Individual/situational

• Individual


  The individual explanation argues that behaviour is a result of a particular feature or characteristic of an individual
• Situational

  Behaviour is a result of the influence of social groups and the environment
• Situational strengths

  • Produce determinist arguments of how ordinary people sometimes show extreme behaviours in society
  • Another is that it can produce practical applications to change negative behaviours in society
  • Social studies tend to have high ecological validity
  • Need to be longitudinal to understand how a situation can affect behaviour over time
• Weaknesses of situational

  • Considered reductionist because it ignores the role of individual personality characteristics of behaviour
  • Another is that to study it involves placing participants in an unethical situation
  • Reduces validity of the debate since it is so difficult to separate the effects of social influence from individual
  • Social studies often have restricted samples and therefore can be difficult to generalise social behaviour to wider pop
• Individual strengths

  • Produces determinist arguments of how individual characteristics determine behaviour - criterion validity
  • Another is that it can produce practical applications to measure differences and develop support for certain disorders
• Individual weaknesses

  • Ethics - behaviour blamed solely on the individual
  • May not have wide practical applications
  • Focuses on what makes people different
  • Lacks generalisability
  • Methodology sometimes subjective and biased