How people perceive the situations they engage in are important because (a) Persons and situations are interdependent (b)All stimuli both external (e.g., people present) and internal ones (e.g., current mood) are processed within a personality system and (c)Studies have shown that perceptions are not monolithic entities: They vary according to the person who perceives a stimulus, The properties of the stimulus itself, and The interactions between person and stimulus. Rothman has developed novel componential approach to situation perception to disentangle Perceiver (a perceiver’s tendency of seeing situations), Situation (a situation’s tendency of being seen), and Perceiver Situation variance (a perceiver’s unique view of a specific situation).

1. Compiled by Col Mukteshwar Prasad(Retd),
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Principles of situation perception
Ref- …A Componential Approach…..
By John F. Rauthmann

2. Introduction
 A situation is a set of fleeting(Lasting for very short time), dynamic, and
momentary circumstances that do not lie within a person (i.e., they are
neither own mental processes nor own behavior), but in their
surroundings.
Rauthmann, 2015
Or
 Situation constitutes everything that is outside the person.
 A person (Psychologically ) is made up of goals, motives, values,
interests, skills, abilities, etc.,
 Situations are everything else, including other people.
 Every thought, feeling, desire, and behavior is embedded in a
situation.
 Three different kinds of situational information provide a lens to define
situation :
 Cues-Something happening in our environment we interpret as in need of a
response.
 Characteristics(are the perceived qualities or attributes of situations)

3. Principles of situation perception
 How people perceive the situations they engage in are important
because
 (a) Persons and situations are interdependent
 (b)All stimuli both external (e.g., people present) and internal ones
(e.g., current mood) are processed within a personality system and
 (c)Studies have shown that perceptions are not monolithic entities:
 They vary according to the person who perceives a stimulus,
 The properties of the stimulus itself, and
 The interactions between person and stimulus.
 Rothman has developed novel componential approach to situation
perception to disentangle
 Perceiver (a perceiver’s tendency of seeing situations),
 Situation (a situation’s tendency of being seen), and
 Perceiver Situation variance (a perceiver’s unique view of a specific
situation).

4. Principles of situation perception
 The Relevance of Situation Perception
 Lewin (1946) stressed that ‘‘the person and his environment have
to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors’’
 People constantly engage with their surroundings, and
subjective situation construals (The way people perceive,
comprehend and interpret the world) will guide behavior, which
makes situation perception a fundamental issue.
 Person–situation transactions emphasize the interdependence
of person and situation
 Dispositions (Inherent qualities of mind and character)require
situations within which to manifest and situations could be seen as
‘‘event tests’’ that afford the expression of certain personality traits.
 Thus situations may be affordances (What environment offers an
Individual) or presses that modulate (elicit, permit, constrain) the
expression of traits.
 John F. Rauthman presented a componential view on situation
perception that can advance our understanding of how we perceive
situations.

5. The situation–perception components
model.

6.  Context Factor- Describes the influence of environmental factors on
one's perception of a stimulus.
 Culture Epoch Theory(Not in favour now)-assumes human
development to recapitulate or mirror the historical development of
the human race.
 Ecological Niche-The position (a person's situation as it corresponds to
other people in the group, specifically in terms of social status or rank or
to their stance on an issue.)or function of an organism or a population
within a biological and physical environment.
 Zeitgeist- It refers to a form of supra individual mind at work in the world
and developed in the cultural world view which pervades the ideas,
outlooks, and emotions of a specific culture in a particular historical period
 Person Situation Transaction- Human behavior may be determined by
the person, the situation, or a combination of both.
 If Then Pattern -The statements follow an “if then” pattern whereby
actions depend on certain conditions or observations
 Situation Selection-Situation selection involves choosing situations
based on their likely emotional impact and may be less cognitively taxing
or challenging to implement compared to other strategies for regulating
emotion, which require people to regulate their emotions "in the moment";
 Corresponsive principle-The corresponsive principle concerns about
personality-environment transactions that involve life experiences. Simply
put, the corresponsive principle suggests that the traits that are more
likely to be developed by a life experience are the traits that were
most responsible for bringing or exposing the individual to that life

7. Situation
 Perception
Perception is driven by different components, and people’s ratings or
perceptions have been studied with variance decomposition
 There are different approaches to decomposing the variance in ratings but
Kenny’s method—brought forward originally for interpersonal
perception and behavior in the Social Relations Model (SRM)—has
become a widely used and well-established standard .
 Any rating may be broken down into variance due to perceiver/actor,
target/partner, and relationship (between perceiver/actor and
target/partner)
 The Perceiver (differences in perceivers’ general tendency of
viewing situations),
 Situation (differences in how situations are generally seen by
perceivers), and
 Perceiver Situation interaction (differences in perceivers’
unique impression of specific situations, beyond perceivers’
general habit of seeing situations and situations’ general
tendency of being seen).

8. A Componential Approach to
Situation
 This is summarized in the Situation Perception Components Model (SPCM)
illustrated in Figure 1.
 A situation—As a gestalt —may be composed of a panoply of
objectively quantifiable cues, such as locations, time, persons,
activities etc. which form
 The ‘‘alpha press’’ of a situation- These cues are then filtered by a
person’s perceptional units or stable perceiver effects—general
lenses through which we perceive our world to form a psychologically
active situation
 The ‘‘beta press’’- This subjective situation construal as an
‘‘individuals’ attempt to establish the meaning of situations in a
subjectively accurate way’’ may then trigger
 Associated intrapersonal processes (cognition, affect, motivation,
volition, intention, and regulation) and
 Behavioral dynamics (passive, reactive, evocative, and proactive)
 These Presses in turn, can modulate the given situation.

9. A Componential Approach to
Situation
 The perceiver effects should be strongly tied to enduring person
factors such as traits, needs, values, appraisals, and so on (Figure 1,
Path B).
 Situation Effects - How situations are consensually seen or canonically
interpreted are captured with situation effects and depends on
 The specific situation cues at hand (Figure 1, Path A) and
 The macro context in a given culture (Figure 1, Path C).
 Perceiver - Situation effect – Captures the idiosyncratic and unique
perception of a which may depend on Complex person–situation
transactions (Figure 1,Paths D), such as
 If-then patterns,
 Situation selection , or
 The corresponsive principle (i.e., traits lead to life experiences
which, in turn, deepen these traits).
 Relative percentages of Perceiver, Situation, and Perceiver
Situation components in Big Five situation classes (15 OLQs as in
SSB) and relations among situation-related perceiver effects and
personality traits (Figure 1, Path B) is a basic, first step to introduce a

10. Situation
 Perceiver, Situation, and Perceiver Situation components for Big Five
situation classes (15OLQs in SSB) are generally examined across crucial
rating formats
 Frequency: How often does situation occur current everyday life (Never
to Often)?
 Valence: How pleasant or unpleasant is the situation (-ve to +ve) ?; and
 Activation: How activating or deactivating is the situation?) and
 Associations among perceivers: Big Five (15 OLQs) and
 Situation class perceiver effects
 First situation classes can be distinguished regarding their relative
percentages of perceiver versus situation variance.
 Extraversion and Agreeableness: Expressed in situations involving
perceptually social–interpersonal cues ,allowing perception
determination by situation than perceiver variance.
 Neuroticism, Openness, and Conscientiousness : Expressed in situations
with less visible afforded or expressible cues, hence affected more by
interpretive processes that should be reflected in more perceiver than
situation variance.

11. Situation
 Second there are individual differences in perceiving situations which
should be related to personality.
 Perceiver effects should be linked to corresponding dispositional
person characteristics (e.g., the Big Five traits or OLQs ).
 It is expected that a situation class (e.g., situations associated with the
expression of Extraversion) is primarily associated with the corresponding
Big Five trait on side of the perceivers (e.g., Extraversion)

12. Methods
 Items were generated according to multiple criteria:
 Relevance for at least one Big Five domain or OLQs
 Occurrence in everyday life(excluding unusual, atypical, abnormal, and extreme
situations),
 Mid level of abstraction.
In SSB we have 12 TAT , 60 WAT and 60 SRT items to study 15 traits grouped in
Four factors
 Frequency ratings can be seen as basic indices of situation representation in
everyday life and have been employed elsewhere .
 Valence ratings are included because ‘‘the overall gist of the situation is
captured by its affective charge or likely effect’’ and ‘‘some situation qualities
are tied directly to the perceiver’s emotions or feelings’’ .
 Emotions or moods are often nominated by lay persons and can be seen as highly
salient consequences or accompanying elements of psychological situations.
 Situations may thus be easily judged according to their
unpleasantness/pleasantness.
 Activation ratings are employed to capture a situations’ activation potential as
Pervin (1976) found situation dimensions of not only friendly–unfriendly (akin to
valence) but also tense–calm and interesting–dull (akin to activation).

13. Interpretation
 Variance components.
 Persons form unique impressions of a given situation—
beyond their general tendency of perceiving situations and
beyond the situation’s general tendency of being seen
 Neuroticism, Openness, and Conscientiousness
situation classes tended to show more perceiver than
situation variance.
 Extraversion and Agreeableness situation classes tended to
show more situation variance
 Situations pertaining to social interactions carry more
commonly held information and could be referred to as
‘‘strong’’ as they might impose normative tendencies of
perceiving and experiencing them.
 Differences between perceiver and situation variance were
most pronounced in valence and activation ratings.
 Activation ratings leave more room for individual

14. Interpretation
 Perceiver effect–personality relations. The convergent correlations
between situation–perceiver effects and perceivers’ personalities can be
explained in different ways.
 1.There is a link between situations ‘‘affording’’ a Big Five trait and the
actual behavioral expression of the afforded Big Five trait
 Traits may ‘‘translate into’’ perceiver effects because trait-affording
situations can activate trait-specific needs and goals and render
situations functionally equivalent .
 2.People attribute certain qualities to situations based on their causal
impact on them . These attributions may be influenced by perceiver
effects.
 3.Persons tend to select situations that are congruent to their self-
concepts, identity, and goals and these choices are related to person
variables. Perceiver effects likely play a role here.
 4.Common source variance cannot be ruled out as an influencing
factor in cross-sectional designs

15. Interpretation
 Extraversion and Neuroticism seemed to play an
important role in situation perception.
 Perceivers’ Extraversion, a personality dimension of
sociability, agency, and positive affect consistently
manifested positive relations with all situation–perceiver
effects (except for the Neuroticism situation class).
 People scoring highly on Extraversion perceive many
kinds of situations as more frequent and enjoyable.
 Perceivers’ Neuroticism, a personality dimension related
to instability, anxiety, depression, rumination, and
negative affect , showed a trend toward negative
associations with all situation classes.
 This could hint at maladaptive cognitions (e.g., a
pessimistic–negativistic outlook) underlying situation
evaluations. A perception of negativity and threat may, in
turn, perpetuate the hypervigilance that is a core feature