The Person-situation Debate and the Assessment of Situations

While the person-situation debate was largely based on a misunderstanding of the magnitude of the corre-lations that characterize relations between personality traits and behavior, it drew much-needed attention to the importance of situations. However, few attempts have been made to understand the important elements of situations in relation to behavior. Current work developing the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ) aims to provide a useful way to conceptualize and measure the behaviorally important attributes of situations. A current project is applying this method cross-culturally. New data from the US and Japan show that behavioral corre-lates of two elements of the situation—the presence of a member of the opposite sex and the experience of being criticized by others—have largely similar behavioral correlates between genders and across cultures. ese analyses illustrate how the RSQ illuminates the connections between situations and behavior. Future research will extend such analyses to more situational attributes and other cultures around the world. Key words: personality, situations, behaviors, cross-cultural research Personality traits determine behavior, but what people do also depends critically on the situation. e relative importance of these two inuences has long been a contentious issue in personalit