Human behavior has two general determinants -- the person who does it, and the situation in which it occurs. These three variables -- behavior, personality, and situation -- form a "triad" in the sense that if any two were completely understood, the third should in principle be derivable. Psychology includes many tools for conceptualizing and measuring aspects of persons, including numerous personality inventories. In addition, many techniques are available for the assessment of behavior. The purpose of the present project is to develop a means to conceptualize and measure the third element of the triad, the situation. The new Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ) aims at specific and psychologically meaningful properties that evoke widespread agreement but still have different implications for individuals. Two studies will assess situational variables at the general level (Study I) and at the level of individual perceptions (Study II). In Study I participants will provide open-ended descriptions of situations they have experienced within the past 36 hours, as well as their behavioral and emotional responses. Addressing each of the elements of the personality triad, analyses will assess: (1) correlations between individual differences in persons and the average situations they experience, combined with the behaviors they perform in them, (2) correlations between specific behaviors and attributes of the people who perform them, combined with the situations in which they tend to appear, and (3) correlations between properties of situations and the personality attributes of the people who tend to experience them, combined with the behaviors that result. In Study II, participants will describe specific exemplars of situations from Study I using the RSQ. These individual descriptions will be compared with the average view of each situation, provided by all of the participants, and the divergence will be correlated with measures of personality and personality disorders to illuminate how situations may be distinctively construed according to personality. This research seeks to specify how personality is expressed through the experience of and response to situations. Potential long-term implications include the design of therapeutic interventions based on situational construals of individuals with personality disorders, the matching of people to environments for the promotion of behavioral outcomes (e.g., health, education, and employment), and the design of contexts to promote mental and physical health and the accomplishment of individual goals. In addition, UC Riverside is a designated minority-serving institution (MSI). This provides opportunities to conduct this research within a diverse sample of participants, to explore moderation of effects by ethnicity as well as gender, and to include members of groups underrepresented in science as research assistants who serve essential roles in the laboratory.
