Even as the acknowledgment that “behavior is a function of an interaction between the person and situation” has attained the status of a truism in psychology, the study of situations has lagged far behind the study of persons. This imbalance has begun to be remedied in recent years, with the development of assessment instruments and new theoretical perspectives for understanding situations. More and more papers are being published, symposia and even entire conferences are being devoted the interplay of persons and situations, and research is progressing rapidly. Accordingly, this is a good time to compile a handbook on the situation1 of research on psychological situations, providing a one-stop source for readings in the state of the art of theory, methods, findings, and applications in this burgeoning field. The handbook chapters are conveniently organized along these themes, and we thus hope that this handbook will be a great resource to seasoned experts and young talents alike. We owe the contributing authors our deepest gratitude—without their time, excellent summaries, cogent arguments, and patience (with us as editors) this project would not have been possible.
To many more years of flourishing situation research!
John Rauthmann, Ryne Sherman, and David Funder
The Oxford Handbook of Psychological Situations
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