We often assume behavior comes from who people are.
But some of psychology’s most influential thinkers argued that behavior can only be understood within the dynamic contexts in which it occurs.
“No simple mechanistic law relating particular stimuli to particular responses is possible, given that behaviors are always embedded in dynamic contexts that alter and constrain their effects.”
— Kurt Lewin (1951), quoted in Ross & Nisbett, The Person and the Situation (1991)
Context does not explain everything.
But without context, we often explain very little.