Chapter 11: Albert Bandura & Walter Mischel Flashcards
Social Cognitive Theory
The theory/position of both Bandura and Mischel. “Social” acknowledges the social origins of much human thought and action. The “cognitive” portion recognizes the influential relationship between thought processes and human motivation, affect, and action. This theory views the interaction between the person and environment as highly complex and individualistic. Observational learning is at the heart of social cognitive theory. Observational learning requires no reinforcement. This theory contrasts sharply to the theories of Skinner and Dollard & Miller which rely heavily on the concept of direct reinforcement.
Consistency (or lack thereof) of Human Behavior
Traditionally, personality theory has assumed that although people differ from one another another, the behavior of any given individual tends to be consistent across similar situations over time. However, Mischel found hat standardized personality tests designed to measure traits were weak predictors of behavior & that ppl are better predictors of their own behavior than the best available personality tests. He then reviewed many studies designed to measure consistency of behavior across situations and found that the typical correlation to be about 0.3 which he called “the personality coefficient”
He argued that the weakness of the coefficient was not due to problems in measuring such characteristics as traits or behavior, but rather, to the fact that human behavior is simply not very consistent
Consistency Paradox
Term used by Mischel to describe the fact that both laypersons and professional psychologists persist in believing that people’s behavior is consistent when evidence indicates that it is not.
Person variables vs situation variables
Person variables: those aspects of a person such as traits, habits, and repressed experiences that are assumed to cause the person to act consistently in a variety of similar situations
Situation variables: consist of the environmental circumstances in which the person finds himself or herself
*Mischel’s major criticism of traditional personality theories is that they emphasize person variables over situation variables
*Mischel believed Skinner’s theory overemphasized situation variables by attempting to explain behavior entirely by environmental conditions
Reciprocal Determinism
Mischel’s position that person variables, situation variables, and behavior continuously interact with one another. Situation vs provide the setting. Person vs determine how a situation is analyzed and which behaviors are chosen. Behavior both provides information concerning the person’s analysis of the stiuation and modifies the environment
*one implication of this is that ppls beliefs about themselves and the world will influence both how they behave and teh environments in which they place themselves and then feedback from behavior & environmental experience will confirm or disconfirm ppls believes
Cognitive Social Person Variables
These determine how a given individual will interact with a situation—determine how the myriad of stimuli confronted by a person are perceived, selected, interpreted, and used. Unlike traditional personal variables, cognitive social person variables are active cognitive processes that operate in the present.
Mischel’s Five Cognitive Social Learning Person Variables:
1- Encoding Strategies: How we see things
2- Expectancies: what we think will happen
3- subjective values: What is worth having or doing?
4- Self regulatory systems and plans: how do we attain our goal?
5- Competencies: what are we capable of doing?
Reinforcement and Social-Cognitive Theory
Within social-cognitive theory reinforcement is not believed to influence learning, it is believed to be importantly related to performance and to perceptual processes. In other words, reinforcement is thought to influence what is attended to, and thus learned and, more importantly, it is thought to determine which aspect of what has been learned is translated into behavior.
Observational learning
Model: anything that conveys information—for instance, a person, a television, a book, a film, etc.
in the Bobo doll experiment, an adult human was the model (adult showed modeling aggressive behavior toward Bobo Doll to see if kids would then partake in that behavior)
Vicarious reinforcement: children who saw the model’s aggressiveness reinforced appeared to develop the hypothesis that if they acted aggressively, they too could expect reinforcement.
Vicarious punishment: same as above but with punishment
Bobo Doll experiment continued
1st phase of study indicated that reinforcement was important for learning but that it could be vicariously experienced & need not be contingent on one’s own behavior. This finding alone contradicted Skinner, Dollard, & Miller’s claim that for reinforcement to be effective it must be contingent on one’s own behavior
2nd phase - in all 3 groups the children were offered incentives to act as the model had in the video (even though in one of the groups they had seen the model be reprimanded and threatened for his behavior). All 3 groups replicated the model’s behavior in this scenario, showing that what is observed is learned and that how what is learned is translated into performance depends on the learner’s behavior- outcome expectancies
Four Processes that influence what is attended to, what is retained, how what is learned is translated into behavior, and why it is translated into behavior
Attentional Processes: include aspects of the environment that influence attention, such as the complexity, distinctiveness, and prevalence of the stimulation. ie: screeching brakes attract most ppls attention. It has been shown that models are attended to more if they are seen as similar to oneself, are respected, are considered powerful or attractive
Retentional Processes: what is learned by observation is of no value unless it is retained. Info is generally encoded and stored either imaginary or verbally. Makes delayed modeling possible (the fact that often info gained by observational learning is first translated into behavior long after the time that it is learned
Motor Reproduction Processes: to translate learning into performance, one needs to have the necessary motor apparatus & even then complex skills cannot simply be observed and immediately translated into performance.
Motivational Processes: no matter how much one has learned, and no matter one’s capabilities, learning will not be translated into performance unless there is an incentive to do so.
Self-Regulated Behavior
People develop performance standards that they use to evaluate their own behavior. Meeting standards results in intrinsic reinforcement, failing to meet standards results in intrinsic punishment
Bandura found that children exposed to models with high performance standards reinforced themselves only for superior performance whereas children exposed to models accepting minimal performance standards reinforced themselves for minimal performance
Personal frustration, chronic discouragement, and feelings of worthlessness can result from extreme forms of harsh standards for self-evaluation. Bandura found that ppl prone to depression generally judge themselves more harshly tan ppl not prone to depressoin
Self Efficacy
Human agency- the conscious planning and intentional execution of actions that influence future events
Self-Efficacy- what a person is actually capable of doing
Perceived self-efficacy- that which a person believes he or she is capable of doing. Influenced by several factors (personal accomplishments and failures, seeing models perceived as similar to oneself succeed or fail at various tasks, and verbal persuasion ie encouragement by others
Ppl w/ high perceived self efficacy have been found to set more challenging goals & performance standards, persist longer in the pursuit of goals, be more venturesome in their behavior, recover more quickly from setbacks, experience less fear, anxiety, stress, and depression than ppl with low perceived self-efficacy
Moral Conduct & the 8 self-exonerating mechanisms that allow a person to act contrary to their moral principles without experiencing self-contempt
1- Moral Justification: poor behavior justified as a means to a higher purpose (religious wars)
2- Euphemistic Labeling: calling poor behavior something other than what it really is (aggression is ok if occurs in a “game”)
3- Advantageous Comparison: comparing one’s poor behavior with even more heinous acts to make your acts look less bad
4- Displacement of Responsibility: acting against your moral code bc an authority sanctions the behavior & takes responsibility
5- Diffusion of Responsibility: taking part in a group action that goes against your moral code bc going against the group is uncomfortable
6- Disregard of Distortion Consequences: when you ignore or distort the harm caused by your conduct & so there is no need to experience self-contempt. Removing yourself from the effects of your immoral behavior
7- Dehumanization: looking upon others as subhuman so you can treat them inhumanely w/o experience self-contempt
8- Attribution of Blame: choosing something that a victim said or did and claiming that is what caused you to act against your moral code
Delay of Gratification
Mischel found that the ability to delay gratification increases with age, intelligence, and with shorter intervals of delay.
Study where 4 & 5 y/o children were given the choice between a small reward given immediately (marshmallow) or a larger reward given after a delay (2 marshmallows). Children waited teh longest when no rewards were visible. Children who were most successful in delaying gratification made the waiting easier for themselves by distracting themselves via talking to themselves, trying to fall asleep, playing made up games, etc.
They followed up on the study subjects 10 years later & found that the children who had been able to delay gratification even with the rewards in front of them were found to have developed a number of positive adolescent personality characteristics such as social and academic skills.
*willingness to delay gratification can be learned through modeling & would benefit early ed & childrearing practices
Dysfunctional Expectancies & Psychotherapy
According to Social-Cognitive Theory, psychological problems result from dysfunctional expectations (erroneous, nonfunctional, or faulty anticipations) and any type of therapy that corrects them will be, by definition, effective. Ie: someone believes developing a close relationship w/ the opposite sex will bring pain and frustration, one will avoid such relationships. Can be overgeneralized and prevent the person from having experiences that would disconfirm them.
Providing disconfirming experiences in relation to overgeneralized dysfunctional expectations is a key ingredient of the kind of therapy promoted by social-cognitive theory.
Perceived self-efficacy is another type of dysfunctional expectancy (ie ppl w/ low self-efficacy might overgeneralized their shortcomings which discourages them from trying things they think they can’t do which means they never encounter scenarios in which they have experiences that disconfirm their poor self image/lack of self-efficacy)
