3. Are Your Personality Features Consistent, Or Do They Change According To The Situation?

Learning Outcomes

Discuss situational influences on personality

decorative image Sure situations and circumstances can influence a person'south day in a positive or negative way. Depending on the circumstance, a normally positive person may become more negative. On the other hand, a traditionally pessimistic person may announced to be more positive. So how is this possible? Y'all accept experienced both triumphs and tribulations in your lifetime and whether or not y'all realized it, they near likely impacted the way you acted and contradistinct your personality for that period of time. It is homo nature for emotions and personalities to differ depending on what is happening in our lives.

Even if we are not aware of what others may exist going through, information technology is reasonable to assume that certain situations in the lives of all individuals impacts their personality. For example, you are out with friends, and you lot encounter your friend Lorenzo, who is the nigh extroverted person in the group, crying in the corner. Does this mean Lorenzo is no longer an extravert simply rather an introvert? Or could he be crying because he just heard some upsetting news? Chances are, the latter pick is a more realistic i. While the news may accept changed his personality during that social setting on that day, it nearly likely did not alter it permanently.

Permit's wait at another instance. The coworker y'all disagree with most, Kayla, who constantly argues against your ideas, comes into piece of work Monday morning time with a pep in her step. At your team meeting, she completely supports your proposed projection idea and offers to help execute it. Has Kayla turned a corner and has decided to finish the feud between yous two? Possibly. Simply odds are there is something in her life that has temporarily altered her personality. What yous may not know, is that over the weekend her all fourth dimension favorite team won the Super Bowl. Her excitement from the twenty-four hour period before spilled over into Monday, presenting a much version of Kayla that seems to like you a great bargain more.

These are just two minor examples of how situations in people's lives can alter the mode they act. People tin can also change their personality based on who they're effectually. If the person you're with makes you uncomfortable, yous're not probable to be very talkative and offer upward good conversation. Nonetheless, if you're on the telephone with a friend y'all haven't talked to for awhile, y'all're likely to have an animated conversation.

Exercise Question

If situations can influence personality and personality can predict behavior, so situational influences also contribute to predicting beliefs. It also brings into question whether or not personality traits are consequent since they are easily influenced by situations. In 1968, Walter Mischel published a book entitled Personality & Assessment. In his book, Mischel argued that an interactionist approach was best suited when exploring personality, situations, and beliefs. This interactionist arroyo believes that both personality and situational circumstances create behavior. In addition, Mischel explained that personalities tend to differ across a range of situations (personality at work versus home); yet, they keep consistencies within similar situations (piece of work meetings). This revelation created an upset in the traditional view of personality by arguing that personality stability and instability can each exist at the same fourth dimension.^[1]

A loop indicating that the situation affects personality and personality affects the situation There are two master correlations to remember here:

Situations can influence an individual'due south personality.
An individual'due south personality paired with the situation can assist to predict behavior.

Companies tin use these correlations to create stronger and more than efficient teams. While unique circumstances may arise, agreement personality traits is the first step in developing a strong organization.