A free-response description approach to the analysis of person-situation interaction.

This study is a report on the utilization of a free-response description approach to address the following question: In what ways does an individual remain stable and vary as a function of situational characteristics, and what are those characteristics? Each of four subjects generated a list of situations in his or her current life which he or she then rated on lists of situation traits, feelings, and behaviors, which were also generated by the individual subject. For each subject the data were factor analyzed to determine groups of situations which were distinctive in terms of the feelings and behaviors associated with them. It was suggested that the personality of each individual could be understood in terms of the pattern of stability and change in feelings and behaviors in relation to defined groups of situations. It was also suggested that the approach utilized might serve as the basis for the future development of a taxonomy of situations and behaviors in situations.