The Person and the Situation

by Lee Ross

Economist and political theorist Thomas Sowell (1987) has argued that two opposing visions of human nature and society have struggled against one another across the centuries. He calls these visions “constrained” and “unconstrained.” The constrained vision holds that human nature and the broad outlines of social life are relatively fixed and are very difficult to change, and that the effects of deliberate interventions to produce change are unpredictable and usually include unforeseen negative consequences that cancel or outweigh any positive ones. The unconstrained vision holds that human nature is highly plastic and malleable, and that we know the laws of individual psychology and social systems well enough to be able to plan interventions that will reliably improve the human condition. We believe that social psychology speaks in a clear voice to these questions – siding in part with the holders of the constrained view and in part with the holders of the unconstrained view.