The psychological situation in an interactional perspective of personality : a theoretical background and some empirical studies

Sammanfattning: A total of nine studies are presented addressing the issue of 'the psychological situation' in personality research. After a review of environmental conceptualizations in two basic theories of personality - behavior theory and trait theory - a modern interactionistic perspective on situation analysis is summarized. Within this paradigm, two main categories of person variables which can be used to describe and classify situations are investigated. Part I of the thesis deals with the specification of a situation in terms of behavior. The empirical studies presented pertain to individuals' cross-situational anxiety behaviors. Part II analyze situations in terms of perception. Based on a situation-outcome model of anxiety, emphasizing the role of outcome expectancies, the nature of these expectancies are the object of investigation in five empirical studies.