Cognitive/Behavioral Approach
Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel
The Cognitive/Behavioral
Approach: Behaviorism
•Personality consists of patterns of behavior
•Emphasizes experience and learning
(Nurture)
•Influenced by John B. Watson and B.F.
Skinner
The Cognitive/Behavioral
Approach: Cognitive Approach
•Personality is a style of information
selection and processing
•Most recent approach
•Often combined with the behavioral
approach
•Nurture
•Major impact on clinical and applied
psychology
Albert Bandura (1925-present)
•Born in Northern Alberta
•Stanford University in 1953 (worked with Mischel)
•BoBo doll experiments
•Personality Development
•Modeling alleviates snake phobias but is mediated by
“self-efficacy” beliefs
•Psychotherapy-Participant modeling
•In 2002, Bandura was ranked as the 3rd most frequently
cited psychologist of all time, behind only Sigmund
Freud and B.F. Skinner
Bandura and BoBo Dolls
Walter Mischel (1930-present)
•Born in Vienna, Austria
•Family moved to New York in 1939 to escape Nazism
•Applied psychoanalytic therapy to juvenile delinquentsabandoned Freudian concepts
•Obtained Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1956,
working under George Kelly (personal constructs) and
Julian Rotter (social learning theory), two pioneers in the
cognitive approach
•1962 moved to Stanford University (worked with
Bandura)
•1968 “Personality and Assessment”
Mischel and “The Marshmallow test”
•On average, only 2/3 of children pass the test
•“Waiters” and “grabbers”
•singing, playing with their clothes, doing fantasy games,
looking around the room, playing with the table vs. fixing
attention on marshmallows
•“Clouds” and “logs”
•Longitudinal studies- social competence, academic competence,
coping with problems
-210 point advantage on SAT (American
university entrance exam out of 1600 points)
Cognitive Social Learning Theory
•Many have taken an extreme
position in the person-situation
debate
•Reciprocal determinism
Reciprocal Determinism
-we produce the environment that shapes us
Cognitive Social Learning
Person Variables
Cognitive Social Learning
Person Variables
Competency/Self-Efficacy Variables
• Trying new things
• Perceived Self-efficacy helps determine-behaviors to engage in
-how much effort
-persistence
-thinking, emotional reactions
-psychological dysfunction
Cognitive Social Learning
Person Variables
Encoding strategies and personal constructs
• Encoding strategies- ways in which the
individual interprets the world and events in it
• Personal constructs- encoding strategies
about the self
Cognitive Social Learning
Person Variables
Expectancies
• Stimulus-outcome expectancies
• Behavior-outcome expectancies
• Self-efficacy expectations
Cognitive Social Learning
Person Variables
Subjective values- this set of values comprises
our values system, including our ethical and
moral values--ranging from liking ice cream,
to value we place on honesty
Social learning Person Variables
Self-regulatory systems and plans-modulate our
behaviour in the present and help guide us toward
future goals
A) Self-regulatory systems- provide feedback on how
we are doing, and we use this feedback to modify our
behavior
-includes self-imposed achievement standards
Social learning Person Variables
Self-regulatory systems and plans cont…
B) Plans- CSL theory sees our behavior as partly
teleological in that it is not only governed by what is
happening here and now, but also by our hopes and
goals for the future.
-varies greatly across individuals
-major factor is the ability to delay gratification
Evaluation of the theory
Positive
-recognizes the importance of cognition
-heuristic value
-optimistic view of human nature
-emphasizes conditions in the present and plans
for the future as primary motivators of
behavior
Evaluations of Theory
Negative
-according to behaviorists focus on cognition is a
weakness, because cognitions cannot cause
behavior
-uses terms whose meaning is not clear
-not able to predict an individual’s behavior in a
situation more than other theories
-ignores the unconscious
-little to say about development of personality
over time