Will, habit, and the limits of character
How much of your character is just the room you are standing in?
What it argues
Situationist social psychology found behaviour is predicted better by immediate circumstances than by global traits: the same person is honest, cruel, or helpful depending on noise, hurry, and who else is present. The strong reading is that character traits as usually conceived do not exist; the weak reading is that they are far more situational than we report.
The probe
Take one I am the kind of person who claim. Find the situations where it fails. Then change the situations rather than the self-description.
The source
Lack of Character — John Doris, 2002. The link goes to the text or to a catalogue record for it, not to a summary. This one is a catalogue record: the entry gives you the question and the probe, not the argument in the author's words.
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