Tony’s changing behavior in the disco with his friend is far more different with his behavior in the office when he was working. In able to better understand and further analyze this change in behavior, we must first try to clarify some technical terms and to apply the concepts of Person-situation controversy and reciprocal determinism in able to understand what causes the variability of Tony’s behavior. First, according to Mischel, person-situation controversy tackles the possibility of a person’s consistent traits.Here, there is a focus on the traits that continue to exist after sometime and in different situations. Thus, with regards to the attitude that Tony have shown, he did not have consistent behavior as when he was in the office and when he was outside of the office. With respect to the view of Luigi Pirandello, a person’s attitude is dependent on his environment as well as to the situation that we found ourselves to be.
In this case, our personality is ever changing depending on the people that we are with, the situation and/or the environment.Thus, using this perspective alone, serves as an explanation, why Tony’s reaction was not really surprising. His behavior is normal because he only acts in accordance to what the situation calls for. If we would further analyze this situation, using the reciprocal determinism that was popularized by Albert Bandura, stating that, a persons behavior is affected by the person himself as well as his immediate surrounding, and in turn, he was also affecting the surrounding he was in.
This explains the description of Tony, being the “life of the party”.He was cheerful when he was with his friends and he often go dancing on clubs, this tells us that his friends also are cheerful and also dances on clubs while his officemates were serious and quiet. His immediate environment determines what actions he is supposed to perform while on the other hand, his actions determine what kind of ambiance his environment would be. For instance, if he go home and lock himself in his room, he might be as serious and as quiet as he is in his office, however, he go into clubs and parties, this places requires him, stereotypically, to act happy, cheerful, vibrant and confident.
