Social Cognitive Theory of Personality

10 Key excerpts on "Social Cognitive Theory of Personality"

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  Personality

  Theory and Research

  • Daniel Cervone, Lawrence A. Pervin(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Social-cognitive theory has developed considerably during the past few decades and today is an important force in the science of personality. 312 SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORY: BANDURA AND MISCHEL Questions to Be Addressed in This Chapter 1. What is the role of thinking, or “cognitive,” processes in personality? 2. How do people learn complex social behaviors? 3. How can one scientifically analyze people’s capacity for personal agency, that is, their abil- ity to influence their actions and the course of their own development? 4. In what ways do variations—as opposed to consistencies—in a person’s behavior reveal the nature of his or her personality? 5. What are the cognitive processes through which people can motivate their behavior, and what are the processes through which they can control their impulses? You have two things in common with the personality theorists you will learn about in this chapter. 1. They, like you, appreciated the range of challenges faced by the personality psychologist: Understanding personality structure, processes, and development, and applying this under- standing for the benefit of human welfare (see Chapter 1). 2. They, like you—once you complete your personality psychology course—knew all the major theories that had addressed these challenges. They could tell Freud from Skinner, Eysenck from Rogers. With this knowledge, they surveyed the intellectual scene and concluded this: The theories were not up to the challenges. Something new was needed. Starting in the 1960s, they began to forge that something new: An approach to personality structure and dynamics known as social-cognitive theory. Relating Social-Cognitive Theory to Historically Prior Theories In crafting their theory, social-cognitivists tried to overcome the limitations of all the theories of personality covered elsewhere in this book.

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  Psychology and the Challenges of Life

  Adjustment and Growth

  • Spencer A. Rathus, Jeffrey S. Nevid(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  On a personal level, to better understand your present behavior as a student or a worker, we need to learn more about your individual history of rewards and punishments. To the traditional behaviorist, Humanistic Theory 67 your personality is nothing more than the sum total of your learned behaviors. Many contem- porary learning theorists, however, take a broader view of the learning process. These theorists, generally called social cognitive theorists, expand the traditional view of learning to include cognitive factors such as expectancies and observational learning. Social cognitive theorists view people as active seekers and interpreters of information in the environment, not merely as reactors to environmental forces acting on them. But like psychodynamic theory, learning theory models of personality have also been subject to criticism. To some critics, learning models fail to account for the roles of unconscious influences in determining behavior. Others have voiced concern that learning models fail to give sufficient attention to the influence of heredity or to the development of personality traits or styles, or that they lack the ability to provide a meaningful account of self-awareness. Let’s now turn our attention to humanistic theory, which, like social cognitive theory, emphasizes cognitive processes and conscious experience. Humanistic Theory Humanistic psychologists focus our attention on the meaning of life—or, rather, the meaning with which we imbue our lives. The term humanism has a long history and many meanings. It became a third force in American psychology in the 1950s and 1960s, partly in response to the predom- inant model of determinism espoused by psychodynamic and behavioral theorists (Grogan, 2013). To the humanistic theorists, humans are not puppets on a string controlled by the invisible puppet masters of internal mental structures or environmental influences.

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  Media Effects

  Advances in Theory and Research

  • Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, Jennings Bryant(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this environment, general social learning theories initially emerged (Bandura & Walters, 1963). These theories focused on imitation and rewarded behaviors. Where behaviorism placed emphasis squarely on internal mental processes (i.e., paired associations), social learning theories moved the focus to environmental cues (Bandura, 1986). However, these general theories of social learning failed to explain why individuals imitated the behaviors of others when the imitator was not directly rewarded for the behavior or why novel behaviors were ever undertaken in the first place. As a result, Bandura (1986) began to focus on environmental cues and cognitive processes that guide us. In retrospect, Bandura’s suggestion that environmental cues provide information for potential imitation, but that imitation also requires self-efficacy and motivation, seems obvious. At the time, though, it required a shift in thinking—in some cases, a dramatic one—to arrive at this current moment of understanding.

  Whereas a bulk of the related research, especially in the area of media effects, has focused on behavioral outcomes of learning (i.e., modeling, imitation), cognition was from the beginning crucial to the theory (Bandura & Walters, 1963). This fact became more clear in 1986 when Bandura introduced the full scope (and changed the name) of the theory, introducing concepts of self-regulation and self-reflection as important to the processes of learning. It was then that the importance of environment—more specifically, our cognitive situation and human agency in the environment—was identified as the factor that ultimately encourages or dampens learning likelihood.

  Explicating the Theory

  Social cognitive theory (SCT), in simplest terms, explains how humans can learn and be motivated to perform behaviors by observing others. But this does not mean that humans simply mimic others. SCT is based on an agentic perspective (Bandura, 1986, 2006), meaning that the theory views humans as having agency: We are proactive, self-regulating, self-organizing, and both purposefully and reflexively adaptive to changes in the environment. This understanding of agency is crucial. As will be discussed below, although our environment provides much needed input to aid in learning and behavioral processes, SCT emphasizes the vital aspect that information processing and human motivation play; that is, whereas factors external to us may influence our actions, the origins of our actions are internal. Humans are not mere imitators; we are not automatons.

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  Psychology of Personality

  Viewpoints, Research, and Applications

  • Bernardo J. Carducci(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  It stands to reason that entrepreneurs would not risk the personal and financial costs of starting a new business if they did not believe they had the skills to be successful. The Influence of Self-Efficacy: Affecting Thoughts, Feel- ings, and Behavior Self-efficacy influences not only people’s behavior (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998) but also their thoughts and emotions (Brutus & Ryan, 1998). For example, if you believe that being a good dancer is very important because of the attention and popu- larity it will bring you, and if you also believe you are not a very good dancer and will never be one no matter how hard you try, you are very likely to feel depressed. Such a combination of beliefs and emotions may cause you to not even try to improve your dancing ability. As 398 Chapter 11 The Social-Cognitive Viewpoint Summing It Up Basic Concepts of Bandura’s Social-Cognitive Theory The self system is a set of internal cognitive process that influence how indiviudals give meaning to their perceptions of the environment that serve to regulate their behavior based on these perceptions. Triadic reciprocal causation helps to account for the mutual influence the self system and environmental factors have on individual’s behavior, as well as how such modifications in an individual’s behavior serves to influence changes in the self system and environmental factors. Observational learning is the process by which we learn complex behavior patterns from watching others, instead of on a trial-and-error basis. Specific characteristic features of observational learning include the following: The distinction between learning and performance: Within the context of observational learning is the idea that we do not necessarily have to perform a behavior as proof that we have learned it.

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  Introduction to Personality

  Toward an Integrative Science of the Person

  • Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, Ozlem Ayduk(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  14.16 Describe three characteristics of social cognitive personality assessment. What kinds of measures are typically employed, and how do they differ from trait measures? Personality Assessment  367 Second, assessments whenever possible also try to identify the implications for constructive personality change or treatment. They thus are aimed at identifying the psychological person variables that might be modified, for example by enhancing efficacy expectancies through exposure to relevant efficacy-building experiences. Such assessments, always closely linked to change or treatment programs, are being done effectively in areas that range from weight control in anorexic patients to recovery of sexual functioning after massive coronary problems, to overcoming debilitating fears. Personality assessors in this approach also seek to identify the underlying person variables and processes that seem to account for the individual’s stable behavior patterns. They tend to conceptualize these underlying variables in relatively specific (rather than global) terms. Researchers and assessors therefore obtain self-reports, ratings, and other data to infer the particular person variable as directly and specifically as possible within these contexts. Some also try to sample and observe behavior as it occurs naturally. For example, they ask people to provide daily diary reports of what they actually did and experienced within specific situations (e.g., Ayduk, May, Downey, & Higgins, 2003; Bolger & Schilling, 1991; Cantor et al., 1991). There have been many applications, and we illustrate these with the example of the measurement of self-efficacy expectations. Measuring Self-Efficacy Expectancies Given the importance of the self-efficacy construct in social cognitive theories it is also a person variable that is used extensively in personality assessment at this level of analysis (Bandura, 1978, 1986; Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001; Merluzzi, Glass, & Genest, 1981).

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  The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology

  • Philip J. Corr, Gerald Matthews(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  B. 1960. Emotion and personality . New York: Columbia University Press Atkinson, J. W. 1964. An introduction to motivation. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Baldwin, M. W. 1999. Relational schemas: research into social-cognitive aspects of inter- personal experience, in D. Cervone and Y. Shoda (eds.), The choherence of personality: social-cognitive bases of consistency, variability, and organization, pp. 127–54. New York: Guilford Press Bandura, A. 1986. Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1997. Self-efficacy: the exercise of control. New York: Freeman Bem, D. J. and Allen, A. 1974. On predicting some of the people some of the time: the search for cross-situational consistencies in behaviour, Psychological Review 81: 506–20 Berkowitz, L. 1990. On the formation and regulation of anger and aggression, American Psychologist 45: 494–503 Bolles, R. C. 1972. Reinforcement, expectancy, and learning, Psychological Review 79: 394–409 Borkenau, P., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M. and Angleitner, A. 2006. Genetic and environmental influences on person x situation profiles, Journal of Personality 74: 1451–80 Brehm, J. W. and Self, E. A. 1989. The intensity of motivation, Annual Review of Psychology 40: 109–31 484 cognitive perspectives Brewer, B. W, Van Raalte, J. L and Linder, D. E. 1993. Athletic identity: Hercules’ muscles or Achilles heel?, International Journal of Sport Psychology 24: 237–54 Cervone, D. and Shoda, Y. 1999. Social cognitive theories and the coherence of person- ality, in D. Cervone and Y. Shoba (eds.), The coherence of personality: social- cognitive bases of consistency, variability, and organization, pp. 3–33. New York: Guilford Press Downey, G. and Feldman, S. I. 1996. Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70: 1327–43 English, T.

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  Handbook of Self and Identity, Second Edition

  • Mark R. Leary, June Price Tangney, Mark R. Leary, June Price Tangney(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The Guilford Press

    (Publisher)

  Rejecting this equation, an alterna- tive and fundamentally different conception of personality also has evolved throughout the history of the field, and it has much clos- er affinity to theory and research on the self. In this tradition, personality is construed as a system of mediating processes and struc- tures, conscious and unconscious. The focus is on how these mediating processes can explain how and why people think and feel as they do, and their interactions with the social world throughout the life cycle (e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 2010). Freud’s theory was only the first and bold- est of personality process theories in what has become a long tradition whose pioneers include such figures as Alfred Adler, Harry Stack Sullivan, Henry Murray, Kurt Lewin, and George Kelly. In modern personality and social psychology, mediating process models have had a substantial resurgence during the social cognition era in the last three decades (see Cervone & Shoda, 1999; Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996; Higgins & Kruglanski, 1996; John et al., 2008). Drawing both from the early traditions and borrowing from social cognitive and information processing para- digms that also encompass the role of au- tomatic and unconscious processing (e.g., Bargh, 1997; Higgins, 1996a; Kihlstrom, 1987, 1990), newer approaches in personal- 2. The Self as a Psycho-Social Dynamic Processing System 27 ity have emerged that are concerned with the goals, motivations, and affect that underlie behavior central to self and self-regulation (see Hoyle, 2010). Unlike work on isolated self-processes, these approaches try to cap- ture and account for “personality-like” types or individual differences at the person level. They do so by addressing the internal cognitive–affective–motivational states and “processing dynamics” of the person and their interpersonal as well as intrapersonal expressions as the person adapts to and shapes the social environment.

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  Understanding People

  • Trevor Butt(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The advent of a strong cognitive psychology revita-lised the ‘common-sense’ view that thoughts and emotions did in-deed cause behaviour. The encouragement of personal change now required an attack on all three fronts. Clinical psychologists, most of whom practised behaviour therapy, now embraced a cognitive-behavioural approach that was underwritten by cognitive social learning theory. The cognitive therapy developed by Beck (1976) and Ellis’s rational emotive therapy (Ellis, 1975) were seen as being based on an information-processing approach and enthusiastically adopted by orthodox clinicans. Personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) was interpreted as a psychology of personal cognitions (Ash-worth, 2000). The characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving were now seen as being essentially cognitive. Styles of thought, internalised dia-logues, were held to produce emotional and behavioural responses. However, the primacy of a¡ect was championed by Zajonc (1980), and a residual behaviourism argued for the primacy of behaviour. Once more, an interaction e¡ect is proposed, with the balance of power in favour of a cognitive approach. The sense of self The concept of ‘self ’ is a fuzzy and ill-de¢ned one, used to refer to a number of related ideas. As one would expect, behaviourism had no use whatsoever for the concept. It was seen as the successor to the soul and the mind, an explanatory ¢ction that appeared to account for behaviour but in fact explained nothing at all. For Skinner (1974), the problem with a self was that the person was treated as a responsible agent and consequently the real causes of behaviour in the environment were ignored. In contrast, humanists like Rogers Understanding People 8 (1951) attributed agency to the person. For them, people were self-directed agents, capable of transforming their lives and improving their circumstances.

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  Essentials of Psychology

  • John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  There is no way we can completely divorce social influ-ences from the study of any aspect of behavior—nor would we want to. But most psychologists in other areas prefer to study the behavior of a single individual at a time, while most social psychologists focus on the behavior of people in pairs or groups or the influence of one person on another. As Baron and Byrne define it (1977, p. 4), social psychology is the scientific field that seeks to investigate the manner in which the behavior, feelings, or thoughts of one individual are influenced or determined by the behavior and/or characteristics of others. Davis, Loughlin, and Komorita (1976) put it still more briefly: Social psychology may be defined as the study of human interaction. 458 Chapter 14 Social behavior The common ingredient in these definitions is the relationship of one person to another. Since we relate to others in so many different ways— individually, in groups, in crowds, in casual or intimate contacts—the field of social psychology is enormously diverse. Social psychologists have broadened their field of interest further by studying not just social behavior, but also the ways ideas and attitudes (cog-nitions) are influenced by encounters with others and how our emotions influence others and are influenced by them. Thus there are at least three levels of analysis within social psychology. Individual social psychology theorists tend to emphasize one of these levels at a time, so that there are some heavily cognitive theories, some that emphasize emotions, and some that focus almost entirely on overt behavior. Moreover, some social psychologists have chosen to study the intra-personal aspects of social encounters, such as the attitudes we have, the emotions we feel about others, and the judgments we make about other people. Others deal with interpersonal or dyadic (two person) interactions, such as the processes of attraction between individuals and the develop-ment of enduring relationships.

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  Theories of Human Learning

  Mrs Gribbin's Cat

  • Guy R. Lefrançois(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The three points of the triad, shown in Figure 10.3, are the person, the person’s Personal Personal, internal factors, such as biology (gender, hormones), affect (emotions, moods), and cognition (knowledge, goals, expectations) Behavior (the person’s actions) The social and physical environment as experienced by the individual Figure 10.3 Bandura’s notion of triadic reciprocal determinism. Behavior, the person, and the environment all mutually influence and change each other. From Lefrançois, G. R. (2016). Psychology: The Human Puzzle. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Fig. 5.12. Used by permission. 8 There’s a lot that could be said here, Mrs. Gribbin interrupted her reading. A lot. And then for a long time, she was silent. About what? I asked, and for a second, I think she looked disappointed when she glanced at me, but in the dim glow of the kerosene lamp, I couldn’t be certain. About free will, she answered. That you can choose to be here or there and that you can choose how you eat your beans – well, doesn’t that mean that you have volition? Some of your brighter students might want to look at the Miller and Atencio (2008) chapter where they argue that volition is one of the factors that accounts for some of the variance in behavior. But most psychologists aren’t certain what to make of free will. So, they make nothing of it. With some exceptions, like Skinner’s 1971 book Beyond Freedom and Dignity. So, do we have free will? I asked. Do some research; think about it, the old lady replied, and she started to read once more. Cognitive Control in Bandura’ s Social Cognitive Theory 387 actions, and the environment. Personal factors, such as our mood, our knowledge, and perhaps our personality traits, clearly affect our behavior. They can also affect our environ- ments. But just as clearly, aspects of our environments, such as the social systems in which we operate, affect our behaviors even as they can also affect personal factors, such as how we feel.

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