Individual/ situational explanations

Question 1

key concepts?

Answer 1

Individual factors:
Enduring aspects of an individual - their disposition or personality.

Situational factors:
Anything in the environment, including other people.

Question 2

Applications?

Answer 2

IQ tests:
Need to consider people’s upbringing (situation) as this may determine how well they can answer the questions.

Question 3

Links to core studies?

Answer 3

Bandura:
Aggressive behaviour is due to situational events in the environment.

Sperry:
The split-brain participant’ behaviour was due to an individual influence (served corpus callosum)

Question 4

Similarities and differences?

Answer 4

Similarities:
- Individual factors are often similar to nature explanations (behaviour explained by biology)

• Situational factors are similar to nurture (our social and physical environment)

Question 5

Evaluations?

Answer 5

+ Adaptability
Being able to respond to situations makes human adaptable.

-Unresolvable
Both individual and situational factors contribute to development, so the debate can’t be resloved.