Florida Atlantic University researchers are looking into answering the fundamental questions of why people behave and feel the way they do.
Researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science in Boca Raton were among those who measured real-world effects of situations on human behavior. By studying 208 FAU students, their personalities and how they responded to various situations, researchers showed that personality predicts behavior.
“For decades, social scientists have theorized that human behavior is a function of the things inside of us — our personality — and the things outside of us — situations,” Ryne Sherman, Ph.D., an FAU assistant professor of psychology, said in a press release. “Until now, looking at both factors simultaneously has been hard to do outside the laboratory in a real-world setting.”
In the study’s first phase, Sherman and colleagues used a tool called the HEXACO-60 to measure the broadest dimensions of personality: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. For descriptions of those personality dimensions, visithexaco.org/scaledescriptions.
“One would assume that if a person is honest and humble, then his or her usual response to a situation would be behavior that is honest and humble,” Sherman said in the press release. “And in the same way, if a person is extraverted then we would expect his or her behavior to be outgoing and sociable in situations.”
Students in the study received eight text messages a day, for seven days. The messages helped to gauge their reactions to different situations at that moment. Students rated each situation indicating what they experienced and how they were feeling.
“The key finding in our study is that our personalities and the situations we encounter predict our behavior independently and simultaneously at any given moment,” Sherman said.
I asked Sherman a few questions about how we can take his research and apply it to our lives. Here’s what he had to say:
Fit Life: Can readers better predict how they or their loved ones or coworkers might respond in any given situation?
Sherman: Yes. Our study shows that personality does a good job of predicting how a person will typically behave in general across many moments in time, which is really important. At the same time, our study also shows that the characteristics of situations predict how a typical person will behave in a given moment in time. Taken together, this means that predicting how a particular person will behave in a particular moment in time requires (at least!) (a) knowing something about the person (i.e., his or her personality) and (b) knowing something about his or her situation.
Fit Life: Does your research suggest that even a person whose personality is defined by honesty and humility can be deceptive in a situation?
Sherman: Absolutely. One way to think about it is that your personality is your baseline — how you typically behave. Everyone has a different baseline, but as people go about their day, they run into different situations that push and pull them away from their baseline. On average, we see that people behave like their baselines (i.e., their personalities), but at any given moment, situations can force a person away from his or her baseline.
For those who want to know more, this study was published online April 27 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. You can read the study’s abstract by clicking here.
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About Lisette
Lisette Hilton, president of Words Come Alive, has had the luxury of reporting on health, fitness and other hot topics for more than 23 years. The longtime Boca Raton resident, University of Florida graduate and fitness buff writes for local, regional and national publications and websites. Find out more on wordscomealive.com.
