The culture of the situation: The role of situational strength in cultural systems

Bond’s insightful analysis puts, at long last, the role of the situation central to the study of culture. As he cogently argues, while psychologists have always acknowledged the role of situations in human behaviour – as far back as Weber (1922), Mead (1934), and Lewin (1943;1946) – there continues to be a much heavier emphasis on the internal properties of individuals (personality, the self) to the neglect of theories and research on dimensions of situations. In fact, criticisms regarding the neglect of the situation began well over half a century ago (Cottrell, 1950; Murray, 1938) and have continued since (Barker, 1968; Bowers, 1973; Goffman, 1963; Mayhew, 1980; McAuley, Bond & Kashima, 2002; Moos, 1973; Pervin, 1978; Seeman, 1997; Ten Berge & De Raad, 1999). As Endler (1993) put it, ‘although we have a fairly advanced differential psychology of individual differences, our differential psychology of situations is still in the dark ages’ (p. 258). Similarly, in his Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Presidential address, Reis (2008) argued that psychology, more generally, should take seriously the study of situations and how they affect psychological processes. The mind, he argued, consists of a set of adaptations designed to solve adaptive problems, one of which is to adapt to everyday situations (Reis, 2008). Cross-cultural and cultural psychologists have also bemoaned the fundamental neglect of the situation and have argued situational analyses should feature more centrally in research on cultural systems (Gelfand, Raver, Nishii, Leslie & Lun et al., 2011; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto & Norasakkunkit, 1997; Oyserman, Kemmelmeier & Coon, 2002; Triandis, 1972). Bond raises the critical question of: How can we identify objectively defined social situations that are universal? He aptly points out that there is little consensus on the basic dimensions of situations (Wagerman & Funder, 2009), and draws on research on the ecology of perception (Gibson, 1986) to argue that the dimensions of social situations that are most promising are those that relate to fundamental motivational affordances – for example, sociality and status – that are relevant for the human species. We add to this thoughtful analysis and offer another dimension of situations that is a promising candidate for universality across cultures, that which relates to questions of individual agency or the degree to which individuals are afforded latitude versus constraint in everyday recurring situations. Scholars from numerous disciplines have long argued that situations differ in the range of behavioural responses that are considered appropriate, commonly referred to as situational strength (e.g. Goffman, 1963; Mischel, 1977; Price, 1974; Price & Bouffard, 1974; see also Boldt, 1978; Douglas, 1982). When situations are strong, there is a restricted range of behaviour that is deemed appropriate and with high censuring potential, leaving little room for individual discretion in determining behaviour. When situations are weak, by contrast, there is a wide range of behavioural patterns that are acceptable, thereby placing few external constraints on individuals and allowing individual differences to be expressed. Our work on this dimension of situations (Gelfand, Raver, Nishii, Leslie & Lun, 2011) is consistent with and extends Bond’s insightful analysis. Specifically, we have shown that: (i) the dimension of situational strength is likely a universal (providing empirical evidence consistent with the O[S] component in Bond’s formula), and that individuals tend to agree about the level of situational strength in their cultural context (providing empirical evidence consistent with the CO[S] component in Bond’s formula); (ii) the strength of situations varies widely across national cultures, and such variations are afforded and constrained by the ecological and historical context of nations. This systematic cultural variation suggests that situational structures are not randomly assigned to cultures (similar to Bond’s argument that people are not randomly assigned to situations). Put simply, differences in situational strength are adaptive (or at least were at some time in the past) to the constraints and affordances of the natural and historical contexts within which societies are embedded; and finally (iii) the strength of social situations has cross-level consequences for fundamental psychological processes (e.g. selfguides, self-regulation, epistemic needs). We suggest that the extent to which situations are chronically strong versus weak then induces particular chronically accessible processes. An implication of our analysis is that cultural differences in situational constraint may provide new explanations for cultural variation in a wide range of psychological processes, including cultural differences in attributions, Correspondence: Michele J. Gelfand, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. Email: mgelfand@umd.edu Received 19 October 2012; accepted 26 November 2012. bs_bs_bannerAsian Journal of Social Psychology