Individual Versus Situational Factors

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about what drives behaviour, focusing in particular on: (i) an introduction to what is meant by an individual compared to a situational factor; (ii) the tendency for people to focus on individual factors when hypothesising about another person’s behaviour; (iii) the historic focus on individual factors in psychology, including Wundt’s introspection and Freud’s psychodynamic theory; (iv) research claiming to have calculated the percentage of behaviour that personality and situational factors account for; (v) Lewin’s equation, which proposes that it is the interaction between situation and personality factors which has the greatest impact on behaviour.

About the lecturer

Dr Ayoub Bouguettaya is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Dr Bouguettaya’s research interests are in social psychology and how knowledge from that field can be applied to others, particularly health, including how we can apply social identity theory to societal problems, as well as investigating the different perspectives one might take on those issues. Some of Dr Bouguettaya’s recent publications include 'The relationship between gambling advertising and gambling attitudes, intentions and behaviours: a critical and meta-analytic review' (2020) and 'The Effect of a Food Addiction Explanation Model for Weight Control and Obesity on Weight Stigma' (2020).