Measuring the Evolutionarily Important Goals of Situations : Situational Affordances for Adaptive Problems.

According to the Fundamental Motives Framework, basic goals such as protecting oneself, forming coalitions, and avoiding disease have emerged as a result of evolutionary processes to enhance reproductive fitness. This article introduces the Situational Affordances for Adaptive Problems (SAAP), a measure of situation characteristics that promotes or prevents the achievement of these evolutionarily important goals. In Study 1, participants rated a recent situation they encountered using a preliminary version of the SAAP.

The independent effects of personality and situations on real-time expressions of behavior and emotion.

The joint influence of persons and situations on behavior has long been posited by personality and social psychological theory (Funder, 2006; Lewin, 1951). However, a lack of tools for real-time behavioral and situation assessment has left direct investigations of this sort immobilized. This study combines recent advances in situation assessment and experience sampling methodology to examine the simultaneous effects of personality traits and situation characteristics on real-time expressions of behavior and emotion in N = 210 participants.