Individual/Situational

Question 1

What are individual explanations?

Answer 1

Suggest that behaviour is the result of the person’s unique characteristics and personality

Question 2

What are situational explanations?

Answer 2

suggest that behaviour is the result of the specific environment and circumstances the person is in at the time

Question 3

How does sperry relate to the individual side of the debate?

Answer 3

individual differences in brain structure (severed corpus callosum after brain surgery) impacts performance on visual and tactile tasks

Question 4

How does Bocchiaro relate to the individual side of the debate?

Answer 4

individual differences in whistleblowing influenced by whether or not the person has some kind of faith

Question 5

How does Piliavin relate to the situational side of the debate?

Answer 5

level of help influenced by the appearance of the victim, and the confined nature of the train carriage

Question 6

How does Grant relate to the situational side of the debate?

Answer 6

memory for the article was better when they were tested in the same environment as they studied it in (i.e. matching noise levels)

Question 7

What are the strengths of claiming that behaviour is due to the individual?

Answer 7

Useful in placing people into jobs, etc. based on their personality profiles

Can mean people can be held to account for their behaviours as it allows more room for free will

Can be more scientific to study individual factors in a standardised way

Question 8

What are the strengths of claiming that behaviour is due to the situation?

Answer 8

It is easy to replicate research into the influence of situational factors to check for consistent patterns of behaviour.

Useful as it suggests that we can influence behaviour by changing the situation people are in