Theories of Personality Rotter Mischel Chapter 17 Mc

Theories of Personality Rotter & Mischel Chapter 17 © Mc. Graw-Hill © 2009 by The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

Outline • • Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory Biography of Julian Rotter Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory Predicting Specific Behaviors Predicting General Behaviors Maladaptive Behavior Psychotherapy Cont’d © Mc. Graw-Hill

Outline • Introduction to Mischel’s Personality System • Biography of Walter Mischel • Background of the Cognitive-Affective Personality System • Related Research • Critique of Cognitive Social Learning Theory • Concept of Humanity © Mc. Graw-Hill

Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory • Assumes Cognitive Factors Help Shape How People Will React to Environmental Forces • Expectations of Future Events are Prime Determinants of Performance • Focus on Interaction of People with Meaningful Environments • Examination of Consistency or Inconsistency of Personality © Mc. Graw-Hill

Biography of Rotter • Born in Brooklyn in 1916 • In high school, he became familiar with the writings of Freud and Adler • In 1941, received a Ph. D in clinical psychology from Indiana University • Published Social Learning and Clinical Psychology in 1954 • Moved to the University of Connecticut in 1963 and has remained there since his retirement © Mc. Graw-Hill

Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory • Rests on Five Hypotheses – Humans interact with their meaningful environments – Human personality is learned – Personality has a basic unity – Motivation is goal directed – People are capable of anticipating events © Mc. Graw-Hill

Predicting Specific Behaviors • Behavior Potential • Expectancy • Reinforcement Value – Internal and external reinforcement – Reinforcement-reinforcement sequences • Psychological Situation • Basic Predicting Formula © Mc. Graw-Hill

Predicting General Behaviors • Generalized Expectancies • Needs – Categories of needs • Recognition-Status • Dominance • Independence • Protection-Dependency • Love and Affection • Physical Comfort – Need components • Need Potential • Freedom of Movement • Need Value • General Prediction Formula • Internal and External Control of Reinforcement • Interpersonal Trust Scale © Mc. Graw-Hill

Maladaptive Behavior • Rotter defined maladaptive behavior as any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal • Combination of high need value and low freedom of movement – That is, unrealistically high goals in combination with low ability to achieve them – Characterized by unrealistic goals, inappropriate behaviors, inadequate skills or unreasonably low expectancies of executing behavior © Mc. Graw-Hill

Psychotherapy • Bring Freedom of Movement and Need Value into Harmony • Changing Goals – The role of therapist • Help patients understand the faulty nature of their goals • Teach them ways to strive toward realistic goals • Eliminating Low Expectancies – The role of therapist • Teach effective problem solving • Help client to make distinction between past and present and teach assertiveness © Mc. Graw-Hill

Introduction to Mischel’s Personality Theory • Early Work Objected to Trait Theory Explanation of Behavior • Cognitive Activities and Specific Situations Play Role in Determining Behavior • Recently Have Advocated Reconciliation between Processing Dynamics and Personal Dispositions Approaches • Holds that Behavior Stems from Relatively Stable Personal Dispositions and Cognitive-Affective Processes Interacting with a Particular Situation © Mc. Graw-Hill

Biography of Mischel • Born in Vienna in 1930 • Second son of upper-middle-class parents • When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, his family left for the U. S. • Received his Ph. D from Ohio State University in 1956, where he worked under Rotter • Published Personality and Assessment in 1968 • Has taught at Colorado, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, where he remains as an active researcher © Mc. Graw-Hill

Background of the Cognitive. Affective Personality System • Consistency Paradox – Although both laypeople and professionals tend to believe that behavior is quite consistent, research suggests that it is not • Person-Situation Interaction – Mischel believes that behavior is best predicted from an understanding of the person, the situation, and the interaction between person and situation © Mc. Graw-Hill

Cognitive-Affective Personality System • Behavior Prediction – Individuals should behave differently as situations vary • Situation Variables – All those stimuli that people attend to in a given situation • Cognitive-Affective Units – – – Encoding strategies Competencies and self-regulatory strategies Expectancies and beliefs Goals and values Affective responses © Mc. Graw-Hill

Related Research • Locus of Control and Holocaust Heroes – Midlarsky et al. (2005) • Heroes had a higher internal locus of control • Person-Situation Interaction – Kammrath et al. (2005) • The average person understands that, depending on their personality, people adjust their behavior to match the situation – Mendoza-Denton et al. (2001) • Conditional and interactionist self-evaluations buffer negative reactions to failure • The social-cognitive interactionist conceptualization is more appropriate than traditional “decontextualized” views of personality © Mc. Graw-Hill

Critique of Social Learning Theory • High on Generating Research, Internal Consistency, Parsimony, and Ability to Organize Knowledge • Average on Its Ability to Guide Action and to Be Falsified © Mc. Graw-Hill

Concept of Humanity • • • Free Choice over Determinism Teleology over Causality Conscious over Unconscious Social Factors over Biology Uniqueness over Similarity Rotter's view is slightly more optimistic whereas Mischel's is about in the middle © Mc. Graw-Hill