The description of situations: Towards replicable domains of psychological situation characteristics

Using the most comprehensive lexical approach with English adjectives to date, Parrigon et al. (2017) found 7 major dimensions of psychological situation characteristics (CAPTION: Complexity, Adversity, Positive Valence, Typicality, Importance, humOr, Negative Valence). Researchers using or studying situations may be interested in how well these dimensions empirically overlap with dimensions from other taxonomies, such as the DIAMONDS (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Deception, Sociality). This comment highlights empirical and theoretical convergences between CAPTION and DIAMONDS scales, yielding evidence for 5 replicable dimensions. In general, average convergent correlations were substantial (.47-.69), much larger than discriminant ones (.18-.30), and as high as or higher than those typically found for Big Five scales. We highlight the opportunity to integrate different situation characteristics taxonomies and conclude with the plea for large-scale, cross-cultural research that can further expand our knowledge on the structures of situation characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record