The Concept of Situations

By Yu Yang, Stephen J. Read, Lynn C. Miller. 2009

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The concept of situations has a long past, but the conceptualization of situations only has a short history. This article provides a survey of the concept of situations. Based upon Milgram’s [Human Relations 18 (1965), 57] vision toward ‘a compelling theory of situations,’ the authors examine the concept of situations in three specific literatures: definitions of situations, taxonomies of situations, and interrelationships among persons, situations, and behaviors. To further integrate the literature, the authors propose that the essence of a situation is its affordance of human goals, and that situations are largely characterized by two specific principles of goal processes (what happened, is happening, or might happen to people’s goals) and goal contents (the specific goals afforded in the situation).

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d8309657b37946435aed672e2d9fff494f932b3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. J. Rauthmann
2. R. Sherman
3. D. Funder
4. C. Nave
5. G. Kolar
6. Matthias R. Mehl
7. C. Wrzus
8. R. Furr

In Social Psychology

1. J. Rauthmann
2. R. Sherman
3. D. Funder
4. G. Kolar
5. M. Back
6. A. Vedel

In Sociology and Political Science

1. J. Rauthmann
2. R. Sherman
3. D. Funder
4. C. Nave
5. C. Wrzus
6. R. Furr
7. Matthias R. Mehl

Citations in the corpus

• Principles of Situation Research: Towards a Better Understanding of Psychological Situations (2015, methodology): “This notion is reflected in the process model of Figure 1 that seeks common ground between conceptualizations that have been previously proposed (e.g. Magnusson, 1981; Rauthmann et al., 2014; Reis, 2008; Yang et al., 2009).”
• Structuring Situational Information (2015, background): “’’ Indeed, many different definitions of situations have been proposed (e.g., Argyle et al., 1981; Block & Block, 1981; Lewin, 1936; Magnusson, 1981; Murray, 1938; Pervin, 1978; Yang et al., 2009).”