Personality-driven situation experience, contact, and construal: How people’s personality traits predict characteristics of their situations in daily life

In situation perceptions, the objective situation and its unique construal are confounded. We propose a multiple-rater approach where situations are rated by raters in situ (who experienced the situations first-hand) and raters ex situ (who read participants’ factual descriptions of the situations). Two multi-wave studies (Austria: N = 176–179, 3 waves; USA: N = 202, 4 waves), examined associations between personality traits (Big Five OCEAN) and four sources of ratings of situation characteristics (Situational Eight DIAMONDS), namely (a) in situ (situation experience), (b) ex situ (situation contact, conservative), (c) what is shared between in situ and ex situ (situation contact, liberal), and (d) in situ controlled for ex situ (situation construal). Replicable evidence was found that personality is associated with the situations people encounter as well as their construal of them.

[1]  L. Harper,et al.  Child Effects on Adults , 1977 .

[2]  Avshalom Caspi,et al.  Personality development: stability and change. , 2005, Annual review of psychology.

[3]  D. Buss.  Predicting parent–child interactions from children's activity level. , 1981 .

[4]  Matthias Ziegler,et al.  The Situational Eight DIAMONDS: a taxonomy of major dimensions of situation characteristics. , 2014, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  Gordon W. Allport,et al.  Pattern and growth in personality , 1961 .

[6]  D. Funder,et al.  Situational Similarity and Personality Predict Behavioral Consistency , 2022 .

[7]  D. Buss,et al.  Evolutionary foundations of personality. , 1997 .

[8]  Adrian Furnham,et al.  Social Situations: Language and speech , 1981 .

[9]  B. Roberts,et al.  Person-Environment Fit and its implications for personality development: a longitudinal study. , 2004, Journal of personality.

[10]  Lars Penke,et al.  Motivational individual reaction norms underlying the Five-Factor model of personality: First steps towards a theory-based conceptual framework , 2008 .

[11]  D. McAdams,et al.  A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality. , 2006, The American psychologist.

[12]  D. Buss.  Evolutionary personality psychology. , 2020, Annual review of psychology.

[13]  K. Macdonald.  Evolution, Culture, and the Five-Factor Model , 1998 .

[14]  D. Buss,et al.  Preschool Activity Level: Personality Correlates and Developmental Implications. , 1980 .

[15]  D. Paulhus,et al.  The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy , 2002 .

[16]  David Serfass.  Personality and perceptions of situations from the Thematic Apperception Test: Quantifying alpha and beta press , 2013 .

[17]  P. Costa,et al.  Toward a new generation of personality theories: Theoretical contexts for the five-factor model. , 1996 .

[18]  A. Caspi,et al.  The Cumulative Continuity Model of Personality Development: Striking a Balance Between Continuity and Change in Personality Traits across the Life Course , 2003 .

[19]  C. F. Bond,et al.  One Hundred Years of Social Psychology Quantitatively Described , 2003 .

[20]  D. Buss,et al.  Social adaptation and five major factors of personality. , 1996 .

[21]  D. Buss,et al.  Tactics of manipulation. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  Beatrice Rammstedt,et al.  Kurzversion des Big Five Inventory (BFI-K): , 2005 .

[23]  M. Snyder.  When belief creates reality , 1984 .

[24]  M. Ashton,et al.  Empirical, Theoretical, and Practical Advantages of the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure , 2007, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[25]  D. Cervone,et al.  Behavioral Experience and Social Inference: Individual Differences in Aggressive Experience and Spontaneous Versus Deliberate Trait Inference , 1996 .

[26]  Lauren E. Molloy,et al.  Tethering theory to method: Using measures of intraindividual variability to operationalize individuals' dynamic characteristics. , 2012 .

[27]  Elysia Todd.  Personality and the Construal of Situations , 2014 .

[28]  Philip J. Corr,et al.  Book review. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. Eds. P. Corr & G. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 , 2022, New Psychological Research.

[29]  E. Brunswik,et al.  The Conceptual Framework of Psychology , 1954 .

[30]  H. Friedman,et al.  Personality and health: A lifespan perspective. , 2008 .

[31]  Marcel A. van den Hout,et al.  Neuroticism and avoidance of ambiguous stimuli: Better safe than sorry? , 2010 .

[32]  John A. Johnson.  Persons in situations: distinguishing new wine from old wine in new bottles , 1999 .

[33]  John L. Holland,et al.  The psychology of vocational choice: A theory of personality types and model environments. , 1967 .

[34]  D. Cervone,et al.  Social inference and individual differences in aggression: Evidence for spontaneous judgments of hostility , 1995 .

[35]  K. Dodge,et al.  Social cognitive biases and deficits in aggressive boys. , 1982, Child development.

[36]  David C. Funder,et al.  Properties of persons and situations related to overall and distinctive personality-behavior congruence , 2012 .

[37]  Daniel Nettle,et al.  An evolutionary approach to the extraversion continuum , 2005 .

[38]  John F. Rauthmann,et al.  Principles of Situation Research: Towards a Better Understanding of Psychological Situations , 2015 .

[39]  Stephen J. Read,et al.  The Concept of Situations , 2009 .

[40]  J. G. Holmes.  Interpersonal expectations as the building blocks of social cognition: An interdependence theory perspective. , 2002 .

[41]  Patrick Gallagher,et al.  The implications of Big Five standing for the distribution of trait manifestation in behavior: fifteen experience-sampling studies and a meta-analysis. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[42]  E. Diener,et al.  Situation selection as a moderator of response consistency and stability. , 1986 .

[43]  W. Fleeson.  Perspectives on the PersonRapid Growth and Opportunities for Integration , 2012 .

[44]  John F. Rauthmann,et al.  Structuring Situational Information , 2015 .

[45]  P. Costa,et al.  Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) , 1992 .

[46]  John A. Edwards,et al.  The structure of perceived qualities of situations , 2005 .

[47]  Albert Mehrabian,et al.  Characteristic individual reactions to preferred and unpreferred environments1 , 1978 .

[48]  D. Funder,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology: Personality psychology of situations , 2009 .

[49]  Robert P. Abelson,et al.  A Variance Explanation Paradox : When a Little is a Lot , 1985 .

[50]  S. Scarr,et al.  How people make their own environments: a theory of genotype greater than environment effects. , 1983, Child development.

[51]  Adrian Furnham,et al.  Personality and activity preference , 1981 .

[52]  D. Funder,et al.  Situational construal is related to personality and gender , 2013 .

[53]  Michael J. Marks,et al.  The null hypothesis significance-testing debate and its implications for personality research. , 2007 .

[54]  K. Dodge,et al.  Social-cognitive mechanisms in the development of conduct disorder and depression. , 1993, Annual review of psychology.

[55]  Brian A. Nosek,et al.  Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects. , 2015, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[56]  D. Funder,et al.  Renovating Situation Taxonomies: Exploring the Construction and Content of Fundamental Motive Situation Types. , 2015, Journal of personality.

[57]  J. Rauthmann.  A Road Map of the Multiple Pathways to Different Situational Taxonomies , 2015 .

[58]  K. MacDonald.  Evolution, the Five-Factor Model, and Levels of Personality , 1995 .

[59]  A. Furnham,et al.  The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review , 2013 .

[60]  D. Nettle.  The evolution of personality variation in humans and other animals. , 2006, The American psychologist.

[61]  R Plomin,et al.  Genotype-environment interaction and correlation in the analysis of human behavior. , 1977, Psychological bulletin.

[62]  M. Ashton,et al.  A theoretical basis for the major dimensions of personality , 2001 .

[63]  H. Murray,et al.  Explorations in Personality , 2007 .

[64]  P. Costa,et al.  Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[65]  O. John,et al.  Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: personality processes, individual differences, and life span development. , 2004, Journal of personality.

[66]  J. Asendorpf,et al.  From Dating to Mating and Relating: Predictors of Initial and Long–Term Outcomes of Speed–Dating in a Community Sample , 2011 .

[67]  Avron Spiro,et al.  Personality, health, and aging: prolegomenon for the next generation , 2002 .

[68]  W. Ickes,et al.  Personality influences on the choice of situations , 1997 .

[69]  M. Mehl,et al.  Naturalistic observation sampling: The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). , 2012 .

[70]  Mark Snyder,et al.  Personality and social behavior , 1985 .

[71]  C. V. Lieshout.  Lifespan personality development: Self-organising goal-oriented agents and developmental outcome: , 2000 .

[72]  A. Caspi,et al.  Personality Development Across the Life Course:The Argument for Change and Continuity , 2001 .

[73]  J. Rauthmann.  You Say the Party is Dull, I Say It is Lively , 2012 .

[74]  W. Fleeson.  Situation-based contingencies underlying trait-content manifestation in behavior. , 2007, Journal of personality.

[75]  D. Buss.  Selection, evocation, and manipulation. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[76]  R. Q. Bell.  A Reinterpretation of the Direction of Effects in Studies of Socialization , 1970 .

[77]  D. McAdams,et al.  The five-factor model in personality: a critical appraisal. , 1992, Journal of personality.

[78]  S. Srivastava,et al.  The Big Five Trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. , 1999 .

[79]  R. Larsen,et al.  Choice and avoidance of everyday situations and affect congruence: Two models of reciprocal interactionism. , 1986 .

[80]  H. Friedman,et al.  Long-term relations of personality and health: dynamisms, mechanisms, tropisms. , 2000, Journal of personality.

[81]  J. Hemphill,et al.  Interpreting the magnitudes of correlation coefficients. , 2003, The American psychologist.

[82]  Tarik Bel-Bahar,et al.  What modifies the expression of personality tendencies? Defining basic domains of situation variables. , 2007, Journal of personality.

[83]  A. Caspi,et al.  Continuities and consequences of interactional styles across the life course. , 1989, Journal of personality.

[84]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[85]  P. Costa,et al.  Conceptions and correlates of openness to experience. , 1997 .

[86]  G. Downey,et al.  The self-fulfilling prophecy in close relationships: rejection sensitivity and rejection by romantic partners. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[87]  G. Downey,et al.  Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships. , 1996, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[88]  W. Fleeson.  Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: traits as density distribution of states. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[89]  Vincent Egan,et al.  The dark triad and normal personality traits , 2006 .