ABSTRACT
The first task is to question social psychology’s focus upon the internal psychological properties and processes of individuals. The point I will make is that people’s behaviour is very context-dependent. We tend to think of ourselves as pretty much the same kind of person from day to day and from place to place, and this view of ourselves as consistent and coherent individuals can be thought of as part of the ideology mentioned above; it is often more a description of what we feel ought to be the case than of what actually happens (Gergen, 1972). The term ‘situation specificity’ is usually associated with early versions of social learning theory (e.g. Mischel, 1968), and refers to the claim that our behaviour is dependent upon the situation or context in which we find ourselves, rather than the outcome of internal processes. The claim that behaviour is situation specific challenges the essentialist assumptions of trait and type theories of personality. For example, honesty had long been found to refer not so much to a reliable and consistent aspect of the personality than to aspects of behaviour in certain circumstances (Hartshorne and May, 1928-1930). But in social psychology the relevance of situation specificity is seen most clearly in the study of attitudes.
