Situational strength is defined as cues provided by environmental forces regarding the desirability of potential behaviors.
In contrast, an example of a soft situation is a yellow traffic light because the most appropriate course of action is not especially well defined and norms are inconsistent.
[2] Additionally, Stanley Milgram argued that psychological forces of conflict may not be brought into play under diluted conditions.
[3] However, recent conceptualization and study of situational strength can be traced back to the work of Walter Mischel.
In 1968, Mischel published his classic book, Personality and Assessment, where he argued that personality cannot be studied in a vacuum; instead, the complexity of human behavior and its determinants must be studied from a perspective that accounts for the simultaneous and interactive impact of individual differences and situational characteristics.
[4] It is important to note that Mischel did not imply that people show no consistencies in behavior, or that individual differences are unimportant.
Specifically, Mischel began laying the foundation for subsequent thought in this area by arguing that psychological "situations" and "treatments" are powerful to the degree that they lead all persons to construe the particular events the same way, induce uniform expectancies regarding the most appropriate response pattern, provide adequate incentives for the performance of that response pattern, and instill the skills necessary for its satisfactory construction and execution (p. 276).
Mischel's work led to an important shift in social scientists' thinking about the behavioral expression of personality.
Studies have found that the two traits most responsible for the effect of counterproductive work behavior are agreeableness and contentiousness.
[11] Perhaps the most important implication of situational strength is that it is commonly believed to explain cross-situational variability in the criterion-related validity of non-cognitive individual differences.
One of the core ideas expressed in the fit literature is that a mismatch between individuals' needs and environmental supplies can have deleterious effects on performance, attitudes, and health.