Situations matter. They let people express their personalities and values; provoke motivations, emotions, and behaviors; and are the contexts in which people reason and act. The psychological assessment of situations is a new and rapidly developing area of research, particularly within the fields of personality and social psychology. This volume compiles state-of-the-art knowledge on psychological situations in chapters written by experts in their respective research
areas. Bringing together historical reviews, theoretical pieces, methodological descriptions, and empirical applications, this volume is the definitive, go-to source for a psychology of situations.
Psychologists have extensively investigated the connection between personality characteristics and behavior. Inventories exist for measuring well-known traits such as the "Big Five" and for studying less prominent characteristics ranging from achievement striving to zest. What has often been missing, however, is the role of situations in affecting behavior. This impressive handbook begins to fill the gap, establishing a foundation for the study of situational
elements that interact with personal characteristics. The book comprises 31 chapters by an international group of more than 50 contributing authors. Researchers with deep understanding of the complexities of studying behavior will appreciate the authors' organization of an extensive body of empirical and
theoretical literature into a framework that will influence ongoing research and facilitate understanding of the combined role of the person and the situation in producing behavior.
