Individual/ situational explanations

Question 1

What is this debate about?

Answer 1

Whether a persons behaviour is a result of their own personality or the context they are in

Question 2

Situational explanations

Answer 2

Suggests that behaviour is best explained by the situation and circumstance someone is in: someone’s social or physical environment
Most extreme shows people will act the same in a given situation as the situation is only what changes behaviour

Question 3

Individual explanations

Answer 3

Behaviour is a result of someone’s internal characteristics: their biology, personality, development (personal experience), cognitive processes
At most extreme this shows a persons behaviour is unchanging whatever situation they’re in

Question 4

Strengths of situational explanations

Answer 4

Supported by evidence where people are influenced by situations they’re in
Has practical applications in research where psychologists can manipulate situations to change Ps behaviour (

Question 5

Weaknesses of situational explanations

Answer 5

Could be used as an excuse to explain away bad behaviour (eg x made me do it)
Ignores differences people show in the same situation eg anomalies
Individual differences across people are ignored

Question 6

Strengths of individual explanations

Answer 6

Supported by idea of individual differences
Could be useful by placing people in certain jobs
Holds people accountable for their behaviour

Question 7

Weaknesses of individual explanations

Answer 7

Makes it difficult to predict how people behave in given situations
Makes generalisations to the whole population difficult if we can’t say a certain situational factor will effect behaviour
Reductionist as it ignores the situations affect individual

Question 8

Examples of studies that support situational side of the debate

Answer 8

Milgram - individually participants didn’t want to deliver shocks but due to situation (Yale, the experimenter, prods) they did
Bandura - children acted aggressively to bobo doll due to the situation they were put in to observe an aggressive role model and therefore learnt this behaviour

Question 9

Examples of studies that support the individual side of the debate

Answer 9

Casey - internal differences such as being a high delayer/low delayer of gratification (thus performance on the hot go/no go task) are caused by differences in brain activity (hot and cold regions) these are due to someone’s individual biology
Hancock - internal factor eg disorder of psychopathy is the cause of different language used, eg using more disfluencies and past tense