Carrie (11) IB Psych 1 Describe the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior.

[Intro] Context: There are many ways to explain behavior in the psychological world. Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to explain human behavior and people construct their own causal theories of human behavior because they want to be able to understand the environment around them. He directs attribution to situational or dispositional factors. This is called the attribution theory. Command term: This essay will attempt to give a detailed account of the role of situational and dispositional factors in explaining behavior. Define: -Attribution is the process of interpreting and explaining the causes of events and behavior. -Situational factors are external to the individual, for example the circumstances or environment. -Dispositional factors are internal or within an individual, for example personality, attitude, or other generally unchanging characteristics. [BODY 1, 2] -The tendency to see motives and dispositions behind human action is so automatic humans mostly attribute behavior to dispositional factors. Simmel (1994) performed an experiment where he showed moving geometric figures to participants are asked them to describe the movements of the figure. The participants all described them as if the geometric figures had intentions to act in the way they did. -Attributions are also made depending on whether the people are performing it themselves or observing somebody else doing it. This is called the actor-observer effect. When people discuss their own behavior, they tend to attribute it to situational factors and when people discuss others behaviors, they are more likely to attribute it to dispositional factors. Ross et al (1977) Method: Participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: game show host; designed their own questions, contestant; tried their best to answer the question, audience members; watched the game show. The audience members had to rank the intelligence of the people that took part in the game show. Results: The audience consistently ranked the game show host as the most intelligent even though they knew he/she was assigned the role and had written the questions. The audience emphasized dispositional factors in making their judgments by ignoring the situational advantages the game show hosts had. [BODY 3, 4] -Several studies have actually shown that situational factors play a more important role in explaining behavior than dispositional factors. Zimbardo, Stanford Prison Experiment Aim: To investigate whether situational factors can affect behavior.

Method: 21 male subjects were selected through personality assessment based on their mental stability, maturity and social ability and were randomly assigned the role of either prisoner or warden. The prisoners signed a consent document that some of their human rights would be suspended for the experiment and that all subjects would receive $15 a day up to 2 weeks. They were arrested by surprise by real police from their house, taken to a real police station for standard procedures, and then sent to a staged prison. They were dressed as prisoners, stayed in the prison for 24 hours a day and followed a schedule of work, rest and meal. The wardens were dressed in uniforms and worked 8 hours a day. They were given no specific instructions on the treatment of the prisoners but were asked to keep a reasonable degree of order and were prohibited against any means of physical violence. Results: The experiment was terminated after 6 days instead of the intended 14 days due to abnormal reactions shown by both prisoners and wardens. The prisoners displayed passivity and dependence. Half the prisoners showed signs of depression, crying, rage, and acute anxiety. Due to this reason, they were released early. Researchers proposed that these behaviors were results of the loss of personal identity, dependency, and learned helplessness. The wardens displayed huge enjoyment of power at their disposal, leading towards abusive use of power, dehumanizing the prisoners. Not all wardens displayed aggression, but none opposed others use of it. It is likely that the prison environment affected the behavior of all the participants. Evaluation: -This was a controlled lab experiment therefore there is low ecological validity. Method of data collection was through observations, allowing room for researcher bias. There was also the possibility of demand characteristics in which the participants acted in the way they thought the experimenter wanted them to. -The participants underwent high levels of anxiety and stress and the experiment caused violence, aggression, and discrimination. Even though they gave their consent, the participants were not fully informed of the exact procedure. -The study was not cross-cultural as all the participants were from the US. There was also gender bias in the sample due to the participants being all male. -The behavior of the guards and the prisoners can be attributed to situational factors, however the results of the experiment are not completely reliable and the sampling bias makes it difficult to generalize the results to other cultures and females. Reicher and Haslam (2006) replicated the experiment but their results were not consistent with Zimbardos. -Hartshorne and May (1928) argues that honesty is not a dispositional factor, but is rather influenced by the situation. The researchers conducted a study on honesty in schoolchildren. The children faced a number of situations in which they had a chance to be dishonest and believed they would not be detected. One situation was where they were given money to play with that they could have kept and in another they were asked to report about work done at home or observed taking tests to see who would cheat and who would not. The children were neither consistently honest nor consistently dishonest. -The study has ecological validity because all the situations that were provided for the children are realistic. However, it cannot confirm that dispositional factors dont change and become more stable over time. [Conclusion]

-Both situational and dispositional factors are used to explain behavior. -Different perspectives result in different explanations. -People look for causal explanations for behavior through dispositional and situational factors because this makes the world more predictable.