SITUATIONISM, RESPONSIBILITY, AND FAIR OPPORTUNITY

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We tend to view ourselves and other normal, competent adult agents as having comparatively stable characters and as being responsible for our choices and their foreseeable consequences. We may not always behave consistently, if only because we experience occasional weakness of will, and our characters are not fixed but can and do change over time. Nonetheless, we do think of ourselves as having relatively settled character traits that shape much of our behavior. Moreover, we assume that acting from character is compatible with being responsible for our actions. As long as our character has not been deformed in ways that deprive us of competence to recognize and respond to reasons, we assume that we are responsible both when we act within character and when we succumb to weakness of the will. Competent agents are responsible for their conduct, except in unusual circumstances in which they act under extreme duress, for instance, as the result of coercion.

The situationist literature in psychology may seem to challenge these assumptions about character and responsibility. Situationism claims that conduct is not determined by character but reflects the operation of underappreciated aspects of the agent's situation or environment. For instance, several situationist studies suggest that our willingness to engage in helping behavior for those in need is determined to a very surprising extent by modest contextual factors that influence our mood. According to situationism, situational factors, as well as character, explain behavior. According to some situationist views, context, rather than character, is explanatorily primary. Situationist studies in which behavior seems better explained by contextual than by characterological factors can be both surprising and unsettling. They may suggest that we do not understand ourselves and our motivations very well, and they may raise questions about our competence and responsibility for our conduct.

Recently, several philosophers have embraced situationist findings and drawn revisionary philosophical conclusions, expressing skepticism about the existence of stable character traits, the prospects for virtue ethics, and ordinary assumptions about moral responsibility.¹John Doris has developed these arguments about the revisionary implications of situationism for ethical theory and moral responsibility further than others.²In Lack of Character Doris summarizes situationist findings and argues that ordinary assumptions about character and its...