Project Abstract/Summary
Decades of theory development in social and personality psychology distinguishes two fundamental causes of behavior: person factors and situation factors. Person factors refer to attributes of the actor, such as personality, learning history, goals, and desires. Situation factors refer to forces outside the person, such as the presence of others, the immediate environment, physical forces, and broader cultural forces. Past research has tried to understand the relative contribution of, and interaction between, person factors and situation factors in accounting for a person’s behavior. Both are clearly important, but it is less clear how the two are integrated. This project goes beyond previous work by allowing the relative contribution of person and situation factors to differ across people, situations, and time. Rather than assuming models for human behavior are the same across people, this research tests whether behavior prediction needs to be unique (personalized) to an individual. Understanding when, where, and for whom person and situation factors matter most has critical implications for healthcare, behavior change, education, and more.
This project tests three competing conceptual models of how persons and situations impact behavior. Each of these three conceptual models differ in how general versus unique the model is for any one individual and in how person and situation factors are incorporated. One important innovation in this project is recognizing that most previously used methodology involves a series of short questions that are common among everyone. That approach carries numerous benefits but may sacrifice a great deal of accuracy in capturing differences among people. This project considers the value of tailoring such questions to an individual. This approach may be more complex, costly, and time consuming to implement but may achieve greater accuracy in its forecasts. The three conceptual models advanced in this project have not been previously compared to one another. As a result, it is not known whether the tradeoff in simplicity versus complexity is important. To test this, a more nuanced and sophisticated methodology is developed based on individualized and more frequent assessments. Rather than finding a single correct conceptual model that applies to all people in the same way, this approach is expected to demonstrate that more complex and personalized models will work better for some people but that simpler models will work better for others. This refinement in understanding and assessing personality can inform the development of tailored interventions relating to outcomes in many spheres of life, including educational achievement, health, and productivity.
This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Principal Investigator
Joshua Jackson – Washington University located in SAINT LOUIS, MO
Co-Principal Investigators
Emorie Beck
Funders
Funding Amount
$750,000.00
Project Start Date
06/01/2024
Project End Date
05/31/2027
Will the project remain active for the next two years?
The project has more than two years remaining
Source: National Science Foundation
Please be advised that recent changes in federal funding schemes may have impacted the project’s scope and status.
Updated: April, 2025