What potential research problem arises when generalizing theories are based on specific situations

Your hypothesis could be wrong in another sample

Explanation: if you take a particular event and make a theory from it, this theory will have specific characteristics, causes and effects that won't be accurate in other samples.

For example, if you take an event that happened in a small town, this event will have specific variables that are attached to the fact that it is a small town (small population, particular economy, different culture and rituals, and similar issues). If you make a theory from it, and then you try to apply that in a big city, it is probable that the result won't be the same because the city has a different dynamic.

Generalizing theories need to be tested a lot of times in different scenarios, and each time the result has to be the same.

the civil war started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. when abraham lincoln won election in 1860 as the first republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep south seceded and formed a new nation, the confederate states of america. the incoming lincoln administration and most of the northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. they feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer united states into several small, squabbling countries.

i believe it caused a regional impact in societ