Chapter 14 - Social Cognitive Theories Flashcards
Social Cognitive Theories
Theorists
- Social cognitive theorists combine behavioural and cognitive perspectives into an approach to personality that stresses the interaction of a thinking human with a social environment that provides learning experiences
- Take into account both internal and external factors
Social Cognitive Theories
Reciprocal Determinism
two way causal relations between the person, behaviour, and the environment
Social Cognitive Theories
Julian Rotter: Expectancy, Reinforcement Value, and Locus of Control
Expectancy and Reinforcement value
- Likelihood that we engage in a particular behaviour in a given situation is influenced by two factors: expectancy and reinforcement value
- Expectancy – perception of how likely that certain consequences will occur if we engage in a particular behaviour
- Reinforcement value – how much we desire or dread the outcome that we expect
Social Cognitive Theories
Julian Rotter: Expectancy, Reinforcement Value, and Locus of Control
Locus of Control:
Internal-external locus of control
generalized expectancy that one’s outcomes are under personal versus external control
Social Cognitive Theories
Albert Bandura: The Social Cognitive Perspective and Self-Efficacy
- A concept central to Bandura’s work, and to social cognitive theory, is the idea of human agency, the idea that humans are active agents in their own lives.
- argued that we are not just at the mercy of the environment, we make plans and set goals, and then we behave in ways that help us reach our goals.
- Human agency is a process, not a trait or a characteristic, and includes four aspects:
- intentionality: we plan, modify our plans, and act with intention.
- forethought: we anticipate outcomes, set goals, and actively choose behaviours relevant to those goals
- self-reactiveness: the process of motivating and regulating our own actions, the processes that we use when we modify our goals, monitor our progress toward those goals, and, when necessary, change strategies.
- self-reflectiveness: we think about and evaluate our own motivations, values, and goals.
Social Cognitive Theories
Albert Bandura: The Social Cognitive Perspective and Self-Efficacy
Self-Efficacy
- beliefs concerning their ability to perform the behaviours needed to achieve desired outcomes
- Key factor in way people regulate their lives
Social Cognitive Theories
Albert Bandura: The Social Cognitive Perspective and Self-Efficacy
Determinants of Self-efficacy
- Performance attainments in similar situations
- Observational learning (if another person similar to yourself can accomplish a certain goal, so can you)
- Verbal persuasion
- Emotional arousal (anxiety or fatigue tend to decrease self-efficacy)
Research Foundations:
Albert Bandura, Human Agency, and the Social Cognitive Perspective
- His research is known as rigorous and creative, his theoretical writing as clear, carefully argued, and based on a solid empirical foundation.
- He argued, however, that our behaviour is not controlled simply by stimuli in our environment and the immediate consequences of our behaviour.
- tested 7- to 9-year-old children in a bowling game
- Bandura and Walter Mischel, his colleague at Stanford, found that children would sacrifice a small but immediately available reward in favour of a delayed but more valuable reward if they saw a model behave in this way.
- behaviour was controlled not by the immediacy of a reward in front of the child but by the behaviour they saw modelled by others, even when that meant delaying reward to a future time.
Applications
Increasing Self-Efficacy Through Systematic Goal Setting
research-derived guidelines for effective goal setting:
- Set specific, behavioural, and measurable goals
- Set performance, not outcome, goals.
- Set difficult but realistic goals.
- Set positive, not negative, goals.
- Set short-range as well as long-term goals.
- Set definite time spans for achievement.
Social Cognitive Theories
Walter Mischel: The Consistency Paradox and if…Then…Behaviour Consistencies
- Mischel argued that a more cognitive approach to personality was required, one that takes into account not only the power of situational factors, but also how people characteristically deal mentally and emotionally with experience.
- He has argued for the importance of personal constructs, individual ways of perceiving and understanding events, in behaviour.
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if…then… behaviour cosistencies - suggests that there is consistency in behaviour, but it is found within similar situations
- Ex: if Mark gets angry at his partner, then he will shout and become aggressive; however, once the if changes, so does the then: If Mark becomes angry with his boss, then he will withdraw and sulk.
Social Cognitive Theories
Evaluating Social Cognitive Theories
- A strength of the social cognitive approach is its strong scientific base. It brings together two perspectives, the behavioural and the cognitive, that have strong research traditions.
- Another strength is its ability to translate insights derived from other perspectives into cognitive-behavioural concepts.
- Social cognitive theory suggests that the inconsistency of a person’s behaviour across situations is actually a manifestation of a stable underlying cognitive-affective personality structure that reacts to certain features of situations.
