1. Individual vs Situational Explanations of Behaviour
G544 Issues and Debates
Individual vs Situational Explanations of Behaviour

2. What is the debate? Which do you agree with?

3. January 2013
Briefly outline what is meant by individual and situational explanations of behaviour. (4)
Describe two pieces of research that support a situational explanation of psychology. (8)
Discuss the strengths and limitations of situational explanations of behaviour. (12)
Compare methods used to study individual and situational explanations of behaviour. (8)
Discuss the usefulness of research that emphasises individual explanations of behaviour. (8)

4. Individual explanations

5. Situational explanations

6. EXT: which studies support the Individual explanation?
Describe two pieces of research that support a situational explanation of psychology. (8)
Study:
Brief explanation of how it links to the debate:
EXT: which studies support the Individual explanation?

7. Discuss the strengths and limitations of situational explanations of behaviour. (12)
Individual
Situational
Strengths
Weaknesses
NB: you must use evidence to back your points up and include ‘howevers’.

8. Methods used
Compare methods used to study individual and situational explanations of behaviour. (8)
Discussion: how would we go about answering this?
Example paragraph: P E C

9. Timed Question
10 mins
AT 12 mins
Discuss the usefulness of research that emphasises individual explanations of behaviour. (8)
Hand in please.

10. Compare the debate with other debates
How does this debate link with other debates???

11. Homework
G544 Section B
Ethics

12. Extension Material
This is to broaden your understanding of the debate in the wider context.

13. Fundamental Attribution Error
Remember this:
We tend to attribute more significance to situational factors when considering the causes of our own behaviour but attribute more significance to personality characteristics when considering causes of the behaviour of others!

14. Problems with personality tests
Personality is difficult to operationalise
We cannot be sure any measurement is valid
Fundamental attribution errors
Tests are all different as they are based on different theories e.g.: projective tests are based on psychodynamic theory, the Myers Briggs test is based on a theory of Carl Jung. So the quality or value of the test will depend on the value, importance or quality of the theory.
Test are often not generalisable to all people in all situations (for example an Eysenck test which shows you are an extrovert might predict you would be a good manager in some jobs like retail but not necessarily a good manager in another job like head of school etc).
There is disagreement over whether research shows that behaviours based on personality tests can be often predicted

15. Mischel 1968
Mischel did a literature review of the research into personality tests and predictability of behaviour.
He did correlational analysis between types of behaviour and predictability of that behaviour and found a positive correlation of between .02 and 0.4 which is quite low!
He said the role of personality in behaviour was small and therefore the greatest variability of behaviour depended on the situation.

16. Funder 2001
Said that a correlation of 0.4 was not low and amounted to a prediction that personality would affect behaviour about 70% of the time!
He also said people choose their situations. For example an introvert might choose to work in a library. This will then, in turn affect their behaviours.

17. The Interactionist Perspective
Arguing ‘is it personality or the situation’ causing behaviour is too simplistic. Both arguments are reductionist.
There is a complex interaction between the demands of a situation and the personality traits of the individual.

18. Individual differences and personality
Some individuals may show more consistent personality traits, so may be more influenced by these traits!
Some personality traits will only emerge in some situations!
Some individuals will be more affected by the environment in which they are in than their personality traits!