Approaches

Strengths 

• Social infulences have often been shown to have a stronger effect than dispositional factors (your personality).
• This approach can provide an explanation for a great many phenomenon, for example; It is useful for explaining prejudice and discrimination.
• The approach often adopts scientific methods to conduct research.

Weaknesses

• It underestimates the factors that people bring into a social situation.
• It only provides a superficial 'snapshot' of people's behaviour and does not take into account how this may develop over time.
• The studies within this approach often use small or unrepresntative samples.
• The studies are often carried out in laboratory conditions, and therefore lack ecological validity.