Date of Award
5-2018
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Industrial/Organizational Psychology: M.S.
Department
Psychology
College
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
Jody Illies
Second Advisor
Daren Protolipac
Third Advisor
Dave Robinson
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
personality, situation, person situation debate, person situation interaction
Abstract
The present study examined the ensuing person-situation debate. The independent variables included situational strength (strong verses weak), conscientiousness, and attention to detail. The dependent variable was performance on two different tasks, where good performance required high levels of thorough and focused behavior. This study sought to test the hypothesis that in strong situations there would be more uniform behaviors (less influence of personality) then in weak situations. It also examined the hypothesis that in a weak situation, narrow traits would be a stronger predictor of tasks performance than broad traits, but in a strong situation, there would not be a difference between broad and narrow traits. The hypothesis was not supported. Results of the study indicated that there were no significant main effects. The three-way interaction was not significant either. However, there was a significant two-way interaction of conscientious and the situation on the memo recall task performance. Specifically, participants with low levels of conscientiousness performed better when there were no consequences present. The findings are to be interpreted with caution as the sample size is too low to generalize.
Recommended Citation
Hoepner, Catherine S., "Impact of Situational Factors on Attention to Detail" (2018). Culminating Projects in Psychology. 10.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/psyc_etds/10
