Final Exam Details
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Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13
Open Book (course textbook, lecture notes, ppt, videos, all acceptable)
Multiple-Choice 90 questions
120 minutes
April 26th at 9am to 11am (must start in that window of time)
Sign up for 1 (split with someone else if you want, just decide with them)
Ideally put your section in the doc by this Friday (:
Lecture Note Sign-Up:
● Week 7 & 8: Phenomenological Theory → Brit A. DONE
● Week 9: Trait Theorists → Alicia S. DONE
● Week 10: Trait Theory II → Jehanara
● Week 11: Cognitive Theory (Kelly) → Tinesha DONE
● Week 12: Social Cognitive Theory I (Bandura and Michel) → Tinesha DONE
● Week 13: Social Cognitive Theory II (Contemporary) → Maryam DONE
Textbook Note Sign-Up:
● Ch. 5: Phenomenological Theory→ Maya O. DONE
● Ch. 6: Phenomenological Theory (Rogers) → Yaz DONE
● Ch. 7: Trait Theories I (Allport, Eysenck & Cattell) → Arhama DONE
● Ch. 8: Trait theories II (Five Factor Model) → Jehanara (first half) and Menal (second half)
● Ch. 11: Cognitive Theory (Kelly) → Cam & Claire DONE
● Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura & Mischel) → Omega DONE
● Ch. 13: Social Cognitive Theory (Contemporary) → Nataliya DONE
LECTURE NOTES:
Week 7 & 8: Phenomenological Theory (Brit)
PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY
Wednesday, March 3rd & March 10th (Week 7&8)
Phenomenology & Existentialism Intro:
● The ‘scientific method’ emerged and became the prominent mode of exploring and
understanding the world (renaissance/enlightenment)
○ Attempting to find a “signal” (effect) in the “noise” (individual data)
- Interested in objectively proving affects of something on some variable
○ Statistics - remove individual variance (error) to send the signal
- Individual differences between people is the noise blocking the understanding
of a variables affect on people
○ Very powerful and useful way to understand the world
○ BUT one must note that the scientific method also removes the individual from the
results
- So in a way, we have less of an understanding of the results as the equation
has been boiled down to get rid of the individual
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Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher (1889-1976)
○ Conceptualized how the scientific world has to an extent lead to a loss of self
○ Diagnosed modern society with illnesses of the soul:
1. We have forgotten to notice we are alive -- Das Sein (being) vs Das Neig
(the nothing)
2. We’ve forgotten that we are all connected - we treat others and natures as
means → “the unity of being” = moments of noticing our connectedness
3. We forget to be free and live for ourselves - we are thrown into the world
(categorized and socialized in certain ways) -- wanted to help us overcome
“thrownness” (Geworfenheit) and move away from inauthenticity to
“eigentlichkeit” (authenticity) -- starting to live for ourselves
○ Heidegger developed notion of - Being & Time (existentialism)
- We have lost the idea of “being” and our interconnectedness (similar to
buddhism)
- Thrownness → thrown into time, space and character - and we need to work
to realize our being and not just allow the thrownness nature to absorb us
- Authenticity → our self, rather than they-self (the chatter - “das gerede”)
- Focus on our own upcoming death will remove the chatter of theyself and bring us to live for our self
- We should spend more time in Graveyards
- Reminding us of our life and grounds us (humbling)
- Connect us to the past and cherish sense of being alive
○ Considering mindfulness
Existentialism → a philosophical theory that emphasizes the existence of the individual as a
free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of will
○ Free will emphasized
Phenomenology → interested in conscious experience. Period.
○ Derived from the Greek words ‘phainein’ meaning ‘bring to light’ and ‘phainesthai’
meaning ‘to appear’ or ‘that which appears’
○ What in the perceptual field resonates with the individual?
- Thinking about why certain things resonate or are of interest to given
individual
○ All experience is equal (dream/wake)
- What we perceive is reality - there is no dissecting of it - because it is just
another part of experience even if it is a dream - the dream was experienced
by our brain
Objectives:
● Introduce Carl Rogers
● What is the self?
● Can human motivation be looked at in terms of personal growth, self actualization and
feelings of congruence?
● How important is a stable self-concept?
● What are the childhood conditions that produce a positive sense of self-worth?
Phenomenological Theory & Rogerian Psychology:
● Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
○ American - grew up in religious and ethical atmosphere (father was minister)
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Started in agriculture then theology then clinical psychology
Began career as a child therapist → based theory on therapeutic experience (like
Freud) and scientific experiments
○ Formed center for the studies of the person
○ President of APA (1946-1947)
○ Distinguished scientific contribution award
○ One of the most influential psychologist of 20th century
Rogers personal thoughts:
○ Do not act like something i am not - authenticity
○ Value in understanding others - and honoring others values and our values
○ Experience is key - not to be too static and to flow forward and grow through
experience - overcoming anxiety to experience life
○ People move in positive directions (good and moral in nature)
○ Life is dynamic - not deterministic
○ (overall - person-centered therapy)
CONTEXT:
○ Freud → controlled by unconscious forces - primarily sexual/aggressive
- Personality is determined, and fixed, by experiences in early life
(deterministic)
- Our adult experiences are repetitions of unresolved early conflicts
○ Rogers → emphasized conscious perceptions of the present - “being”
- Subjectivity of experience (perception) - phenomenology - is most important
to our being
- Humanistic - free will, emphasizes:
- Personal worth of the individual
- Centrality of human values and the creative, active nature of human
beings
- Optimistic view focusing on the noble human capacity to overcome
hardship, pain and despair
“Conscience” as the Self (similar to Freud’s Ego)
Rogers View of the Person:
Subjectivity of Experience:
● The reality each of us observes is unique
○ It is private world of experiences - the phenomenal field
○ Phenomenological -- how the conscious person experiences the world
● Our perceptions of the world are subjective and individualistic
○ The reality we see is constructed of the real outer world of objects and our subjective
inner world of narrative/meaning (individual needs, goals and beliefs, shaped by our
experiences)
● This inner narrative/meaning (ie. the Self) we associate with objects and experience shapes
the subjective experiences that we interpret as objectively real
○ Ex. A person with low self-esteem may attribute a failure to internal causes rather
than external causes (ie. interpretation defines our experience) and vice versa
○ Ex. experiences can bring up past experiences → Someone is laughing and looking at
you … - reminds you of humiliation
● We commonly fail to recognize the influence of our personal thoughts/needs on our own
perception of the outside world - we are not in touch with “being” in the Heidegger sense
Feeling of Authenticity:
● People are prone to a distinctive form of psychological stress called ‘incongruence’
○ Incongruence → the feeling that one’s experiences does not align with one’s true
self
- We don't feel ‘authentic’
- The individual may think they have, but not feel, an attachment to their
values
○ Ex. you get into a fight with a friend and cut off all communication with them
- Initially it feels good and alleviates the stress of the situation but soon you
start feeling bad about the argument and realize you may have also been in
the wrong (incongruence)
- So we call our friend and make up and we immediately feel better
(congruence)
The Positivity of Human Motivation:
● Freud: motivation is primarily based on aggressive and sexual incidents driven by the ID and
must be suppressed/repressed
○ More negativistic view of humans
● Rogers: the core of our nature and motivation is essentially positive and towards growth
○ When people are functioning freely they are able to move towards being positive
mature beings
○ More positive view of humans
Overview/Recap:
● Phenomenology → subjective experience of the world
● Congruence → feelings of authenticity; thoughts and feelings match experience
● Positivity → people are generally good, positive and seek growth
PHENOMENOLOGY
1. Structure
2. Process
3. Growth & development
4. Psychopathology
Structure:
The Self
● The key structure of Rogerian theory is the SELF
○ It is what attaches meaning to the phenomenological field
○ Clinical work helps people become more aware of themself
● The self is:
○ The subset of the phenomenological field that is recognized as “me” or “I”
- Phenomenologists say there is no boundary between the me and the I and the
world - because they are deeply connected through relationship
- A lack of recognizing the ‘me’ or ‘I’ can lead to psychopathological
tendencies
○ An organized and consistent pattern of perception
- It remains relatively stable across time and situations (like personality)
- It is like our inner voice and is primarily conscious
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Our self concept - the person we think and feel we are
Unique to an individual
- Different subsets of the phenomenological field will resonate as “like me” or
“not like me” for different people
- Ex. Congruency test (rating traits from 1-5 on how they apply to actual self,
ideal self and how they compare in rank) - differences over 2-3 on a trait may
indicate incongruence
● So..the self, or self concept, is a psychological structure through which people interpret their
world
○ A person's self concept can be genuine (truthful/authentic) or distorted (deceitful,
exaggerated, insincere, calculated)
- A distorted self concept can lead to psychopathology
● How can we measure self-concept?
○ Q-sort (Stephenson, 1953) → sort cards (trait-words) in a forced distribution (most to
least like me)
- Only a few at each end and most in the middle
■ Fixed and flexible measure
■ Can investigate the difference between the actual and ideal self
○ Semantic Differential (Osgood, Suci & Tannenbaum, 1957)
- Rate concepts (my self, ideal self, my college, etc.) on Polar adjective scales
(ei. incongruencgood/bad, strong/weak, scholarly/non-scholarly, etc.)
- Research example: college & self -- incongruence predicted
dissatisfaction
Process:
Self Actualization:
● One single overarching motivational principle - self actualization
○ A forward looking tendency towards personal growth (process rather than a goal ongoing)
- Grow from simple to complex
- Dependence to independence
- Pleasure from activities that enhance one’s self
○ *no “measure” developed by Rogers - just a concept
● Personal growth scale (Ryff, 1955) akin to self-actualization
○ Feeling of continued development
○ Sense of realizing your potential - ongoing
○ Open to new experiences
○ Greater self-knowledge, reflectiveness and effectiveness
● We are happiest when pursuing goals congruent with our sense of self (Little, 1999)
○ Ex. if you feel you are a compassionate person, helping others will make you feel
good
Self-Consistency & Congruence:
● But we aren’t always self-actualizing?
○ We have conflicts, doubts and psychological distress on occasion...
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Rogers says:
○ We seek to maintain consistency (an absence of conflict) and congruence between
our individual perceptions of the self and experiences
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Incongruence occurs when we act in ways incongruent to our sense of Self
- This causes psychological distress and is defended against
- An object is either this or that (congruent), cant be 2 different things at onces
(eg. a “coywolf”)
However, congruence can take the shape of being positive or negative
- If we feel we have poor self-worth (consistent self-concept), we will behave
in a manner that is consistent with having poor self worth (congruence of
experience and self concept)
Rogerian Defences:
○ Subception → removal of incongruent experiences from consciousness before we are
“aware” of them
- We then either deny or distort the experience
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Distortion → change meaning of experience
- “Our relationship ended because she’s crazy and jealous”
- Not that i was dishonest, unfaithful (these are incongruent with self)
“Our relationship ended because he’s got commitment issues”
- Not because i was overbearing and resentful
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Denial → remove from consciousness
- “I didn’t do it” (complete denial) rather than “they made me do it”
(distortion)
Research on self-consistency & congruence
○ Chodorkoff (1954) → subjects slower to perceive words that were personally
threatening to them (incongruent)
- Ex. caused incongruence and the need to deny or distort (takes time)
○ Cartwright (1954) → better recall for stimuli that matched a person’s self image
(congruence) (ie. “like me”)
- Also found distortion on recall → ‘hostile’= changed to ‘hospitable’ on recall
○ Aronson & Mettee (1968) → people with low self-esteem (eg. a low self-concept)
more likely to cheat
○ Heimpel (various) → people with low self-esteem will maintain low self-concept and
negative mood (congruence)
- Induce sadness and ask them to choose a movie (ex. Sad, happy, neutral) more likely to choose sad movie if they are sad
Growth & Development:
Basics:
● Rogers had a strong therapeutic background in child psychology and development
○ He believed self-actualization is a life-long process
● Development occurs at 2 levels:
1. Parent-child interactions → do parents provide an environment that is optimal for
psychological growth?
- And do we later in life allow ourselves to have psychological growth?
2. Internal psychological structures
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Assimilate incongruence into self concept (ex. The world works differently
than we thought it did and we integrate that into our understanding of the
world and ourselves)
“Be grateful for your difficulties and challenges, for they hold blessings. In
fact, man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health, personal growth,
individuation and self actualization” - Carl Jung
OR
Distort (or accommodate) incongruences to retain Consistent self-concept,
but no personal growth
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Perfection (20 minute TedX Talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huOxk-UhOz0
○ We constantly search for perfection - especially through social media - hoping that
people will validate the self that we are broadcasting
○ Unrealistic and unhealthy - “perfect instagram life”
○ When you set yourself up for perfection, you tie yourself to your abilities and any
failure you feel is a personal failure
○ “In order to play well again, I had to stop caring about others perceptions of me”
- Removing the burden of perfection and finding yourself
○ Chasing perfection = losing your unique self
○ When you fall short you are given the opportunity to learn and grow
○ Social media give people the unique feeling to be a star - but it places pressure on you
in leading life
○ Embrace and love imperfection as it shows you how wonderful life can be
○ Feeling of incongruence when you expect yourself to be perfect but fail → you have
to assimilate and recognize the incongruence and integrating that understanding into
your self
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Self-actualization hinges on whether the child/adult can fully accept themselves
○ Little denial or distortion; accept incongruence and build it into one’s view of self
(assimilation)
- Reduces incongruence in the long-term as opposed to short term relief (ie.
avoidance)
Good parenting will foster an environment where the child can be themselves and be accepted
by the parents even if some behaviour is disapproved
○ “That behaviour is very naughty” VS “you are very naughty”
Video: Our Buggy Moral Code & Cheating:
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_our_buggy_moral_code/up-next
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Week 8: Lecture 6
Psychopathology:
Self-Experience Discrepancy:
● Where does psychological distress come from if we are all self-actualizing?
○ An incongruence between the self and experiences (our beliefs and actions govern
this)
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Phenomenology - mortality (beliefs/actions) - (ex. Crime and punishmentDostoevsky)
- Tension within humans of good and evil (benevolent and malevolent)
A psychologically healthy person:
○ Is able to assimilate experiences into their self-structure (beliefs) - good and bad
○ Is open to experience (actions) rather than reacting to experience in a defensive
manner
A psychologically unhealthy person:
○ Incongruent experiences are either denied completely or distorted
○ This creates a discrepancy with actual experience and the self’s awareness of the
experience
- This is termed the “self-experience discrepancy”
- We create defences against this
Defences:
○ Rationalization → rationalize the experience to maintain congruence between the
self and experience
- Reality: i got a C on the essay because i procrastinated
- Self: i prioritized what i could do with the little time I had, i studied as much
as i could
○ Fantasy → create a fantasy world to maintain congruence
- I may think everyone admires me (if i feel exceptionally high self-worth;
narcissism)
OR
- I may think everyone hates me (if I feel low self-worth; depression)
○ Projection → (ex. externalisation)
- Project your incongruent desires onto someone else
- Ex. you cheat on a partner and then you don’t trust them
Psychological Change:
● Rogers models of developing and fostering psychological change are very prominent today
○ Person-centred therapy, ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), mindfulness
therapy, CBT, etc.
● Rogers believed there were conditions necessary for ROGERIAN Therapeutic Change
○ Non-directive approach → allow clients to reflect on thoughts, feelings, behaviour
- No set plan in the session, no agenda - rather listening to the client and
flowing with them
○ Person or client centred therapy → emphasizes an active role of the therapist
○ Therapeutic climate → client and therapist equality (ie. partnership) - aka the
“therapeutic alliance”
- Three therapist-centred conditions necessary for good therapeutic
climate/environment:
1. Genuineness (authenticity)
2. Unconditional positive regard (like a good parent)
3. Empathic understanding
● Genuineness → therapist is themselves
○ Open and transparent
○ Speaks honestly (non-distortive)
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Inter-logic (an absolute truth; “never tell a lie”) VS consequential (a truth that
would hurt the person; thus using a “white lie” (Gad Saad)
Rogers endorsed consequential truth
Unconditional Positive Regard → therapist communicates a deep and genuine caring for the
client as a person
Empathic understanding → therapist strives to understand how the client perceives the
world through active listening and empathetic concern
○ Working to understand the emotional valence
○ Asking questions to understand the client's feelings vs making assumptions
Carl Rogers: Person-Centered
● Video of Rogers in therapy → Gloria volunteers to come on tv and talk about her experience
with different types of therapy
○ Gloria is → single mom, concerned about dating and its effect on her daughter,
whether to be honest about her sexual experience of lie to her and how this would
affect her daughter
○ Rogers notes he can't give her answers, he doesn’t know the answers - but they will
go through the journey of trying to understand together
● What seems to be the overarching issue (or belief) the gloria is struggling with?
○ Guilt towards not being authentic with herself and her daughter
○ Compartmentalizes her personality elements (ex. I'm sweet and caring mom but have
deep sexual attraction and drive for men)
- Feelings of incongruence
● Excerpts written by Gloria sometime after session
○ “Something happened in those few short minutes which has stayed with me ever
since. He simply helped me to recognize my own potential -- my value as a human
being. All the words couldn’t possibly express the importance of that for me”
Rogers - Empathy
● Rogers saw empathy as a process:
○ Entering the private perceptual world of another and becoming thoroughly at home in
it
○ Being sensitive moment to moment of the changing felt emotion that flows in the
individual/client (fear, anger, tenderness, confusion)
○ Temporarily moving delicately around in his life, without making judgements,
making meaning of which he is scarcely aware but also not trying to uncover feelings
that they are totally unaware of as this would be too threatening
○ Communicating your sensing of his world, with fresh and un-frightened eyes, at
elements of which he is fearful
○ Frequently checking with him to the accuracy of your sensings and being guided by
his responses
○ Being confident in helping him experience fully his sensings
Albert Ellis - Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT)
● The premise of REBT is that humans do not get emotionally distrubed by unfortunate
circumstances ---- But by how they construct their views of these circumstances
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○ Perception vs actuality
Based on their language, evaluative beliefs, meanings and philosophies about the world,
themselves and others
The fundamental assertion of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) is:
○ The way people feel is largely influenced by how they think (their personal beliefs
and perceptions)
○ (often considered the 1st cognitive therapy)
When people hold irrational/illogical beliefs and negative thinking patterns about themselves
or the world, problems can result
Ex. pair-bonding failures (friendships, dating, marriage, etc.)
○ Belief systems (Freud: super-ego) - when other views don’t match your “reality”
○ Speech to action (truth to authenticity)
○ Understanding how other people may view the world (empathy)
Psychopathology continued….
○ Genuineness (self matches action)
○ Unconditional positive regard
○ Empathic understanding
* pretty good basis for how to interact with people in our everyday life, huh?
● Think back to Rogers philosophy on life (Ch.5):
○ People will know/see if you aren’t acting genuine
○ People tend to like/admire the aspects that are genuine and UNIQUE about you often the very aspects you try to cover up
○ Actual → (true) Ideal Self
Outcomes of Client-Centred Therapy:
Do clients benefit from this approach? How do we know it works?
● We view external objects & experiences from an internal sense of who we are
○ Psychological distress occurs when we feel we are not who we want to be
- Incongruence: (true) Self and action
● We have an actual Self, who we believe we are…
● We also have an ideal Self (not a should/ought Self), we aim to be (process, meaning,
purpose)...
○ Distress occurs when there is a large discrepancy (difference) between the Self and
the ideal Self
○ Therapy must bring these 2 selves closer together
**Rogers was the first to open psychotherapy up to systematic investigation**
Evaluation therapy
● Used Q-Sort techniques before and after
therapy
○ Can correlate scores given to actual
and ideal self ratings
● Correlation, r, (similarity between actual and
ideal) should be higher after therapy
○ Indicates greater congruence between
actual and ideal self
○ Perfect correlation is +1 and worst is -1 (opposite) - 0 means no relationship
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Butler & Haigh (1954) - correlation (similarity between actual and ideal)
○ Therapy scenario: subjects that were psychologically distressed…
- Before therapy r=0 (no relationship)
- After therapy r=0.34 (decent positive correlation)
- 6 month followup r=0.31 (showed consistency and stability)
○ Subjects that weren’t in therapy, not psychologically distressed? Controls - r=0.58
The Human Potential Movement (HPT)
● As a backlash to Freud (and behaviourism) the human potential movement, existentialism and
positive psychology emerged
○ Freud → internal drives emphasis (deterministic; conflicted; distorted)
○ Behaviourism → external drives emphasis (conditioning; lack of free will authenticity)
● Human potential movement (positive
growth):
○ Inner perception of external
experience (ex. REBT)
○ People have the capacity to move
forward and realize their potentials
(Murphy, 1958)
● Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
○ People are good or neutral rather than
evil (eg. not made up of unconscious
crude drives)
○ Psychopathology results from a
twisting or hindering of our natural
growth as an organism by social
structures (critique of the superego)
- People should be free to be themselves and express themselves
○ Existentialism influence → we have personal responsibilities, due to our free will
(choice)
○ Psychological needs are our personal responsibilities
○ People need us and rely on us to fulfil our responsibilities (create feelings of
belonging)
- This brings about esteem
- Brining purpose, meaning to our lives (and others), hence self-actualization
○ One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be
chosen again and again; fear must overcome again and again (Maslow)
○ First Contribution → we cannot develop the psychological needs without first
satisfying the biological needs - there is a Hierarchy of Needs
○ Second Contribution → he (purposely) studied in detail, healthy self-fulfilling selfactualizing individuals
- Insight into personality doesn’t come from looking at: 1) distressed
individuals with psychological problems or 2) normal people
- It comes from studying abnormal people - those that are unusually high
functioning, self actualized individuals
○ Self actualizing individuals:
- Acceptance → Accept themselves and others for who they are
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Compassion & empathy → can be concerned for themselves and others
Psychological flexibility → respond to the uniqueness of situations, not
mechanically
Intimacy → can form intimate relationships with at least a few people
Open to experience → spontaneous and creative
Authentic → resist conformity and be assertive while responding to the
demands of reality
Related Theories:
Positive Psychological Movement (PPM)
● Martin Seligman (contemporary “leader” of PPM)
○ We have been to focused on the distressed, troubled, clinical cases and thus have
created negative theories of people
○ PPM psychologists are interested in the nature of human strengths (aka virtues)
- What are human strengths - how do we identify them?
- It is an enduring quality that is beneficial in a variety of domains (ex.
“Wisdom” vs “being a good singer” vs “manipulative” )
- Parents and society foster these “strengths” in children and if
developed, it is celebrated by one’s community (ex. Wise man vs con
man)
- The strength is valued in almost all cultures in the world (ex.
wisdom)
- Temperance, courage, wisdom, love, transcendence, justice
● Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
○ A positive state of consciousness with the following characteristics:
- A perceived match between personal skills and environmental challenge
(congruence)
- High level of focused attention
- Lack of distractions and irrelevant thoughts
- Intrinsic enjoyment in the activity
- Loss of self-consciousness (self-unaware; time flies) -- in the zone
○ Those situations when you just “lose time” and everything just “falls into place”
- Think of times you might have had flow → playing sports, videogame,
hobbies, passion, music, deep talk with friend, writing about interesting topic
Existentialism:
● Fredrich Nietzche Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueBZZ8CRJCo&list=WL&index=32&t=668s
1. Be a harmonious totality
- Believed we have 2 main sides to personality (apollonian side - rational,
conscious, responsible) and 2) Dionysian side (instinctual, subconscious,
emotional)
- Balance between these 2 sides allows for harmonious personality and life
- Embrace inner chaos
2. Avoid having a reactive life
- We are too passive, reactive and not honest
- Be honest and reflective with self and face reality - don’t lose self in
meaningless activities
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- Don’t be passive spectator
3. Avoid holding resentment
- Resentment is a trademark of weakness - be strong enough to forget and
move forward
- Replenish soul with positive things - don’t let negativity affect you too much
- Don’t complain but be better
4. Don’t blindly follow the masters
- Strive to build your own path (can have influence from others but make your
own mind and choices)
- Don’t always choose the easiest path - consider everything and take the 3rd
path
5. Find your “why”
- Only fear your own consciousness
- Follow the why no matter how painful the how - because the why is the
purpose
- Reflect to see if you are being true to you and see what you would need to
change to reach your full potential
6. Suffering can make you stronger
- Be ready to rise from the ashes - learning from each journey of life
- Process of learning is transformative - outside of the outcomes
7. Avoid being just ‘busy’
- Masters are free, slaves are not - there is a limit to how much of yourself you
can give up
- Be there for yourself
8. Live dangerously
- Test our limits to overcome ourselves and grow
9. Become a superhuman
- Man is a bridge, not a goal
- The purpose of humanity is to overcome itself to create something greater
- Our real goals in life are not individual but collective goals pushing society
forward
- Individual goals as part of the collective
10. Happiness is the way you approach goals
- It a process, not a goal
- 4 steps:
- Say yes to experiences and people - take risks and learn
- Evaluate the experience and be selective
- Draw necessary conclusions from experiences
- Formulate your goals from these experiences and conclusions
Overarching concern with existence
○ Emphasis on the human condition, having consciousness, existing -- the significance
of the individual
○ It involves the search for meaning in human existence → what is the purpose of life?
Emphasis on Life as Suffering:
○ Limited capabilities in a world of infinite complexity
○ Life is finite, death anxiety
○ Therefore, psychopathology is normative, the default
○ Beliefs (and the opposite Nihilism - Nietzche’s “god is dead”
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- Reduce suffering through action/meaning purpose
- Balance chaos (unknown) and order (known)
Phenomenology perspective → understanding the unique experience of others as
transcendent beings
(Jean-Paul Sartre 1905-1980) Consciousness, nothingness, Freedom and Responsibility
○ Humans differ from animals in that we are free from simple deterministic drives
(anti-Freud)
- We have conscious (Abstract) action
- We thus have freedom - freedom to choose courses of actions
- We always have freedom to choose
- Abstract thought → we can imagine alternatives and we can imagine things
not existing (nothingness)
- With freedom comes “responsibility”
- “I had no choice” …(no, we must take responsibility for our actions)
- Morality and incongruence
Sam Harris → The Self is an Illusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
○ Consciousness and Subjectivity (Video)
○ The self is an illusion and we feel like our being is in our mind but that isn’t really the
case
○ Viewing ourselves from the outside, reflectively, is a goal
Sam Harris: Science can answer all moral questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
○ Belief systems and morality (incongruence)
Terror Management Theory (TMT)
1. People's desire to live
2. People’s awareness that death is inevitable (existential threat)
○ How do we cope with knowing we are going to die?
- Once life’s fragility becomes a personal truth instead of philosophical
concept that happens to other people, we become more capable of celebrating
whatever days and experiences remain to us instead of focusing on everyday
hassles
Mortality Salience → tests the hypothesis that the more death anxiety one faces, the more
one will commit to one’s cultural and political beliefs (ex. Getting closer with your family)
○ Increases in mortality salience (fear of death) produce:
- Greater fondness for members of one’s own group and rejection of members
of different groups
- Greater anxiety about blasphemous attitudes towards one’s cultural ‘group’
icons
- Greater physical aggression towards those that attack ones ‘group’
- Increased donations to charities that benefit one’s group
Recent Developments: Discrepancies Among Parts of Self
● Specific research looking at discrepancies not between ideal and actual, but among parts of
the self
○ Ideal self and the “ought” self
- Ideal self concerned with hopes, ambitions and desires
- Ought self concerned with duties, responsibilities and obligations (“things I
ought to do”)
○
Discrepancies with the actual self:
- Ideal → leads to disappointment, sadness, depression (ex. Can't live up to
ideal - perfectionism video)
- Ought → leads to fear, threat, anxiety; avoidance and social isolation =
negative reinforcement + increase control
○ Research shows discrepancies between:
- Actual-ideal (leads to depression)
- Actual-ought (leads to anxiety disorders)
- When we feel anxiety we avoid - feeling of ought leads us to avoid
situations where we can meet that - negative reinforcement list
Critical Evaluation of Phenomenological Theory:
Scientific Observation
● The database:
○ some data based on clinical observations but made these open to public scrutiny
- Allowed himself to be put under the spotlight; judged
○ Rogers and colleagues sought objectivity
- Q-Sort technique
- Semantic Differential
○ Only used explicit methods (Ex. self report)
- No implicit (unconscious) measures (ex. Dream analysis, symbolism, free
association, etc.)
○ Lack of cultural diversity (certain clientele)
Systematic?
● Little systematic theorising in general
○ but parts are logical and systematic
- Formal personality theory is cogent and logical
- Parent-child interactions and how those influence the development of self
concept
○ Rogers didn’t like to theorise
- Thought he was too subjective
- Thought his theory was immature -- would have liked a model that would
stand mathematical rigour
○ Overall it is systematic, but perhaps less so than others we will cover
Testable?
● Some aspects of the Rogerian theory are testable
○ Particularly the actual and ideal self concept (but self-report)
● Overall the “self-concept” is testable
○ Necessary and sufficient conditions for psychological change are among the very best
in psychotherapy and are still used today
○ But Self is often derived through Trait theory - Big 5 factor model for example
● However, a universal motive towards self-actualization?
○ Another way to think about this is the Self becomes the Actual - the pursuit of an
ought, unrealistic ideal (perfectionism) or ought-ideal (societies “perfection”) is
dropped/completed
○ Only the path to the true ideal Self is taken
○ Individualistic as we are unique
Applications?
● Simply profound:
1. Interpersonal relationship between therapist and client
- Therapeutic alliance (contemporary terminology)
- Most important element
2. Developed methods to objectively test effectiveness of therapy (the first!)
3. Person-centered approach
- Empowered clients to improve their own lives
- It was up to them in the end
Major Contributions:
● Rogerian theory and the Client-Centred approach:
● Strengths:
○ Focuses on aspects of human existence that are neglected by most
- The self concept and human potential for growth
○ Provides concrete therapeutic strategies and settings
- First person to do this and the strategies remain today
○ Brought scientific objectivity to personality psychology
● Limitations:
○ Does not attend to phenomena that lies outside conscious experience
○ Little attention to cross-cultural differences and situational differences
**Being singularly hurt by someone or something can lead to resentment and willful blindness
which leads only to personal tragedy and MORE suffering
● Once you accept who you are, then you can grow
Things that you don’t like about others or notice in others may be things that you don’t like about
yourself
Week 9: Trait Theorists
Intro to Trait Theories
● Traits are words (‘personal’ adjectives) that describe people’s typical styles of experience
(personality) and action (behaviour)
○ Playful
○ Honest
○ Humble
○ Likable
○ Generous
● Much of our language consists of these words
○ -ous
○ -ful
○ -able
○ -est
● Strongest difference in personality theories is in the type of Data the assumptions rely upon
○ Trait theorists - measurement is key
■ Form of measurement or tool often precedes a major advancement in science
● Light in a vacuum - E = mc2
● Photo-electric effect - quantum physics/mathematics
● fMRI (blood flow in the brain) - neuroscience
● Jet Engine - supersonic flight
● Semi-conductor - mobile phones, internet
○
○
○ Social media, inter-dependence knowledge?
Freud - zero measurement (none)
Rogers - self-actualization (nope)
Trait Theory View of the Person
● What is a personality trait?
○ Consistent patterns in the way people behave, feel and think
■ Trait: a person is described as kind, this means they are:
● Kind over time (durable) and situation (stable)
● “Kinder” than the average person
○ Thus, traits then, have two connotations associated with them:
■ Consistency - describes a regularity in the way a persona behaves
● Doesn’t have to be always; it is like a predisposition
■ Distinctive - people differ on the trait
● “Human being” per se is not a trait
○ So, trait theories presuppose that ‘traits’ are (for the most part) consistent and
enduring
■ Other personality theorists (later) will argue that situation plays a stronger
role in governing our actions than trait theories believe
Why Traits?
● Trait theorists suggest that trait theory helps Personality SCIENCE for three reasons:
○ 1. Description
■ Trait construct are descriptive - they describe people and their typical
behaviour
● Fundamental start to a scientific investigation
● ‘Rules’ to describe all people (nomothetic) - a taxonomy (eg. a
classification system)
○ 2. Prediction
■ Personality traits may predict types of behaviour
● Can we predict a good employee? - conscientious, openness,
trusstful?
■ Behaviour may predict personality traits and characteristics
○
3. Explanation
■ Do traits also ‘explain’ behaviour?
● Behaviour: we accidentally spill wine on a friends’ carpet - we fess
up and tell them
○ Are we being respectful (trait)?
○ Are we being honest (trait)?
○ Or is our intent just to have others view us as
honest/respectful
■ eg. manipulative (trait)?
○ What is the intent of the behaviour?
●
●
■ Eg. in law: mens rea: criminal intent
If you bump into someone in the subway and they get angry
○ Are they aggressing or fearful
○ Or perhaps they were already angry prior to the encounter
(situational x trait)
You feel and have cognitions, much of which are language-based
Basic Structure of Trait Theory: Shared Assumptions of all Theorists
● Traits (Definition)
○ Enduring predispositions, consistent and distinctive
○ Continuum: People can be high or low on a trait (eg. possess more or less of it;
scales)
■ Direct correspondence of performance of trait-related actions and the
possession of a trait
● Ie. if you act extroverted then you possess more of the extroverted
trait
■ Validity: However, it can still lack certainty (phenomenological: limited
knowledge)
● Eg. if you act extroverted, you may be acting extroverted (Jung,
persona) to repress (psychodynamic define) or compensate (Adler,
inferiority process) for feelings of anxiety and shyness (neuroticism,
negative emotion)
● Hierarchy
○ Human behaviour can be organized in a hierarchy (bi-directional explanation, but
also process?)
○ Eysenck’s specific model (P-E-N, but more on this later)
○
Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
● “The Turtle”
○ Slow and methodical
○ Leaves no stone unturned
○ “We must study each person carefully and in great depth”
■ Idiographic approach
● Great figure of Psychology; American
○ Harvard University professor
○ President of the American Psychological Association in 1939
●
Rejected both:
○ Psychoanalytic approach (went too ‘deep’)
○ Behavioural approach (didn’t go deep enough)
● Emphasized the uniqueness of each individual
○ Importance of the present context (situation), as opposed to past history
○ Traits can be more or less displayed according to the situation
○ Primarily endorsed an idiographic approach
■ In-depth analysis of one person
■ Opposite of a nomothetic approach (uncover common, universal attributes)
● Differentiated Traits from other psychological aspects
○ Traits, States and Activities
■ Traits have to be frequent, intense and be seen across a wide variety of
situations
■ States and Activities (situational) are temporary, brief and caused by external
circumstances
● First personality psychologist to use a “Lexical Approach”
○ He went through the entire dictionary (+150k words) and located every term that he
thought could describe a person
■ He developed a list of 4500 descriptive (trait-like) words
■ He organized these into 3 levels of traits
● 3 levels of traits
○ Cardinal traits
■ A trait that is so pervasive it dominates a person’s behaviour and character
● They are rare, a person may have no clear cardinal trait at all
○ Eg. Narcissistic (Trump), Libidinal/Seductive (Don Juan),
Sadistic (Marquis de Sade)
○ General Traits
■ A trait found to varying degrees in most people
● Honesty, kindness, assertiveness, etc. (ie., the “normal” traits)
○ Secondary Traits (traits x situation)
■ Traits related to attitudes or preferences that often appear only in certain
situations or under specific circumstances
● Nervous when speaking to large groups
● Getting impatient waiting in a line
● Avoidant of the dentist
Gordon Allport Example: The Nature of Prejudice
● Allport did a great many things in psychology other than personality (nicholson, 2002)
○ However, he did little research to support his trait concepts
○ Believed traits were hereditary but didn’t substantiate with research
○ No models linking trait-related behaviour to motives (biological, implicit or
otherwise)
○ He is unique in his use of an idiographic (case study) approach among trait theorists
○
Identifying Trait Dimensions
● With the exception of Allport, trait psychologists have tried to identify a universal set of
traits
○ Traits that everyone has to a greater or lesser degree (scales or dimensions)
■ Physically we are more or less tall, young or old, heavier or lighters
○ Psychologically?
■ There are just so many possibilities
● Altruistic, assertive, active, argumentative, agreeable, aggressive
■ So how can we describe anybody?
○ Some traits seem to ‘go together’ (they often co-occur in people)
○ We can investigate these similarities with Factor Analysis (statistical analysis)
Factor Analysis
● Factor Analysis is a statistical technique that summarizes the way in which a large number of
variables correlate or co-occur together
○ Remember if a variable is highly (pos.) correlated with another they behave in very
similar ways
■ Eg. if one goes up, the other goes up, or if one occurs the other occurs
■ Fictional facebook friends survey (correlation matrix)
● The analysis investigates the correlation (or co-occurrence) of a large number of variables and
identifies which ones co-occur with each other
○ Variables that are highly correlated with each other will cluster together and form a
“factor”
■ Thus, actors are made up of co-occurring variables
● We can reduce a large number of variables into a small number of meaningful factors
○ Factors are overarching representations of many traits (even latent ones)
■ Latent traits describe traits that cannot be directly measured, such as
neuroticism, narcissism, etc,
● Factors are then subjectively labelled (ie., described) as to what variables it
possesses/represents
○ In other words, our “labelling” defines the factor
● Trait theorists main “TOOL”
○ Benefits
■
Parsimonious
● Organising a large set of information into a simpler form
■ Factors can be used to describe, predict and explain almost anything
○ Limitations
■ Atheoretical
● Completely mathematical solution (apart from the subjective
labelling)
● Not lead by theory - completely data driven
● So, other data sets - can result in different answers
■ Does not answer why - why do they co-vary in this way?
Raymond Cattell (1905-1998)
● “The Squirrel”
○ Obsessive gatherer of nuts
■ Eg. information
○ Grouped all his similar nuts (info) into piles (factors)
○ Ended up with a lot of nut piles, 16 to be exact
● Born in England, BSc in Chemistry, PhD in Psychology, UCL
○ Professed in America (U at Illinois)
○ Prolific psychologist - 200 articles and 15 books
● Wanted to create the ‘basic elements’ of the human mind like the periodic table of elements
has for chemistry
○ Created the famous 16 Personality Factor Model
● Surface and Source traits (add pics)
○ Source traits (factors)
■ Correlations of surface traits (identified 16 of them)
○ Surface traits
■ Superficial traits can be observed (identifies hundreds of them)
○
Raymond Cattell: 16PF Questionnaire
●
The 16PF questionnaire is still used today as a personality screening inventory in business
and workplaces
● Cattell further identified 3 different types of Source Traits (eg. Factors)
○ Ability Traits
■ Skills and abilities that allow the individual to function effectively
■ Eg. REASONING (High - Intelligence; Low - Concrete Thinking)
○ Temperament Traits
■ Involve emotional lie and stylistic qualities of behaviour
■ Eg. WARMTH (High - Kind; Low - Detached)
○ Dynamic Traits
■ Concern the striving, motivational life of the individual
■ Eg. DOMINANCE (High - Forceful; Low - Humble)
Raymond Cattell: Evidence
● Sources of Evidence for 16PF model
○ L-data
■ Life record data (15PF)
○ S or Q-data
■ Questionnaire data (16PF)
○ OT-data
■ Observational/experimental data
■ Behavioural mini-situations; extraversion with confederates (21PF)
○ Cattell tried to relate the outcomes using these different data’s to each other
(construct validity)
■ L and S-Q similar (the combined results are what makes up the Cattell 16 PF
model)
■ OT data; very little direct relationship… fail
○ Bus is acclaimed in his attempt to investigate construct validity
■ That was a novel idea/process at the time
● Construct Validity
○ Eg. individual test of extraversion
■
Raymond Cattell: Traits and Situation
● Allport (The Turtle): Traits, States and Activities
● Cattell (The Squirrel): Traits, States and Roles
○ Traits and states (emotion, mood, etc.) the same for both
● Roles:
○ Certain behaviours are more closely linked to social roles than to personality traits
■ I may behave more “professionally” in class, than I do in other
situations/roles
■
It depends on my perceived “role” - notice the similarity to Jungian ideas of
the persona again
● So Cattell (in a nutshell) established
○ Traits are stable behaviours that may be affected by mood (state) and social situations
(roles)
Raymond Cattell: Limitations
● Approach
○ Data → Factor Analysis → Theory
■ Should be Theory → Data → Factor Analysis
■ Every data sample is different - dangerous to use data to create theory
● Can have problems replicating results (a scientific necessity!)
■ Cattle and others could not replicate the 16PF model
● Conceptual
○ Even if we can identify what a person’s traits are how can we use this
therapeutically?
○ Early trait theorist didn’t offer much explanation, but Hans Eysenck took things a
little further with more construct validity of the trait approach itself (introduces
biology)
Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
● “The Owl”
○ Wise theories
■ On the surface they seem overly simple
■ But they have extremely complex underpinnings
○ Biological wonderment
● Born in Berlin, Germany
○ Mother - film star
○ Father - nightclub entertainer
● Moved to England in the 1930s
○ Opposition to the Nazi party
● PhD from the Department of Psychology at University College London (UCL)
● Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry (London) from 1955 to 1983
○ Founding editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences
○ Authored over 80 books and over 1600 journal articles
■ That’s 32 papers and 1.5 books a year, every year, for 50 years
■ So every 8 months he wrote a book and 21 papers
■ Every month he wrote 2.6 papers and 12% of a book
■ Every week he (only) wrote ⅔ of a paper and 3% of a book
Hans Eysenck: Superfactors
● Eysenck analyzed a massive amount of questionnaire data, to reveal lots of various factors
(just like Cattell did)
○ But, realised that factors may also be related to each other
○ So, Eysenck factor analyzed factors to create
■ Superfactors
● Initially, he identified two “Superfactors”
○ They are statistically independent
● Extraversion
○ Introversion vs. extraversion
● Neuroticism
●
○ Emotional stability vs. instability
These related well to ancient proposals of personality types by Hippocrates and Galen
○
Hans Eysenck: Superfactors Remix
● Eysenck later added a third dimension that organized largely negative and abnormal social
traits and attitudes
○ He called this superfactor Psychoticism
●
Hans Eysenck: Measuring the Factors
● Developed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ)
● Based on P-E-N model
○ Psychoticism
○ Neuroticism
○ Extraversion
● EPQ-R (1985)
○ Full version
■ 100 yes/no questions
○ Short version
■ 48 yes/no questions in its short scale version
● Scales of P-E-N found to be reliable under criterion analysis, but, limited due to yes/no only
Professor G’s Eysenck P-E-N Results
●
●
●
●
Extroversion (sociability)
||||||||||||||||||
74%
Neuroticism (emotionality)
||||||||||||
41%
Psychoticism (rebelliousness)
||||||||||||
46%
Extraversion results were high
○ Which suggests you are overly-talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the
expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based
identity
Neuroticism results were moderately low
○ Which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic
Psychoticism results were medium
○ Which suggests you are moderately self interested, willful, and difficult, while still
respecting the well being of others
Hans Eysenck: Biological Basis of Personality Traits
● Eysenck was very influenced by biological factors
○ He believed there must be a biological basis for personality
○ What does that mean for his own theory then?
■ Because P-E-N are independent statistical factors they must have separate
biological models
● 1. Extraversion/Introversion
○ Linked to neurophysiological functioning; arousal
○ Introverts - high cortical arousal
■ Highly intense stimuli (parties, skydiving, loud music, etc.) make them
OVER-aroused
○ Extroverts - low cortical arousal
■ Low intense calming stimuli will make them UNDER-aroused (they’ll seek
arousal)
○ Green (1997) brain activity shows support
●
●
○ Krueger and Johnson (2008) Twin studies also support (a Hereditary link)
2. Neuroticism
○ Eysenck theorised that individual differences would be found in the autonomic
nervous system (ANS)
■ Highly attuned to negative and/or emotional experience (overly anxious)
■ High neuroticism should be linked to a quick responding ANS that is slow to
decrease these individuals will seem “jumpy” and “stressed out”
○ Not consistently supported (Eysenck, 1990)
3. Psychoticism
○ Some links between psychoticism and being male (eg. aggressiveness)
■ Particularly increased testosterone levels
○ But very little support for the neurophysiological basis of psychoticism
Hans Eysenck: Extraversion and Social Behaviour
● Introverts
○ More sensitive to pain
○ Fatigue more easily
○ Excitement interferes with performance
○ Careful
○ Slower
○ Better in school
○ Vocations that are solitary
○ Enjoy more intellectual humour
○ Less active sexually, less partners
○ Less suggestible
● Extraverts
○ Less sensitive to pain
○ Fatigue less easily
○ Excitement enhances performance
○ Riskier
○ Faster
○ Worse in school (drop-out)
○ Vocations that are social
○ Enjoy explicit humour
○ More active sexually, more partners
○ More suggestible
Hans Eysenck: Psychopathology and Behaviour Change
● Psychological difficulties derive from:
○ 1. Personality traits and
○ 2. The (biological) nervous system functioning related to those traits
■ For example: a person develops neurotic symptoms due to biological systems
and environmental experiences
● Eg. heightened fear responses
● Neurotic patients will have high neuroticism and low extraversion
● Criminals and antisocial people have high neuroticism, high extraversion and high
psychoticism
● Can we change?
○
Genetic and biological determinants are only predispositions
■ If a patient has psychopathological symptoms (high neuroticism for example)
they can learn to change their behaviour
Hans Eysenck: Final Words
● Eysenck exemplary contribution
○ Eysenck’s impact has not been substantial though… why?
● 1. P-E-N model
○ Better 2- and 3- factor models
○ Impulsivity and Anxiety better support than E and N (Gray, 1990)
● 2. Little empirical support for the biological foundations of N and P
● 3. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences
● 4. Maybe more than 3 factors are needed to describe personality
○ How would conscientiousness (orderliness and industriousness) fit into the P-E-N
model?
○ Maybe 5 ‘BIG’ factors will work better
Questions?
● Eysenck’s attitude to science was summarized in his autobiography Rebel with a Cause
(1997)
○ “I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he
sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad.”
○ “Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in
business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts.”
Week 10: Trait Theory II (Big Five Model)
The “Big Five” Factors
● Why 5?
○ Meta researched evidence has generally supported a 5 factor model
● “Big” was used to indicate that each factor had a number of more specific traits, as the factors
are broad and abstract in the personality hierarchy
● Costa & McCrae (“OCEAN”, 1992) NEO-PI-R / NE
○ Openness
○ Conscientiousness
○ Extroversion
○ Agreeableness
○ Neuroticism
● Goldberg (Adjective Inventory, 1992)
○ Self-report ratings of the big five factors
■ Same overall factors as Costa and McCrae
■ C&M and goldberg had different ways of measuring it
1) OPENNESS (to new experience)
a) Is a general appreciation for creativity, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination,
curiosity and variety of experience
b) People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, appreciative of art and
sensitive to beauty
i)
Tend to be more creative and more aware of their feelings
c) Openness distinguished imaginative people from down to earth conventional people
d) 6 facets (measured on the NEO PI-R personality test)
i)
Fantasy: the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life
ii)
Aesthetics: the tendency to appreciate ar, music and poetry
iii)
Feelings: being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional
experience
iv)
Actions: the inclination to try new activities, visit new places and try new
foods
v)
Ideas: the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas
vi)
Values: the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political
values
e) CLOSEDNESS (opposite end to openness)
i)
People with low scores on openness tend to have more conventional,
traditional interests
ii)
They prefer the plain, un-nuanced, non complex and obvious over the
complex, ambiguous and subtle
f) Sam Gosling’s research suggests it is possible to assess openness y examining one’s
home and/or workspace
i)
Highly open individuals tend to have distinctive and unconventional
decorations
ii)
books on a wide variety of topics, a diverse music collection, and art on
display
g) Openness correlates with creativity, as measured by tests of divergent thinking
h) Openness is related to need for cognition
i)
motivational tendency to think about ideas, scrutinize information, and solve
puzzles
ii)
Generally more open to different cultures and lifestyles
2) CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
a) Tendency to self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement
i)
Traits include being organized, methodic, and thorough (industriousness)
ii)
It influences how we control, regulate, and direct our impulses (e.g., delayed
gratification)
b) Facets (6):
i)
Self‐discipline
ii)
Dutifulness
iii)
Competence
iv)
Order
v)
Deliberation
vi)
Achievement striving
c) High conscientiousness: more organized and less cluttered in their homes and offices
i)
Example; books neatly shelved/in alphabetical order, clothes folded and
arranged neatly, presence of planner and to-do lists
ii)
Conscientiousness is related to successful academic performance in students
d) Research indicates that after general mental ability is taken into account,
conscientiousness is one of the best predictors of performance in the workplace /
school
i)
some aspects (i.e., facets) of openness (intellectual environment),
disagreeableness (assertive), low neuroticism) also relate (but more so in the
workplace)
ii)
Conscientious employees are generally more reliable, more motivated, and
harder working
3) EXTRAVERSION
a) positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek out stimulation and the
company of others
b) marked by pronounced engagement with the external world
i)
In groups extraverts tend to talk more, assert themselves, and draw attention
to themselves
c) Facets (6):
i)
Gregariousness
ii)
Activity Level
iii)
Assertiveness
iv)
Excitement Seeking
v)
Positive Emotions
vi)
Warmth
d) Extraversion: behaviour
i)
Extraverts wear decorative clothing, decorate their offices more, keep their
doors open, keep extra chairs nearby
(1) Attempts to engage with co-workers and encourage interaction
ii)
Introverts lack the social exuberance and activity levels of extraverts
(1) Lack of social involvement should not be interpreted as shyness or
depression
(2) Need less stimulation than extraverts and more time alone
(3) prefer practical, comfortable clothes, decorate less, and tend to
arrange their workspace to discourage social interaction
e) Ambiversion: used to describe people who fall in the middle of the continuum and
exhibit tendencies of both groups
i)
An ambivert is normally comfortable with groups and enjoys social
interaction, but also enjoys time alone and away from the crowd
4) AGREEABLENESS
a) tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic
towards others
b) Facets (6):
i)
Straightforwardness
ii)
Trust
iii)
Altruism
iv)
Modesty
v)
Tender Mindedness
vi)
Compliance
c) Agreeable individuals value having a good relationship with others
i)
are generally considerate, friendly, generous, helpful, and willing to
compromise their interests with others
d) Agreeable people also have an optimistic view of human nature - they believe people
are basically honest, decent, and trustworthy
e) Agreeableness is an asset
i)
Agreeable people are biased toward liking others and viewing them in a
positive light
f) The research also shows that people high in agreeableness are more likely to control
negative emotions like anger in conflict situations
i)
High Agreeableness: More likely to use constructive tactics when in conflict
with others
ii)
Low Agreeableness: More likely to use coercive / manipulative tactics
g) Disagreeable individuals place self-interest above having a good relationship with
others
i)
generally more assertive
ii)
generally unconcerned with others’ well-being, and are less likely to extend
themselves for other people
iii)
Sometimes their skepticism about others’ causes them to be suspicious,
unfriendly, and uncooperative
h) A central feature of agreeableness is its positive association with altruism and helping
behavior
i)
people who are high in agreeableness are more likely to report an interest and
involvement with helping others, not only their own Kin (nepotism)
ii)
agreeable people appear to be "traited for helping“ and do not need any other
motivations
iii)
Disagreeable people may be more likely to harm others
5) NEUROTICISM
a) the tendency to “over-experience” negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or
depression
i)
sometimes called emotional instability (e.g., borderline, histrionic,
personality disorders)
b) Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress
i)
They are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor
frustrations as hopelessly difficult
c) Facets (6):
i)
Anxiety
ii)
Self‐consciousness
iii)
Depression
iv)
Vulnerability
v)
Impulsiveness
vi)
Angry hostility
d) Neurotics negative emotional reactions tend to persist for unusually long periods of
time, which means they are often in a bad mood
i)
These problems in emotional regulation can diminish the neurotics ability to
think clearly, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress
e) Individuals low in neuroticism are less easily upset and are less fselfemotionally
reactive
The Fundamental Lexical Hypothesis & Cross-Cultural Consistency in the Big 5
●
Big five was developed by using language (much like Cattell, Allport and Eysenck's factor
models)
○ Natural language, or everyday language people use to describe personality
●
●
■ Specifically, individual words (primarily adjectives) that describe persons
idea was based around evolutionary psychology
○ As we evolve, we develop and retain the most useful and distinguishing words to
differentiate and describe people
Fundamental Lexical Hypothesis (Goldberg, 1990)
○ “the most important individual differences in human transactions will come to be
encoded as single terms in some or all of the world’s languages”
○ There should be human universals of language
■ We should see the same words, labels, descriptions across cultures if it is
truly evolutionary
○ The trait terms communicate information about individual differences that are
important to our own well being or that of our group/clan
■ Socially useful because they serve the prediction of purpose and control
■ Help us predict the behaviour of others and thus control our life outcomes
■ Help answer questions about how an individual is likely to behave across a
wide range of relevant situations
○ Limitations to this approach
■ Words and meanings differ across cultures
■ Sometimes there is no word or the precision is different
○ Big Five became culturally specific
■ Develop own traits based on own language
■ Big five are US based factors
● These may not be important factors in other cultures
Measuring the Big Five: The NEO-PI-R
●
●
●
Costa & McCrae theoretically very similar to Goldberg’s bipolar measure but different
structure
○ 5 Factors are made up of 6 facets each
○ There are 8 test items to measure each facet
■ 8 x 6 x 5 = 240 test items (questions) in entire NEO-PI-R assessment
Reliability?
○ Can be used as self report or as peer report
■ Concurrent and convergent validity
○ Shows good reliability between self report and peer report
○ mcCrae and Costa report substantial agreement of self ratings with ratings by peers
and with ratings by spouses on all 5 factors
■ Agreement between self and spouse is greater than that between self and
peers (spouses generally know each other better than friends or because
spouses talk a lot about each others personalities)
Validity?
○ Good agreement with Goldberg’s (1992) adjective inventories
○ Some disagreement in relation to openness factor
■ Goldberg emphasized intellectual and creative cognition
FIVE-FACTOR THEORY: McCrae & Costa (1996, 2008)
● Does the Big Five explain behaviour?
● Criticism is that factors are merely descriptors
○
●
The five factors say nothing about processes or actual psychological entities
(motivations, structure or theory of personality, development etc)
Costa and McCrae suggest the big five do address processes/actual psychological entities
○ Each of the five traits (factors) exist in each and every person to varying degrees
○ They argue, the big 5 traits are universal, genetic and biological-based (e.g.,
Eysenck’s PEN research)
■ The amount of each factor we have is inherited biologically (nature) – they
are our basic tendencies – and social experience (nurture) have little effect on
them
○ They suggest, the factors (our basic tendencies) have a causal relationship on our
character and behaviour, separate from environmental or external influences (i.e.,
inherited traits)
Criticism of Trait Approaches: Person-Situation Controversy I
●
●
Walter Mischel (1960) argued that people don’t act consistently at all
○ People vary their actions to fit the situation
Two types of consistency:
○ Longitudinal stability
■ Your trait score at one time will be similar to your trait score at another time
○ Cross-situational stability
■ Your trait score in one situation will be similar to your trait score in another
situation
Criticism of Trait Approaches: Person-Situation Controversy II
●
Mischel and Peake (1983): Conscientiousness of college students
○ Asked them to rate their conscientiousness on multiple occasions and then aggregate
these scores
■ Found good longitudinal consistency (semester to semester) but…
■ Found poor cross-situational consistency (setting to setting)
● e.g. good note takers and good marks (classroom/school), but messy
rooms (home)
■ However, we know that college is a very different environment in of itself
(e.g. time commitments/pressure)
○ Cross-situational consistency found to be higher if we look at behaviours in a similar
setting
■ e.g. consistency in behaviours when at home or at work
Criticism of Trait Approaches: Person Situation Controversy III
●
●
●
Good evidence for Longitudinal consistency
Cross-situational far more difficult to answer
○ Researchers look at personality across similar situations to assess…
For example: measuring a person’s (social) anxiety at a house-party vs. a nightclub
○ But how to assess “similar”?
○ How do we define anxiety?
○
○
■ Self-report or observational or physiological?
What situations are consistent or equivalent?
■ Are all “social functions” the same? (work, new friends, old friends,
wedding, wake)?
Should we even expect to be consistent across a range of situations?
■ Is it possible to always be extraverted at a party regardless of what type of
party, who’s hosting, your mood, etc.?
Criticism of Trait Approaches: Person-Situation Controversy IV
●
●
People act relatively consistently over time but also vary to different degrees across situation
If we accept that people show longitudinal consistency, then I think these can be thought of as
“situational pre-dispositions”
○ All things being equal in a situation (e.g. an ‘identical’ situation or context) people
will more likely act in a consistent way (e.g., same situational perception, same
behavioural response)
○ Act based on previous experience or a logically-abstracted cognitive scenario practice
of what we think will achieve our desired goal in that scenario
Critical Evaluation of Trait Theory: Scientific Observation
● Scientific Observation
○ The database: excellent
○ Objectivity in data collection and analysis is paramount
■ Objective data, not relying on clinical interviews or idiographic approaches
○ Diversitybig five
■ Large numbers of people
● Different ages, ethnicities and sociocultural backgrounds
■ Massive number of research publications in relation to trait theories and the
big five
○ Different types of data
■ S-data and O-data
● O-data is sometimes a better predictor of performance than S-data
○ Major Limitation
■ Learn about populations as wholes, not the individual
● Systematic
○ Do trait theorists tie together an integrated account of personality structure, process
and development?
■ Yes and no.
● Cattell analysed traits, roles and motivational processes
● Eysenck related traits to biological entities (e.g. the nervous system
and arousal)
● However, contemporary trait theorists would receive poor marks for
systematic process (i.e., causal, motivational) development
○ For example, Costa & McCrae did little to account for the
dynamic processes (motivational) of their five-factor model
(FFM)
● Testable
○
●
●
●
Absolutely, possibly the reason there are so many studies related to trait theory is the
fact that it is so easily testable
■ It’s an objective measure (e.g., mathematical outcomes are related to test
items) and can be lead by theory or lead by analysis
■ With so much research and various models it is also relatively easy to assess
validity (by comparing models)
■ These reliable measures (Big Five, PEN, 16PF, etc.) can be statistically
related to other aspects of human existence and psychology.
Comprehensive
○ On the analytical side of things, trait theory is extremely comprehensive
■ Vast lexical analysis across cultures, ages, socio-cultural groups
○ On the theoretical side it is mostly non-comprehensive in the psychological sense
■ Very little is explained about how we might use the factors or measures for
anything other than descriptive research
Application
○ As a predictive tool and a measure to differentiate broadly between people it is useful
as an applied tool
■ Organisational psychology (World War 2)
■ Personality research
○ clinical application: it is unclear of how it can be directly used effectively
■ This is mainly because we don’t have any guidance on the causality or the
processes involved in the factor structures found
Major Contributions
○ Made substantial gains in personality theory in terms of assessing similarities and
differences between people
○ These similarities and differences between us can lead to predictions about the
relationships to many various psychological and non-psychological aspects of human
nature
○ Simplified a vast lexical swarm of adjectives used to describe people into a concise,
reliable and valid set of 3, 5 or even 6 factors
■ That is quite a feat in itself
○ First empirical attempts to wed the biological drives (nature) to the psychological
aspects of personality (nurture)
Week 11: Cognitive Theory (Kelly)
Personal Construct Theory - George Kelly
● Kelly’s PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY (PCT) developed from contact with patients
● Like Rogers, Freud
● Kelly focuses on the ‘whole’ person
● Kelly highlights the uniquely human capacity to reflect on ones self and actions
● Freud: Animalistic drives
● Rogers and Kelly very similar
● Kelly much more interested in the cognitive processes though
● Kelly focused on how we categorize people, things, objects and make meaning out of
experience
●
●
●
●
●
● Phenomenology – objects vs. meaning
Kelly used ‘Constructs’ to refer to these “categories” we use to interpret (give meaning to)
our experience
Constructs
● Some constructs we have are the same as other people have (particularly for
‘common’ objects)
● Mainly when its an object or a ‘thing’ – e.g. a book
● But some of our constructs vary (to differing extents) based on their subjective
meaning
● e.g., in relation to people and experiences (emotions, personality
descriptions, thoughts)
● Consider your friend introduces you to someone who they say is soooo funny
– but, no, not at all.
● Kelly’s theory labelled a cognitive theory
● Investigates the cognitive elements of our worlds
● Cognitive = “to know”
Kelly published (the vast majority of) his theory in two volumes (books) in 1955
● 1950’s was full of behaviourism
● Behaviourism (Chpt. 10) – we are mostly/entirely motivated by
reward/punishment paradigms (somewhat deterministic / fatalistic)
● No, no, no, Kelly said…
All life events and experiences are perceived through constructs
● The way we perceive something is referred to as a “cognitive process”
● Hence, Kelly’s theory is often referred to as a “cognitive theory”
Constructs comprise the entire knowledge we have of the world
● Kelly was far ahead of his time in terms of his theory
● “Kelly’s theories (PCT) is actually becoming more contemporary with age”
(Neimeyer, 1992)
George Kelly (1905-1966)
● Kelly, like Rogers, was a very well-liked and deeply sympathetic man
● He encouraged others to be adventurous, not to be afraid to be unorthodox and to
explore the unknown (however bizarre and threatening)
● The kind of man, where everything you said to him would be of interest and of
importance
● Idiographic view of people in contrast to the nomothetic trait theorists for
example
● Kelly had a diverse upbringing…
● he studied in the US and Scotland and worked in several different universities
across the US
● see this paralleled in his theory later on – “self-complexity”
● High on trait Openness?
● Kelly’s initial clinical experience was with children in the Kansas school system
● Teachers would send children to him with various complaints (e.g. disrupting)
● He was not interested in proving/deciding if the child was disrupting (per se)
but instead why the teacher thought so?
●
●
●
●
He tried to understand the child’s behaviour and the way in which the teacher
perceived these behaviours and why it was interpreted as disrupting
This was a significant idea at the time
● that investigating the interaction between two individuals is key
In practical terms it led to an analysis of teachers and the pupils
● …behaviours do not occur in isolation of situation/interaction
Kelly’s idea was that there was no absolute truth
● Because not all is known or ever will be
● Phenomena are meaningful only in relation to how they are interpreted/perceived
● e.g. the pupil and the teacher likely each thought the other was ‘in the wrong’
● This kind of approach was a hallmark to Kelly’s theorising overall
● He saw no ‘black or white’ solutions
● to him everything was more subtle and complex
● NUANCED
Kelly’s Science of Personality
● What are scientists doing when constructing theories?
● Searching for the truth?
● A theory is proposed that is either true or false (e.g., F=mg Newtonian
physics)
● Kelly: Even well formed ‘true’ theories will only be true at a certain
moment/time
● F may not equal mg at subatomic levels (E=mc2; Einstein and Quantum
physics)
● Instead, we need to ask whether the theory is useful?
● Often (in science, particularly psychology) utility is defined as predictability (i.e.,
cause and effect)
● e.g., high conscientiousness leads to better job performance
● However, different theories may allow for different predictions that are also useful
● e.g., high intelligence leads to better job performance
● We don’t need to choose theories – we can use them all!
● Each may have its unique use – think about Intelligence vs.
Conscientiousness
● Kelly called this Constructive Alternativism
●
Kelly: psychologists too dogmatically focused on discovering the ‘truth’
● In psychology, ideas like repression, traits, self-actualisation etc aren't things you can
touch or feel… they have no absolute truth (and for Freud – “truth” is being
repressed)
Kelly proposed science should have a more Invitational Mood
● Theorists, scientists and individuals should be creative, hypothesise and explore the
unknown
● theories are modifiable and ultimately expendable
● e.g. extraverts are under stimulated, cognitively
● Kelly suggested theories have a range of convenience
● Boundaries a phenomenon can cover (e.g. cognitive activity in extraverts)
●
And theories have a focus of convenience
● Points within the boundaries that the theory works best
● e.g. extroverts are under stimulated, cognitively, when socially isolated
● In other words, social activity/isolation is an important aspect of the
cognitive parameter
●
Other critiques brought forth by Kelly:
● Measurement
● Kelly: too great an emphasis on measurement of individual differences
(e.g. traits)
● This leads psychologist to erroneously thinking these things actually
exist!
● Psychologist becomes a statistician, rather than an expert in the human mind
● Kelly: Psychologists fear they are not truly ‘scientists’
● Fear exploring or presenting anything that isn't construed as ‘scientific’ (i.e.,
known outcomes)
● Note: CBT (e.g., 10-week program) as the gold standard versus
psychodynamic therapy
● Kelly: Forget “science/fact/absolute truth” notions and try to understand the
person!
Kelly’s View of the Person
● Kelly’s view of the person was the same as his view of science…
● He believed that scientists and laypersons were engaged in the same task…
● We are all scientists
● We all try to develop ideas that allow us to predict events
● e.g. if I buy these shoes, people will think I’m cool and stylish
● this is the formulation of a hypothesis and we can test it…
● Kelly recognised this as a central element in his theory;
● “Person-as-scientist”
Person-as-Scientist
● We are constantly trying to predict events in our future
● …If I study all week for this test I will get a good grade
● Two main principles apply to the person-as-scientist:
● 1) We are future orientated
● Formulating hypotheses and theories about future outcomes
● BUT based on past and present experiences (i.e., beliefs)
● 2) We have constructive alternativism
● we can reconstruct events and predictions
● we can come up with an alternative theory
○ …If I fail that test I can modify my construct
● Note again the relevance of openness and closedness (trait) here
● People respond to their environment actively not passively
● “People can think about their thoughts/beliefs” (self-reflection/introspection/“metacognition”)
● We can reconsider our past thoughts from a distance (e.g., when emotion has
subsided)
●
●
●
●
e.g. after a fight with a friend, we may reconsider the event and our actions,
and modify our beliefs, and understanding of our experience
● We have actively engaged in constructive alternativism and next
time our behaviour may be different
● Kelly: We have free will (and hence a responsibility) to create new
alternatives and modify or create new constructs to define (create meaning in)
our experience
● Phenomenological: Achieve congruence between self and experience
However, in Kelly’s view there are limitations to our free-will
We have free-will to choose from alternatives and to act as we like
● But we create our own alternatives
● so we can become trapped within the alternatives we make for ourselves
● “I’m all alone because I’m worthless and unlovable”
● …leads to… “even if I try, I’ll only be rejected again, so why bother?”
The good news is that we can reconstruct and reinterpret experience to present ourselves with
better alternatives
● e.g. this is the goal of cognitive-based (and most other modern) therapies
● To help clients re-frame their experience(s) and adapt their belief systems
● We can't change the world (or the past), but we can change our experience of
it
● Client: “I guess I’ve had some relationships that haven’t been so bad, and I guess my
friends don’t think I’m worthless and unlovable, so maybe it might work out this
time… I guess I could try”
Structure: Construct
● The key structural variable in Kelly’s theory of personality is the Construct
● Construct
● A concept used to interpret the world around us
● We use constructs to categorize and organise experience into our perception
of the world/experience
● In other words, to give experience meaning
● note that the “meaning” we give experience can change over time and
situation (additional experience)
● Constructs are formed in an automatic process to make sense of the world and
experiences
● e.g. we might watch a parent lovingly pick up their child and give them a kiss
and think that the parent is ‘nice’ or ‘kind’ or a ‘caring parent’
● ‘nice’ or ‘kind’ or a ‘caring parent’ are constructs that we are using to
make sense of what has just occurred (experiences in general
● But how do constructs come to be then? How do we learn to interpret these
situations?
●
●
People notice patterns and irregularities (similarities and differences) in things
We notice some events have features that distinguish themselves from others
● In short, we distinguish between similarities (things that are the same) and contrasts
(things that are different)
● Everything that is similar is also different!
● Categories:
●
● Books
● Books I’ve read
● Books with hard covers, etc.
According to Kelly, our judgements of similar and different is how constructs are
formed
●
Hence, Kelly believed constructs are BIPOLAR
● They have a “similar” end and a “contrast” (difference) end
● Bear in mind, these are not necessarily interpreted as positive or negative ends
●
To create constructs three elements are necessary:
● Two similar events
● a parent hugs their child + a parent kisses their child
● One different event
● a parent hits their child
The similar events form the similarity pole of the construct and the different event forms the
contrast pole
● The above instance might lead us to a caring parent construct
● The similarity pole being caring acts and the contrast pole being the hostile
act
We can't know the thing “hostile parent” without the experience of the “caring parent” and
vice versa
● We cannot have a construct without knowledge of both ends (similarity and contrast)
●
●
●
According to Kelly, constructs are not multi-dimensional
● They don’t have points or segments along them
● For subtleties or refinements we create new constructs
● with refinements, such as quality and quantity
● e.g. a ‘very mean parent’ or ‘psychologically mean parent’ etc.
●
Accordingly, there are literally thousands of constructs with varying degrees
● Liberal vs. conservative
● Neo-liberal versus liberal
● Beautiful vs. ugly
● Gorgeous versus beautiful
● Immoral vs. moral
● Dishonest versus immoral
Interpersonal Consequences
● Since constructs are idiographic…
● e.g. we each create them from our own experiences, so they are unique to the
individual
● Two people might have a similar construct but may call them different things:
● kind vs. good-natured
● Two people might use the same word for a construct, but mean different things:
● kind – always willing to help others
● kind – always caring about others
Communication/cooperation may be enhanced by learning more about each others constructs
● Hospital admin and mental health professionals (Simpson, Lange & O’Brien, 2004)
● Share personal construct lists of what was ideal for each profession
● Found great overlap and participants increased communication subsequently
(shared ground / common interests)
Structure: Components
● Verbal and Preverbal
● Not all constructs can be expressed in words
● Preverbal constructs are learned before we develop language
● e.g., rubbing your eyes repeatedly when you’re tired; fixing your hair, etc.
● Submerged
● One end of a construct is ‘submerged’ or unavailable
● “life is cruel, and people will only hurt you” (Jungian shadow?)
● The individual has likely not experienced (much, if any) “kindness” in their
lives
● e.g., Locus of control (failure: internal vs external rationalization)
● Can also be difficult to admit that the other end of contrast exists (pai
● Core Constructs
● Central to a person’s basic functioning (unique to individual)
● Can only be changed with great consequence to the whole construct system
● Peripheral constructs
● Much less ‘important’
● Can be easily modified
●
●
Core: I am beautiful
Peripheral: Snakes are very dangerous
●
The crux of Kelly’s theory on constructs is that:
● Our use of constructs says more about us than the person its said about
● I may describe someone as “clever”
● Which to Kelly would reveal that this is an important construct in my own
life
● ...it may be a core construct (e.g., intelligence) if I use it a lot
● …but it may also be because I identify with the contrast pole
(“dumb”)
Assessment
● An individual's personality is made up of constructs
● We all have slightly different constructs
● So, to understand a person we must know something about their constructs (AdamsWeber, 1998)
● 1) The way they developed
● 2) How they function in relation to that individual
● 3) How they are organized to form a system
● How can you do this?
● Kelly: Ask them!
● People can report on their own personality and they can reflect upon it
●
Note how different this is to a Freudian or even a trait theory
Assessment: Rep Test
● Kelly developed an assessment tool that exactly matched his theory called the Role
Construct Repertory Test (Rep Test)
● The Rep test consists of two steps:
● First, the client names a set of ten to twenty people (or things), called elements
○ These are of some importance to the person
○ They can also be named in response to certain suggestive categories:
■ “Ideal self”, “future self”
■ Family members
■ People who've hurt you
■ People you’ve loved
■ and so on…
●
Next, the test taker then chooses three of these at a time (note the three circles in each row):
● And answers, “which of the three are similar, and which one is different?”
●
Example process:
● Mother
● Father
● Brother
●
●
similarity pole – how are they similar?
contrast pole – how are they different?
● Mother and Brother are both “active”
● Father is “lazy”
● Thus, one of the clients constructs is “active – lazy”
●
We continue doing this to uncover more constructs
●
●
In therapy, the Rep grid gives the therapist and the client a picture of the client's view of
reality that can be discussed and worked with
● In other words, how do they construe the world around them (e.g. is it hostile?)
● Client could have said anything for similarity or difference
Answers aren't final either
● The Rep grid is rare among "tests" in that the client is invited to change his or her
mind about it at any time
● Neither is it assumed to be a complete picture of a person's mental state
● It provides a way of loosely, understanding people's perceptions without prejudging
the terms of reference
Cognitive Complexity and Simplicity
● People can differ not only in content of the individual constructs but also in the organization
of the construct system
● For example, constructs systems can differ in complexity
● People with more complex construct systems:
● will have many constructs with minimal overlap
● e.g. large overlap = Smart/dumb vs. intelligent/unintelligent (roughly
the same)
● will have fine-grained constructs (more specific)
● e.g. intelligence (analytic) vs. knowledge (wisdom) (similar but
different)
● e.g., declarative knowledge vs. procedural knowledge (book smarts
vs street smarts)
● …and thus will be better at differentiating (or discriminating) between
people
●
Cognitively complex persons will also then be better able to predict a person’s
behavior and the outcome of their actions (Bieri, 1955)
●
Further research in differences between people in cognitive complexity/simplicity found that:
● Mayo & Crockett (1964):
● High complex persons integrate inconsistent information into their
impressions of people and judgments
● Low complex persons simply disregard inconsistent information
● Adams-Weber (1979)
● High complex persons able to take on the roles of others
● see things from other perspectives (empathy)
● Tetlock et al (1993)
● Complexity highly related to high levels of ‘openness to experience’
(Big Five)
●
Further research in differences between people in cognitive complexity/simplicity found that:
● People differ in their complexity of their beliefs about their ‘Self’
● Patricia Linville (1985) – Self-Complexity
● Low self-complexity people believe just a few things about themselves and use these
constructs over and over (clever/dumb; attractive/unattractive; good/bad, etc.)
●
High self-complexity people may be involved in many life roles and possess many
skills and tendencies, leading to a vast amount of constructs (high complexity)
Process: Motivation
● Kelly didn’t include any motivational (process) elements in his theory
● He suggested motivation was redundant
● We are always actively striving, anticipating and seeking to interpret
● Motivation implies that we are inert and need some prodding to act
● Anticipating events
● The dynamic process involved in Kelly’s structure (personal constructs) is
called the fundamental postulate
● The fundamental postulate dictates that people’s psychological processes
are channeled by the ways in which they anticipate events
● All of the psychological outcomes of interests to us are shaped by our
anticipation of the future
● e.g. I want this in the future, so I’ll do this know
● We use our constructs to anticipate/predict what an outcome will be or how
to achieve an outcome; the constructs themselves become the motivators
● We constantly try to develop theories and constructs about the future event, choosing
alternates when appropriate
● If I want to make friends, I just need to be funny (fails)
● If I want to make friends, I just need to be funny and sincere (succeeds)
● Develops new construct or theory; making friends / not making
friends
●
Studies have shown that people seek validation and expansion of their construct
systems, even if the outcome is negative
● My construct is that “I am worthless and no one likes me” (clearly negative)
● So I act mean to people hence no one likes me (validation)
Process: Anxiety, Fear, and Threat
○ Anxiety
■
■
■
■
■
○
Fear
■
Recognition that an event lies outside the range of convenience of one’s
construct system
○ (range of convenience = boundaries a phenomenon can
cover)
● In other words – this experience is new!
This is unpleasant to us so we must protect ourselves by narrowing or
broadening existing constructs
I’m a caring and sharing person (my construct), but then I act selfishly one
day
● This is ‘out of character’ – I can’t explain it with my current
constructs
● So I modify my construct to adapt…
Narrowing
● I only act selfish when the person is not my friend
Broadening
● Caring people can also sometimes be selfish
We experience fear when a new construct is about to enter the construct
system
○
Threat
■ Is the awareness of imminent comprehensive change in one’s core structure
■ Threat accompanies all profound changes
○
An interesting interplay develops
■ Our desire to expand our construct system versus our desire to avoid threat
■ We may adhere to a constricted (and negative) system to avoid the threat of
“core” change
● Person that feels ‘unlovable’ may begin to challenge that core system
● Realization that they are ‘lovable’ may pose a great threat to that core
system
○ …If I was loveable… why was I abandoned/betrayed?
○ …I must not be loveable – i.e., they may resist that change
Growth and Development
● Not much coverage on growth and development in PCT
● Constructs are derived from observing patterns or events
● Development of preverbal constructs occur in infancy
● Across cultures similar constructs develop
● Constructs develop over time / age
● Higher complexity in construct systems may be related to:
● More varied childhood experiences
● More autonomous parenting over authoritarian (e.g., helicopter parenting)
Psychopathology
● Kelly devoted one of his two volumes in 1955 purely to clinical applications of PCT
●
Psychopathology is a disordered response to anxiety
● Event (new) anxiety to threat to No change to constructs or (more often) “narrowing”
● Poorly functioning people retain their constructs even if it repeatedly yields incorrect
predictions
●
Kelly suggested psychopathology is produced from protecting ourselves from Anxiety and
Threat
● Submerging one end of a construct, for example
● “Failure is not an option”; “I must be perfect”
● Repressing events, patterns of events
● “It wasn’t my fault”
Time-Pinning
● Construct: The world is a dangerous place you need to ALWAYS be on your guard
(e.g. aggressive) and dominate others to SURVIVE
● Could this ever be a valid construct?
● Client: Hostile environment – gangs, home, school, etc.
● Aggression first, questions later (protective)
●
●
Construct was valid – but now it can change (it is no longer needed)
● Changing it is threatening for him though…
● …I will be defenseless against the world – which I know is dangerous!
● 2 years of continued community therapy
Construct systems can be adaptive, logical and necessary even if negative at certain
times
Treatment
● Change and Fixed-Role Therapy
● Sometimes we cant see the alternatives (constructive alternativism) in order to even
try them out
● We are fixed in who we are and what we think of ourselves
● Kelly suggested that if we took on the role of someone else (like an actor does) we
could open our minds to other alternatives
● People can ‘act’ out these alternative roles in their lives for a couple weeks under
less threat – because they are just “acting”
● Example client : “No one cares that I even exist”
● Client is very shy, quiet, and introverted individual
● Tried a “role” as an outspoken, flamboyant extrovert
● The desired outcome is that the patient drops some old constructs (maladaptive ones),
creates some new (positive) ones and moves to a construct system that is more
accurate in it’s predictions
● “Everyone was talking to me, I told a joke and they were all laughing, people
noticed me for once”
Critical Evaluation of Personal Construct Theory (PCT): Scientific Observation
● The Database
● Excellent:
● Detailed, in-depth analysis of patients/clients, similar to Freud and Rogers
●
●
Revolutionary approach to testing and the development of an excellent
assessment instrument
● Few did both so well
Limitations surround its breadth of application
● No cultural studies
● Little on growth and development
● Only one tool
Systematic?
● Very systematic and well-respected theory
● Formally postulated theory
● Presented entire theory all at once in 1955
● So its cohesion was terrific
● e.g. there wasn’t years of papers after papers adjusting, updating, etc.
● It was what it was, from the start to finish
Testable?
● Two key aspects made his theory testable:
● Defined PCT precisely and all it’s elements
● The REP assessment tool perfectly matched the theory he presented
● The REP is versatile but complex
● Can be used for all manner of applications (marketing, dating, car models, etc.)
● Can gain insight into the subjective and the objective
● Overall, we CAN test PCT
● No untestable ‘unconscious’ for example
Comprehensive?
● If we agree with the assumptions (e.g. the fundamental postulate) then the theory is
comprehensive
● It falls like a house of cards if we don’t
● It comprehensively covers when people ‘act like scientists’
● But do we? Always?
● …why do we keep making the same mistakes?
● every situation is different
● How do we know which contrast to choose to predict events?
Major Contributions
● PCT is a pervasive and enduring theory
● The roots of Social-Cognitive (Behavioural) Theory
● Strengths
● Emphasises cognitive processes (not the external, deterministic approach)
● Has both a nomothetic (average) and idiographic (individual) basis
● Assessment tool (REP) based precisely in the theory
● Limitations
● Has not led to research that extends the theory (but spin-offs, CBT, etc.)
● Nothing on Growth & Development (contrast with Erikson, Freud, Biological, etc.)
Week 12: Social Cognitive Theory I - Bandura and Michel
Social Cognitive Theory, plus a bit of Chapter 13 and concluding with 15
●
Introduction
● Social-Cognitive theory has its origins in “behavioural-” or “social-learning”
● now “social–cognitive” to emphasise:
● (1) cognitive processes in analyses of personality
● and (2) the social context (situation)
● We learn and acquire our own thoughts about ourselves (and others) through
interaction with the environment
Social Cognitive Theory
● For the social-cognitive psychologist:
● Psychodynamic approaches overemphasise the unconscious
SC recognise “cognitive unconscious” but believe conscious processes are of greater importance
● Opposed to trait theories nomothetic nature
SC More important to study the variability in one’s actions (rather than an overall pattern)
● e.g. if we are extroverted – in which situation are we not extroverted (and why)?
● Behaviourism too focused on the external environments behavioural effect on
people
SC Behaviours don’s occur in a vacuum of cause and effect, our perception of the situation is what is
more important
● Note the nod to phenomenology and the meaning of objects, people, situations
Social Cognitive Approach
● Most similar to the phenomenological approach (e.g., schemas) and Kelly’s personal
construct theory:
● Emphasis on people as active agents (i.e., free choice)
● Emphasis on social origins (societal, history, culture) of behaviours (e.g., beliefs,
standards)
● Emphasis on cognitive (thought) processes (e.g., meta-cognition; validity of
“thoughts”)
● Emphasis on both collective behavioural tendencies (nomothetic) and variability in
behaviour (idiographic)
● Emphasis on the learning of complex patterns of behaviour in the absence of
rewards (i.e., learning cannot be entirely explained by behaviourism; operant or
classical conditioning)
● Behaviourism review:
● Classic conditioning – Pavlov's dog (stimulus behaviour)
● Operant conditioning – reinforcement and punishment (reinforcement
incr. behaviour)
● Two main figures of the SC approach: Walter Mischel & Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura (1925-present)
● Albert Bandura (born December 4, 1925, in Mundare, Alberta, Canada)
● David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University
● Over a career spanning almost six decades, Bandura has been responsible for groundbreaking
contributions to many fields of psychology
●
●
●
●
● was influential in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology
He is known as the originator of:
● social learning theory
● theory of self-efficacy
● the influential 1961 Bobo Doll experiment
A 2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth most-frequently cited psychologist of all time,
behind B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Piaget
Bandura is widely described as the greatest living psychologist and as one of the most
influential psychologists of all time
At 90 years old… Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves
(2015)
Walter Mischel (1930-2018)
● Mischel was born on February 22, 1930 in Vienna, Austria, a “stone’s throw from where
Freud grew-up”
● He grew up in Brooklyn, New York and studied under George Kelly and Julian
Rotter
● In 1968, Mischel published, Personality and Assessment
● Mischel showed that an individual’s behavior, when closely examined, was
highly dependent upon situational cues
● Mischel proposed that by including the situation (as it is perceived by the person) a person’s
personality (the consistencies that characterize the individual) can be examined
● “if-then” situation-behavior leading to psychologically meaningful “personality
signatures”
● e.g. “she does A when X, but B when Y”
Social-Cognitive Theory’s View of the Person and Science of Personality
● SCT’s view of the person
● Three essential qualities:
● Persons are beings that can reason about the world using language (social,
communication, complex ideas)
● Persons can reason about the present, past and future (abstraction – learn &
predict)
● The reasoning commonly involves reflection on the self (meta-cognition)
● SCT’s science of personality
● SCT tries to use all aspects of psychology and utilise all significant advancements
● Patchwork of developmental, neuroscientific, cultural, cognitive, social, etc.
psychologies
● Uses both nomothetic and idiographic
● Pragmatic – utility in its application
●
Competencies & Skills
● Differences and variations between and within people due to competency or skill on a
task
● e.g. a person may appear introverted because they lack social
skills/competency
● Competencies involve both thinking about (identifying) a problem and executing
solutions to them
●
●
Declarative Knowledge
● Knowledge we can express in words
● e.g. the names of all provinces and capital cities
● Procedural (Tacit) Knowledge
● Cognitive and behavioural capacities that we can't articulate the exact
nature of
● e.g. “gut-feeling” – how was this acquired?
Competencies are context specific and can be changed or acquired (e.g., social
phobia)
Social Cognitive Theory: Structure
● Consider three different ways people think about the world…
● Beliefs (or Expectancies)
● Beliefs about what the world is actually like
● Primary determinant of our actions
● A system of thoughts about the future that can vary across
situations
● e.g. expect certain rewards or punishments based on
behaviour
● We organise situations/beliefs idiosyncratically – ‘at home’, ‘at
school’, ‘with friends’
● Evaluative Standards (e.g., “standards”)
● Beliefs about what the world should be like
● Goals
● Beliefs about what we can attain in the world
Structure: Beliefs
● The Self and Self-efficacy Beliefs
● The major factor in SCT is our beliefs about our Self and our expectations of our
abilities and performance
● Perceived self-efficacy
● our perceptions (not necessarily accurate) of our own capabilities for
actions in future situations
● Why is self-efficacy so important?
● Self-efficacy influences a number of important behavioural aspects important
for achievement
● 1) Decisions - Decide to attempt difficult tasks
● 2) Persistence - Persist in your efforts
● 3) Affect – remain calm rather than anxious
● 4) Analytical thoughts – keep your thoughts organised and on task
● Task: obtain a BA degree > (1) Go to university > (2) conscientiousness > (3)
manage anxiety on tests > (4) stay focused on studies, sacrifice
●
(1) Self-efficacy differs from self-esteem
● Self-esteem is an ‘overall’ global affect
● Self-efficacy is determined by the situation (i.e., perceived)
● It is a judgment of what we think we can do in that situation / or
goal, task, etc
●
I have a high self-efficacy that I can write a research paper but low selfefficacy that I could learn Greek
● BUT, both of these wouldn’t necessarily effect my self-esteem (pos.
or neg.)
Beliefs and Expectations
● The Self and Self-efficacy Beliefs (cont’d)
● (2) Self-Efficacy Expectations (SEE) differ from Outcome Expectations (OE)
● Outcome expectations (OE) are beliefs about the rewards (or
punishments) that will occur given a behaviour
● Self-Efficacy Expectations (SEE) are beliefs of whether or not you
can even perform the behaviour
● e.g. me being an NHL player (OE very high; SEE low/moderate)
●
Self-efficacy expectations (SEE) predict the behaviour we will engage in
more so than OE
● Hence, I’m a professor, not an NHL player
Beliefs and Performance
● Self-efficacy and Performance
● Do SEE causally influence behaviour?
● One can ‘anchor’ SEE with subtle manipulations and see result on behaviour
● The final exam is going to be way harder than the midterm (SEE
lowered – “you scared me”)
● If you study and watch these lectures the final will be a breeze (SEE
higher – “gave me confidence”)
● Your perception of your self-efficacy (performance or ability on a task) can also be
manipulated
● E.g., …have you ever been talked out of doing/trying something?
● Our actions and outcomes are highly influenced by our own subjective selfperceptions!
● We do what we think we can do and we don’t do what we think we can’t
● Thomas the steam engine – I think I can, I think I can….
● …we are literally our worst enemy most of the time
Social Cognitive Theory: Beliefs
● Self-efficacy and Performance
● Generally research has shown that people with HIGH self-efficacy (e.g. high belief
in themselves and their abilities) will differ from LOW self-efficacy person’s in the
following ways:
● (1) Selection
● select more difficult and challenging tasks
● (2) Effort, Persistence & Performance
● show greater effort and persistence on task (don’t give up so easily)
● (3) Emotion
● approach task with less anxiety
● (4) Coping
● better at (emotional) coping with disappointments, setbacks and
stress
Social Cognitive Theory: Goals
● Goals
● A goal is a mental representation of the aim of an action or course of actions
● Goals motivate us, help us select and make decisions that go beyond
momentary influences
● Goals can be organised as hierarchical, time-related and varying focus
●
Evaluative Standards
● A standard is a criterion for judging the goodness of a person, thing or object
● “This pizza isn't up to my standards”
● Self-evaluative reactions (are we living up to our own standards)
● EVALUATE: We have internalised personal standards which we constantly
evaluate ourselves on
● We may have a personal standard on producing an essay; we evaluate
the final product
● REACT: These reactions constitute self-reinforcements (or punishments)
● Especially in absence of external reinforcers (e.g. pats on the back, a
good grade, etc.)
● We have an internal mechanism of praise and guilt that we use to reward
or punish ourselves
● These correspond to our beliefs of moral and immoral, right and
wrong
Social Cognitive Theory: Process
● SCT addresses the dynamics of personality process in two ways:
● (1) General Theoretical Principles:
● Reciprocal Determinism - the analysis of the causes of behaviour
● Cognitive Affective Processing System (CAPS)
● (2) Analysis of psychological functions
● Observational learning (e.g. modelling)
● Motivation
● Self-Control
●
Reciprocal Determinism (Bandura)
● Each aspect influences the other – no direct causality
● People as ‘active agents’
● e.g. a basketball star that always plays great at “home”
●
Cognitive Affective Processing System (CAPS)
● Mischel & Shoda (2008): Personality is a complex system (many parts working in a
coherent way)
● (1) Cognitive and Emotional personality variables are linked to each
other
● Thoughts about goals may trigger thoughts about skills which
triggers thoughts about self-efficacy which may affect emotions or
self-evaluations in a situation
● (2) Situations trigger varying cognitive subsets to be activated within the
overall system
● The ‘anxiety’ subset, the ‘conscientiousness’ subset, the
‘relationship’ subset, etc.
● (3) The varying subsets will cause a variation in behaviour from situation
to situation
● e.g., “If X…then Y…” …but every X is slightly (or largely) different
● Importantly, M & S argue that this variation is what defines our personality
● how we differ from situation to situation and why!
Mischel & Shoda suggest that our variation is what is consistent
● (1) We should investigate the ‘if…then…’ profiles of people (i.e.,
behavioural variation)
● e.g. If X happens John will do Y
● He will consistently do Y given situation X
● But he may consistently do Z given a different situation X
(self-perceived different)
● (2) We shouldn’t look at overall aggregate nomothetic consistencies...
● We should investigate an individual’s behavioural signatures (i.e.,
idiographic)
● i.e., situations in which their behaviour is different/varied
● e.g. High in trait extraversion (aggregated), but…
● Extraverted in most situations (with friends, strangers,
family, etc)
● Introverted at work/school (colleagues)
●
this important info would be lost in the aggregate
Growth and Development
● Observational Learning (Modelling)
● Very few personality theories have looked at learning and how we acquire skills and
knowledge
● Bandura proposed the process of observational learning or modelling
● bobo doll experiments
● We can learn complex forms of behaviour by simply observing it
● People (especially children) can learn by observing the behaviours of others
● A parent, teacher, peer, etc. will act as a ‘model’ in early development
● Examples:
● We already know (for the most part) how to drive before we
ever attempt it
●
Self-Regulation and Motivation
● How do we put knowledge into action
● Our motivations are based on our self-perceptions
● We are self-motivating and self-directing of our behaviour
● Note similarity to Kelly’s fundamental postulate for
motivation/process
● This process is called self-regulation
● We regulate our behaviour by setting goals and evaluating our behaviour
according to our evaluative standards of performance
● e.g., I didn’t watch TV last night (behaviour) because I had to finish
this lecture prep (standard) in order to do my job competently (goal)
● We may differ in our goals, standards and our self-efficacy but we are all:
● Proactive – we are motivated by the anticipation of satisfaction (OE) with
the accomplishment of goals (reward) or the dissatisfaction of failures
(punishment)
●
Self-efficacy, goals and self-evaluative reactions
● Overall, we will try our hardest to achieve goals if the goal is clearly defined and we
have feedback on performance along the way…
● Shoot at the target…vs. Try to hit the bullseye… you’ll need to aim slightly lower
and to the right…. Hey! Nice shot! Almost got it!
● It is the most anxiety and trauma provoking when we have high self-efficacy for the
task
● But, we fail …but we know we can do this!
● This situation causes people to increase motivation to accomplish the goal
● However, low self-efficacy can lower motivation no matter how attractive the goal is
● e.g., I would love to be a professional athlete (attractive goal, high OE) but I
don’t have the necessary skills (low self-efficacy)
● So when you have a goal (something you would like/love to accomplish) and
you aren’t motivated to do it (e.g., you just aren’t doing it,) ask yourself:
● (1) Is the OE actually high for me
● (2) Is it just low self-efficacy, am I scared to try, because I may fail?
SMART Goals
*there are actually 3 R’s: realistic, resolute, and relapse
● Self-control and delay of gratification
● In life we often have to delay (or refuse) gratification in the present in order to
obtain something better in the future
● Defining quality of “work” - giving up present (short term reward) for future
(long term) success
● Not going out with friends the night before an exam
● Turns out, we often need to delay our gratification
● Delay of gratification is learnt by and is influenced by modelling
● If you are unable to delay gratification it is likely that your parents or those
close to you (e.g. your “models”) were not able to either!
●
Mischel’s delay of gratification paradigm
● The idea of this experimental paradigm is to see how people will reason, what mental
strategies they might use and the choices they’ll make in delaying gratification
●
●
●
Set-up (immediate):
1 marshmallow
Return/Delay:
2 marshmallows
● Can test high and low delay of gratification in the child
● Longitudinal: Children that were able to delay gratification for long periods of time
(high delay) were:
● (later in adolescence) found to be more attentive, able to concentrate, able to
express ideas well, able to cope with stressors, etc…
Mischel’s delay of gratification paradigm (cont’d)
● Also manipulated if the child could see the marshmallow or not
● This had a huge effect on the ability to delay gratification
● Much harder to delay gratification if you can see and touch the object of your
desires! (e.g., “bad” food in the house, when dieting…)
●
Found that if children were taught to utilise cognitive strategies they could better
delay gratification (e.g., number counting, engaging in a simple cognitive task, etc.)
Social Cognitive Theory: Applications and Research
Schemas
●
●
●
Self-Schemas are elements of our self knowledge
● we use them to organise our information processing when we encounter
situations
● Similar to a “collection of constructs”
People, due to differential experiences with the environment, will have different
self-schemas
● My self-schema may have to do with pursuit of knowledge/learning…
● I would interpret events from a “what new knowledge can I attain
here” perspective
We become biased towards our self-schemas and more likely to pay attention and
remember information that fits our self-schema
● e.g. politicians are disingenuous individuals that are completely self-serving
● This would be a self-schema learnt (in some way) that biases me
against (all) politicians
● …or is it something about being manipulated or lied to?
● “people I don’t trust vs people I do trust”?
Self-Schemas
● Self-Schemas also motivate us to process information in two ways:
● Self-enhancement
● People are biased towards maintaining a positive view of the self
● e.g. if I fail an exam its because the test was “unfair”
● This may also causes us to overestimate our positive attributes (e.g., raise
our SEE, despite performance – clinical narcissism as an extreme)
●
Self-verification [e.g. Kelly: Threat: imminent comprehensive change in core
construct(s)]
● Very strong motive to be consistent in who we are (good or bad) to avoid
threat/anxiety
● Self-schema: I’m a bad person – so I will be mean to people (e.g.,
congruence)
● Therapeutic efforts are used to modify these schemas (e.g. cognitive
distortions in pedophiles)
Learning vs. Performance Goals
● We are motivated by our goals
● But we may have different types of goals and each person may have different
interpretations of the same goal
● Dweck (1988, 1999)
● Learning goals
● More interested in what can be learnt
● Performance goals
● More interested in achievement
● Low ability causes far greater anxiety and ‘interference in completion’ in those with
performance goals compared to learning goals
Standards of Evaluation
● Tory Higgins (2006)
● Individual differences on evaluation standards lead to different types of
emotional experiences and motivation
● Two people may evaluate a goal (or behaviour) in different ways
● Getting an A- on an exam could be catastrophic for one person and
the best thing that ever happened for another
● Discrepancies in self-standards cause different problems (covered in the
phenomenological lecture)
● Actual – Ideal self (e.g. want)
● Feelings of sadness – not achieving our own standards; hopelessness
(with low efficacy)
● Clinical: Depressive people
● Actual – Ought self (e.g. should)
● Creates agitation and anxiety
● Clinical: Social Phobics (person feels they “ought to be” better than
they are)
Clinical application
● Psychopathology and Change
● Maladaptive behaviour (psychopathology) results from dysfunctional learning
● Maladaptive responses can be learned from parents, or ‘sick’ models
● e.g. anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, etc.
● most likely also reinforced (e.g. snakes and flowerpot
island!)
●
Dysfunctional expectancies
●
●
Erroneously expect that a negative (or positive) event will follow an event or
situation
● e.g. two men walking down a busy street towards (aggressive) client
and I
● Client (over)reacts to perceived/expectant threat of harm
(fight or flight)
It is perceived inefficacy that leads to anxiety and depression (Bandura, 1997)
● i.e., self-belief that you are “unable to handle” the situation; you are not
capable
● Solution: the more we experience the less we perceive inefficacies
● We learn to be resilient, overcome, improve, adapt, etc
● “Baby steps” (explore – return)(CBT)
●
Self-efficacy, Anxiety and Depression
● Threatening events cause anxiety
● Not necessarily the event that causes anxiety but the perceived inefficacy in
coping with the anxiety of the event
● a “fear-of-fear” response
● Depression
● Perception of inefficacy to achieve the rewarding outcome
● Unusually high standards (e.g. perfectionism)
● The vicious circle: perceived inefficacy (not living up to own self-standards)
leads to avoidance (relief-reward) leads to reinforces the self-inefficacy and
avoidance strategy
● Bandura – depression occurs when the goal is thought to be attainable
● Gloria: I am unable to find the partner I desire (actual to ideal) (depression)
● Gloria: I should have a man (actual to ought) (anxiety)
●
Therapeutic change: Modelling and Mastery (CBT)
● Desired goal is to change the person's self-efficacy in relation to a particular event
● This is done by actually performing the task that is causing anxiety
● The overall task is broken down into small sub-skills that are practiced and
then performed
● The difficulty of the skills gets progressively harder for the client (e.g., threat
scale)
● Re-learn (re-model) the event and what the expectations are
● Example
● A social phobic teenager (anxious that people will ridicule her)
● 1) practice/rehearse (in office) ordering a donut at Tim Hortons
● 2) go to TH and accompany therapist while they order
● 3) next time client says what they want
● 4) next time client does the entire order
* But is this reducing fear or building confidence? Learning confidence on one task can often spill
over into other areas of fear, without therapeutic intervention!
●
Stress and Coping
● Lazarus (1990)
●
●
Stress occurs when the person views circumstances as exceeding their
resources and endangering well-being (e.g., the task demands resources
beyond your capacity)
● But can it be a perceived self-inefficacy?
Two ways of coping with a stressful situation:
● Problem-focused
● Cope by altering aspects of the situation (external; reality)
● e.g. change jobs (e.g., bay-street lawyer)
● e.g. distortion (INCEL – e.g., Toronto Van Terrorist:
Alex Minnassian)
● Emotion-focused (internal)
● Attempt to improve internal emotional state
● e.g., seek social support, emotional distancing
Ellis and REBT
● Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy
● Albert Ellis (1997)
● People respond to their beliefs about events (not the events themselves)
● …and they Worry
● ABC’s
● An (A)ctivating event leads to a (C)onsequence
● Not so, our (B)elief about A will determine our response to C
● B’s that cause psychological distress are irrational
● A C I choose to try for an A on the exam
● B If I don’t get an A I’m a failure (or I should always get an
A)
● Therapy (REBT) attempts to make people aware of their irrationality
BECK and CBT
● Cognitive Therapy
● Aaron Beck (1987)
● Psychopathologies are due to automatic thoughts, dysfunctional
assumptions and negative self-statements
● Beck’s Cognitive Triad of Depression
● Systematic misevaluation of on-going (global), past and future experiences
●
Cognitive Therapy
● Designed to identify and correct distortions in thinking and beliefs
● Help clients to monitor their own negative thoughts and to substitute more realityorientated interpretations in their place
● I am really scared of public speaking
● Why is that?
● I guess I’m scared people will laugh at me
● Why would they do that?
● Because they will think I’m stupid
● Do people often think you’re stupid?
● No, I guess not
● Well, why would they think that in this situation then?
● Basically examine the logic in a clients interpretation (i.e., “downward arrow”)
● Behavioural assignments (just as in – go to TH and order a donut) are used to help
patient test certain maladaptive cognitions and assumptions
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: The Database?
● Excellent.
● Mischel, Bandura and colleagues built their theory on a systematic
accumulation of objective scientific evidence
● Very diverse
● Correlational, laboratory and longitudinal studies
● Looked at behavioural change
● Ran clinical studies
● Participants in studies have been every imaginable type
● Along with Trait theory it is based on the largest databases of scientific
knowledge
● And continues to grow!
Systematic?
● Not very good.
● No overarching network of assumptions that tie together all theoretical elements
●
●
●
More of a strategy for studying personality than a full theory
Theory could indicate the sort of things we should assess, but too diverse to collate it
all together
The SCT approach prides itself on assessing the whole person – no easy feat!
Testable?
● Yes, SCT is highly testable
● Plethora of studies speaks to this - Clear concepts that can be measured
Comprehensive?
● Quite Good.
● SCT have addressed:
● Motivation
● Development
● Self-concept
● Self-control (gratification delay)
● Psychopathologies
● Behavioural change
● But…Biological aspects? Temperament?
Applications?
● Excellent. CBT considered the gold-standard in clinical approaches
● Most commonly used in modern day psychological therapy
● But, the “gold-standard” is denoted for its empirical evidence (testable)
(reliability>validity)
● Do CBT ‘tasks’ really address the underlying problem?
● Remember if..then.. (situation) – is the remedy transferable across
situations, generalisable?
● Behavioural change is important but what caused the anxiety in the first place? (e.g.,
Neuroticism)
● What about the underlying roots to problems and clients
ability/understanding of negative thoughts (cure fear of public speaking…but
then what?)
● CBT process acknowledges the negative thought and behavioural
tests to address that thought
● Where do these maladaptive behaviours come from – why are some things
modelled and others not?
● Unlearning the past? Forgetting? Re-evaluation?
Major Contributions
● Current favourite among academic personality psychologists
● Patchwork approach, taking in important aspects of all areas of psychology makes it
extremely comprehensive and up to date
● Open to change and dynamic
● Mischel, and particularly Bandura, are extremely prominent psychologists
● Nevertheless I think it is important to note, from a clinical perspective, there are two
reliable and relevant scientific findings when discussing psychological therapy:
1. People who get therapy improve substantially, regardless of the “type” of therapy used
2. When therapies are compared to one another, they usually appear to be equally effective`
Week 13: Social Cognitive Theory II - Contemporary
Schemas
● More of an idea of self knowledge, the way we perceive ourselves
● Important to know when encountering other people, that everyone has different self-schemas
● You should allow beliefs to change when necessary to cooperate with others
● If you have a knowledge self-schema, you will quote your perspective from “what new
knowledge can I attain here”
● Self-schemas can give us insight into ourselves due to projection, what are you picking up
on? Is it positive or negative
○ Gain more self knowledge through self schema through projection and what we
notice
Self Schemas Can Motivate Us to Process Information in Two Ways
● Self Enhancement
○ People biased to maintain positive view of oneself
○ If a fail on a test, it was because the test was “unfair”
○ May cause to overestimate positive personality attributes (clinical narcissism as an
extreme) (do not have to have clinical narcissism to have grandiose opinion on
oneself)
● Self Verification
○ Always trying to verify if we are being ourselves in our way (Kelly)
■ Are thoughts and actions aligned with our self-schema
■ Create firm grounding for ourselves
○ Can also lead to problems due to using congruence in a negative way
■ Idea of if I am socially anxious about something, I avoid it.
● That's gonna cause the behaviour to happen more and more, more
avoidance in that
● By avoiding these behaviours, we are rewarding them since →
● Activating dopamine pathways which cause reinforcement of that
behaviour (avoidance based)
○ Once you identify avoidance, or negative based behaviours, you can counteract
through therapy, etc.
Learning Versus Performance Type Goals
● Self-efficacy expectation for learning is fairly low, if one fails, they simply get back up and
keep going
● Whereas for performance, if one fails, one may try to avoid it/back away from it
● A performance related task (not having a high performance or not achieving what would like
to be achieved) if failed, higher chance for quitting that task rather for when failing with a
learning based task.
Standards of Evaluation
● We have different individual standards
● Tony Higgins (2006)
○
●
●
●
●
Individual differences on evaluation standards lead to different types of emotional
experiences and motivation
○ People may evaluate a goal (or behaviour) in different ways
Discrepancies in self-standards cause different problems (covered in the phenomenological
lecture)
Actual - Ideal self (ie, want)
○ Sad when unable to meet standards of ideal self
○ Clinical; Depressive people
Actual - Ought self (ie, should)
○ Creates agitation and anxiety
○ Not living up to standards of others ‘ideal’
○ Clinical; Social Phobics (person feels they “ought to be” better than they are)
Outcome expectancy different for everyone
Clinical Application
Psychopathology & Change
Maladaptive Behaviour
● All Bandura's work on observational learning relates to more contemporary thoughts about
maladaptive behaviours that come from dysfunctional learning models
○ Maladaptive responses can be learned from those around you
○ People growing up with characters on TV, heroes you had, heroes you looked up too
■ This can create models of behaviour of how one “should be”
○ This is individual to some degree
○ These things are wrapped up in observational learning
Dysfunctional Expectancies
● May have learned belief systems that do not serve us
● Erroneously expect that a negative (or positive) event will follow an event or situation
● e.g., Client (over)reacts to perceived/expectant threat of harm (fight or flight)
● e.g., Gloria – Ellis (REBT)
Self-efficacy, Anxiety & Depression
●
●
●
Threatening Events Cause Anxiety
○ Not really the event that causes anxiety but the perceived inefficacy in coping with
the anxiety of the event
○ A “fear of fear” response (eg, DSM5 - Panic disorder, agoraphobia)
Depression
○ Perception of inefficacy to achieve the rewarding outcome and/or our ideal
(Bandura)
○ Unusually high standards (e.g. perfectionism – Joey Harrington video)
■ Worked really hard and that meant success but at some point, working really
hard does not mean success. Other obstacles can impact you.
■ had to work with a counselor and work on the issue of perfectionism
The Vicious Cycle
○ When you avoid things, you get a reinforcement of the dopamine system which
makes it worse
○ perceived inefficacy (not living up to own self-standards) leads to avoidance
which (neg.) reinforces (1) the avoidance strategy and (feelings of congruence)
(2) REWARDS self-inefficacy (e.g., dopamine release)
○ With each dopaminergic release – we actually strengthen our pathways of failure
and avoidance when we quit or avoid
○ Brain is telling your neuromodulators exactly what to be doing, by getting rid of
anxiety of not being able to do something by avoiding, takes you back to a safe
spot/congruence. Which causes dopamine release from failure.
Therapeutic Change: Modelling & Mastery (CBT)
●
●
●
Desired goal is to change the person's self-efficacy in relation to a particular event
○ This is done by actually performing the task that is causing anxiety
○ The overall task is broken down into small subs-kills that are practiced and then
performed
○ The difficulty of the skills gets progressively harder for the client (e.g., threat scale)
○ Re-learn (re-model) the event and what the expectations are
■ Lay it out in process and slowly build up mastery
Example
○ A social phobic teenager (anxious that people will ridicule her)
■ 1) practice/rehearse (in office) ordering a donut at Tim Hortons
■ 2) go to TH and accompany therapist while the therapist orders
■ 3) next time client says what they want
■ 4) next time client does the entire order
● The idea is to model what is socially normative behaviour and than
try to model it
● This builds up into bigger things
Reduces fear (specific symptoms) and builds confidence (global symptoms). Learning
confidence on one task can often spill over into other areas of fear, without therapeutic
intervention!
Stress & Coping
●
●
●
●
Building up and mastering and modelling can still involve stress
Writing down coping strategies and learning them can help
Coping is a very important mechanism
Lazarus (1990)
■ Stress occurs when the person views circumstances as exceeding their
resources and endangering well-being (e.g., the task demands resources
beyond your capacity)
■ Related to explanation of ‘suffering’ in existentialism
Two ways of coping with a stressful situation:
(1) Problem-focused (externalise)
●
Cope by altering aspects of the situation (external; reality)
● e.g., change jobs (e.g., bay-street lawyer)
● e.g., distortion - misogynistic (INCEL – e.g., Toronto Van Attacker Alex
Minnassian)
●
Distorted view of problem can lead to distorted coping/solving of the
problem
(2) Emotion-focused (internalise)
●
●
●
●
Attempt to improve internal emotional state
● e.g., seek social support, talk it out, emotional distancing, meditation,
REM/dreams)
PTSD - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) – deactivate
amygdala
EMDR related to REM sleep in deactivating Amygdala
Amygdala encodes emotions and memories
Elis & Rebt
●
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Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT)
Albert Ellis (1997)
○ People respond to their beliefs about events (not the events themselves)
○ …and they Worry
ABC’s
○ An (A)ctivating event leads to a (C)onsequence
○ Not so, our (B)elief about A will determine our response to C
B’s that cause psychological distress are irrational
○ A C: I date someone and it doesn’t work out
■ B It’s my fault, I’m such a loser
Therapy (REBT) attempts to make people aware of their irrationality
From Video: Important to stay in present in rational emotive psychotherapy.
○ The B sentences (beliefs) are what upset the individual
○ Important to identify catastrophizing beliefs
○ With REBT/CBT, it has more of to do with providing homework to help one
overcome/master
Beck & CBT
●
●
●
CBT developed by Aaron Beck (1987)
Psychopathologies are due to automatic thoughts, dysfunctional assumptions and negative
self-statements
○ It is our job than to see what thoughts are relevant to us
○ Going back to that B discussed in REBT (beliefs that may be dysfunctional)
Beck’s Cognitive Triad of Depression
○ Systematic misevaluation of on-going (global), past and future experiences
○
Negatives views about the world (catastrophic statements), about the future
(hopelessness), about oneself
■ One of the best therapeutic ways to get patients out of depression is to engage
in activity. As depression can be avoidance, the method to simply get
someone to engage back in life can help one realize that there is not
hopelessness
Cognitive Therapy
●
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●
●
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●
●
●
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Geared around identifying the invalid thoughts and finding the valid ones
Challenging dysfunctional beliefs
Designed to identify and correct distortions in thinking and beliefs
Help clients to monitor their own negative thoughts and to substitute more reality-orientated
interpretations in their place
I hate public speaking
○ Why is that?
I guess I’m scared people will laugh at me
○ Why would they do that?
Because they will think I’m stupid
○ Do people often think you’re stupid?
No, I guess not
○ Well, why would they think that in this situation then?
Basically examine the logic in a clients interpretation (i.e., “downward arrow”)
Behavioural assignments (just as in – go to TH and order a donut) are used to help patient test
certain maladaptive cognitions and assumptions
Make sure that basic needs are met before worrying about a higher cognitive need
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: The Database?
●
●
●
●
●
Excellent
Lots of research and data to consume on how cognitions, emotions, etc play a role in our
behaviour
Mischel, Bandura and colleagues built their theory on a systematic accumulation of objective
scientific evidence
Very diverse
○ Correlational, laboratory and longitudinal studies
○ Looked at behavioural change
○ Ran clinical studies
○ Participants in studies have been every imaginable type
Along with Trait theory it is based on the largest databases of scientific knowledge
○ And continues to grow!
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Systematic?
●
●
●
●
●
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Not Very Good
Lots of different perspectives that overlap, don't really know why certain things connect
No overarching network of assumptions that tie together all theoretical elements
More of a strategy for studying personality than a full theory
Theory could indicate the sort of things we should assess, but too diverse to collate it all
together
The SCT approach prides itself on assessing the whole person – no easy feat!
Different people have different ways of learning, some cases some methodology may work
whereas another case, a different methodology will work
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Testable?
●
●
Yes, SCT is highly testable
Plethora of studies speaks to this - Clear concepts that can be measured
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Comprehensive?
●
Quite Good.
● SCT have addressed a number of things:
● Motivation
● Development
● Self-concept
● Self-control (gratification delay)
● Psychopathologies
● Behavioural change
● But… still learning more, new developments →
● Biological aspects? (genetic; neuro-modulation) (sleep?)
● Temperament? (genetic; attachment; Eysenck P-E-N)
● Big five factor can be very imprinted (genetics, quite evident that
even identical twins are born and have different personalities)
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Applications?
●
Excellent. CBT considered the gold-standard in clinical approaches
○ Most commonly used in modern day psychological therapy
■ But, the “gold-standard” is denoted for its empirical evidence (testable)
(reliability>validity)
■ Do CBT ‘tasks’ really address the underlying problem? (neurotic; anxiety
disorders)
○ Behavioural change is important but what caused the anxiety in the first place? (e.g.,
Neuroticism)
■ What about the underlying roots to problems and clients
ability/understanding of negative thoughts (cure fear of public speaking…but
then what?)
● CBT process identifies negative/distorted thoughts (and bx) and
develops behavioural tests to address those thoughts
○ But where do these maladaptive behaviours come from –
why are some things modelled and others not?
■ Unlearning the past? Forgetting? Re-evaluation? Removing the emotional
content of memories, remove the relationship of the thought(s)/situation(s) to
the past
■ Although empirical validation is important, disregarding something due to
inability to classify it may not be the best idea
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Major Contributions?
●
Current favourite among academic personality psychologists
●
Patchwork approach, taking in important aspects of all areas of psychology makes it
extremely comprehensive and up to date
● Open to change and dynamic
● Mischel, and particularly Bandura, are extremely prominent psychologists
● Nevertheless, I think it is important to note, from a clinical perspective, there are two reliable
and relevant scientific findings when discussing psychological therapy:
1. People who get therapy improve substantially, regardless of the “type” of therapy used
2. When therapies are compared to one another, they usually appear to be equally effective
● There are different specific therapies for different frameworks for disorders as opposed to
someone who may be interested in counselling in psychology, where a therapeutic alliance is
formed and it is more of “mental hygiene” (CBT).
○ Building on strengths and working through problems in a more counselling-esque
way
(Information from up and above is all in week 12 notes on this doc as well, information from below
down is not)
Review Over Chapter 15
●
Summary of Major Theoretical Concepts / Tables For Review
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Scientific Observation?
●
The Database
○ Must be built on scientific observation that is diverse and large, that are objective and
measurable, and shed light on the psychological aspects of:
■ Cognition (e.g. thoughts)
■ Affect (e.g. emotions)
■ Biological systems (e.g. genetic)
○ Personality psychologists have employed all manner of research strategies and
developed impressive databases to test their theories on a whole
○ Limitations
■ Idiographic methods in mainstream research – still most difficult to
understand the ‘whole’ person while having a system capable of measuring
others consistently (i.e., nomothetically)
● Difficult to examine one person and than transfer that to population
○ Almost cannot have both at the same time so you can either
go one way or the other
● Clinical perspective of publication and examining one person is not
generally publicable. Academia focused on a nomothetic view rather
than a idiographic view
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Systematic?
●
●
Systematic Approach available in Grand theories presented earlier in course
Myers Brigg Test is not a very validated instrument, however how important is validation?
●
●
●
○ One source of resource is
Did we find an integrated theory of personality?
○ Depends “when” you look
‘Grand theories’ of the middle 20th century
○ Freud, Jung, Eysenck, Cattell & Kelly
○ Sweeping accounts of personality that were highly systematic
The last quarter of the 20th century saw a shift to more ‘scientific’ (both data-driven; and
empirically validated) approaches
○ Big Five (factor models), Social & Cognitive theories (McCrae & Costa, Kelly,
Bandura)
○ More specific theories with more rigorous testing but can't cover as much ground
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Testable?
●
●
●
●
Good side of academia is our testing hypothesis, coming up with new ideas constantly
○ Lots of divergent views on things and different areas, with psychology continuing to
grow
Best feature of personality psychology (apart from perhaps Freud)
All subsequent theories were highly testable
○ we saw that with the masses of research that followed each theoretical advance
Personality theory/science has been a data-driven research area for decades
○ Can't publish without convincing tests of hypotheses
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Comprehensive?
●
●
●
●
●
Theories all together were less comprehensive than would be ideal
Freud was probably the most comprehensive
○ But valid? Testable?
In contemporary terms, Bandura, Beck and other SCT have applied social-cognitive theory to
an impressive breadth of personal and social phenomena
In ‘clinical-oriented’ personality theory, Rogers is (still) outstandingly comprehensive
Mischel & Shoda (2008) have proposed an integrative approach, with the agreed existence of:
○ dispositions due to biological factors and cognitive structures (trait and socialcognitive theory) AND
○ unconscious and motivated cognitive processes (psychodynamic theory) AND the
○ importance of perceptions of self and situation (phenomenology of Kelly and Rogers)
Critical Evaluation of Social-Cognitive Therapies: Applications?
●
●
Therapeutic Applications:
● All theories had good therapeutic application
● Can be used in all types of different areas
● Most notable were Freud, Kelly, Rogers and Social-Cognitive (Beck, Ellis)
approaches
Other applications:
● Trait theory can be useful in identifying clinical aspects for change but did not have a
therapeutic process per se
●
●
Further, it has a more broad use in organisational psychology
For example, conscientiousness as a predictor of job performance
TEXTBOOK NOTES:
Ch. 5: Phenomenological Theory
Rogers View of the Person
Subjectivity of Experience
Feelings of Authenticity
●
People are prone to a distinctive form of psychological distress — its a feeling of alienation or detachment; the
feeling that one’s experiences & daily activities don’t stem from ones true, authentic self
●
Why do these feelings arise? Because we need the approval of others, we tell ourselves that their desires & values
are our own
●
The individual thinks but does not feel an attachment to their own values — ‘primary sensory & visceral
reactions are ignored’ & ‘the individual begins on a pathway that is described as I don’t really know
myself’
●
To Freud, visceral reactions were animalistic impulses that needed to be curbed by the civilized ego & superego —
distorting & denying these impulses was part of normal, healthy personality functioning
●
To Rogers, these instinctive visceral reactions are a potential source of wisdom
●
individuals who openly experience the full range of their emotions, who are accepting & assimilating of
all sensory evidence experienced by the organism are psychologically well adjusted
●
Conflict between instinctive & rational elements of mind is not an immutable feature of the human
condition — rather than conflict, persons can experience congruence
A Phenomenological Perspective
●
A phenomenological approach is one that investigates peoples conscious experiences, the investigation does not try
to characterize the world of reality as it exists independent of the human observer
●
●
Interested in the experiences of the observer; how the person experiences the world
The psychodynamic tradition was not particularly interested in phenomenology; to Freud, conscious
phenomenological experiences is not the core of personality
●
Conscious experience may be related in only the most indirect ways to that core, which involves
unconscious drives & defences
Rogers View of the Science of Personality
●
What does Rogers concern with phenomenological experiences have to do with this view of personality? Are these
two independent things; phenomenological perspective on psychology & a viewpoint on the science on the other?
●
Bit of reflection suggests that a marriage between a traditional conception of science & a concern with
phenomenological experience may be difficult.
●
Science rests on clear cut data, Rogers argues that personality psychology must address subjective internal
experiences — These experiences cant be measured in the manner of objective physical qualities
●
Instead they have a subjective quality; their meaning rests on the interpretation of the individual having
the experience
●
Rogers work was an attempt to draw the best of 2 worlds, that of science & that of clinical understanding of subjective
experiences — in therapy, his main goal was not to classify his client, but to gain a deep understanding of how his
clients experienced the world
Personality Theory of Carl Rogers
Structure
The Self
●
According to Rogers, the self is an aspect of phenomenological experience. Its one aspect of our experiences of the
world, one of the things that fill our conscious experiences is our experiences of ourselves, or of ‘a self’
●
The individual perceives external objects & experiences & attaches meaning to them — the total system
of perception & meanings make up the individuals phenomenal field
●
That subset of the phenomenal field that is recognized by the individual as ‘me’ or ‘I’ is the self — the self, or SELFCONCEPT, represents an organized & consistent pattern of perception
●
To Rogers, the self is not a little person inside us; the self does not independently control behaviour, rather the self
is an organized set of perceptions possessed by the individual, who’s ultimately responsible for their actions
●
The pattern of experiences & perceptions known as the self is, in general, available to awareness
●
Although individuals off have experiences of which they’re unaware, the self concept is primarily
conscious
●
Rogers did recognize 2 different aspects of the self; the ACTUAL SELF & the IDEAL SELF — people naturally
think not only themselves in the present but also their potential selves in the future
●
They thus generate an organized pattern of perceptions not only of their current self but of an ideal self
that they’d like to be — the ideal self is the self concept that an individual would like to possess
●
He first thought that the self was a vague, scientifically meaningless term, however, he listened to his clients who
commonly expressed their psychological experience in terms of the self (i.e they didn’t feel like themselves)
●
Was clear to rogers that the self was a psychological structure through which people were interpreting their
world
Process
●
Rogers didn’t present an elaborate model of personality structure, with personality divided into a number of parts
●
He presented a simple model that highlighted what he felt was central structure in personality; the self
Self Actualization
●
Rogers didn’t think that behaviour was primarily determined by animalistic drive states, felt that the most
fundamental personality process is a forward-looking tendency towards personality growth; ‘SELF
ACTUALIZATION’
●
The organism has one basic tendency & striving — to actualize, maintain, & enhance the experiencing
organism; rogers described life as an active process, comparing it to the trunk of a tree on the shore of the
ocean as it remains erect, tough, resilient, maintaining & enhancing itself in the growth process
●
The concept of actualization refers to an organism's tendency to grow from a simple entity to a complex one, to
move from dependence toward independence, from fixity & rigidity to a process of change & freedom of expression
●
Includes the tendency of each person to reduce needs or tension, but it emphasized the pleasure &
satisfactions that are derived from activities that enhance the organism
●
Others made a measure involving a 15 item scale that measures the ability to act independently, self-acceptance or
self-esteem, acceptance to one's emotional life, & trust in interpersonal relations
●
Ryff made a multifaceted conception of positive mental health that includes self-acceptance, positive relations with
others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, & personal growth (related to rogers view of growth
process & self actualization)
●
Her PERSONAL GROWTH SCALE defines someone high on personal growth as someone who has
feelings of continued development, has a sense of realizing their potential, open to new experiences & is
changing in ways that reflect more self knowledge & effectiveness
●
The principle of self actualization is not sufficient to account for the dynamics of personality functioning;
psychological life consists of conflicts, doubts & psychological stress rather than a continual march towards personal
actualization
Self Consistency & Congruence
●
Challenge for rogers is account for more complete range of personality dynamics within self based theory the person
●
One way he does this is by positing that people seek self consistency & a sense of congruence between
their sense of self & their everyday experience— an organism functions to maintain consistency among
self perceptions & to achieve congruence beware perceptions of self & experiences
●
SELF CONSISTENCY: according to Lecky, the organism doesn’t seek to gain pleasure & avoid pain but seeks to
maintain its own self structure — the individual developed a value system, center is individual's valuation of the self
●
Rogers emphasized the importance of personality functioning of CONGRUENCE between self & experience —
between what people feel & how they view themselves
●
If you view yourself as a kind person who expresses empathy towards other but have an experience where
you think your cold & unempathetic, you face INCONGRUENCE between sense of self & your
experience
●
What happens when people experience an incongruent between self & experience that suggests inconsistency in
self?
●
Rogers posits that anxiety is the result of a discrepancy between experience & perception of self — the
person will be motivated to defend the self; they’ll engage in defensive processes
●
For Rogers, defensive processes involve defense against a loss of a consistent, integrated sense of self
●
To rogers, we perceive an experience as threatening b/c it conflicts with out self concept, we don’t allow
the experience to be conscious
●
Through SUBCEPTION we can be aware of an experience that’s discrepant with self concept before it reaches
consciousness
●
We react defensively & attempt to deny awareness to experiences that are dimly perceived to be
incongruent with the self structure
●
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Defensive processes are DISTORTION of the meaning of experience & DENIAL of the existence of the experience
●
Denial serves to preserve the self-structure from threat by denying it conscious expression
●
Distortion allows the experience into awareness but in a form that makes it consistent with the self
The emphasis on self consistency might lead one to wonder whether its healthier to see oneself as essentially the
same person across situations or to see oneself as quite different in various social roles
●
Subjects were asked to rate themselves on various personality characteristics in various social roles —
measures of variability across the roles were related to self reports of psychological well being
●
Results indicates that individuals with highly variable role identities were more likely to be anxious,
depressed & low in self esteem
●
Followers of Rogers confirmed the hypothesis that individuals would be slower to perceive words that were
personally threatening than they’d be to perceive neutral words; tendency was characteristic of defensive, poorly
adjusted ppl
●
People with low self esteem are so prone to maintain a consistent self-concept that they fail to even take simple
actions that might put them in a better mood; resigned to painting a poor self image & experience of neg emotions
Need for Positive Regard
●
Proposed that all persons possess a basic psychological need — NEED FOR A POSITIVE REGARD; people need
not only obvious biological facts of life but also something psychological; accepted & respected by others
●
Rogers sees the need for positive regard as a powerful force in the workings on personality — its so powerful that it
can draw ones attention away from experiences of personal value
●
This alternative Rogers describes as CONDITIONS OF WORTH; the child is made to feel like a worthy
individual only if they have some thoughts & feelings but not others (adhering to what others want)
●
If child receives positive regard unconditionally, there’s no need to deny experiences — but if child
experiences conditions of worth, then they need to balance their own natural tendencies with their need
for positive regards
●
Rogers didn’t feel a need to use the concept of motives & drives to account for the activity & goal directness of the
the organism — the person is active & self experiencing, because of past experiences w/ conditional positive regard,
we may deny or distort experiences that threaten the self system
Growth & Development
●
To Rogers, development is not confined to the early years of life — people grow toward self actualization throughout
the life course, experiencing even greater complexity, autonomy, socialization & maturity
●
The self, after becoming a separate part of the phenomenal field early in life, continues to grow in
complexity throughout life
●
Suggested that developmental factors much be considered at two levels of analysis;
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level of parent-child interactions, question is whether the parents provide environment thats optimal for
psychological growth, to rogers, this would be an environment that profited unconditional positive regard
●
level of internal psychological structures, question is whether individuals experience congruence between
self & daily experience or, distort aspects of their experience to attain others regard & a consistent self
concept
●
The major developmental concern is whether the child is free to grow, to be self actualizing or whether conditions
of worth cause the child to be defensive & operate out of state of incongruence
●
Research associated with attachment theory supports the view that a parenting environment that provides
for unconditional positive regard is associated with later secure attachment styles & characteristics of fully
functioning, self actualized person
●
Healthy development of self takes place in climate in which the child can experience fully, can accept
themselves & can be accepted by the parents, even if they disprove of particular types of behaviour
Research on Parent Child Relationships
●
Most critical are children’s perceptions of their parents appraisals; if they feel these appraisals are positive, they find
pleasure in their bodies in their selves — if they feel they’re negative, they’ll develop insecurity & negative
appraisals of the body
●
●
The kinds of appraisals that parents make of their children reflect the parents own degree of self acceptance
Coopersmith defined SELF ESTEEM as the evaluation an individual makes with regard to the self — its an
enduring personal judgement of worthiness, not a momentary good or bad feeling resulting from a situation
●
●
Findings in a study involved the relation of self esteem to other personality characteristics
there are three parental attitudes & behaviours important to the formation of self esteem
●
1. Degree of acceptance, interest, affection & warmth expressed by parents towards the child
●
2. Permissiveness & punishment — tried to affect behaviour by using rewards
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3. Whether parent-child relations were democratic or doctoral
●
Parents of kids with self esteem had established & enforced extensive rules for conduct, but in
doing so treated children fairly within these defined limits & recognizes the rights & opinions
of the child
●
Parents of kids low in self esteem set few & poorly defined limits & are autocratic, doctoral &
rejecting
Ch. 6: Phenomenological Theory (Rogers)
Clinical Applications
●
Rogers work in therapy involved more than just a set of techniques it included a broad perspective on the nature of
the therapeutic setting — he emphasized the expertise & curative power of the client
●
To Rogers, the client possesses an inherent drive towards psychological health; therapists task is merely to help the
client to identify conditions that may interfere with personal growth allowing the person to overcome obstacles & to
move towards self actualization
Psychopathology — Self Experience Discrepancy
●
To Rogers, healthy persons are individuals who can assimilate experiences into their self structure — they’re open
to experiencing rather than interpreting events in a defensive manner; they have CONGRUENCE b/w self &
experience
●
Neurotic person's self concept has become structured in ways that doesn’t fit organismic experience; they
deny awareness of significant sensory & emotional experience, experiences that are incongruent with self
structure
●
This distortion results in discrepancy between actual psychological experiences & the self awareness of
experience; SELF EXPERIENCE DISCREPANCY — involves rigid defence of self against experience
that might threaten self concepts
●
The observer (you) are not the only person who’s unaware of what is actually going in within, by distorting his
experiences, the person has lost an accurate sense of their true self
●
Rogers did want to differentiate among forms of defensive behaviours
●
RATIONALIZATION, people distorts behaviour in such a way to make it consistent with the self
●
FANTASY, a man who defensively believes himself to be an adequate person may fantasize that he’s a
prince & all woman adore him & might deny any experiences that are inconsistent with that image
●
PROJECTION, individual expresses a need but in a form that the need is denied to awareness &
behaviour is viewed as consistent with the self
●
These defense mechanisms are similar to Freuds, but for Rogers, the important aspect of these behaviours is their
handling of an incongruence between self & experience by denial in awareness of distortion of perception
Psychological Change
●
Rogers committed himself to understanding how personality change can come about
●
His contribution to understanding change was work in which he outlined necessary conditions of therapy; he
described types of circumstances & events that need to court in the relationship between client & therapist in order
for personality change to occur
Therapeutic Conditions Necessary for Change
●
Rogers emphasized the therapeutic technique REFLECTION; in this non directive approach, therapists don’t guide
the flow of events in therapy, they merely summarize/reflect back to the client their understanding of that the client
said
●
Reflection is effective, it conveys to the client a feeling of having been thoroughly, deeply understood by
the therapist — CLIENT CENTERED THERAPY
●
In client centered therapy, the therapist not only uses the technique of reflection but also plays a more active role in
understanding the experiences of the client
●
Rogers believed that the critical variable in client centered therapy is the nature of the interpersonal
encounter that develops between therapist & client — THERAPEUTIC CLIMATE
●
Rogers described ideal therapeutic climate in terms of 3 conditions necessary for therapeutic change
●
1. CONGRUENCE/GENUINENESS: congruent therapists display to clients their true thoughts & feelings, they’re
interpersonally open & transparent
●
They experience events in the therapeutic encounter in a natural manner & shares with the client their
genuine feelings, even if the feelings towards the client are negative
●
The client experiences a real interpersonal relationship with the therapist rather than the stilted, formal
relationship that one might usually experiences with a mental health care provider
●
2. UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD: the therapist communicates a deep & genuine caring for the client
as a person
●
Client is prized in a total, unconditional way; the experience of respect & unconditional positive reward
enables clients to explore their inner self with confidence
●
3. EMPATHETIC UNDERSTANDING: therapists ability to perceive the clients experiences as they’re
experienced by the client — therapist strived to achieve empathy with the clients experiences as they’re experienced
by the client during the moment-to-moment encounter in psychotherapy
●
Through active listening, the therapists strives to understand the meaning & subjective feeling of the events
experienced by the clients & to make it clear to the client that they’re being understood empathically by
therapist
Outcomes of Client Centered Therapy
●
To determine whether a therapy works, one must first determine what it means, in principle for a therapy to work
●
Rogers answer is that deep psychological distress doesn’t arise merely from objective events in the world,
it results from an interest sense of personal inadequacy
●
●
So for therapy to work, the client should achieve greater actual-ideal self congruence
Rogers main goal as to evaluate therapy through methods that were objective — recognized that a big limitation in
the methods of evaluating therapy provided by Freud was their method were too subjective
●
In Rogers client centered therapy, he wanted a means of evaluating therapeutic success that was superior
to the subjective reports of a therapist
●
The correlation is a numerical index of the degree of congruence between the actual self & ideal self; a higher
positive correlation indicates a greater congruence between the actual & ideal self
●
With this index of actual-ideal self congruence in hand, Butler & Haigh looked at the effects of Rogerian therapy —
They examined a group of people before & after the individuals experiences ~31 sessions of Rogerian therapy
●
Before therapy, the relation between peoples actual & ideal self was quite low; average correlation was 0
— after therapy, the congruence between these two aspects of self increased significantly
●
Average post-therapy correlation between the actual & ideal self Q-sort was +3,4. Rogers therapy worked,
as evaluated by an objective measurement procedure, the Q-sort
●
The therapeutic changes from this therapy do last, they also found the clients had higher congruence
between ideal & actual self
Presence
●
Rogers view of the conditions necessary for therapeutic improvement changed relatively little over the years after
he first formulated them — one addition is noteworthy; nothing of pressure
●
He came to believe that ‘perhaps I have stressed too much of the three basic conditions’ & in addition to
these 3 relative objective features of the therapeutic setting, another feature was more elusive, difficult to
describe, almost mystical yet much of importance
●
Rogers became aware that in successful therapeutic encounters, he himself experiences his own core self
in interaction with his clients & responded to them in a intuitive way that they sometimes were able to
share with him
●
To the client centered therapists, these deeply intuitive, almost spiritual encounters can be highly transformative —
interpersonal experiences between client & therapist that seem beyond words & logic are thought to foster deep
psychological change
●
The notion of presence used by Rogerian's is recognized in other intellectual circles & other cultures, which suggests
it might have a reality that's deserving of study
The Case of Jim
Semantic Differential; Phenomenological Theory
●
Jim completed ratings of the self concepts self, ideal self, faster & mother using the semantic differential — although
somatic differential is not the exact measure recommended by rogers, its results can be related to Rogerian theory
since its procedures have a phenomenological quality & assess perceptions of self & ideal self
●
First, consider how perceives his self — based on semantic differential, Jim sees himself as intelligent, friendly,
kind; at the same time, other ratings suggest he doesn’t feel free to be expressive & uninhibited
●
●
Thus, he rates himself as reserved, introverted, inhibited, tense, moral & conforming
One gets the impression of an individual who would life to believe that he’s basically good & capable of genuine
interpersonal relationships at the same time the he’s bothered by serious inhibitions & high standard for himself
●
Jim didn’t see a large gap between his self & his ideal self; however, large gaps did occur on a number of specific
scale items (I.e rating himself as weak but his ideal self is strong)
●
Jims ratings of his parents gives some identification of where he sees them in relation to himself in general & to
these qualities in particular
●
If we compare the way Jim perceives his self with his perception of his mom & dad, he clearly perceives
himself to be much more like his dad than his more
●
In the critical areas of warmth & strength, the parents tend to be closer to the ideal self than Jim is
Comments on the Data
●
We learn of his popularity & success through high school & of his good relationship with his father, we find support
for the suggestions from the projective tests of anxiety & difficulties with women
●
We learn of Jims dears of ejaculating too quickly & not being able to satisfy women, we also find an individual who
believes himself to be basically good & interested in doing humane things
●
Given the opportunity to talk about himself & what we would like to be, Jim talks about his desires to be warmer,
more relaxed & stringer
●
In Rogers terms, we see an individual who’s struggling to move towards self-actualization, from dependance towards
independence, from fixity & rigidity to freedom & spontaneity; an individual who is without self consistency &
congruence
Related Conceptions; Human Potential, Positive Psychology & Existentialism
Human Potential Movement
●
Rogers isn’t the only therapist to emphasized peoples capacity for self-actualization — others recognized that
personality functioning involves more than mere repetition of past motives & conflicts suggested by Freud
●
Instead, people had POTENTIALITIES; a basic feature of personality functioning is that people have a capacity to
move forward to realize their inherent potentials
●
Freudian theory fails to do justice to the positive aspect of life… to recognize that the basic phenomenon
of life is an incessant process of coming to terms with the environment
●
Theoretical contributions to human potential movement can be known as the THIRD FORCE in psychology
because they offered an alternative to psychoanalysis & to behaviourism
Abraham Maslow
●
Emphasized the positive aspects of human experiences, propose that people are basically good or neutral rather than
evil, with everyone having an impulse toward growth & the fulfillment of potentials
●
To Maslow, social structures that restrict the individual from realizing their potential are a root cause of this
frustration — the human potential movement became popular among individuals who felt restricted & inhibited by
environment
●
Maslow's views have been important in 2 ways:
●
First, suggested a view of human motivation that distinguishes between biological needs & psychological needs;
one cant survive as a biological organism without food, like one can develop fully as a psychological organism
without the satisfaction of other needs as well
●
●
These needs to be arranged in a hierarchy from basic physiological needs to important psychological needs
Second, his intensive study of healthy, self fulfilling, self actualizing individuals — reasoned that if one wants to
learn about personality, there’s no need to restrict ones study merely to (1) everyday normal personality functioning
or (2) breakdowns in normal functioning resulting in psychopathology
●
Suggested that all of us have the potential to move increasingly in the direction of these qualities
Positive Psychology Movement
●
Maslow's focus on the positive aspects of human nature anticipated a contemporary movement in psychology —
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT / HUMAN STRENGTH MOVEMENT
●
Human frailty & psychopathology have been over emphasized — psychologists tended to examine individuals
suffering from distress, to use those experiences as foundation for theorizing about people & to end up with theories
that emphasize the negative
●
Positive psychologist argue that this focus causes the psychologists to overlook human strengths; one ends up with
a distorted picture of personality the under emphasizes the positive
Classifying Human Strength
●
Seligman tried to classify human strengths— attempted to bring positive side of human nature to the attention of
psychological scientists & foster research; tried to develop a comprehensive classification scheme
●
Two objectives: (1) to identify criteria that would cause a psychological characteristic to be called strength
& (2) to use these criteria to identify a list of strengths
●
Criteria that are defining of human strength; for a characteristic to be a strength, it should be an enduring
characteristic of the person thats beneficial in a variety of life domains
●
Something that both parents & the larger society try to foster in children & thats celebrated by ones
community when its developed — Something thats values in all or more cultures of the world
●
Grouped strength into 6 categories; wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance (forgiveness) & transcendence
(appreciation of beauty — all recognized as positive features of human personality
●
In positive psych, suggests that these virtues are central to human experience & can be enhanced by
parenting & by social institutions
●
Seligman has an interest in positive aspects of personality functioning, retaining an interest in treatment of
depression developing a positive psychotherapy approach to lowering depressing & raising well being
Virtues of Positive Emotions
●
A positive step towards understanding these emotions has been taken by B. Fredrickson, who proposed a
BROADEN-&-BUILD THEORY of positive emotion
●
●
Positive emotions have a specific effect on thoughts & actions, they broaden thought & action tendencies
The emotion of pride motivates one to continue the creative of achievement activities that caused one to feel proud
of oneself — positive emotion contribute directly to the further building of human competencies & achievement
●
Measured three qualities of interest; (1) how resilient people were; individual differences in peoples general tendency
to recover from stress & deal with new situations, (2) physiological indicators of stress as people prepared their
speech, (3) positive emotions; extend to which people felt positive emotions during experiment despite stress
●
People who scored high on resilience experienced lesser degrees of cardiovascular activity indicating stress
●
People who experienced positive emotions — looked on the bright side, remained interested —
experienced less stress
●
The primary reason that some people were resiliently calm is that they were able to experience positive
emotions
Flow
●
M. Csikszentmihalyi worked on the concept FLOW; describes a feature of conscious experiences, specifically to
positive states of consciousness with the following characteristics
●
Perceived match between personal skills & environmental challenge, high level of focused attention,
involvement in an activity such that time seems to fly by & irrelevant thoughts/ distractions don’t enter
consciousness
●
Flow experiences can take place in activities as diverse as work, hobbies, sports, dancing & social interactions —
‘when i’m involved, everything just seems to come to me. I just float along, feeling both excited & calm.’
●
Seligman’s Classification of human strengths, Fredrickson’s broaden & build theory & Csikszentmihalyi work on
flow illustrate the promise & achievement of the positive psychology movement
Existentialism
●
A major aspect of the EXISTENTIALISM view is the significance of the individuals — sees the person as a
singular, unique & irreplaceable we well as an emphasis on freedom, consciousness & self reflection
●
Freedom involves responsibility for choice, action, being authentic, or for acting in bad faith & being inauthentic
●
There’s an emphasis on phenomenology & an understanding of the unique experience of each person in terms of
some standardized definition or the confirmation of some hypothesis
●
Rogers represented an existential emphasis; I.e considering his discussion of loneliness, what is it that constitutes
the existential experience of loneliness;
●
Rogers suggested a number of contributing factors; impersonality of our culture, its transient quality, the
fear of close relationships
●
What most defined loneliness is the effort to share something very personal with someone & to find that
its not received or that its rejected
●
Existential frustration & existential neurosis involve frustration & lack of fulfillment of the will to find meaning
Contemporary Experimental Existentialism
●
Existentialists have long conjectured that thoughts of death are a central feature of human experience
●
experimental existential psychologists advances beyond the early philosophical analyses by taking this general idea
— People awareness & fear of death — & turning it into specific testable hypotheses
●
Significant step is TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY: examines the consequences of combining two factors
— peoples desires to live & peoples awareness of the inevitability of death
●
TMT posits that peoples awareness of death makes them vulnerable to being overwhelmed by terrifying
death anxiety — how do people people manage to avoid terror?
●
TMT suggests that part of the answer lies in social & cultural institutions or world views — they serve psychological
functions; buffer against the fear of death
●
●
TMT is that cultural institutions furnish meaning in life; even if one does dwell on the inevitability
A specific hypothesis follows from TMT; increasing death anxiety — MORTALITY SALIENCE — should lead
to a greater commitment to ones cultural beliefs & greater rejection of cultural beliefs that might threaten ones
worldview
●
Increased mortality salience should lead to greater agreement with & affection for those who share ones
beliefs & greater hostility/disdain for those who don’t share or challenge ones beliefs
●
Existentialism is a philosophical movement thats defined by its topics of primary interests; four features of
existentialism stands out
●
1. Existentialists are concerned with understanding existences — the person in the human condition
●
2. Existentialists are concerned with the individuals — rather than trying to understand human existence
by searching for abstract theoretical principles, existentialists address the experiences of the individual
person
●
3. Existentialists emphasize the human capacity for free choice, a capacity that comes from peoples unique
ability to reflect consciously on alternative possibilities
●
4. Existentialists devote much attention or the phenomenological experiences of anguish & despair — the
feeling of ‘existential crisis’ — that result when people reflect on their alienation from the world, a loss of
meaning in life, or the inevitability of death
Developments in Research: The Self & Authenticity
Discrepancies Among Parts of the Self
●
According to Rogers, psychological pathology results from discrepancies between self-concept & actual experience
— contemporary research focuses on the role of discrepancies in psychological distress
●
This work differs from Rogers, it tends to focus less on discrepancies between self & experience, & more
on an internal psychological discrepancy; discrepancy between different parts of the self
●
Higgins’s work addressed the relation between aspects of self-concept & emotional experience — his work extends
rogers thinking by differentiating between 2 aspects of ones future self
●
In addition to the ideal self, Higgins suggested that everyone possesses an OUGHT SELF: an aspect of
self-concept thats concerned with duties, responsibilities & obligations — the ideal self centers on personal
hopes
●
According to Higgins, discrepancies between actual self & ideal self lead to DEJECTION RELATED
EMOTIONS; if someone has an ideal self of being an A student but gets a C, they’ll likely feel disappointed, sad
or depressed
●
The distinction between ideal self & ought self is important because it helps separate two kinds of self
relevant emotions; those related to dejection (disappointment, sadness) & those related to agitation (fear,
threat)
●
Relation between self-discrepancies & emotional experience is not fixed, but can vary — an important factor is the
degree to which people are aware of their self-discrepancies at any given times
●
If some feature of the social environment causes people to dell on themselves, than discrepancies among
aspects of the self concept may influence emotional experience more strongly
●
Looking in mirror has the effect of drawing ones attention to oneself —researchers fond that self
discrepancies are linked more strongly to emotional experiences in conditions of high self awareness when
they faced the mirror
Fluctuations in Self-Esteem & Contingencies of Worth
●
Rogers idea about the self implied that people possess a relatively stable sense of self-worth / esteem — to bring
changes in peoples sense of self, it appeared that systematic efforts (I.e client centered therapy) was required
●
Crocker & Wolfe are interested in ‘CONTINGENCIES OF SELF WORTH’ — a person's self esteem depends
on positive & negative events
●
●
Its the successes & failures that are the contingencies of self worth on which the self esteem depends
In addition to the possibility of fluctuations in self esteem, Crocker & Wolfe’s theoretical framework highlights
another point; people may differ in the degree to which any given event is a contingency of self worth
●
The impact of events on ones self esteem should depend on the perceived relevance of those event to ones
contingencies of self worth
●
Although high self esteem would appear to be a good thing, surprisingly its not related to the measure of objective
outcomes
●
Rather than a global self esteem thats related to all aspects of performance, self esteem may have many components
to it, each of which is related to a specific area
Authenticity & Internally Motivated Goals
●
AUTHENTICITY: defined as the extent to which people behave in accord with their self as opposed to behaving
in terms of rules that fosters false self presentations
●
Key idea in authenticity is that, to understand human experience, one cant look merely at peoples observable
behaviours — One must explore inner feelings as well
●
Specifically one must as whether people feel that their activities are consistent with their true self rather
than being phony actions that express a false self
●
In addition to this overall relationship with psychological being, it was found that the more genuine & self expressive
people feel they’re in a specific situation
●
Individuals may vary in their behaviours from situation to situation, but the critical questions Is whether
they feel they’re being authentic & true to their self overall
Self-Determination Theory
●
SELF DETERMINATION THEORY suggests all human beings have fundamental psychological needs to be
competent, autonomous & related to others — basic, universal human needs
●
The need for competence refers to feeling effective in ones actions, the need to be autonomous refers to the need to
act in autonomous, self directed ways & to engage in tasks that are intrinsically motivated (motivated by intrinsic
rewards) as opposed to in tasks that were coerced or forced (motivated by external rewards & punishments)
●
The need for relatedness refers to feelings connected with others & having a sense of belonging in community —
satisfaction of these basic psychological needs is associated with healthy psychological functioning
●
There are 2 caveats worthy of note
●
First, its not the goal per se thats important but why the goal is being pursued — the same goal can be
pursues for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons
●
●
Second, its easy to assume that these principles of motivation apply to all people
A final note in relation to self determination theory concerns its recent emphasis on how social contexts can facilitate
or impair satisfaction of the basic psychological needs
Cross Cultural Research on the Self
●
Does Rogers’s work provide us with a general view of human nature or with a view that pertains primarily to people
in the industrialized western world?
Cultural Differences in the Self & the Need for Positive Self Regard
●
The basic nature of the self & the need for positive regard may vary from culture to culture
●
In eastern cultures, the self concept consists of connections with others, & individual parts that cant be
understood when separated from the greater, collective whole
●
This cultural understanding of self stands in contrast with the self in western civilization; views self as
unique & separate from others
●
To rogers, unconditional acceptance of the individual, whatever their faults may be, is the pathway to psychological
heart — such unconditional regards builds the individuals sense that they’re a valued prized person
●
If psychological processes regarding the self are akin to biological processes, then the answer is yes, but
psychological processes involving the self may not be like this
●
The very notion of the self is acquired socially, people acquire a sense of self from interaction with the
individuals who make up their family, community & wider culture
●
Its possible that some cultures teach people to have a need for positive regard; a culture of values the
individuals & individual achievements may foster the belief that individuals should enhance their own
well being
●
It appears that the cultures of the U.S & if Japan teach people different ways of evaluating the self
●
These variations in the nature & functioning of self evaluations & self-esteem are understandable in light of
contemporary research on culture & personality
Contemporary Developments: Personality Systems Interaction Theory & Integrated Self
●
A distinctive feature of Rogers theory of personality is that is holistic — he believed that personality cant be directed
into parts; the core of personality, the self, is an organized, integrated whole
●
You cant understand a person a person as a whole by dividing the individual into a set of variables that are
analyzed one at a time
Limitations of Rogerian Theory; What is the ‘integrated self’?
●
A strength of Rogers approach is that it captures peoples experiences of themselves, or their ‘phenomenology’ —
people experience themselves as while, unified persons, not as collections of personality variables
●
What exactly is this whole, integrates self? A limitation of rogers theory is that he doesn’t answer this question In a
precise way
●
When it comes to the analysis of the self, Rogers theory is more descriptive than explanatory; vividly
describes the psychological experiences that compel one to propose an integrates self as the core of
personality, but never explained where this integrates self comes from
●
When one analyzes the workings of the mind, its obvious that mental processes are highly diverse; people hold a
wide variety of beliefs & possess a near infinity of memories
●
What needs to be explained is how a whole, integrated self emerges out of this psychological & biological diversity;
Rogers didn’t accomplish this
●
He never identified the psychological or neural symptoms that enabled people to experience an integrated,
unified sense of self
Personality Systems Interaction Theory
Four Functionally Distinct Personality Systems
●
Personality system interactions identified 4 personality systems that have distinct functional properties
●
1. ANALYTIC THINKING SYSTEM: mental system that processes material in a logical, step by step manner —
you’re consciously aware of this step by step analytic thinking when you talk to yourself about your day
●
2. HOLISTIC THINKING & FEELING SYSTEM: a parallel processing system, one where large numbers of
psychological processes occur at the same time; central processing is a central feature of the human mind
●
PSI recognizes that 2 features of parallel processing systems are important to personality
●
One is that parallel processing occurs outside of consciousness — conscious awareness is limited
(impossible to be aware of a large number of things at the same time)
●
Second, different processes often are interconnected, although the brain is engaged In multiple
thinking processes at the same time, the interconnections among these processes allow for into
to be combined
●
PSI argues that interconnections among mental processes that occur in parallel are key to the integrated
sense of self described by Rogers — parallel processing connections let the mind combine thoughts &
feelings about the self into an integrated whole
●
3. INTUITIVE BEHAVIOUR CONTROL SYSTEM: mental system that allows you to engage in behaviour
without having to pay attention to each step you’re talking
●
4. DISCREPANCY DETECTION SYSTEM: mental system that recognizes when something wrong, its sensitive
to differences between sensory experiences & prior expectations of goals
Emotion & the Four Personality Systems
●
PSI takes a step that rogers didn’t, it identifies which emotional states influence the ways in which people think
about themselves
●
A core insight of PSI is that changes in emotion — increase or decrease in positive & negative emotions — activate
the personality systems
Implications for Rogers Self Theory of Personality
Scientific Basis for the Holistic, Integrated Seallportlf
●
Rogers wasn’t able to identify the cognitive, emotional & brain systems that enables people to achieve a coherent
sense of self
●
Proposed the self exists but didn’t provide a scientific basis for this proposal — but PSI shows that the concept of
an integrated self does have a scientific basis
Demystifying Process of Change in Client Centered Therapy
●
Roger felt that the central ingredient of his client centered theory was interpersonal, he provided a warm, supportive
interpersonal relationship in which clients experienced unconditional positive regard
●
This changed the way clients thought about themselves, with the change being in the direction of personal
growth
●
●
The psychological process through which this change occurs remains a bit of a mystery
PSI theory demystifies the process of client centered change in the following way
●
client entering therapy generally are experiencing distressed, negative emotions; these distressing
emotions are a main reason why people see therapy
●
This positive interpersonal experience naturally would lower the clients level of negative emotions — this
psychological process is the one that enhances holistic thinking
●
PSI suggested that the influence of Rogerian therapy on clients thoughts & feelings is a special case of a more general
psychological process
Critical Evaluation
Scientific Observation; Database
●
The scientific observation on which Rogers based his theory are quite admirable; Rogers was sensitive to the fact
that scientific observations must be objective
●
Rogers allows transcripts & recordings of his therapy sessions to be made public; outsiders could verify the reports
●
Other features of Rogers scientific observation seem limited in light of contemporary science — one involves the
type of personality assessment method he used; relied on explicit measures where clients put statements
●
There is also a lack of cultural diversity — he devoted little attention to the possibility of cultural variation in the
nature of self concept
Ch. 7: Trait Theories I (Allport, Eysenck & Cattell)
A View of the Trait Theorists
●
In the 20th century, the foundations for trait psychology were laid by three investigators whose work is of particular significance: Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell, and Hans Eysenck
Trait Theory’s View of the Person
●
●
When talking about people, we commonly use personality trait terms—words that describe people’s typical styles
of experience and action
Personality researchers associated with the trait approach consider traits to be the major units of personality
-The Trait Concept
●
●
●
Personality traits refer to consistent patterns in the way individuals behave, feel, and think
Trait terms, then, have two connotations: consistency and distinctiveness
○ By consistency, we mean that the trait describes a regularity in the person’s behavior
○ The idea of disposition highlights an impor- tant fact about trait terms as used by trait theorists
of personality
trait theorist is concerned primarily with psychological characteristics in which people differ—features
that therefore make one person distinct compared to others.
Trait Theory’s View of the Science of Personality
●
The ability to measure psychological traits reliably and validly is the utterly critical first step in building a science
of personality in the trait-theoretical view.
-Scientific Functions Served by Trait Constructs
●
Trait theorists use trait constructs to serve at least two, and sometimes three, scientific functions:
description, prediction, and explanation.
*Description
*Prediction
*Explanation
Trait Theories of Personality: Basic Perspectives Shared by Trait Theorists
●
●
●
The most basic assumption is that people possess broad predispositions, called traits, to respond in particular ways
A related assumption is that there is a direct correspondence between the person’s perfor- mance of trait-related
actions and his or her possession of the corresponding trait
Another shared assumption is that human behavior and personality can be organized into a hierarchy (By Eysenck)
-The Trait Theory of Gordon W. Allport (1897–1967)
●
●
●
Allport believed that traits are the basic units of personality
traits actually exist and are based in the nervous system. They represent generalized personality dispositions that
account for regularities in the functioning of a person across situations and over time
Traits can be defined by three proper- ties—frequency, intensity, and range of situations
*Traits: Personality Structure in Allport’s Theory
●
●
●
defined traits as “gener- alized and personalized determining tendencies—consistent and stable
modes of an individual’s adjustment to his environment”
Chaplin, John, and Goldberg (1988) replicated Allport and Odbert’s classifications of
personality descriptors into three categories: traits, states, and activities
○ Ex. whereas a person may well be gentle throughout his or her lifetime, an
infatuation (an internal state) typically does not last and even the most enjoyable
carousing (activity) must come to an end.
Different kinds of traits:
○
○
○
Cardinal trait expresses a disposition that is so pervasive and outstanding in a
person’s life that virtually every act is traceable to its influence
Central traits (e.g., honesty, kind- ness, assertiveness) express dispositions that
cover a more limited range of situations than is true for cardinal traits
Secondary dispositions are traits that are the least conspicuous, generalized, and
consistent
*Functional Autonomy
●
●
Allport analyzed not only stable traits but also motivational processes
He emphasized the functional autonomy of human motives:
○ although the motives of an adult may have their roots in the tension-reducing
motives of the child, as Freud suggested, the adult grows out of the early motives
○ In adult life, motives become independent of, or autonomous from, ear- lier tensionreducing drives
*Idiographic Research
●
●
He emphasized on the uniqueness of the individual
Idiographic Strategy:
○ focuses on the potentially unique individual
*Identifying Primary Trait Dimensions: Factor Analysis
●
●
●
●
Factor analysis is a statistical tool for summarizing the ways in which a large number of
variables go together, or co-occur.
○ a correlation is a number that summarizes the degree to which two variables go
together
○ If there were only two variables in which trait theorists were interested, then the
technique of correlation would be suf- ficient for their purposes
Factor analysis is a statistical method for identifying patterns in this mass of correlations
Factor analysis is a technique of mathematical statistics, not psychology.
○ If a factor analysis identifies six mathematical factors that summarize correlations
among personality test items, then the trait psychologist will usually refer to the
resulting six-dimensional mathematical structure as the “structure of personality.”
It is the tool they use to identify the structures of personality
-The Factor-Analytic Trait Theory of Raymond B. Cattell (1905–1998)
●
●
●
Cattell gained knowledge of the newly developed (in his time) technique of factor analysis
with his background in chem- istry Cattell recognized the importance to scientific advance of having a
taxonomy of “basic elements,” such as the periodic table
Cattell judged that factor analysis could yield a set of basic psychological elements that would be
foundational to personality psychology
*Surface and Source Traits: Personality Structure in Cattell’s Theory
● Cattell provided two conceptual distinctions that are both valuable for distinguishing among
the multiplicity of personality traits;
○ One distinction differentiates surface traits from source traits.
■ Surface traits represent behavioral tendencies that are literally superficial:
They exist “on the surface” and can be observed
■ Source traits is internal psychological structures that were the source, or
underlying cause, of observed intercorrelations among surface traits
○ To understand this co-occurrence of traits, Cattell relied on the technique of factor
analysis.
■ The factors (i.e., the mathematical dimensions identi- fied via factor
analysis) that summarized the correlations among surface traits are, in
Cattell’s system, the source traits.
● Source Traits:
○ Identified 16 source traits & grouped them into 3
categories.
■
●
Ability traits refer to skills and abilities that
allow the individual to function effectively
(ex. intelligence)
■ Temperament traits involve the emotional
life and the stylistic quality of behavior (ex.
tendency to work quickly versus slowly)
■ Dynamic traits concern the striving,
motivational life of the individual (ex.
Individuals who are more or less motivated)
Ability, temperament, and dynamic traits are seen as capturing the major stable elements of
personality.
*Sources of Evidence: L-Data, Q-Data, and OT-Data
●
●
●
Cattell relied on three different types—or three different sources—of data about personality.
○ Life record data (L-data)-- relates to behavior in actual, everyday situations such as
school performance or interactions with peers
○ Self-report questionnaire data (Q-data)--involves self-report data or responses to
questionnaires
○ Objective-test data (OT-data)--involves behavioral miniature situations in which
the subject is unaware of the relationship between the response and the personality
characteristic being measured
Four steps in Cattell’s research:
○ (1) He set out to define the structure of personality in three areas of observation,
called L-data, Q-data, and OT-data
○ (2) He started his research with L-data and through the factor analysis of ratings
came up with 15 source traits.
○ (3) Based on research findings, he developed the 16 P.F. Questionnaire, which
contains 12 traits that match traits found in the L-data research and four traits that
appear to be unique to questionnaire methods.
○
(4) Using these results to guide his research in the development of objec- tive tests,
Cattell found 21 source traits in OT-data that appear to have a complex and low-level
relation to the traits found in the other data.
But what is the evidence for the existence of these traits?
○ (1) the results of factor analyses of different kinds of data,
○ (2) similar results across cultures,
○ (3) similar results across age groups,
○ (4) utility in the prediction of behavior in the natural environment,
○ (5) evidence of significant genetic contributions to many traits.
*Stability and Variability in Behavior
●
●
Cattell did not view persons as static entities who behaved the same way in all situations.
Cattell highlighted two other determi- nants: states and roles
○ State refers to emotion and mood at a particular, delimited point in time.
■ One’s psychological state is partly determined by one’s immediate
situation. Illustrative states are anxiety, depression, fatigue, arousal, and
curiosity
○ Concept of role: certain behaviors are more closely linked to social roles one must
play than to personality traits one possesses
■ Social roles, not personality traits, explain why people shout at football
games and not in churches
Although Cattell believed that traits foster stability in behavior across situations, he also
recognized that a person’s mood (state) and style of self-presentation in a given situation (role)
contribute to behavior
-The Three-factor Theory of Hans J. Eysenck (1916–1997)
●
Like Cattell, his work was influenced by advances in statistical techniques, especially factor analysis
●
●
Eysenck’s emphasis on biological foundations of personality traits
Eysenck recognized that trait theory can break out of such conceptual circles by going beyond the mere
use of words and identifying biological systems that correspond to trait
*“Superfactors”: Personality Structure in Eysenck’s Theory
●
●
●
●
●
Similar to Cattell, Eysenck also conducted factor analysis but took it one step further He
conducted secondary factor analyses.
○ A secondary factor analysis is a statistical analysis of an initial set of factors that are
correlated with one another.
He used secondary factor analysis to identify a simple set of factors that were independent, that
is, not correlated with each other.
○ These secondary factors of course also are traits: They are consistent styles of
emotion or behavior that distinguish people from one another, and the superfactors
are continuous dimensions
But they are factor-analytic trait dimensions at the highest level of a hierarchy of traits, and
thus Eysenck called them
○ (1) introversion– extraversion○ (2) neuroticism (alternatively called emotional stability versus instability)
The Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen proposed the existence of four basic personality
types:
○ Melancholic
○ Phlegmatic
○ Choleric,
○ Sanguine.
■ These four basic personality types could be represented by where the
person falls on the introversion (I), extraversion (E), and stable-unstable
(N) dimensions
Three factors
○ Psychoticism,
○ Extraversion,
○ Neuroticism
-Measuring the Factors
●
He developed questionnaire measures (e.g., the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire)
that contained simple self-report items designed to tap each of the factors
*Biological Bases of Personality Traits
●
●
●
●
●
Eysenck provided specific scientific models of the biological bases of individual differences
One therefore needs a separate biological model for each of the three traits
○ The trait for which Eysenck’s theorizing about underlying biology has proven most
successful is extraversion
individual variations in introversion–extraversion reflect individual differences in the
neurophysiological functioning of the brain’s cortex
○ Introverts--experience more cortical arousal from events in the world
■ make them over aroused—an aversive state that they avoid.
○ Extroverts-- experience less cortical arousal than introverts from a given stimulus
Regarding neuroticism, Eysenck hypothesized that the key neural systems are (a) the limbic
system, a lower-level brain region involved in emotional arousal and (b) the autonomic
nervous system, the part of the nervous system that influences bodily arousal (e.g., heart rate,
sweat gland activity)
○ Unfortunately for Eysenckian theory, research has not consistently supported this
physiological theory of neuroticism
For psychotisicm genetic association is suggested, in particular an association linked with
maleness; aggressiveness
○
higher in men and may be affected by levels of testosterone
○ A more recent suggestion involved a neurotransmitter in the brain, namely,
dopamine. Research suggests that people with higher levels of psychoticism have
higher levels of dopamine-based neural activity
*Extraversion and Social Behavior
●
●
extraversion is probably the most extensively studied of all traits, in part because relevant
behaviors are relatively easy to observe
those individuals whose personalities were most predisposed to suggestion proved most
susceptible to influence by suggestions of a real epidemic
*Psychopathology and Behavior Change
●
A person develops neurotic symptoms because of the joint action of a biological system and
environmental experiences that contribute to the learning of strong emotional reactions to fearproducing stimuli
○ neurotic patients tend to have high neuroticism and low extraversion scores
○ In contrast, criminals and antisocial persons tend to have high neuroticism, high
extraversion, and high psychoticism scores
*Evaluation of Eysenckian Theory
●
●
Mathews grounds his argument in a number of critiques of Eysenckian theory; they include the
following:
○ Measures did not align with theory.
○ Eysenckian theory underestimated the complexity of the brain.
○ Cognitive factors affect performance.
Matthews central argument is that personality traits partly reflect an individual's beliefs about
themselves and the social world.
Ch. 8: Trait theories II (Five Factor Model)
Contemporary Developments in Trait Theory: Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory
(RST)
Limitations
- Limitations to the classical trait theory are evident when considering: the goal of a
personality theory and the distinctive strategy of the classical trait approach.
o The main goal of personality theory is to provide scientific explanation by
identifying psychological systems that an individual possesses and
contributes to the individual’s personality style.
o The strategy to trait theory relies on factor analysis. A large number of
people are asked to fill out a personality questionnaire and their
responses are factor analyzed. The resulting statistical factors summarize
the main ways that people differ from one another.
Top-Down Strategy
- The top-down strategy is when one tries to identify a small set of “high level” personal
variables and use these variables to explain a variety of lower-level tendencies and
behaviours. Many trait theories use this strategy.
- The problem with this approach is that the variables will not correspond in any
consistent manner to psychological structures that individuals actually possess. Meaning
that people having similar variables do not mean they have anything in common in terms
of their personality. For example, a successful doctor, successful musician, and a
successful lawyer have the variable “success” in common but that has no bearing on
their personality, they could have nothing in common. There is, in other words, no “oneto-one mapping” of successfulness scores to underlying psychology or biology.
- With this approach, the statistics (the factor analysis) came first, and the hunt for
underlying biological mechanisms came second.
Bottom-Up Strategy (adopted by RST pioneers)
-
To solve the issue with the top-down approach, the bottom-up approach was created.
- This approach is the opposite of the top-down, instead the strategy is to first identify
the fundamental properties of brain-behavioural systems and then relate
variations in these systems to known measures of personality.
- Another critique RST theorist’s have is of the five factor model (big five). The model
describes between-person differences in personality but cannot explain how an
individual’s emotions and behaviors might vary across situations and over time. Just as
“successfulness” does not explain why a person has a high income or a lot of good
friends, five-factor “agreeableness” does not explain why a person displays cordial,
affable behavior.
Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST)
-
Founder: British scientist Jeffery A. Gray
- Goal: identify neural subsystems in the brain that correspond to universal types of
motivation and emotion.
Neural Subsystems
- Neural subsystem is an interconnected collection of mechanisms that may be located
in different parts of the brain but work together to carry out a particular function. RST
tries to identify which subsystems are related to emotion and motivation.
o E.g., visual system is a neural subsystem: made up of different parts in
different locations (eye, middle of brain, visual cortex) but all work
together to mainly provide vision.
- Through neural subsystems, you can explain individual differences. The same way
the visual system can explain differences in sight, individual differences in other brain
systems may explain person-to-person variations in emotion and motivation.
Three RST Systems
- Behavioural Approach System (BAS): Biological system that responds to
pleasurable, desired stimuli. These stimuli generally are called appetitive a term which
indicates that they fulfill bodily needs. The BAS responds to appetitive stimuli that
immediately fulfill those needs, as well as to other stimuli that are associated to them
through classical conditioning.
o When you are hungry BAS would become active if you saw or smelled
food. When you see or smell food you start becoming hungry or become
aware of hunger. BAS produces anticipatory pleasure, the positive
feeling of looking forward to an upcoming positive activity (the feeling
when seeing the food knowing you’ll eat soon).
- Fight-Flight-Freeze system (FFFS): this system responds to stimuli that are
potentially dangerous or harmful. There are three types of responses: confronting the
threat (fight), escaping the threat (flight), or complete immobility (freeze). The emotion
generated by activation of the FFFS is fear.
- Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS): the BIS resolves goal conflicts. Gaol conflicts
are two goals that conflict each other or when the two goals are activating different RST
systems (BAS and FFFS). The BIS responds to the conflict by providing the necessary
emotions/motivations to appease the two goals.
o When a small animal is looking for food in the wild its BAS is active as it is
looking forward or encountering food sources (reward). At the same time,
its FFFS is activated as the chances of predators being in the area are
high. Here the goal of getting food and the goal of avoiding becoming a
predators food conflict. Searching for food exposes the prey to predators
and hiding eliminates the chance of eating. The BIS will then generate
anxiety and a defensive approach where the animal will still pursue the
reward (food) but with heightened sensitivity to environmental threats.
Individual differences in the functioning of each system create individual differences in
emotion and behavior. Specifically,
- People with a particularly active BAS would be expected to be more impulsive than
others.
- People with highly sensitive and active FFFS’s would be prone to fear-related clinical
disorders such as phobias.
-
People with BIS are more active than others would be prone to experiencing anxiety.
Even though the three neurobiological systems were first identified in laboratory research
with animals, they may explain individual differences in the social behavior and emotions of
people
Implications for Classical Trait Theory
When contrasting RST with classic trait theory, three points stand out
Identifiable RST Biological Mechanisms
- One point is that the exact biological underpinnings of the RST systems are
reasonably well understood. This is not something one can say about the Big Five
variables. This understanding comes from research not only in personality science but
also in psychological science and neuroscience more generally. The BIS is studied a lot
in cognitive science. In trying to understand how mental resources are allocated when
people have conflicting goals, it was found that to activate a particular region of the brain
known as the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). Thus, the ACC is a neural system that
may carry out the psychological functions of the BIS.
There is No One-to-One Mapping of Big Five Variables to Underlying Biology
- The second implication of RST is that there is no one-to-one mapping of Big Five
variables to underlying psychology and biology. RST explains that fear and anxiety have
different biological underpinning; fear results from FFFS activation whereas anxiety
results from BIS activation. A theory of personality thus should identify different
psychological structures that are associated, respectively, with anxiety and with fear. But
consider the five-factor variable of neuroticism. It combines anxiety and fear together in
one variable; questions about (a) apprehensive anxiety and (b) fear are both found in
five-factor measures of neuroticism. Furthermore, impulsiveness—which RST
researchers explain is a product of a third neurobiological system, the BAS—also is a
facet of five-factor neuroticism. There really are distinct biological systems of personality,
according to RST. But they simply don’t correspond to the variables of five-factor theory.
RST Makes Trait Theory Interactionist
- A third implication of RST concerns person-situation interaction. The term person–
situation interaction refers simultaneously to two facts; the first concerns psychology
systems and the second involves observable behavior: (1) Any given personality
structure may be activated in one situation but not another; psychological structures and
situations thus interact. (2). At the level of observable behavior, there are person-bysituation interactions.
o People may feel or believe in something in different times. A student may
believe they are horrible at math. This belief is not always present/active.
It may be active when in math class or discussing course planning,
however the belief is not lawyers activated. People may even feel
confident when talking about school and school life but become selfconscious when the discussion turns to math class. People’s behavior
varies from one situation to another; almost everyone is outgoing in some
setting but shy in others, conscientious about some things and not others.
- Trait theorists are aware of these interactions, but the theories do not explain them.
RST explains these interactions in two ways:
o One is that the theory specifies ways in which three RST systems are
activated by environmental cues. The three RST systems are not global
traits that pertain to any and all situations. Instead, situations that include
cues involving reward, threat, and a need to resolve goal conflicts activate
the BAS, FFFS, and BIS, respectively.
o The second way is through attention. People’s attention throughout the day
changes, when you are relaxed and alert early in the day, you can focus.
When tired later in the day, attention wanders. If you are feeling anxious,
your attention may become “locked in” to the source of your anxiety,
causing you to fail to pay attention to opportunities that might reduce your
anxiety.
Both RST and classic trait theories devote little attention, for example, to cognitive processes
and social skills that are central to an individual's life success. Nevertheless, RST does
represent a significant advance toward a biologically grounded theory of psychological
mechanisms of personality.
Person-Situation Controversy
Since the 1960s, various writers have questioned whether there is enough consistency in
social behavior even to support the idea of trait concepts as a centerpiece of personality
theory. Walter Mischel’s, a writer, review of research evidence led him to conclude that
people’s behavior often varies or is inconsistent from one situation to another. This
inconsistency, he reasoned, reflects a basic human capability: the capability to discriminate
between different situations and to vary one’s actions in accord with the different
opportunities, constraints, rules, and norms present in different circumstances. The debate
and questioning of the effect situations have on behaviour and personality is known as the
person-situation controversy, which dominated the professional field.
In considering whether people are consistent in their personality traits, one must distinguish
two aspects of such consistency:
- Longitude stability: are people high on a trait at point in time also high on that trait at
another point of time?
- Cross-situational consistency: are people high on a trait in some situation also high
on that trait in other situations?
Trait theorists suggest that both are true, that is, that people are stable over time and across
situations in their trait personality characteristics. There is, generally, evidence of longitudinal
stability of trait however cross-situational stability is much more complex, therefore critiqued.
Cross-Situational Consistency issues:
- How do we decide that a person has acted, across situations, in a manner that we
should call “consistent” or “inconsistent?” The trait position that needs to be evaluated
empirically is whether there is consistency across a range of situations where different
behaviors are considered expressive of the same trait. Many theorists say it is
impossible to measure behaviour in one situation as evidence of a person’s standing
trait. A single situation may not be relevant to the trait in question, and it is possible for
an error in measurement to be made. On the other hand, sampling over a wide range of
situations ensures that relevant and reliable measures will be obtained.
- What happens if one takes these considerations into account and actually measures
the consistency of trait-related behavior? Mischel and Peake did a study of that and
found that there were high results of longitudinal stability but low results of crosssituational consistency. They emphasize that a basic fact of social life is that people may
vary their behavior from one situation to another. In so doing, they commonly may
display behaviors that are inconsistent with respect to a broad personality trait. This
result was consistent with findings from much earlier studies that similarly indicated that
levels of longitudinal stability could be quite high, whereas the cross-situational
consistency of behaviors related to a broad trait might be low.
Trait questionnaires do not ask about how variable a behaviour is, just general tendencies.
Fleeson researched the variables of behaviours by asking participants to record their
behaviour a few times a day over a number of days. He asked them to rate behaviours such
as how “talkative they were in the past hour” repeatedly over a couple of days giving him a
lot of information. With this information, one can determine not only average levels of
behavior but also the degree to which people’s behavior varies around the average. His
results indicated that there was a lot of trait-related behaviour. The average individual
routinely and regularly manifests all levels of” these traits and also most levels of
Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. People do differ in their average level of behavior.
But that’s only a part of the story. As they adapt to the diverse challenges and opportunities
of daily life, people vary their behavior substantially, and these variations simply are not
described, or explained, by trait constructs.
In terms of Person-situation controversy it is fair to say that there is evidence of trait
consistency but within domains of situations (e.g., home, school, etc.) rather than across
domains of situations. To a certain extent people are the same regardless of context, and to
a certain extent they also are different depending on the context. Trait theorists are
impressed with the former and use such evidence to support their position, whereas
situationist theorists are impressed with the latter and use such evidence to support their
position.
Critical Evaluation
Trait theory is:
- Scientific observation – 3 advantages: objective, diverse population, and diverse data
(sef reports, reports by observers, measures of objective life events, etc.). 1
disadvantage: rarely employs the in-depth methods. Someone’s general qualities are
assessed rather than their inner psychological dynamics, making is a “psychology of a
stranger”
- Systematic: some theorists say yes, others say no. As a whole trait theory scores
really low on providing a systemic account of diverse aspects of personality
- Testable: Trait theory is extremely testable via objective evidence. Trait theorists
make numerous other predictions that are open to unambiguous empirical tests. In each
case, the trait theorist could, in principle, be proven wrong. Their ideas are open to
objective empirical testing
- Comprehensive: In some respects, the trait theories are remarkably comprehensive.
Trait theorists have tried to ensure, then, that all significant individual differences are
incorporated into their factor-analytic studies of personality structure. Yet in other ways
their efforts are lacking in comprehensiveness. Many topics of interest to other
personality psychologists simply were not addressed by the primary trait theorists.
o There is relative absence of analyses of personality processes. The
theories tell us far more about the stable “building blocks” of personality—
personality trait structures—than about dynamic personality processes.
This is a significant limitation.
o One cannot confidently assume that the traits identified in factor analyses
of individual differences are qualities that exist in the psyche of each and
every individual.
o Application: If the provision of tools for the prediction of individual
differences is the main applied product one wants from a personality
theory, then trait theory applications can be judged a success. However,
other personality theorists want the theory of personality to be clinically
useful, and they find trait theory lacking in this regard.
- A major strength of the trait approach is its capacity to move from a psychological to
a biological level of analysis. Work in genetics and neurophysiology has begun to identify
biological foundations of individual differences, as we review in the chapter ahead.
Although all personality psychologists recognize that persons are biological beings, the
trait model particularly lends itself to the integration of biological findings into a
comprehensive model of personality.
Ch. 11: Cognitive Theory (Kelly)
Kelly’s View of the Science of Personality
● Fundamental question that Kelly raised “What are scientists doing when they are constructing
theories?”
● “True versus false” is not the right question to ask about a scientific theory
○ Important questions to ask instead:
■ Is the theory useful? How is the theory useful? Does the theory enable one to
do some useful things that one couldn't do without the theory?
■ How does one evaluate a theory’s usefulness?
■ What important events can one predict using a given theory?
● Constructive alternativism: seeing the world through the lens of different theories, as each
of which may enable one to have a useful view of the world.
○ Scientific theorizing does not involve the pursuit of one single “correct” theory
○ Scientist attempt to construe events: interpreting phenomena in order to make sense
of them
● Personality science is not concerned with the discovery of truth, rather it is effort to develop
scientific construct systems that are useful in predicting events.
● “Invitational mood”: one is free to invite many alternative interpretations of phenomena and
to entertain propositions that initially many seem absurd
○ Allows people to develop creative hypothesis
● Range of convenience: the boundaries of the phenomena that the theory can cover
● Focus of convenience: the points within the boundaries where the theory works best
● Theories are modifiable and ultimately expendable, when it stops leading to new predictions
or leads to wrong predictions.
● Kelly questioned other traditional assumptions:
○ He questioned the emphasis on measurement
○ He considered the clinical method to be more useful than the experimental method
○ A good scientific theory should encourage the invention of new approaches and
solutions of the problems of people
Kelly’s View of the Person
● Person-as-scientist: just like scientists, the layperson uses constructs to predict events . The
layperson’s theory may be informal and nonscientific but the task is fundamentally the same.
○ As a central feature in our lives, we develop theories, test hypotheses, and weigh
evidence.
○ People are oriented to the future
○ There can be constructive alternativism in the domain of personal constructs
● People respond actively to the environment, and actively think about their own thought
processes.
○ People are both free and determined: we have freedom to deal with the meaning of
events and we are only limited by the choices of alternatives that we make for
ourselves
Personality Theory of George A. Kelly
Structure
● Construct:
○ element of knowledge.
○ Concept used to interpret, or construe, the world
○ Used to categorize events
○ Happens automatically
● Core Idea: Person anticipates events by observing patterns and regularities and distinguishing
similarities and contrasts.
● Three elements necessary to form a construct:
○ Two elements must perceived as similar to each other (forming the similarity pole)
○ The way in which these two are contrasted with the third pole forms the contrast
pole
■ ex. observing two people helping someone and a third hurting someone could
lead to the kind/cruel construct (kind=similarity pole, cruel=contrast pole)
● Through the use of other constructs, subtleties and refinements in the construction of events
are made
● People use constructs to interpret events as well as to plan for future occurrences
Constructs and Their Interpersonal Consequences
● Personal constructs- bipolar ideas such as moral/immoral, liberal/conservative, and
clutch/chokes
● People reveal aspects of their own personality in the constructs they use to describe others
● Differences in construct systems have important interpersonal consequences
○ Create conflicts between people who have different views
○
Difficulties in communication as a result of not realizing that people have similar
constructs in common
Types of Constructs and the Construct System
● Verbal Constructs: can be expressed in words
● Preverbal Constructs: one that is used even though the person has no words to express it
○ Learned before the person develops use of language
● This idea relates to the Freudian phenomena of conscious vs. unconscious
● Submerged construct: when one end of the bipolar construct is not available for
verbalization
○ ex. when someone insists that people only do good things, thus ignoring the “bad”
end of the construct
○ the person must have been aware of the contrasting behavior to have formed the
construct but they cannot report all the elements of it
● Important aspect - constructs are believed to be part of a system.
○ Each construct within a system has a range of convenience and a focus of
convenience
● Core constructs: basic to a person's functioning and can be changed only with great
consequences for the rest of the construct system.
● Peripheral constructs: much less basic and can be altered without serious modification of
the core structure
● A person's construct system is organized hierarchically.
○ Superordinate constructs: top of the hierarchy (ex. animal) , include more narrow
and specific constructs (ex.dog, cat)
○ Subordinate constructs: even more narrow and specific (ex. german shepherd,
poodle)
● Our behavior expresses the construct system rather than a single construct
● Some constructs conflict with others, which produces strain and difficulties for a person in
decision making
Assessment: The Role Construct Repertory (Rep) Test
● Role construct repertory test (Rep test): assessment procedure closely tied to Kelly’s
theory, in which there are two steps
○ The development of a list of persons about whom the personality ratings will be made
(the role title list)
■ People are asked to indicate the names of people that fill various roles in their
life (20-30 roles)
○ The elicitation of constructs, that is, the test taker is asked to engage in a task that will
elicit his/her personal constructs
■ The examiner picks three people from the list and asks them to indicate how
two of the three people are alike and different from the third
● With each presentation of a new triad, the test taker generates a construct
Unique Information Revealed by Personal Construct Testing
● Grice (2004): administered two tests in order to examine whether the Rep test is worth doing
○ (1) an idiographic grid procedure that was modeled closely after Kelly’s Rep test for
assessing personal constructs
○ (2) a nomothetic grid technique in which people made personality ratings using a
fixed set of Big Five markers, rather than using the potentially unique personality
descriptors that are revealed by Kelly’s procedure.
○ Findings revealed that the procedures overlapped only partly, only half of the
variation in personality ratings made in personal construct testing was predictable
from Big Five scores.
○ This would prove the Rep test to be worth using
Cognitive Complexity/Simplicity
● Cognitively complex system: one that contains many constructs that don't overlap
○ People with cognitively complex systems can predict behavior more accurately and
recognize differences between themselves and others
● High-complex people try to use inconsistent information they have of other to form
impressions of them
● Low complex people commonly form an impression that is consistent by rejecting all
information inconsistent with that impression.
● More complex individuals are better able to understand and take on the roles of others
(connected to openness in Big Five factors)
● Self-complexity: involves constructs that one has about themselves
○ High self-complexity: when someone is involved in numerous life roles and has
different skill sets in tendencies in each of these different settings, these people deal
better with stress
○ Low self-complexity: someone possesses a small number of central beliefs about
themselves that come into play repeatedly in one or two central circumstances
● Social identity complexity: the complexity of people's mental representations of the social
groups to which they belong
Process
● Kelly rejects the concept of motivation because it assumes that a person needs something to
“get started”
Anticipating Events
● The fundamental postulate of personal construct theory: peoples psychological processes are
channeled by the ways in which they anticipate events.
● Links the structure aspects of Kelly’s theory (personal construct system) to ongoing dynamic
processes
● Constructs are tested in terms of their predictive efficiency.
● A person chooses the alternative that promises the greatest further development of the
construct system.
● People seek validation and the expansion of their construct systems
● Individuals don't seek consistency for consistency’s sake or even for self-consistency. Instead,
individuals seek to anticipate events and it is a consistent system that allows them to do this.
Anxiety, Fear, and Threat
● Anxiety: the recognition that the events with which one is confronted lie outside the range if
convenience of one’s construct systems
○ People protect themselves from anxiety in various ways: (1) broadening a construct
so that it can apply to a greater variety of events (2) restrict the construct to apply to
certain set of people or events
● Fear: when a new construct appears to be about to enter the construct system.
● Threat: greater significance, is the awareness of imminent comprehensive change in one's
core structure. A person feels threatened when a major shakeup in the construct system is
about to occur. One is threatened by death if perceived as imminent and involves a drastic
change in one's core constructs.
○ Whenever people undertake a new activity they expose themselves to confusion and
threat
○ Response to this may be to regress to old constructs
● Death threat: high when the person is unable to construe death as relevant to the self
● The concepts of anxiety, fear, and threat are so significant because they suggest a new
dimension to Kelly’s view of human functioning.
● In the face of anxiety and threat individuals may rigidly adhere to a constructive system
instead of choosing to expand their constrict systems
Growth and Development
● Constructs are derived from observing repeated patterns of events
● Emphasizes the development of preverbal constructs in infancy and the interpretation of
culture as involving a process of learned expectation
● People belong to the same cultural group in that they share certain ways of construing events
and have the same expectations for behaviors
● Developmental research associated with personal construct theory generally has emphasized
two kinds of change.
○ First, there has been exploration of increases in complexity of the construct system
associated with age.
○ Second, there has been exploration of qualitative changes in the nature of the
constructs to form and the ability of children to be more empathetic or aware of the
construct systems of others
● Om terms of construct system complexity, as children develop, they develop more constructs,
make finer differentiations, and show more hierarchical organization
● In terms of empathy, there is evidence that as children develop they become increasingly
aware that many events are not related to the self and are able to appreciate the construct of
others.
Clinical Applications
Psychopathology
● Psychopathology is a disordered response to anxiety
● Kelly defined psychopathology in terms of disordered functioning of a construct system
● Psychological disorders are disorders involving anxiety and faulty efforts to reestablish the
sense of being to anticipate events
● Psychopathology, to Kelly, is an effort to avoid anxiety and threat
○ Similar to Freud’s concept of repression, to protect against anxiety and threat, an
individual employs protective devices. In the face of anxiety, individuals may act in
way that will submerge their constructs
Change and Fixed-Role
● Fixed-role therapy: enabling clients to think about themselves and behave in new ways
through the use of a personality sketch.
○ After establishing a basic understanding of the client, the psychologist(s) writes up a
sketch of a new person that the client can try out. The client decides if they would be
comfortable with that person.
○ The therapist asks the client to act like that person for 2 weeks (the client is not told
that this is what they should eventually be)
○ Many characteristics in the sketch contrast with the person’s current functioning but
behaving in accord with it sets in motion the reconstruction of the self
Critical Evaluation
Scientific Observation: The Database
● Kelly’s database lacked diversity (he did work within a North American culture (the U.S))
Theory: Systematic?
● Yes, Kelly’s writing was very logical and formal. His theory features a set of theoretical
postulates that relate to his overall conceptual framework.
Theory: Testable?
● Yes, Kelly took two key steps that make his theory testable.
○ He defined terms of personal construct theory precisely
○ He developed an objective assessment procedure that perfectly matched the theory
(Rep test)
● Kelly’s work has a significant number of theoretical assumptions that are not open to test
○ Ex. psychological processes being channelled by the way people anticipate events or
constructive alternativism as a general principle of human psychology
Theory: Comprehensive?
● Yes, if one accepts the fundamental postulate of Kelly’s theory.
● But, if one questions this postulate, the theory lacks comprehensiveness.
○ Ignores circumstances where people don’t act like scientists (ex. Drunks, irrationally
love-struck people, crazed mobs)
● Process aspects are also not well specified:
○ How does someone know which construct will be the best predictor
○ How does someone know which end of the bipolar construct to use
● Not enough discussion about growth and development (in regards to acquisition of construct
systems)
● Kelly take unidirectional view of personal constructs and emotions
○ He talks about how personal constructs influence emotional experience, but not about
how emotions influence personal constructs
●
●
Kelly tells us more about humans as cognitive and social beings rather than biological ones
Kelly’s theory ignores embodied cognition:
○ conceptual processes are not carried out by a single cognitive system but instead a
number of distinct systems are involved
Applications
● Theories are based on clinical experience and backed by detailed principles for conducting
theory
● Entire second volume of Kelly’s main work, The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955),
is devoted to therapeutic application of theoretical system
● Kelly’s theoretical efforts were were motivated by an applied goal: to help improve people’s
lives by reconstructing their circumstances
Major Contributions and Summary
● In the decades after the theory was presented, Kelly’s ideas were often neglected in the U.S.
but widely known in England
Strengths and Limitations of Personal Construct Theory
Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura & Mischel)
OMEGA COMPLETED
Chapter 12 Social-Cognitive Theory: Bandura and Mischel
· View that behavior is the result of an interaction between the person and the
environment, is a key concept in the social-cognitive theory of personality. This theory is
distinctive in its emphasis on the social origins of behavior and the importance of cognition
(thought processes) in human functioning
Relating Social-Cognitive Theory to the Previous Theories
· To the social-cognitivist, psychoanalysts overemphasize unconscious forces and the
influence of early childhood experience.
· Social-cognitive theorists place greater emphasis on conscious self-reflection and argue
that critical developmental processes occur not only in early childhood but also throughout
the life course.
· Social-cognitive theorists question the core premise of trait theory: that personality can
be understood in terms of overall, average tendencies (i.e., average trait levels). They believe
that personality is revealed in both average levels of behavior and patterns of variability in
action
·
Social-cognitive theorists question the adequacy of evolutionary psychology
· Finally, social-cognitive theory rejects the behavioristic argument that environmental
stimuli control behavior. People also have a capacity for self-control. Cognitive capabilities,
they argue, enable people to shape the course of their own development
Distinguishing Features of Social-Cognitive Theory
1. Emphasis on people as active agents
2. Emphasis on social origins of behavior
3. Emphasis on cognitive (thought) processes
4. Emphasis on both average behavioral tendencies and variability in behavior
5. Emphasis on the learning of complex patterns of behavior in the absence of rewards
Albert Bandura (1925–)
· Since the 1970s, Bandura has focused on “self-processes,” that is, thinking processes
involving self-conceptions and personal goals (1977, 1997).
· He contends that self-processes give people the capacity for personal agency, that is, the
capacity to affect their own behavior and experiences.
·
Bandura’s social-cognitive theory thus is an “agentic” conception of human nature
Walter Mischel (1930–)
· Mischel provided an alternative: a set of cognitive-social personal variables (Mischel,
1973; discussed below). They were designed to explain the discriminativeness of behavior,
that is, how people distinguish between situations (even seemingly similar ones) and vary
their actions adaptively from one situation to the next.
· “Might the same person who is more caring, giving, and supportive than most people in
relation to his family also be less caring and altruistic than most people in other contexts?”
Mischel ask
· Mischel also has become extremely well known thanks to “the marshmallow test”
(Mischel, 2014), a simple research paradigm (described below) that revealed highly
consequential indi[1]vidual differences in people’s ability to control their impulsive
tendencies
· Mischel suggests that while genes are important in shaping personality, there remains
great potential for personality change
Social-Cognitive Theory’s View of the Person
· The simplest way to understand the social-cognitive theory view of the person is to ask,
“What is a person?”
· People (1) reason about the world using language; (2) contemplate not only present
circumstances but also past and hypothetical future events; and (3) reflect on themselves,
thinking about themselves and their own thinking
· Curiously, many prior personality theories did not emphasize these uniquely human
abilities
· They try to capitalize on advances throughout psychology, as well as related sciences of
human nature (Cervone & Mischel, 2002).
· They pursue an integrative task: to synthesize knowledge from diverse fields into a
coherent por[1]trait of human nature and the differences among persons.
· A second feature of the social-cognitive view of personality science is its emphasis on the
uniqueness of the individual.
· Social-cognitive theorists employ idiographic methods to capture the idiosyncrasies of
individual
Social-Cognitive Theory of Personality: Structure
·
4 cognitive process
· Four structural concepts are particularly noteworthy: competencies and skills,
expectancies and beliefs, behavioral standards, and person goals
Competencies and Skills
· The core insight of the theory is that differences between people we observe may not be
caused only by differences in emotions or motivational impulses, as other theories have
emphasized. Instead, the differences may reflect variations in people’s skill in executing
different types of action
· Of particular interest to social-cognitive theorists, then, are cognitive competencies and
skills in solving problems and coping with the challenges of life
· Competencies involve both ways of thinking about life problems and behavioral skills in
executing solutions to them.
·
They involve two types of knowledge: procedural and declarative knowledge
·
Declarative knowledge is knowledge that we can state in words.
· Procedural knowledge refers to cognitive and behavioral capacities that a person may
have without being able to articulate the exact nature of those capacities;
· the person can execute the behavioral “procedure” without being able to say how he or
she did it
·
A focus on competencies has two implications.
· 1. The first involves context specificity. The term refers to the fact that psychological
structures that are relevant to some social situations, or contexts, may be irrelevant to
others.
· A person may have excellent study skills, but these are of little use when it comes to
getting a date or resolving an argument.
· . Social-cognitive theory generally rejects context-free variables—particularly when
discussing cognitive competencies.
· The last thing social-cognitivists would do is to assume that one person is “generally
more competent” than another. Instead, they recognize that any person’s competencies may
vary considerably from one domain of life to another.
· 2. The second implication involves psychological change. Competencies are acquired
through social interaction and observation of the social world (Bandura, 1986). People who
lack skills in a particular area of life can change. They can engage in new interactions and
new observations of the world and thereby acquire new competencies.
Beliefs and Expectancies
· beliefs about what the world actually is like and what things probably will be like in the
future. These thoughts are called beliefs and—when the beliefs are directed to the future—
expectancies.
· A second class of thinking involves thoughts about what things should be like. These
thoughts are evaluative standards, that is, mental criteria (or standards) for evaluating the
goodness or worth of events.
· A third class of thinking involves thoughts about what one wants to achieve in the future.
These thoughts are called personal goals
· Social-cognitive theory contends that a primary determinant of our actions and emotions
is our expectations about the future. People have expectancies concerning topics such as the
likely behavior of other people, the rewards or punishments that may follow a certain type
of behavior, or their own ability to handle the stress and challenges
· People naturally discriminate among situations, expecting different opportunities,
rewards, and constraints in different settings
· investigators study expectancies in a domain-linked manner. In other words, they assess
people’s expectancies with regard to specific areas, or domains, of their life.
· Social-cognitive theorists recognize that the capacity to vary expectations and behavior
from one situation to another is basic to survival.
·
No animal could survive if it failed to make such discriminations.
· A key point in the social-cognitive approach is that, when forming expectancies, people
may group together situations in ways that are highly idiosyncratic.
· According to social-cognitive theorists, the essence of personality lies in these differing
ways in which unique individuals perceive situations, develop expectations about future
circumstances, and display distinct behavior patterns as a result of these differing
perceptions and expectations.
· thus behavior is explained in terms of people’s expectations about rewards and
punishments in the environment.
The Self and Self-Efficacy Belief
· people’s expectations about their own capabilities for performance are the key
ingredient in human achievement and well-being.
·
He refers to these expectations as perceptions of self-efficacy.
· Perceived self-efficacy, then, refers to people’s perceptions of their own capabilities for
action in future situations.
· Why are self-efficacy perceptions so important? It is because self-efficacy perceptions
influence a number of different types of behavior that, in turn, are necessary
· People with a higher sense of self-efficacy are more likely to decide to attempt difficult
tasks, to persist in their efforts, to be calm rather than anxious during task performance,
and to organize their thoughts in an analytical manner.
· In contrast, people who question their own capabilities for performance may fail even to
attempt valuable activities, may give up when the going gets rough, tend to become anxious
during task performance, and often become rattled and fail to think and act in a calm,
analytical manner (colloquially speaking, one might say that a person with a low sense of
self-efficacy tends to choke on difficult activities).
· NOTE: It is important to recognize that Bandura conceptualizes perceived self-efficacy
as different from self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to people’s overall evaluation of their
personal worth. Perceived self-efficacy, in contrast, refers to people’s appraisals of what
they are capable of accomplishing in a specific situation
· Outcome expectations are beliefs about rewards and punishments that will occur if one
performs a given type of behavior.
· Social-cognitive theory contends that efficacy expectations generally are more important
than are outcome expectations as a determinant of behavior
· . If people lack a sense of efficacy for accomplishing something, the rewards associated
with accomplishing that goal are probably irrelevant to them.
· microanalytic research strategy. According to this strategy, detailed measures of
perceived self-efficacy are taken before performance of behaviors in specific situations.
Specifically, people are asked to indicate their degree of certainty in performing specific
behaviors in designated context
·
WHAT KIND OF QUESTIONS WOULD IT ASK?
· A self-efficacy scale for athletic performance in, for example, the sport of basketball
would not ask a vague question such as “Do you think you are a good basketball player?”
(The question is vague because the word “good” is so ambiguous
· Instead, test items describe specific actions and accomplishments and ask people to
indicate their confidence in attaining them: For example, “How confident are you that you
can make at least 75% of your free throws during a basketball game.”
Self-Efficacy and Performance
·
Skill levels might influence both self-efficacy perceptions and behavior and account
for the relation between perceived self-efficacy and motivated action
·
Our behavior can be understood simply in terms of our inherent physical capacities.
How, then, do we know that we ever need to appeal to the notion of perceived selfefficacy to explain behavior?
·
Social-cognitivists have addressed this question through experimental strategies. The
idea is to experimentally manipulate perceived self-efficacy while holding other
factors—such as people’s actual skills—constant.
·
Once self-efficacy perceptions are manipulated experimentally, one can see whether
the variations in perceived self-efficacy causally influence behavior.
·
One research strategy has been to employ a technique known as “anchoring”
manipulations. Anchoring refers to a thinking process that comes into play when
people try to figure out the answer to a problem.
·
What often happens is that the final answer that people reach is greatly
·
influenced by whatever people happen to think of first when they try to solve the
problem; their final answer is “anchored on” their initial guess.
·
Surprisingly, this occurs even when the initial guess is determined by factors that
are completely random and obviously irrelevant to the problem
·
STUDY DEMONSTRATED THIS: Cervone and Peake (1986) applied anchoring
techniques to the question of self-efficacy judgment and behavior. Prior to
performing a task that had a series of items, participants were asked to judge
whether they could solve “more or less than X” of the items. In high and low anchor
conditions, the “X” was a number that corresponded to a high versus low level of
performance. This number appeared to be random, literally drawn out of a hat.
People then judged exactly how many items they could solve (their level of selfefficacy on the task). Findings indicated that the anchoring manipulation affected
perceived self-efficacy.
·
Self-efficacy beliefs also influence how people cope with disappointments and stress
in the pursuit of life goals. Research generally suggests that human functioning is
facilitated by a personal sense of control (Schwarzer, 1992). Self-efficacy beliefs
represent one aspect of such a sense of control.
·
STUDY TO DEMONSTATE THIS: In this research, women about to obtain an
abortion completed questionnaire measures of personality variables such as selfesteem and optimism, as well as a self-efficacy scale measuring expectation
concerning successful post abortion coping. For example, the scale included items
asking about whether the women thought they would be able to spend time around
children or babies comfortably and whether they would continue to have good
sexual relations following abortion. Following abortion and then three weeks later,
measures of mood and depression were obtained
·
RESULTS: The results clearly supported the hypothesis that self-efficacy was a key
determinant of post abortion adjustment. The contribution of personality variables
such as self-esteem and optimism was also related to post abortion adjustment.
However, their effects appeared to occur through their contribution to feelings of
self-efficacy
Goals:
· A basic tenet of social-cognitive theory is that people’s ability to envision the future
enables them to set specific goals for action and, thus, to motivate and direct their own
behavior.
· Goals guide us in establishing priorities and in selecting among situations. They enable
us to go beyond momentary influences and to organize our behavior over extended periods
of time.
· A person’s goals are organized in a system. In a goal system, some goals are more central
or important than others. Goal systems often are understood as having a hierarchical
structure
· People may select among goals, depending on what seems most important to them at the
time, what the opportunities in the environment appear to be, and their judgments of selfefficacy for goal attainment
·
People’s goals on a task may differ in a variety of ways (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002).
· One obvious variation is in the level of challenge, or difficulty, of goals. For example, in
a college class, some people may have the goal merely of passing the course, whereas others
may adopt the challenging goal of getting an A in the class
· Another variation involves the nearness, or proximity, of goals. One person may set a
proximal goal, that is, a goal that involves an aim that is coming up soon. Others may set
distal goals, that is, goals that specify achievements that are far in the future
· Research findings indicate that proximal goals often have a bigger influence on one’s
current behavior than do distal goals.
· In addition, goals may differ in a manner that involves the subjective meaning of an
activity.
· WHAT DETERMINES THE TYPES OF GOALS SET? Goals are related to the
previous social-cognitive personality construct: expectancies. Expectancies influence the
process of goal setting. When selecting goals, people generally reflect on their expectations
about their performance. People with higher perceptions of self-efficacy often set higher
goals and remain more committed to them
Evaluative Standards
· . The study of evaluative standards, then, addresses the ways in which people acquire
criteria for evaluating events and how these evaluations influence their emotions and actions
· Social-cognitive theory recognizes that people commonly evaluate their ongoing behavior
in accordance with internalized personal standards.
·
Evaluative standards often trigger emotional reactions.
· We react with pride when we meet our standards for performance, and we are
dissatisfied with ourselves when we fail to meet our own standards.
· Bandura refers to such emotions as self-evaluative reactions; we evaluate our own
actions and then respond in an emotionally satisfied or dissatisfied way toward ourselves as
a result of this self-evaluation
· These emotional reactions constitute self reinforcements and are important in
maintaining behavior over extended periods of time, particularly in the absence of external
reinforcers. Thus, through such internal self-evaluative responses as praise and guilt, we are
able to reward ourselves for meeting standards and to punish ourselves for violating them
· Some of the evaluative standards that we learn involve ethical and moral principles
concerning the treatment of other people. Although everyone in a given society may be
familiar with such principles, sometimes people do not use them to regulate their own
behavior. For example, everyone knows that it is wrong to steal things from a store
· People who disengage their moral standards say things to themselves that temporarily
enable them to disregard their own standards for behavior. For example, a student who is
tempted to cheat on a test might say something like “Everybody cheats on tests, so it must be
ok.”
· The disengagement of evaluative standards enables people to perform acts that they
normally would not perform due to internalized moral sanctions
· STUDY TO DEMONSTRATE THIS: Everyone possesses moral standards indicating
that killing is wrong. Yet some people in U.S. society kill people as part of their profession;
they are executioners who carry out death penalties. How do they do? , Osofsky et al.
studied personnel who work at maximum-security prisons.
·
Some personnel were relatively uninvolved in executions
· Osofsky et al. asked all participants to complete a scale measuring the tendency to
disengage from moral standards involving executions.
· RESULTS: They found that the degree to which people displayed moral disengagement
varied as a function of their level of involvement in executions. Prison personnel who were
directly involved in executions displayed much higher levels of moral disengagement than
did others; they were more likely to endorse statements such as “An execution is merciful
compared to a murder
The Nature of Social-Cognitive Personality Structure
· beliefs and expectancies, goals, evaluative standards, and competencies and skills—are
not treated as four independent “objects” in one’s mind. Instead, these four personality
structures should be understood as referring to distinct classes of thinking.
· The theoretical claim is that cognitions about what the world actually is like (beliefs),
about one’s aims for the future (goals), and about how things normatively should be
(standards) play distinct roles in personality functioning and, thus, should be treated as
distinct personality structures.
· Social-cognitive theorists believe that personality is far too complex to be reduced to any
simple set of scores
Social-Cognitive Theory of Personality: Process
· Social-cognitive theorists have presented two theoretical principles that they think
scientists should use when analyzing the dynamics of personality processes. One is an
analysis of the causes of behavior, which is called reciprocal determinism. The other is a
framework for thinking about internal personality processes, which is called a cognitive–
affective processing system (CAPS) framework.
Reciprocal Determinism
· This principle addresses the issue of cause and effect in the study of personality
processes. The problem Bandura is trying to solve is the following. When analyzing a
person’s behavior, one generally needs to consider three factors: the person, his or her
behavior, and the environmental setting in which the person acts
· personality, behavior, and the environment must be understood as a system of forces
that mutually influence one another across the course of time.
· The principle of reciprocal determinism constitutes a rejection of the views of other
theories. Some theories explain behavior primarily in terms of inner forces: the inner
conflicts of psychoanalysis, the motive for self-actualization of the phenomenological
theories, the genetically determined dispositions of the trait theories, and the evolved
psychological modules of evolutionary psychology
· bandura rejects this entire discourse about “inner versus outer” or “internal versus
external” forces as woefully inadequate because it fails to recognize that the person’s
internal psychology and the social environment influence one another reciprocally.
· People select situations as well as are shaped by them; social-cognitive theorists regard
the capacity to choose the type of situation that one will encounter as a critical element of
people’s capacity to be active agents influencng the course of their own development.
Personality as A Cognitive–Affective Processing System (CAPS)
·
The CAPS model has three essential features.
· First, cognitive and emotional personality variables are seen as being complexly linked to
one another. It is not merely the case that people have a goal (e.g., get more dates), a level of
competency (e.g., low dating skills), a particular expectancy (e.g., low perceived self-efficacy
for dating), and certain evaluative standards and self-evaluative reactions (e.g., feeling
emotionally dissatisfied with oneself when it comes to dating).
· Instead, their personality system features these cognitions and affects and interrelations
among them. Thoughts about one’s goals may trigger thoughts about skills, which in turn
trigger thoughts about self-efficacy, all of which may affect one’s self-evaluations and
emotions
· The second key feature of the CAPS model concerns the social environment. In this
model, different aspects of social situations, or “situational features,” activate subsets of the
overall personality system
· The third feature follows naturally from the second one. If different situational features
activate different parts of the overall personality system, then people’s behavior should vary
from one situation to another.
· . This is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the CAPS model. It contends that not
only average levels of behavior but also variations in behavior are a defining aspect of
personality
· RESEARCH: Empirical research by Mischel and his associates illustrates the CAPS approach
(Shoda, Mis[1]chel, & Wright, 1994). Children were observed in various settings—for example,
woodworking, cabin meeting, classroom, mealtime, playground, watching TV—for six weeks during
summer camp. Researchers coded the type of social interaction that occurred in each of the
situations, for example, whether the given child was interacting with a peer or an adult counselor and
whether the interaction was positive (e.g., child praised) or negative (e.g., child teased). The
researchers also recorded the child’s behavior in that situation, attending to behavior of different
types: ver[1]bal aggression (e.g., provoking, threatening); physical aggression (hitting, pushing);
whining or babyish behavior; complying or giving in; talking prosocially
·
When analyzing these data, the investigators plotted if–then profiles. In an if–then
profile analysis, one plots an individual person’s behavior in each of a variety of different
situations. One then determines if the individual’s behavior varies systematically from one
situation to another.
· RESULTS: People do behave differently in different types of situations. In general,
behavior is different on the playground than in the classroom, in a cabin meeting than in
woodworking. And, of course, there were individual differences in average expressions of
each of the five observed types of behavior. As trait theorists suggest, there are individual
differences in average expressions of behavior across situations
· can two individuals express the same average level of aggressive behavior, be the same
on a trait such as aggressiveness, but differ in the kinds of situations in which they express
their aggressiveness?
· Mischel and his associates indeed found clear evidence that individuals have distinctive,
stable profiles of expressing particular behaviors in specific groups of situation
· IN A SECOND STUDY In one study, laypersons were asked how they expected people
with different personality characteristics to behave in different situations. Results indicated
that laypersons did not anticipate that people would act in a uniform, consistent manner in
different contexts. Instead, they anticipated if–then variability; they expected that people’s
behavior would vary substantially from one situation to another. In a second study,
participants were told about the actions of individuals whose behavior varied distinctively
across different situations. Research participants were not befuddled by these violations of
trait like consistency in behavior. Instead, they inferred that people possessed motives that
explained their patterns of variability in conduct
· Mischel and his associates suggest that individuals have distinctive profiles of situation–
behavior relationships, which are called behavioral signatures.
· Mischel and colleagues emphasized that these unique patterns of behavior would be
completely overlooked if one merely asked about people’s overall, average behavioral
tendencies.
· EX- Two people who, for example, display the same average level of anxiety may be
fundamentally different people.
· An if–then profile analysis might reveal that one person is anxious in achievement
settings and the other is anxious when it comes to romantic relationships
Social-Cognitive Theory of Growth and Development
1.
Observational Learning (Modeling):
· The first of these two psychological functions concerns the question of how people
acquire knowledge and skills
· Previous theories commonly have overlooked these questions. There is little explicit
discussion of the acquisition of beliefs and social skills in most of the previous theories we
have discussed. The theory that addressed the topic most explicitly was behaviorism.
· As you will recall, behaviorists claim that people learn things through a trial[1]and-error
learning process called shaping, or successive approximation. Over a large series of learning
trials, reinforcements gradually shape a complex pattern of behavior
· Albert Bandura succeeded in explaining the shortcomings of this behavioral theory and
in providing psychology with an alternative theoretical explanation
· the shortcomings of the behavioral approach seem obvious. Sometimes, learning simply
cannot be through trial and error because the errors are too costly EX- learning how to
drive
· Social-cognitive theory explains that people can learn merely by observing the behaviors
of others.
· The person being observed is called a model, and this observational learning process is
also known as modeling. People’s cognitive capacities enable them to learn complex forms of
behavior merely by observing a model performing these behavior
· Learning by modeling is evident in innumerable domains of life. A child may learn
language by observing parents and other people speaking.
· The notion of “imitation” generally implies the exact replication of a narrow response
pattern. In modeling, however, people may learn general rules of behavior by observing
others. They then can use those rules to self-direct a variety of types of behavior in the
future
· Identification implies an incorporation of broad patterns of behavior exhibited by a
specific other individual. Modeling, in contrast, involves the acquisition of information
through observation of others, without implying that the observer internalizes entire styles
of action exhibited by the other individual.
· In contemporary society, much modeling occurs through the media. We may learn styles
of thought and action from people whom we never meet but whom we merely observe on
television or other media sources
· CONCERNS WITH THIS? Huesmann and colleagues (Huesmann, Moise[1]Titus,
Podolski, & Eron, 2003) performed a long-term longitudinal study on the question of
whether exposure to violence in the media during childhood leads to higher levels of
aggression later in life. Among both men and women, people who witnessed high levels of
violence when they were 6–10 years old turned out to be more aggressive in early adulthood.
Acquisition versus Performance
· . A new, complex pattern of behavior can be learned or acquired regardless of
reinforcers, but whether or not the behavior is performed will depend on rewards and
punishments
· EX- study : In this study, three groups of children observed a model expressing
aggressive behavior toward a plastic Bobo doll. In the first group, the aggressive behavior
by the model was not followed by any consequences (No Consequences); in the second
group, the model’s aggressive behavior was followed by rewards (Reward); and in the third
group it was followed by punishment (Punishment). Following observation of the model’s
aggressive behav[1]ior, children from the three groups were presented with two conditions
· RESULTS: First, did the children behave aggressively when they were given an
incentive to do so as opposed to when they were not?
· Many more imitative aggressive behaviors were shown in the Incentive condition than in
the No Incentive condition. In other words, the children had learned (acquired) many
aggressive behaviors that were not performed under the No Incentive condition but were
performed under the Incentive condition
· ; children who observed the model being punished performed far fewer imitative acts
than did children in the model Rewarded and No Consequences group
Vicarious Conditioning
· The difference between acquisition and performance suggests, however, that in some
way the children were being affected by what happened to the model; that is, either on a
cognitive basis, on an emotional basis, or both, the children were responding to the
consequences to the model. The suggestion here is that the children learned certain
emotional responses by sympathizing with the model, that is, vicariously by observing the
model.
· Not only can behavior be learned through observation, but emotional reactions such as
fear and joy can also be conditioned on a vicarious basis
· FOUND IN HUMANS AND MONKEYS. Thus, human subjects who observed a model
expressing a conditioned fear response were found to develop a vicariously conditioned
emotional response to a previously neutral stimulus
· Similarly, in an experiment with animals, it was found that an intense and persistent fear
of snakes developed in younger monkeys who observed their parents behave fearfully in the
presence of real or toy snakes. What was particularly striking about this research is that the
period of observation of their parents’ emotional reaction was sometimes very brief.
2.
Self-Regulation and Motivation
· Social-cognitive theory addresses human motivation primarily by examining the
motivational impact of thoughts related to oneself, or self-referent thinking. The general
idea is that people commonly guide and motivate their own actions through their thinking
processes. Key thinking processes often involve the self.
· The general term for personality processes that involve the self-directed motivation of
behavior is self-regulation (Gailliot Mead, & Baumeister, 2008). The term is meant to imply
that people have the capacity to motivate themselves: to set personal goals, to plan
strategies, and to evaluate and modify their ongoing behavior.
· . Self-regulation involves not only getting started in goal attainment but also avoiding
environmental distractions and emotional impulses that might interfere with one’s progress
· In its study of self-regulation, social-cognitive theory emphasizes the human capacity for
foresight—our ability to anticipate outcomes and make plans accordingly
· People set their own standards and goals, rather than merely responding to demands
from the environment. Through the development of cognitive mechanisms such as
expectancies, standards, and self-evaluation, we are able to establish goals for the future and
gain control over our own destiny
Self-Efficacy, Goals, and Self-Evaluative Reactions
· The assumption was that greater discrepancies between standards and performances
would generally lead to greater self[1]dissatisfaction and efforts to improve performance.
However, a critical ingredient of such efforts is self-efficacy judgments. Thus, the research
tested the hypothesis that self-efficacy judgments, as well as self-evaluative judgments,
mediate between goals and goal-directed effort.
· RESEARCH: In this research, subjects performed a strenuous activity under one of four
conditions: goals with feedback on their performance, goals alone, feedback alone, and
absence of goals and feedback.
· Following this activity, described as part of a project to plan and evaluate exercise
programs for postcoronary rehabilitation, subjects rated how self-satisfied or selfdissatisfied they would be with the same level of performance in a following session.
· In addition, they recorded their perceived self-efficacy for various possible performance
levels. Their effortful performance was then again measured. In accord with the hypothesis,
the condition combining goals and performance
· RESULTS: feedback had a strong motivational impact, whereas neither goals alone nor
feedback alone had comparable motivational significance, subsequent effort was most
intense when subjects were both dissatisfied with substandard performance and high on
self-efficacy judgments for good attainment. Neither dissatisfaction alone nor positive selfefficacy judgments alone had a comparable effect
· Often, effort was reduced where there were both low dissatisfac[1]tion with performance
and low perceived self-efficacy.
· Performance feedback and self-efficacy judgments also are important to the
development of intrinsic interest. Psychologists have been able to enhance students’ interest
in learning and performance by helping them to break down tasks into subgoals, helping
them to monitor their own performance, and providing them with feedback that increased
their sense of self-efficacy
· It is such intrinsic interest that facilitates effort over extended periods of time in the
absence of external rewards. Conversely, it is difficult to sustain motivation where one feels
that the external or internal self-evaluative rewards are insufficient or where one’s sense of
efficacy is so low that a positive outcome seems impossible.
Self-Control and Delay of Gratification
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Learning Delay of Gratification Skills :
Research in social-cognitive theory suggests that people’s capacity to delay gratification
has a social basis. Modeling and observational learning are important to the development of
performance standards for success and reward that serve as a basis for delay of
gratification.
Children exposed to models who set high standards of performance for self-reward
tend to limit their own self-rewards to exceptional performance to a greater degree than do
children who have been exposed to models who set lower standards or to no models at all
also impose learned standards on other children (Mischel & Liebert, 1966). Children
can be made to tolerate greater delays in receiving gratification if they are exposed to
models exhibiting such delay behavior.
EX WITH A STUDY: In a live-model condition, each child individually observed a
testing situation in which an adult model was asked to choose between an immediate reward
and a more valued object at a later date. The high-delay children observed a model who
selected the immediately available reward and commented on its benefits, whereas the lowdelay children observed a model who selected the delayed reward and commented on the
virtues of delay. In a symbolic-model condition, children read verbal accounts of these
behaviors, the verbal account again being the opposite of the child’s pattern of response.
Finally, in a no-model condition, children were just apprised of the choices given the adults.
Following exposure to one of these three procedures, the children were again given a choice
between an immediate reward and a more valuable reward.
The results were that the high-delay children in all three conditions significantly
altered their delay of reward behavior in favor of immediate gratification
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The live-model condition produced the greatest effect (Figure 12.5).
The low-delay children exposed to a delay model significantly altered their behavior in
terms of greater delay, but there was no significant difference between the effects of live and
symbolic models
Finally, for both groups of children, the effects were found to be stable when the tests
were readministered four to five weeks later
Mischel’s Delay of Gratification Paradigm “the marshmallow experiment,”
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How it works? adult who is interacting with a young child (usually one of
preschool age) informs the child that she needs to leave the child alone for a few
minutes. Before leaving, the adult teaches the child a game. The game involves
two different rewards. If the child can wait patiently until the adult comes back,
she gets a large reward (e.g., a few marshmallows). If the child simply cannot
wait for the adult to return, the child can ring a bell and the adult will return
immediately; how[1]ever, if this happens, the child earns only a smaller reward
(e.g., one marshmallow).
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The dependent measure is how long children are able to wait before ringing the
bell.
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A critical experimental manipulation in this setting is whether children can see
the reward— or, phrased more technically, whether the rewards are available
for attention
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When the rewards were covered up, most children were able to wait a relatively
long time. But when the children were looking at the rewards, they had an
enormously hard time controlling their impulses.
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Subsequent work showed that the key factor in delay of gratification is what is
going on in children’s minds as they try to wait for the large reward. Children
do well at the task if they employ cognitive strategies that distract them from the
attractive qualities of the rewards.
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OUTCOMES OF BEING ABLE TO DELAY GRATIFICATION? They related
delay of gratification scores in preschool to adolescent measures of cognitive and
social competence (as rated by parents) and to the adolescents’ verbal and
quantitative SAT scores. Childhood delay of gratification ability predicted
adolescent outcomes, with high-delay children becoming adolescents who were
more able to control their emotions and who obtained higher SAT scores
Ch. 13: Social Cognitive Theory (Contemporary)
Ch 13: Social-Cognitive Theory – Applications, Related Theoretical Conceptions, and
Contemporary Developments
focus of this chapter: altering self-defeating negative beliefs in clinical settings
social-cognitive theory explains personality in terms of basic thinking capacities; trying to
understand how our cognitive abilities develop as we interact with the social world
- 3 social cognitive variables: people’s beliefs about the world, personal goals, and
evaluative standards judging the worth of their own actions and those of others
Cognitive Components of Personality: Beliefs, Goals, Evaluative Standards
Beliefs About the Self & Self-Schemas
- over time, our thoughts and feelings come together to form a stable self-concept – a
set of beliefs about primary personal qualities and goals
- self-concept, once formed, is influential – affects our emotions, motivation, thinking
patterns
Schemas: knowledge structures, help make sense of stimuli
Self-schemas: knowledge of personal qualities; affect thinking & influence interpretation of
situations
-
different people with different life experiences develop different self-schemas
Self-Schemas & Reaction Time Models (Markus, 1977)
reaction time measures: researchers record response content & amount of time taken to
respond
- relevance to self-schemas: if self-schemas guide information processing, then people
who possess a self-schema should think more quickly; self-schemas should lower
reaction times.
Markus study: identified three groups of people – independent, dependent, and neutral &
when presented with a series of adjectives (e.g. individualistic, adventurous, dependable,
conforming) participants who possessed a schema, made schema-consistent judgments
more quickly
Working Self-Concept: different situational cues may cause different self-schemas to enter
working memory
-
we possess multiple self-schemas that are an aspect of self-concept
Self-Based Motives & Motivated Information Processing
- self-schemas motivate information processing – thinking patterns may reflect self views
& the desire to maintain that self-image
-
two self-based motives that influence thinking: self-enhancement & self-verification
Self-Enhancement: people often are biased to maintain a positive view of themselves; these
biases cause us to overestimate our positive attributes & enhance this self-image by
selectively comparing ourselves to people who are faring less well
Self-Verification: people also may be motivated to maintain themselves as consistent &
predictable – we obtain information that confirms own self-concept
Implicit Theories (Dweck)
Learning Goals: striving to increase ability and achievement
Performance Goals: focusing on the impression you make on others that are evaluating you,
ex. trying to look smart and avoid doing anything that will make you look stupid
Implicit Theories: ideas that guide our thinking; we possess the ideas implicitly, even if we do
not state them explicitly
- Dweck study people’s implicit theories about intelligence – whether intelligence is
fixed or changeable
- those that hold entity theory believe intelligence levels are fixed & tend to set
performance goals
- incremental theory holds that intelligence is acquired gradually and naturally changes
over time; tend to set learning goals
-
these differences in implicit theories affect the goals we set & responses to failure
Standards of Evaluation
- goals (aims one hopes to achieve in the future) vs standards (criteria used to
evaluate events in the present)
- we regulate much of our behaviour by evaluating whether our actions are consistent
with internalized standards for performance
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion, and Motivation
Higgins analysis of the “ideal self” and “ought self” – these are different types of standards
you set when planning achievements; something you should achieve is an element of the
“ideal self”, whereas something you ought to achieve is part of the “ought self”
-
the ought vs ideal standards trigger different types of negative emotions:
1. self-discrepancies: experience negative emotions because of discrepancy between
reality (the actual self) and a personal standard
2. discrepancies with different standards (ideal vs ought) trigger different emotions
o discrepancies between the actual and ideal self cause people to feel sad or
dejected; failing to meet your ideal standards
o discrepancies between the actual and ought self cause agitation and
anxiety; the possibility of not achieving one’s obligation is a potential
negative outcome that is threatening
General Principles Approach to Personality (Higgins)
- Higgins uses personal knowledge and standards for performance to explain
personality functioning
- personal knowledge is an enduring structure of mind that contributes to behavioural
consistency; different situations activate different aspects of knowledge which creates
variability in personality
Contemporary Developments in Personality Theory
- 20th century theory & research limited in 3 areas: personality theory, personality
assessment, identifying cross-situational consistency in personality
The KAPA Model (Knowledge & Appraisal Personality Architecture) (Cervone, 2004)
-
this model addresses the 3 limitations
Knowledge Structures & Appraisal Processes
- the central claim of this model is that there are 2 types of social cognitive personality
variables – knowledge and appraisals
o knowledge is enduring; it is a social-cognitive structure – these are long
lasting, stable beliefs
o appraisals shift rapidly over time; they are social-cognitive processes that
are a rapidly changing flow of thought
Personality Assessment
- the main assessment goal of this model is to identify the knowledge structures that
are most significant to an individual & the appraisals the person engages in when
thinking about challenges
two assessment principles guide this model:
1. Assess Knowledge & Appraisal Contextually: try to identify your primary thoughts
while encountering varying contexts of day to day life
2. Be Sensitive to Idiosyncrasy: allow people to describe themselves in their own words
Clinical Applications
Psychopathology & Change: Modeling, Self-Conceptions, Perceived Self-Efficacy
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social cognitive theory emphasizes the role of behavioural experience
o example: people learn maladaptive behaviours, the therapist would then
provide new experiences to teach new & adaptive behaviours
-
focus on cognition:
o dysfunctional expectancies: constantly expecting negative outcomes may
in fact create those undesirable outcomes
o dysfunctional self-evaluations: perfectionist standards for evaluating
oneself
Self-Efficacy, Anxiety & Depression
- low self-efficacy for coping with threats directly causes high anxiety arousal; the
perceived inefficacy in coping with stress is what creates anxiety, not the stressful event
- low self-efficacy also contributes to depression & problem behaviours, which in turn
contribute to further perceived inefficacy & depression
Therapeutic Change: Modeling & Guided Mastery
- Bandura views the central mechanism of change is cognitive – perceived selfefficacy, but the most powerful means of affecting this mechanism is behavioural –
mastery experiences
modeling: client observes someone display a skill the client hopes to acquire
guided mastery: client views a model performing beneficial behaviours and also assisted in
performing the behaviours themselves
Stress-Vulnerability Signatures
CAPS Model – looks at mapping the stress vulnerability signature & assesses maladaptive
coping strategies
- following assessment of situations and strategies, a stress management program is
implemented (C-ASMT)
Stress, Coping, and Cognitive Therapy
Lazarus explains stress as the way in which individuals appraise the relation between
themselves and the environment; stress occurs when we view circumstances as taxing or
exceeding our resources
-
primary appraisal: person evaluates whether there is a threat or danger
- secondary appraisal: evaluating whether anything can be done to prevent harm or
improve benefit
problem focused coping: cope by altering features of a stressful situation
emotion focused coping: cope by improving internal emotional state; e.g., emotional
distancing or seeking support
Ellis’s Rational-Emotive Therapy
- people do not respond emotionally to events in the world but to their beliefs about
those events
-
the beliefs that cause psychological distress are irrational
- this therapy tries to make people aware of their irrational thoughts and replace them
with calm, rational thinking
Beck’s Cognitive Therapy for Depression
- a depressed person systematically misevaluates ongoing & past experiences; sees
the self as a loser, the world as frustrating, and the future as bleak (the cognitive triad)
Cognitive Therapy
-
identifies & corrects distorted conceptualizations & dysfunctional beliefs
- highly specific learning experiences that teach to monitor negative, automatic
thoughts, to recognize how these thoughts lead to problematic behaviours, examine the
evidence for and against these thoughts & substitute more reality-oriented interpretations
for any biased cognitions