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lukeprog comments on The Good News of Situationist Psychology - Less Wrong
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If our situation controls our behavior (let's try to bracket "to what extent" and "how" it does so), then wouldn't it also control what kind of situation we will go for?
Here's an example from an Orwell essay: "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks."
And then I've always wondered about the following: If situationism is true, why do the folk have such a robust theory of character traits? Can we provide an error theory for why people have such a theory?
Note that the folk do seem to allow for some 'situationism' - for example, when someone gets drunk, we admit they'll have a different persona and some more than others.
Will our situation affect which situation we will go for? Of course.
One reason the folk may have such a robust theory of character traits is that it successfully predicts behavior. But the reason for this is because we mostly only see people in the same situations, not because they do or would behave reliably in very different situations.
Then again, maybe we theorize in terms of character traits only because we hang out in communities of people who demonstrate the fundamental attribution fallacy.