THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE
THEORY OF
PERSONALITY
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORY OF
PERSONALITY: DEFINITION
• Proposed by Albert Bandura
• Emphasizes the interaction of our
traits with our social situations
• We learn many of our behaviors
through conditioning or observing
others and modeling our behavior
after theirs (“social” part)
• Also draws off of the work of Skinner
• Helps us form habits
• Also emphasize the importance of
mental processes: what we think
about our situations affects our
behavior (“cognitive” part)
KEY ELEMENTS OF
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE
THEORY OF
PERSONALITY
RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM
• Interacting influences of behavior, internal
cognition, and environment (Bandura)
• Children’s TV-viewing habits (past behavior)
influence their viewing preferences (internal
factor), which influence how television
(environmental factor) affects their current
behavior
• Reciprocal: two or more parties exchanging
something
• Determinism: your behavior is determined by…
SELF-EFFICACY
• Performance Standards: Standards that
people develop to rate the adequacy of
their own behavior in a variety of situations
• Those who succeed in meeting their own internal
performance standards develop self-efficacy
• Self-Efficacy: Expectancy that one’s efforts
will be successful
• A person’s level of confidence in her or his own
abilities to gain reinforcement
• Can be situation specific: abilities in science v.
rock climbing ability
PERSONAL CONTROL (JULIAN ROTTER)
• External Locus of Control: perception that
chance or outside forces determine a
person’s fate
• When could this be helpful?
• Internal Locus of Control: people who
believe that they control their own destiny
• Attitude, preparation, effort – all controlled by
the individual
• Who achieves more in school and work?
• Internals
• Who acts more independently?
• Internals
• Who enjoys better health and feels less
depressed?
• Internals
Locus: a
particular
position, point,
or place
ASSESSING BEHAVIOR IN SITUATIONS
• How do social-cognitive theorists assess
personality?
• Often through observation in realistic
situations
• Best means of predicting future behavior is
through examining a person’s past behavior
in similar situations
• Best predictor of future grades is past grades
• Best predictor of future job performance is past
job performance
EVALUATING THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE
THEORY
• More than other theories, it builds from
psychological research on learning and
cognition
• Critics:
• Focuses so much on the situation that it fails to
appreciate the person’s inner traits
• Where is the person? Human emotions?
• Traits have been shown to predict behavior at
work, love, and play