Social Cognitive Views
of Personality
Behavior Therapy

Assessment

Contingencies

Therapy

Limitations
Behavior Therapy
Assesment

Behaviors are thought of as a sample, not
symbolic of something else

Dependent measure: Frequency of target
behaviors

Place: relevant location
Behavior Therapy
Contingencies

Contingencies:

What is reinforcing the target behavior?
Behavior Therapy
Contingencies

Premack principle

Identifies reinforcers

What does the person do if they can choose

Used for the reinforcer for therapy

Relativity of reinforcers

The ordering establishes a hierarchy of reinforcers

Nothing is intrinsically reinforcing
Behavior Therapy
Contingencies

The contingency is folded back into the
process

Ultimately, The distinction between
assessment and treatment is artificial
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

A number of applications have been
developed:

Systematic Desensitization

Aversion therapy

Extinction of cravings

Flooding / Explosion therapy
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Systematic Desensitization
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Systematic Desensitization

Establish a hierarchy of phobic activities

Train a mutually exclusive response

Usually relaxation
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Systematic Desensitization

Transference often starts with imaginative
desensitization

In vivo desensitization is more effective

(foreshadowing SLT: the process works even better in conjunction with a
model)
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Associate the unwanted behavior with bad
feelings

E.g.: treatment of alcoholism with antabuse

Problem: It’s tough to keep the client taking antabuse
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Joke:
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Joke: how many therapists does it take to change
a light bulb?
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Joke: how many therapists does it take to change
a light bulb?

Answer:
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Joke: how many therapists does it take to change
a light bulb?

Answer: only one, but the light bulb has to want to
change
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

Joke: how many therapists does it take to change
a light bulb?

Answer: only one, but the light bulb has to want to
change

For this reason, AT is very unpopular with both
therapists and clients
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Aversion therapy

For this reason, AT is very unpopular with both
therapists and clients

What do you think, would you guys ever use AT?
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Extinction of cravings associated with
precipitating cues
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Extinction of cravings associated with
precipitating cues

Similar to systematic desensitization

Establish a hierarchy of cues that cause cravings

Teach them mutually exclusive response
(relaxation)
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Extinction of cravings associated with
precipitating cues

Move up the hierarchy

Anecdote: Dr. Stote says this works with heroin, but not
with meth
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Flooding / Explosion therapy
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Flooding / Explosion therapy

Similar to extinction in some ways

Establish a hierarchy of cues

Lock the client in with the cues

They will have an extreme sympathetic response

Keep them from escaping
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Flooding / Explosion therapy

Guthrie’s Contiguity Theory:

After a while the sympathetic response will diminish

Then the stimuli becomes associated with lower arousal
levels
Behavior Therapy
Therapy

Flooding / Explosion therapy

Move them up the hierarchy

Supposedly this therapy works very fast

(This sounds horrific; please don’t ever do this to me)
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Criticisms:
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Criticisms:

Symptom Substitution

Not real personality change
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Symptom Substitution

The traditional Freudian response

Is this just treating the symptoms, but not the causes?

If so, another symptom will just crop up elsewhere
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Symptom Substitution

There is no evidence for this

Treatment outcomes must be compared to controls

Sometimes clients develop other neuroses, but at the
same rate as controls
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Another criticism: personality change

Do these therapies actually change personality,
or just surface behaviors?

It depends on the definition of personality,
but
Behavior Therapy
Criticisms

Another criticism: personality change

By any reasonable definition, YES

The client’s habitual behaviors change
(the cause of their complaint)

The client’s self concept changes
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The Limitations of BT:

The problem needs to be only behavior
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The problem needs to be only behavior

If the problem were distorted cognitions, the
traditional BT has nothing to work with

E.g.: what if excessive perfectionism drives
someone into depression
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The problem needs to be only behavior

Do you think there are any problems that are truly
only behavioral, with no cognitive component?
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The problem needs to be only behavior

Do you think there are any problems that are truly
only behavioral, with no cognitive component?

E.g. what did you make of the fact, noted earlier, that
Systematic Desensitization works better with a model?
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The problem needs to be only behavior

One possible rejoinder to this limitation:

Reinforce them to engage in more activities that they
find joyous
Behavior Therapy
The Limitations of BT

The problem needs to be only behavior

One possible rejoinder to this limitation:

Reinforce them to engage in more activities that they
find joyous

Does this sound reasonable to you?
Behavior Therapy

Discussion questions:

What do you make of the fact that all the therapies
are so similar?

Is BT just a one-trick pony,
OR

Are these ingenious extensions of a fundamental
principle?
Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Conceptions
(Mischel, 1974)
Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Conceptions
1.
2.
Observational Learning (Bandura)
Cognitive Affective Person System (CAPS;
Mischel)
Observational Learning
(Bandura, 1965)
4 Parts to Observational Learning
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor Production
4. Motivation
(Bandura, 1965)
4 Parts to Observational Learning
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor Reproduction
4. Motivation
(Bandura, 1965)
4 Parts to Observational Learning
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor Production
4. Motivation
(Bandura, 1965)
4 Parts to Observational Learning
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor Production
4. Motivation
(Bandura, 1965)
4 Parts to Observational Learning
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor Production
4. Motivation
(Bandura, 1965)
CAPS “if…then…” Profiles
1.0
I
0.8
I
0.6
I
0.4
I
0.2
I
0.0
I
Conditional Probability
Intra-individual patterns of behavior variability: Behavior X
I
0
I
2
I
4
I
6
I
8
Situations (conditions)
I
10
I
12
CAPS “if…then…” Profiles
teased warned
approached praised punished
-2
I
-1
I
0
I
1
I
2
I
Child #28
Profile stability: r=.49
Verbal Aggression (z)
2
I
1
I
0
I
-1
I
-2
I
Verbal Aggression (z)
Child #9
Profile stability: r=.89
teased warned
approached praised punished
Social Cognitive Processes




Self Schemas (Markus 1977): Traits one
attributes to one’s self.
They guide attention and encoding.
If one thinks “I am needy, whiny and irritating”
they will remember things about events that
are relevant to that specific self attribution.
They organize knowledge and concepts
about how one thinks one is perceived.
Social Cognitive Processes
The Relational Self
 How one represents oneself is intimately
coupled with how one represents significant
others and relations between self and
significant other.
“I am truly my father’s son.”

Social Cognitive Processes



Transference: The Work of Susan Anderson.
Explains traditional Freudian concepts in
cognitive terminology.
Something to think about while we discuss
her research in some detail: Is she doing
more than just changing the jargon? (I’ll
propose one answer a few slides down)
Social Cognitive Processes

The representation of significant others
affects how we judge/ remember/ feel
towards new people.

These representations seem to work just as
stereotypes do, but stereotypes are about
groups of people, these representations are
about single people.
Social Cognitive Processes



Processes that act on these representations
are universal, but content is personal.
Transference is the process of attributing
features to a person because that person
activates a SO representation (reminds you
of someone important to you).
Does anyone remember doing this? I do this
all the time.
Social Cognitive Processes




How to show this? Subjects give descriptions
of SO’s.
Weeks later, they read about descriptions of
made up people, one based on the features
of their SO.
They have a recognition memory test for the
descriptions of the made up people.
False positives of SO features not mentioned
in the description based on subjects’ SO.
Social Cognitive Processes



False positives for positive and negative
features.
SO rep does not even need to be primed to
attribute features to novel person, chronic
accessibility.
Transference seems to be the same
processes as Source Amnesia and category
based inference we have been discussing for
weeks.
Social Cognitive Processes



Activating SO reps affect how we evaluate
people – You remind me of a jerk, therefore
you are a jerk.
Can weakly activate moods – My SO makes
me sad, so do you.
Activates facial expressions – I smile when I
think of my mom, and I smile when I think of
mommy-like people.
Social Cognitive Processes



SO rep activates expectancies of if we will be
accepted or received
SO rep activates working self-concept, how
we view ourselves when with that SO.
If someone had a relationship in which they
were hurt and mistreated, they will transfer
that experience to new relationships.
Social Cognitive Processes

All of these are chronically accessible, so
someone may not share any features of your
SO, but just having a similar role or relation to
you can activate the SO rep and all these
associations with your SO are transferred.
Social Cognitive Processes

What has the cognitive terminology bought
us?
Social Cognitive Processes

The terminology activates a framework for
experimentation. We transfer knowledge of
research on concepts and memory to these
issues to gain new insights that would not
have been discovered in the lab under a
1920 view of psychology.
Social Cognitive Processes





Causal Attributions: How to do people
conceive of the causal forces that lead to the
outcome of events in their life.
External vs Internal causes.
Situation vs Ability
Pride and Shame maximized by internal
attributions.
How honest with yourself do you think you
are?
Social Cognitive Processes




Learned Helplessness
Feel life is too hard and one does not have
the ability to overcome their hardship.
Leads to depression, inactivity and
pessimism.
People who make internal attributions to bad
things and make external to good have more
physical ailments and lead shorter lives.
Social Cognitive Processes


Learned Optimism: When people attribute
internal causes to good things, and are
hopeful, they live longer and recover from
illness quicker.
I can’t tell from the descriptions of these
studies whether the attitude causes these
health differences, or whether people are
generally accurate at evaluating themselves
and their lot in life.
Social Cognitive Processes




Personality Assessment
Social cognitive theories have promoted self
efficacy measures that are determined
through specific situations, not gross
judgments on general self esteem.
By focusing on specifics, the therapist can
figure out the domains to work on to get at
the more general states.
Cindy discussed “If….then…”
Social Cognitive Processes




CBT and Beck: (Clinical people feel free to
correct me at any point)
Goes beyond BT by considering how
behaviors affect thoughts and feelings, and
vice versa.
Looks at how we construct our reality.
Directed at changing how people encode and
construe self and experiences.
Social Cognitive Processes





One’s affect is based on how one construes
self and place in world
Identify when one is interpreting world and
self negatively
Connect negative thoughts and feelings to
behaviors.
Replace negative with realistic thoughts
Change predispositions that distort
experience.
Social Cognitive Processes


From the brief summary in the text, I wonder
how the therapist and patient relationship is
different than traditional therapy. For a
patient to accept a logical explanation of why
some reality is wrong seems to first depend
on the therapist showing empathy for their
situation. Is this traditional aspect of therapy
not part of CBT?
CBT from this short summary seems cold
and impersonal, is this true?