Under the controversy of person–situation debate, situationism is the theory that changes in human behavior are factors of the situation rather than the traits a person possesses.
[2] This is an ongoing debate that has truth to both sides; psychologists are able to prove each of the view points through human experimentation.
Additionally, the popularity of the Big Five-Factor Model of Personality within the field of psychology has overshadowed the theory of situationism.
To carry out this experiment, Zimbardo gathered 24 college men and paid them 15 dollars each an hour to live two weeks in a mock prison.
The guards started waking up the prisoners in the middle of the night for count, and they would yell and ridicule them.
You can't quit.” He then went back to the prison and “began to act ‘crazy,’ to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control.” [7] After this, he was sent home.
The first were the guards that followed all the rules but got the job done, the second felt bad for the prisoners, and the third were extremely hostile and treated them like animals.
This last type showed behaviors of actual guards and seemed to have forgotten they were college students, they got into their roles faster, and seemed to enjoy tormenting the prisoners.
On Thursday night, 6 days into the experiment, Zimbardo described the guards as having "sadistic" behavior, and then decided to close down the study early.
For example, in 1973, Darley and Batson conducted a study where they asked students at a seminary school to give a presentation in a separate building.
Darley and Batson observed that more participants who had extra time stopped to help the confederate than those who were in a hurry.
The way the experiment was devised was that Milgram picked 40 men from a newspaper add to take part in a study at Yale University.
The teachers were told the learners had to memorize word pairs, and every time they got it wrong they were shocked with increasing voltages.
Milgram expected participants to stop the procedure, but 65% of them continued to completion, administering shocks that could have been fatal, even if they were uncomfortable or upset.
This shows that the situation itself is more dependent on characteristics and circumstances in contrast to what is taking place at that point in time.
For example, Dana Nelkin (2005), Christian Miller (2003), Gopal Sreenivasan (2002), and John Sabini and Maury Silver (2005), among others, have argued that the empirical evidence cited by the Situationists does not show that individuals lack robust character traits.
[14] This model emphasizes both sides of the person-situation debate, and says that internal and external factors interact with each other to produce a behavior.
[15] However, it is also important to note that both situationists and trait theorists contributed to explaining facets of human behavior.