OUR DISPOSITION + THE SITUATION USUALLY INFLUENCE OUR CHOICES ---Episode 2

      SITUATIONAL SOURCES OF DISPOSITIONISM

    While our dispositionism is the result of many largely complementary influences, this missive addresses several of the most central interior proclivities. For the sake of time and space, the missive will merely sketch those that have been detailed elsewhere and will detail only those that are the newest to legal and political scholarship. 

                       Interior Sources of Dispositionism

1. Perceptual limitations 

   Individuals realize that situational factors play a significant role in shaping behavior when, and to the extent that, the situational factors are cognitively striking. With our limited cognitive capacities, we humans can attend to only a few elements of any drama and notice the situation only when it somehow stands out. Often we concentrate only on the "lead actors" and miss the "extras," the lighting, the scenery, the script, and the director sitting in the front row. In our eyes, the welfare recipient buying a wide-screen Magnavox at inflated prices on a rent-to-own credit plan is a foolish consumer making another bad decision --- a wasteful extravagance for someone struggling to pay the light bill and save for retirement. All of the situational elements that moved her toward renting the TV --- the promise from her kids that they will spend more time at home, the deceptive wording of the credit plan, the clever sales technique of the retailer, the fact that a neighbor has one and "loves" it, the absence of other retailers willing to sell  in the inner city, and the optimism that a raise will come through at the end of the year --- are not particularly noticeable as we watch her sign on the dotted line. Were we the ones making the purchase, those and other situational elements might seem very relevant (and, indeed, hard to miss), but as mere observers, we find it difficult to see anything but a spendthrift exercising her free choice and a retailer responding to the customer's demands. Without some overt, coercive element to draw our attention ---say, a gun to the woman's head---disposition comes to the fore and situational influence fades into the background. 
   Relatedly, our minds seem to have little space for any notion of partial or incomplete autonomy (though it need not be that way). When we see the welfare mother exiting the rent-to-own appliance store, our attributional options are limited to "choice" or "coercion" with no place in between for imperfect agency. Such is the bipolarity of our categories and schemas --- a manifestation of our mind's desire to avoid the cognitively costly task of distinguishing among the grays.