Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory Flashcards
Cognitive factors, more than immediate reinforcements, determine how people will react to environmental forces; our expectations of future events are major determinants of performance
Social Learning Theory
This position holds that human behavior is based largely on the interaction of people with their meaningful environments
Rotter’s interactionist position
Assumes that people choose a course of action that advances them toward an anticipated goal
Rotter’s empirical law of effect
The possibility that a particular response will occur at a given time and place in relation to its likely reinforcement
Behavior potential
People’s confidence that a particular reinforcement will follow a specific behavior in a specific situation or situations; can either be general or specific
Expectancy
A person’s preference for any particular reinforcement over other reinforcements if all are equally likely to occur
Reinforcement value
The individual’s perception of an event
Internal reinforcement
Society’s evaluation of an event
External reinforcement
The value of an event is a function of one’s expectation that a particular reinforcement will lead to future reinforcements
Reinforcement−reinforcement sequences
Part of the external and internal world to which a person is responding
Psychological situation
The potential for a behavior to occur in a particular situation in relation to a given reinforcement is a function of people’s expectancy that the behavior will be followed by that reinforcement in that situation
Basic prediction formula
People’s expectations based on similar past experiences that a given behavior will be reinforced; include people’s needs−that is, behaviors that move them toward a goal
Generalized expectancies
Functionally related categories of behaviors
Needs
The need to excel, to achieve, and to have others recognize one’s worth
Recognition−status
The need to control the behavior of others, to be in charge, or to gain power over others
Dominance
The need to be free from the domination of others
Independence
The need to have others take care of us and to protect us from harm
Protection−dependency
Needs to be warmly accepted by others and to be held in friendly regard
Love and affection
Behaviors aimed at securing food, good health, and physical security
Physical comfort
The possible occurrences of a set of functionally related behaviors directed toward the satisfaction of similar goals
Need potential
A person’s overall expectation of being reinforced for performing behaviors directed toward satisfying some general need
Freedom of movement
The extent to which people prefer one set of reinforcements to another
Need value
Need potential is a function of freedom of movement and need value
General prediction formula
Rotter’s two most famous scales for measuring generalized expectancies
The Internal−External Control Scale and the Interpersonal Trust Scale
popularly called “locus of control scale”; attempts to measure the degree to which people perceive a causal relationship between their own efforts and environmental consequences
The Internal−External Control Scale
Measures the extent to which a person expects the word or promise of another person to be true
The Interpersonal Trust Scale
Any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal; usually the result of unrealistically high goals in combination with low ability to achieve them.
maladaptive behavior
People’s pattern of variability is their behavioral signature of personality, or their unique and stable pattern of behaving differently in different situations
Cognitive−Affective Personality System
The observation that, although both laypeople and professionals tend to believe that behavior is quite consistent, research suggests that it is not
Consistency paradox
Behavior is best predicted from an understanding of the person, the situation, and the interaction between person and situation; behavior is not the result of some global personality trait, but by people’s perceptions of themselves in a particular situation
Person-situation interaction
If personality is a stable system that processes information about the situation, then individuals encountering different situations should behave differently as situations vary; though people’s behavior may reflect some stability over time, it tends to vary as situations vary
Behavior prediction
Include all those stimuli that people attend to in a given situation
Situation variables
Include all those psychological, social, and physiological aspects of people that permit them to interact with their environment with some stability in their behavior
Cognitive−affective units
People’s individualized manner of categorizing information they receive from external stimuli
Encoding strategies
People use these strategies to control their own behavior through self−formulated goals and self−produced consequences; includes intelligence, which is responsible for the apparent consistency of other traits
Competencies and self−regulatory strategies
People’s guesses about the consequences of each of the different behavioral possibilities
Expectancies and beliefs
This unit tends to render behavior fairly consistent
Goals and values
Includes emotions, feelings, and the affects that accompany physiological reactions
Affective responses
