Chapter 14: Pgs. 349 to 366
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL COGNITIVE LEVEL
Historical Roots:
Social cognitive approach to personality began in the late 1960s
- conceived by many psychologists who were frustrated by limitations of early theories
Personality was divided into 3 fields:
1) Freudians –
guarded Freud’s original work from anyone who wanted to revise or criticize it
2) Students of Individual Differences –
searching for broad personality trait dimensions
3) Radical behaviorialists –
concerned with conditioning and relations between stimuli and responses – nothing about
mental activities/stimuli – did not deal with things that cannot be directly or simply measured
3 camps did not talk to each other
Carl Rogers and George Kelly are one example of a protest movement to the aforementioned
state of affairs.
- Focused on the concepts and constructs of individual perceived by the person.
George Kelly bridged Phenomenological-Humanistic and Social Cognitive Levels of analysis
Linking Cognition and Social Behavior:
Traditional behavioral approaches asserted stimuli control behavior
BUT in truth the perceivers’ mental representations and cognitive transformations of the stimuli
can determine/reverse impact.
- Kelly argued this but with little empirical data but research later showed this fact
Research example:
- preschool children who were made to sit alone in a chair in return for a marshmallow or pretzel.
If they imagined the marshmallow or pretzel as a cloud or a log, it was easier for them to stay the
entire time. THEREFORE: the children’s mental process is more of a determinant than external
stimulus
Example proves George Kelly and Carl Rogers are right
The Cognitive Revolution
Beginning of 1950s: cognitive revolution
Revolt against strict behaviorism: only focused on observable stimuli, discussion of mental
processes are unscientific because they were not measurable
Cognitive revolution  Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology developed rapidly in 1970s and 1980s focused on cognitive processes.
Showed that mental processes such as memory, knowledge, and thinking can provide a scientific
account of mental activity which is overtly linked to behavior
Cognitive psychology  social cognitive psychology
ALBERT BANDURA: SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
One of roots of social cognitive theories developed in 1960s – ALBERT BANDURA
Bandura realizes that classical and operant condition are important types of learning but people
also learn cognitively by observing others, not merely by experiencing rewards for what they do
themselves.
A lot of social learning occurs through observations without any direct reinforcement administered
to learner
Learning Through Observation (Modeling)
Also known as observational learning – “learning that occurs without the learner’s receiving direct
external reinforcement. Such learning occurs even without the person’s ever performing the
learned response at all.”
Much human learning is from observing interpersonal relations rather than direct reinforcement of
a particular action.
It is often indirect, does not depend on actually observing an event
- ex. when others observe and tell us about the action
Mass media contribute heavily to what one learns about social world
- bobodoll experiment (pg 353)
- children who watched violent cartoons, are more assaultive towards their peers
Completely new response patterns can be learned simply by observing others performing them
Observation is especially important for learning a language
- Bandura showed that observation for language learning works better than direct reinforcement
for uttering right sounds
- exposure = rapid acquisition vs. shaping – takes longer
Observing other people’s Outcomes: What Happens to Them Might Happen to You
Expectations about outcomes of a particular course of action depend not only on what has
happened to you in the past but also on what you have observed happening to others
We are more likely to do something if we observe another person (model) obtain positive
consequences for a similar response. Vice versa for negative consequences
Observation also influences the emotions we experience.
By observing emotional response of others to a stimulus, it is possible to vicariously learn an
intense emotional response to a stimulus
Vicariously Conditioned: when you observe repeated the connection between a stimulus and a
emotional response exhibited by another person, you would start exhibiting the response to the
stimulus also
Importance of Rules and Symbolic Processes
Studies that helped cognitive revolution realize people did not need trial by trial shaping, but
rather helped by rules and self-instructions used to link pieces of information together
1) For children – rewarding good behavior and explaining the underlying rules and principles
help children learn to adopt appropriate behavior more easily than when there are no clear verbal
rules
2) Children are active thinker and perceiver who forms theories about world not just passive
learners shaped by external rewards
3) Classical condition: someone associate light with electric shock
however if the experimenter told her that the shock wouldn’t be there anymore, on later trials,
she can see light without feeling fear
These findings show we need a more social-cognitive approach to personality that takes into
account how individual usually deals mentally and emotionally with experiences
Need: a theory of the cognitive-emotional-motivational processes that underlie person’s
characteristic behavioral expressions and conflict
Mid-1980s: Bandura presents broad social cognitive theory
The Agentic, Proactive Person – entire passage is important
Bandura emphasize human capacity to be agentic (to be responsible for self and actions) and
exercise self-regulation and self-reflection as people generate behavior that, rather than being
merely reflexive, is proactive and future-oriented.
Theory pays attention to the importance of human ability to symbolize events and experiences
and to anticipate consequences, plan events, and direct one’s goals and activities purposefully
through “forethought”
Most important construct is: self efficacy
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy refers to the individual’s belief that he or she can successfully execute the behaviors
required by a particular situation
Perception of efficacy: guide and direct one’s behavior
From treatments to help reduce specific fears:
High association was found between degree to which persons improved from treatment and their
perceived self-efficacy
Clear links were found between self-perceptions of one’s competence and the ability to actually
behave competently
The greater a person’s perceived self-efficacy, the higher the goals they choose and the stronger
their commitment and perseverance in pursuing them
People who view themselves as lacking self-efficacy are vulnerable to anxiety and develop
avoidance patterns to lessen fears, more prone to depression and impaired immune systems
The Role of Self-Efficacy in Personality and Behavior Change
According to Bandera, different therapy and change technique work by increasing self-efficacy
expectations, which lead people to believe they can cope with difficult situations that threatened
them before
Methods that strengthen expectancies of personal efficacy will help person perform relevant
behavior
Best methods: give most direct, compelling success experiences in performing a behavior
ex. climbing fire escape successful is better way to overcome height phobia than just thinking
about it
Bandura: All major behavioral strategies induce change by improving self-efficacy
High efficacy expectations help individual persist in pursuit of goals
SOCIAL COGNITIVE RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF PERSONALITY: WALTER MISCHEL
Mischel’s goal: resolve crisis in personality psychology created by 1968 critique of broad
personality traits (chapter 4)
Mischel (1973) – proposed social cognitive reconceptualization of personality
His book (1968) Personality and Assessment – addressed classical assumption of trait theory:
people behave in highly consistent ways across different situations
- book said assumption was contradicted by objective evidence
- raised question: “how can this contradiction between intuitive conviction of substantial
consistency in personality and the evidence on low cross-situational consistency in behavior be
reconciled?”
Social psychologists used Mischel’s conclusion to emphasize power of context vs. traits
Personality psychologists used Mischel to treat situations as noise and remove effects of situation
on personality
Understanding Consistency in Personality: People as Meaning Makers
Mischel provided alternative answer: consistency could be found by analyzing behavior in its
situational context
- “analysis should reveal people have consistent if…then…situation-behavior patterns =
contextualized personality signatures.”
Proposed that people behave in ways consistent with the meaning that situations have for them,
meanings that reflect individual biology history and social learning experiences.
So individual differences in personality emerge in distinctive ways that people process and
understand particular situations
Social Cognitive Person Variables
Mischel identified: social Cognitive Person Variables (REFER TO TABLE 14.1)
Variables – the differences between people in how they interpret social stimuli and situations as
they interact with them
Each variable collectively interact to influence behavior in a particular situation
Consistency of personality not only in individual’s overall average behavioral tendencies but also
in these context-dependent behavioral signatures of personality
Ex. Gary W. treats person that he expects to give him acceptance with over niceness, but if he
sees himself being rejected, then he insults, erupts his anger against his partner – SELF
DEFACATING because hostility will fulfill his rejection fears
1973 paper showed such patterns attest to complexity and adaptive discriminative flexibility and
depth of human personality
Encoding (Construals): How do you see it?
Variables are agentic and proactive: they influence and change, in some way, they create the
situations the person subsequently experiences
People differ greatly in how they encode (represent, construe, appraise, interpret) themselves,
other people, events and experiences.
How they encode influences the subsequent reactions to them
Different people selectively attend to and seek out different kinds of information
ex. some people might encode a mumbled greeting as personal rejection – which makes them
depressed and withdraw other people will feel disrespected and become angry/hostile
How people encode and appraise events and selectively attend to what they observe also greatly
influences what they learn
ex. self conscious people encode social events by how awkward they would feel while more
outgoing individuals encode situations in terms of how interesting/pleasant they can be.
Expectancies and Beliefs: What Will Happen?
Consequences people expect also influence people’s actions
To predict behavior: one has to consider individual’s expectancies about consequences of
different behavioral possibilities in a situation
Self Efficacy Expectations: the person’s belief that he or she can perform a particular behavior,
like handling a snake, or taking an exam.
Behavior-Outcome relations: behavior-outcome expectancies represent the expected if…
then…relations between behavioral alternatives and expected probable outcomes in particular
situations
We are guided by previous expectancies based on experiences in similar past situations
Generate behavior even when they are not in line with objective conditions in a situation
Sometimes we act in ways that confirm our expectations – self-fulfilling prophecies
Affect: Feelings and “Hot” Reactions
Hot cognitions – thoughts that activate strong emotion
ex. beliefs about self and one’s personal future
Anything that implies important consequences, harmful or beneficial, can trigger emotional
reaction
Affective reactions to situation features may occur immediately and automatically outside of
awareness
Emotional reactions can trigger closely associated cognitions and behaviors
Affective states and moods are easily influenced by situational factors
Goals and Values: What do you want? What is it worth?
Goals influence what is valued, values influence performance
Goals and values guide long-term projects people pursue, situation and outcomes they seek and
reactions to them.
Intrinsic Motivation: the gratification of the individual receives from the activity or task themselves
influence life goals
What can you do? Overcoming stimulus Control through Self Regulation
People set performance goals for themselves even without external constraints and social
monitors
We react with self-criticism or self-satisfaction to our behavior depending on how well it matches
our expectations and standards
People differ in the types of plans that guide their behavior in absence of or in spite of external
situational pressures
Individuals differ in components of self-regulation
Self-regulation provides a route through which we can influence our interpersonal and social
environment substantially
We can actively select situations we expose ourselves to
When environment cannot be changed to be more favorable to one’s goal, it maybe possible to
change it psychologically
Contributors to Person Variables: A Quick Look at a Long History
Personal construct theory by George Kelly and Social Learning theory developed by Julian Rotter
– the two of them contributed a lot to personality and clinical psychology
- George Kelly: “The Psychology of Personal Constructs” and Rotter “Social learning and Clinical
Psychology”
Person variable of “encoding strategies” reflect George Kelly’s core point – the importance of how
individuals construe their experience and themselves
Conceptualization of personality – drew from the expectancy-value concepts that Rotter took
Rotter  probability that a particular pattern of behavior will occur was a joint function of the
individual’s outcome expectancies and the subjective value of these outcomes
1940s – early 1950s, Rotter introduced expectancy construct to personality psychology and made
it centerpiece for his social learning
Argued for importance of both expectancies and values as basic building blocks for a theory of
social learning
Impact of theorists felt decades later in indirect forms than when Rotter and Kelly first advanced
ideas