Cognitive approaches to personality Flashcards
Learning theories of personality
- argue individual differences in thought and beh exist due to form of learning
- often involves reinforcement (punishments and rewards)
- childhood social experiences were positive so learned being around others is good thing
Social Learning Theory - Bandura
- observational learning
- characteristics of the model
- attributes of the observer
- consequences of imitating a behaviour
- self-efficacy as a self-regulatory process
- increasing self-efficacy ratings
Social Learning Theory - Bandura Reciprocol Determinism
overt behaviour
environmental influences
personal factors
Theoretical Foundations of Social Learning Theory
Psychodynamic explanations of behavior are flawed:
- based on inferred drives/needs/etc., which can’t be tested
- ignore conscious cognitions
- ignore situational influences
Radical behaviorism is flawed:
- ignores cognition and emotion
- assumes that reinforcement is the only way to learn
Beyond Reinforcement
- we can learn by observing, reading or hearing about other’s behaviours
- vicarious reinforcement: observe others’ behaviour and its outcomes, model for ourselves
Basic Processes of Observational Learning
1) Attentional Processes (attend to and accurately perceive model’s behaviour)
2) Retention Processes (remember the model’s behaviour)
3) Motor Reproduction Processes (translate symbolically coded memories of the model’s behaviour into new response patterns)
4) Motivational Processes (if positive reinforcement is potentially available, enact the modelled behaviour).
Bandura et al., 1963- Bobo doll study
- 48 boys and 48 girls attending nursery
- mean age 4.3 years
- Ss matched for agressive neh shpwn in nursery school
- 4 conditions of bobo doll
- either showed total agression or less agression depending on what shown
Factors Influencing Tendency to Imitate
- characteristics of models: similarity, age, sex, status
- characteristics of observers: Low self-confidence, low self-esteem, reinforcement for imitation
- reward consequences of behaviour: Directly witnessing associated rewards
Evidence of Observational Learning
Bandura & Huston, 1961
- children imitate a model’s aggressive behaviour in the presence of the model
Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961
- children imitate a model’s aggressive behaviour in a new setting, away from the model
Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963
- children imitate a film-model’s aggressive behaviour
Self-Efficacy
- perceived ability to cope with specific situations
- situational specificity varies according to situation
- based on past experiences and previous successes
High self efficacy
- believe can deal effectively with life events
- confident in abilities
- expect to overcome obstacles effectively
Low self efficacy
- feel unable to exercise control over life
- low confidence, believe all efforts are futile
Self-Efficacy and Self Esteem
- perceived self-efficacy not global construct; different self-efficacy beliefs in different situations
- perceived self-efficacy not an abstract sense of personal worth, but a judgment of what one can do
- correlation between self-esteem and performance is weak
- correlation between perceived self-efficacy and performance strong
Self-Efficacy + Education
- self-efficacy accounts for 14% variance in educational performance
- self-efficacy accounts for 12% variance in academic persistence
- suggestion that guided mastery (participant modelling), modelling, and feedback increase self-efficacy for learning
Cognitive elements: Goals and standards
Goal- desired end point
Standard- reference point to complete performance
- motivation higher when have self efficacy
- beh maintained by anticipated consequences
Fixed mindset (entity view)
- ability is a stable, uncontrollable trait of a person that can’t be changed
Growth mindset (incremental view)
- ability is unstable and controllable , can be changed through hard work
Locus of Control
- Internal versus external locus of control
- belief that your behaviour makes a difference
Locus of control and behavioural outcomes
Suh & Suh (2006)
- internals more likely to get high school diplomas
Bender (1995)
- trying but continuing failure leads to external locus of control in educational settings
Anderman & Midgley (1997)
- external locus of control protects against repeated failure
- internals more likely to succeed due to motivation and higher self-expectations
Cognitive theories of personality
- recognise active role by the individual in determining their own beh
Cognitive approaches up to 1960s
- Psychoanalysis: Inner states and drives, emphasis on childhood experiences
- Trait theories: stable structures, descriptive approach
- Behaviourism (classic conditioning, operant conditioning)
based on a stimulus-response paradigm
Limitations of psychodynamic, trait, and behavioural approaches
Psychoanalysis: impossible to test
Traits: cannot explain development; just descriptive
Behavioural/learning: do not take in account the person
George Kelly (1905 – 1967)
- Individuals act like scientists – generating hypotheses about the world and testing them
- our methods are biased by our subjective experiences
- we each have personal constructs
- we all create our own view of the world, then act according to our perceptions
Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory
- Superordinate constructs and subordinate constructs
-our perceptions are malleable - we can change our minds as new evidence comes in (Constructive Alternativism)
- humans are oriented toward the future
-main reason we generate personal constructs about the world is so we can predict what will happen later
Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory: 11 collaries
The dichotomy corollary
- all constructs are based on dichotomies at the superordinate stage – person either friendly or unfriendly
The experience corollary
- the way we are able to change and adapt our constructs based on experience
The individuality corollary
- recognises individual differences in interpretations
Assessing personality using personal construct theory: The Role Construct Repertory Test
- The Role Construct Repertory Test
- participants asked to complete a grid, featuring the most important people in their life
- characteristics (suggested by participant) listed at one side
- 3 people considered at once – participant must select two people for each characteristic, and one for the opposite
Completed Role Construct Repertory Test – Scoring
- no standard way to score repertory grids
- interpretation by participant and/or researcher/therapist
Construct Theory - evaluation
- provides over-arching framework whilst allowing for uniqueness
- too simple?
- more influential in therapy than in personality theorising
- lack of empirical support?
- descriptive – lack of explanatory power
- subjectivity in using the grid
Walter Mischel and the Cognitive Affective Personality System
- are personality traits stable across situations?
- is our behaviour more determined by situations
- claimed correlation between traits and behaviour was at most r=0.3 (it may be more like r=0.4)
Cognitive Affective Personality System
- Mischel and Shoda (1995)
- propose mental and emotional processes to situations need to be incorporated into any model of personality
- developed the Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) made up of cognitive-affective units (CAUs)
- include perceptions of self, others, situations, beliefs, goals, emotional states and experiences
- make up a complex inter-related system that ultimately determines behaviour
Cognitive Affective Units of Personality
- encoding strategies – how people construe the world
- goals – what people are trying to do
- expectancies – what is expected to happen
- competencies – what a person is able to do
- self-regulation – maintaining the pursuit of goals
- emotion – feelings, emotions and affective responses
Shoda et al., 1994
observed beh of boys at summer camp across 5 situations:
- when a peer initiated positive contact
- when a peer teased or provoked
- when an adult gave praise
- when an adult gave a warning
- when an adult gave punishment
- beh stable within situation categories but not across categories
- boys more consistent with behaviour in similar, rather than dissimilar, situations
