Ambiguous environments let personality shape behavior while structured ones constrain it.

Evidence

The relative effect of environment and personality on political behavior varies. Ambiguous environments—for example, new situations and political roles that are only sketchily defined by formal rules (Budner, 1962; Greenstein, 1969, pp. 50–57)—provide great latitude for actors’ personalities to shape their behavior. Structured environments— for example, bureaucratized settings and contexts in which there are well-developed and widely known and accepted norms—tend to constrain behavior. The environment also is likely to account for much of the variance in political behavior when strong sanctions are attached to certain possible courses of action. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1141

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ambiguous from structured environments as the key contingency for when personality matters politically.
• XREF: connects to: Restricted experience produces the one-dimensional, manipulated individual — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 672; Conviviality depends on structural tools rather than user character. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 58; People over-attribute others’ behavior to personality and underweight situational constraints — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 356 (+1 more)