Situational challenges: Putting biology, resources and multi-level constraints back into the picture Ronald Fischer Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research, School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Bond (2013) provides a thought provoking and stimulating challenge to social psychologists by emphasizing that our discipline has failed in considering and studying the context within which people are acting, and how situations shape behaviour. Taking Lewin’s classic formula that behaviour is a function of both personality and the situation, expressed as B = f(P.S), he argues that we need to expand this formula to B = f(P.P[S].O[S].CO[S]). P(S) refers to the general situa- tion as perceived by the actor. One option to measure such general perceptions is with layperson’s beliefs about the world, as measured within the social axioms tradition (Leung & Bond, 2004). O(S) is the situation independent of the actor, a supposedly objective assessment operationaliz- able through intersubjective perceptions of the interaction partners, team members or individuals of the same cultural, ethnic, professional or organizational affiliation. These intersubjective perceptions are rated in terms of their affordances for sociality and status of the actor in this situation. P(S) and O(S) are somewhat interdependent and may overlap to the extent that consensus about the interpre- tation of the situation and the roles of individuals is high. This is the CO(S) component. In my commentary, I will focus on the central parts of the equation. First, the P component is central for understand- ing the other two main components (B & S), but is under- developed. Bond reminds us that many personality measures include subjective recalls of behaviour across situations and recommends that we should avoid these items. However, the trait approach to personality is exactly this: Average behavioural consistency across situations. If P is taken as personality in the trait tradition, then the formula breaks down. When Lewin proposed this general formula, such taxonomies of behavioural consistency were not yet widespread. Yet, in the current context with the widespread use of trait theories of personality, P needs considerably more attention in order to remove confounding it with the B component. In my opinion, the most logical approach would be a re-orientation towards biological and neural network models of personality (DeYoung et al., 2010; Read et al., 2010). Two major systems driven by dopaminergic and serotonergic systems seem to organize personality within major personality taxonomies. A number of poly- morphisms of dopamine and serotonin regulating genes have been identified that influence the expression of each system in an individual’s brain (e.g. Caspi et al., 2003; DeYoung et al., 2010). Although these systems may be moulded by the prenatal and perinatal environment (which includes the social and cultural environment) via epigenetic processes, these biologically oriented approaches have promise to turn the formula on its feet. These broad systems can be measured directly and indirectly via physiological (startle response, galvanic skin response, heart rate variabil- ity), (neuro-)cognitive (implicit association tests, neuro- transmitter release), and genetic (allelic distribution of transporter, receptor, and promoter genes) methods. Read et al. (2010) proposed and tested some neural computer network models in which these two broad systems were able to predict behaviour consistent with personality tax- onomies. More importantly, these two biological systems interacted with a broad set of situations to create meaning- ful and predictable behaviour. Hence, a biological approach to motivation and personality shows much promise and should attract more attention by researchers. Most importantly, there are increasingly diverse methods available that can be used to assess broad motivational orientations independent of self-reports that assess person- ality in terms of self-described behaviour within/across situations. The second component is P(S), an evaluation of the situation by the person or actor. It appears that Bond (some- what reluctantly) recommends social axioms as ‘actor- derived measures of the general situation confronting the actor that combine with traditional measures of actor per- sonality to improve predictions of that actor’s responding in any situation’ (p. 5). In their 2004 article, Leung and Bond described them as context-free general beliefs. The five dimensions of social axioms of social cynicism, reward for application, religiosity, fate control, and social complexity, are more alike to broad personality-like characteristics and general social beliefs about the world and one’s position in it. A reviewer commented that social axioms may not be entirely independent of specific situations, but capture a person’s meta-perspective of the social world, that is a Correspondence: Ronald Fischer, Centre for Applied Cross- Cultural Research, School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. Email: ronald.fischer@vuw.ac.nz Received 17 August 2012; accepted 3 November 2012. Asian Journal of Social Psychology © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2013), 16, 30–33 DOI: 10.1111/ajsp.12017