Situational Influence

The most significant findings in social psychology have been in the observation of situational circumstances and their powerful impact on our behavior. The landmark and defining experiments of The Asch Paradigm, The Stanford Prison Experiment, The Darley and Batson Seminary Study, and The Milgram Experiment all illustrate how situational forces work to induce behavior that are wholly independent of what we would define as personality traits. Clearly defined ethics and moral standards are easily tossed aside when things like belonging to the tribe, role defined expectations, time constraints, and allegiance to obedience are subconsciously put into play. It is difficult to operate with mindful clarity of ones core values every moment of every day. This illustrates the importance of the knowing the power of situational forces and mindfully creating situations that work to our subjective advantage.

We are seldom able to catch ourselves in the midst of a behavior that takes us offline of our core values while we are in it. As the saying goes it is difficult for us to read the ingredients on the label when we are in the jar. The trick is to understand this so we can examine the label when we exit that particular jar. Life will have us in many different jars at different times for different reasons. Many of those reasons will be situational.

There is not a single person on this rock that does not succumb to situational forces. Some us simply do a better job than others of creating productive situations for us to be in and this is done both consciously and subconsciously. The single most powerful behavior hack we have at our disposal is to consciously create powerful situations with the intention of pulling out of us a specific desired behavior. To not do so is to simply go through the motions in our lives having other situations steer the ship. And if those motions are not moving you in the direction you need to be traveling into get you what you want or to optimize your life, then you will find yourself in a perpetual state of frustration and not truly understand why.