strong situations (situations where situational strength is high) exist, the relationship between personality variables (for example, extraversion or risk-taking behaviors) and behaviors is reduced, because no matter what the personality of the individual is, they will act in a way dictated by the situation. When weak situations exist, there is less structure and more ambiguity with respect to what behaviors to perform. [1]
An example of a strong situation is a red traffic light. Traffic rules dictate how people are supposed to act when they see a red light, and this influence often prevents people from engaging in behaviors that are consistent with their personalities. For example, most people, no matter whether they are daring or cautious, will stop in front of a red traffic light. Therefore, one could not reasonably predict how a person would behave with personality in this situation.
In contrast, an example of a soft situation is a yellow traffic light because the most appropriate course of action is not especially well defined and norms are inconsistent. Thus, individuals who are more daring are likely to speed through the intersection on a yellow light, whereas cautious individuals are likely to stop.
Although it is difficult to formally express when situations restricting individual differences in personality began in psychology, work conducted by Carl Rogers suggested that certain individual differences are most likely to manifest themselves in situations where there is psychological freedom and safety, compared to situations where psychological freedom and safety do not exist. [2] Additionally, Stanley Milgram argued that psychological forces of conflict may not be brought into play under diluted conditions. [3] However, recent conceptualization and study of situational strength can be traced back to the work of Walter Mischel. In 1968, Mischel published his classic book, Personality and Assessment, where he argued that personality cannot be studied in a vacuum; instead, the complexity of human behavior and its determinants must be studied from a perspective that accounts for the simultaneous and interactive impact of individual differences and situational characteristics. [4] It is important to note that Mischel did not imply that people show no consistencies in behavior, or that individual differences are unimportant. The major theme was rather that the trait approach to personality was not as sensitive to the influence of situations as it should have been. [5]
In books and articles on the topic, Mischel stressed the importance of better understanding how, when, and why individual differences are most likely to be important predictors of behavior, and when they are more likely to be nullified by situational influences. Specifically, Mischel began laying the foundation for subsequent thought in this area by arguing that psychological "situations" and "treatments" are powerful to the degree that they lead all persons to construe the particular events the same way, induce uniform expectancies regarding the most appropriate response pattern, provide adequate incentives for the performance of that response pattern, and instill the skills necessary for its satisfactory construction and execution (p. 276). [6] He further argued that individual differences are most likely to directly affect behavior "when the situation is ambiguously structured... so that subjects are uncertain about how to categorize it and have no clear expectations about the behaviors most likely to be appropriate (normative, reinforced) in that situation" (p. 276). [6] Thus, he helped to lay the foundation for the general idea underlying what is now typically referred to as "situational strength" (or "situation strength").
Mischel's work led to an important shift in social scientists' thinking about the behavioral expression of personality. But, as some have recently argued, situational strength is too often viewed as being true without treating situational strength as a theoretical construct in need of conceptual development and empirical verification. [7]
Meyer, Dalal, and Hermida argue that for theoretical understanding and practical application of situational strength to be advanced, at least three important issues must be addressed: [8]
Four facets of situational strength have been identified:
In an empirical study, which incorporated vote-counting meta-analysis, it has been found that conceptualizations of situational strength that currently exist in psychological literature form an interaction with non-ability individual differences. Additionally, the effect size of the interaction effect was reasonably large. [8]
Situational strength comes from perception of a behavior. A meta-analysis was performed by Bowling et al. to test the relationship of situational strength between job satisfaction and job performance. The results of this were that constraints and consequences both led to a negative relationship. Job satisfaction and job performance were more related to each other in strong versus weak situations. They found that situational strength had to be the mediator between the two. An example they provided is that an employer would use situational strength to understand that the more satisfied an employee is the better their performance is, and the opposite the less satisfied an employee is the worse their performance is. This holds true for most cases, with some limitations such as the employer holding the same job title as the employee and having a lower level of situational strength. [9]
Studies have shown that situational strength is related to counterproductive work behavior. Counterproductive work behavior can lead to being absent, stealing, fraud, aggression, and more. The increases in crime in the workplace has happened in every region. Counterproductive work behavior is usually considered unacceptable and can lead to harming others. Studies have found that the two traits most responsible for the effect of counterproductive work behavior are agreeableness and contentiousness. This was evident across many cultures. Continuousness has been found to be the trait with the strongest prediction rate on counterproductive work behavior. The influence of the trait is more likely to be stronger the weaker the situation. Group norms were also considered when the studies were performed. One of the results of the group norm study was that after seeing someone being rewarded for an action, the observer is more like to perform that same action expecting a reward. [10]
Self-promotion is frequently used in the workplace. This can be lying on a job application and having a high self-esteem. The act of self-promotion is often caused by the narcissism personality trait. A study was performed to test how situational strength ties into narcissism being used for self-promotion. The results showed that situational strength is not a moderator of narcissistic self-promotion. There was only resistance in strong situations, which is not enough to show that it plays a role in preventing it. [11]
Perhaps the most important implication of situational strength is that it is commonly believed to explain cross-situational variability in the criterion-related validity of non-cognitive individual differences. [1] [12] [13] [14] This suggests that psychology should not focus on whether personality constructs predict job performance but rather about the conditions under which they predict job performance. This also shows great practical implications for personnel selection because the criterion-related validity of individual differences may vary across different occupations. For instance, Meyer, Dalal, and Bonaccio found that occupation-level situational strength moderates the conscientiousness–performance relationship, such that conscientiousness better predicts performance in characteristically weak occupations than in characteristically strong occupations. [15]
Another important implication revolves around the idea of person-environment fit. One of the core ideas expressed in the fit literature is that a mismatch between individuals' needs and environmental supplies can have deleterious effects on performance, attitudes, and health. [16] Within the context of situational strength, some employees may view highly constraining environments as stifling and frustrating, whereas others may find the regimented and predictable nature of constraining environments to be comforting and relaxing. If these differences do in fact exist, this would suggest that employees' psychological reactions are partially a function of their individual differences profile and partially a function of the nature of the situation they are experiencing.
Two critical aspects of situational strength can be fruitful for future study:
Industrial and organizational psychology is the science of human behavior in the workplace and work-life interface. It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. Depending on the country or region of the world, I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.
Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.
Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They tend to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally dependable. Conscientiousness manifests in characteristic behaviors such as being neat, systematic, careful, thorough, and deliberate.
The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory.
Walter Mischel was an Austrian-born American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He was the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Mischel as the 25th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Personality development encompasses the dynamic construction and deconstruction of integrative characteristics that distinguish an individual in terms of interpersonal behavioral traits. Personality development is ever-changing and subject to contextual factors and life-altering experiences. Personality development is also dimensional in description and subjective in nature. That is, personality development can be seen as a continuum varying in degrees of intensity and change. It is subjective in nature because its conceptualization is rooted in social norms of expected behavior, self-expression, and personal growth. The dominant viewpoint in personality psychology indicates that personality emerges early and continues to develop across one's lifespan. Adult personality traits are believed to have a basis in infant temperament, meaning that individual differences in disposition and behavior appear early in life, potentially before language of conscious self-representation develop. The Five Factor Model of personality maps onto the dimensions of childhood temperament. This suggests that individual differences in levels of the corresponding personality traits are present from young ages.
In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. In the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. The responses can include maladaptive behaviors, such as dissociation, procrastination, substance use, etc., which aids in relieving the negative emotions and generating positive ones.
Affective events theory (AET) is an industrial and organizational psychology model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.
Contextual performance is defined as the activities that employees carry out to contribute to the social and psychological functionality of an organisation.
Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. These behaviors can harm organizations or people in organizations including employees and clients, customers, or patients. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.
Goal orientation, or achievement orientation, is an "individual disposition towards developing or validating one's ability in achievement settings". In general, an individual can be said to be mastery or performance oriented, based on whether one's goal is to develop one's ability or to demonstrate one's ability, respectively. A mastery orientation is also sometimes referred to as a learning orientation.
The HEXACO model of personality structure is a six-dimensional model of human personality that was created by Ashton and Lee and explained in their book, The H Factor of Personality, based on findings from a series of lexical studies involving several European and Asian languages. The six factors, or dimensions, include Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Each factor is composed of traits with characteristics indicating high and low levels of the factor. The HEXACO model was developed through similar methods as other trait taxonomies and builds on the work of Costa and McCrae and Goldberg. The model, therefore, shares several common elements with other trait models. However, the HEXACO model is unique mainly due to the addition of the Honesty-Humility dimension.
Core self-evaluations (CSE) represent a stable personality trait which encompasses an individual's subconscious, fundamental evaluations about themselves, their own abilities and their own control. People who have high core self-evaluations will think positively of themselves and be confident in their own abilities. Conversely, people with low core self-evaluations will have a negative appraisal of themselves and will lack confidence. The concept of core self-evaluations was first examined by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997) and involves four personality dimensions: locus of control, neuroticism, generalized self-efficacy, and self-esteem. The trait developed as a dispositional predictor of job satisfaction, but has expanded to predict a variety of other outcomes. Core self-evaluations are particularly important because they represent a personality trait which will remain consistent over time. Furthermore, the way in which people appraise themselves using core self-evaluations has the ability to predict positive work outcomes, specifically, job satisfaction and job performance. These relationships have inspired increasing amounts of research on core self-evaluations and suggest valuable implications about the importance this trait may have for organizations.
Team composition refers to the overall mix of characteristics among people in a team, which is a unit of two or more individuals who interact interdependently to achieve a common objective. It is based on the attributes among individuals that comprise the team, in addition to their main objective.
The person–situation debate in personality psychology refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that a person's personality is relatively consistent across situations. Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits. The debate is also an important discussion when studying social psychology, as both topics address the various ways a person could react to a given situation.
Intelligence and personality have traditionally been studied as separate entities in psychology, but more recent work has increasingly challenged this view. An increasing number of studies have recently explored the relationship between intelligence and personality, in particular the Big Five personality traits.
Trait activation theory is based on a specific model of job performance, and can be considered an elaborated or extended view of personality-job fit. Specifically, it is how an individual expresses their traits when exposed to situational cues related to those traits. These situational cues may stem from organization, social, and/or task cues. These cues can activate personality traits that are related to job tasks and organizational expectations that the organization values. These cues may also elicit trait-related behaviors that are not directly related to job performance.