672 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
tion of the earth?—then the comparison of 
effects has little wider meaning.
Finally and most importantly, in order for 
either persons or situations to affect behav -
ior, each needs the other (Johnson, 1997). 
Persons (and their dispositions) cannot exist 
outside of some sort of situation, and in a 
situation without people, no behavior will 
happen at all. This recognition leads writ -
ers such as Gilbert (1998), among others, to 
conclude that the traditional distinction be -
tween dispositional attributions (ascribing 
behavioral causality to aspects of the person) 
and situational attributions (ascribing it to 
the situation) is fundamentally incoherent.
This compelling perspective leads to some 
surprising conclusions. For example, the 
classic studies of obedience by Milgram 
(1974) are almost universally described as 
demonstrating that the power of the situa -
tion to affect behavior, relative to the influ -
ence of personal dispositions, is much great -
er than anyone would have expected (e.g., 
Ross & Nisbett, 1991). However, when the 
“person versus situation” distinction is put 
aside, Milgram’s results can reasonably be 
read either of two ways: (1) The situational 
force toward obedience (e.g., the experi -
menter saying “The experiment requires that 
you continue”) was (perhaps surprisingly) 
stronger than the situational forces toward 
disobedience (e.g., the victim’s protests), or 
(2) the dispositional forces toward obedience 
were (again, perhaps surprisingly) stronger 
than the dispositional forces toward empa -
thy and disobedience.1 On close examina -
tion, these interpretations are revealed to be 
equivalent. Notice, too, that neither of these 
equally valid (indeed, almost synonymous) 
interpretations pits dispositions against the 
situations.
Person–Situation  Interactions
An important outcome of the person– 
situation debate and of a rejection of the 
competitive view of persons and situations 
is an increased—  or perhaps renewed— 
appreciation of the fact that persons and 
situations “interact” rather than operate as 
competitive, separate, or even simply inde -
pendent forces. A person’s behavior in a par -
ticular situation arises from a nonadditive 
combination of attributes of the person and of the situation; that is, behavior arises not 
simply from both person attributes and  situ-
ation attributes, but from processes through 
which persons and situations shape each 
other’s effects on behavior. Persons shape 
how situations impact behavior, and situa -
tions shape how a person’s attributes impact 
behavior.
Personality psychology has focused con -
siderable attention on the ways in which such 
interconnected, interdependent processes 
unfold. There are at least five specific ways 
that research and theory have embraced the 
idea of person–  situation interaction.
Contextualized Person  Variables
Some researchers have embraced the idea 
of person–  situation interaction by viewing 
“the person” in terms of contextually tuned 
dispositions rather than cross-  situationally 
broad dispositions. Recall that the tradition -
al dispositional approach tends to focus on 
dispositions, such as extraversion and con -
scientiousness, that are believed to affect be -
havior across a wide range of situations. In 
contrast, this approach to person–  situation 
interaction focuses on dispositions that are 
believed to be much more strongly connect -
ed to specific, relatively narrow situational 
stimuli or cues. They tend to be defined in 
terms of the way that people think about, 
perceive, interpret, desire something in, or 
otherwise react to particular types of situ -
ations. Many contextualized dispositions 
are alternatively defined in terms of the way 
that people think or feel about themselves in 
ways that are highly responsive to specific 
situational cues.
For example, Carol Dweck and her col -
leagues (e.g., Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995; 
Rattan, Savani, Chugh, & Dweck, 2015) 
suggest that a key facet of individuals’ per -
sonalities is their beliefs about their own 
(and others’) psychological attributes. People 
who see intelligence as set, stable, and not 
changeable are said to have an “fixed mind -
set” of intelligence. In contrast, people who 
see intelligence as potentially unstable and 
changeable have an “growth mindset” of 
intelligence. Research suggests that such dif -
ferences have important implications. When 
individuals are in situations that they view 
as diagnostic or reflective of their intelli -
gence (e.g., working on a class project), their 