 31. Persons, Situations, and Person–Situation Interactions  679
The Assessment of  Situations
As we noted earlier, situationally oriented 
research has generated a venerable research 
tradition; however, the situational variables 
examined in past research have not been co -
herently organized across different areas of 
situational research. Although interesting 
and important effects of situational vari -
ables have been reported, the lack of orga -
nization creates difficulty when trying to 
systematically integrate situations with dis -
positional factors. To what precisely about 
situations should researchers and theorists 
attend? What are the fundamental compo -
nents, dimensions, or qualities of situations 
that must be integrated into an interactionist 
theory of personality and behavior? In par -
ticular, to empirically assess a model such as 
the situation construal model, a methodol -
ogy is needed to assess all three aspects of 
the “personality triad” (Funder, 2006): not 
just persons and behaviors, but situations as 
well.
Many creative researchers have attempt -
ed to develop situational taxonomies (e.g., 
Magnusson, 1971, 1981; Price & Blashfield, 
1975; Van Heck, 1984), and important 
conceptual developments have been offered 
(e.g., Kelly et al., 2003; Rauthmann et al., 
2014; Ten Berge & de Raad, 2002; Van 
Heck, Perugini, Caprara, & Froeger, 1994; 
Yang, Read, & Miller, 2006). Despite all of 
this work, however, an instrument for the psychological assessment of situations was 
never provided.
Fortunately, psychologists have recently 
offered instruments designed to fill this 
void (e.g., Brown, Neel, & Sherman, 2015; 
Rauthmann & Sherman, 2016; Wagerman 
& Funder, 2009). The Riverside Situational 
Q-Sort (RSQ, Wagerman & Funder, 2009; 
Funder, 2016), one such instrument, is based 
on two theoretical principles. The first is that 
it seeks to describe situations at the middle 
or basic level likely to be easily communicat -
ed and useful for behavioral prediction and 
understanding. Its items are intended to be 
general enough to be psychologically mean -
ingful and behaviorally relevant, but specific 
enough to be rated with adequate reliability.
The second principle is that the items seek 
to describe situational variables that are di -
rectly relevant to the expression of person -
ality, in a manner that is as comprehensive 
as possible. To accomplish this, the RSQ 
draws from a previously developed instru -
ment for personality assessment, which has 
been widely acclaimed for its broad range: 
the California Adult Q -Sort (CAQ; Bem & 
Funder, 1978; Block, 2008; McCrae, Costa, 
& Busch, 1986). RSQ items were written to 
describe characteristics of situations that af -
ford the opportunity for expression of each 
personality characteristic in the CAQ. For 
example, the CAQ item “Is critical, skepti -
cal, not easily impressed” yields the RSQ 
item “Someone is trying to impress some -Personality  
Situation Construal  Behavior Effects of temperament, habit, etc.
Effects of incentives, dangers, rules, etc.Accuracy Selection/Evoc ation Subjectivity 
FIGURE 31.1.  The situation construal model.