soc. cognitive Flashcards
(44 cards)
According to social cognitive theory’s structure, what are the 3 psychological qualities which are essential features of people?
1) People are beings who can reason about the world using language
2) People can reason about not only present circumstances, but events in their past and hypothetical events in the future (things we’ve done and things we wish to do)
3) This reasoning commonly involves reflection on the self - the being who is doing the reasoning
Competencies involve 2 things, what are they?
- Ways of thinking about life problems
- Behavioural skills in executing solutions to them
Competencies involve 2 types of knowledge, what are they? Give an example for each
1) Procedural knowledge: cognitive and behavioural capacities that a person may have without being able to articulate their exact nature
- Something we don’t necessarily verbalize, but something we do
- p.ex: knowing how to make a friend feel better, riding a bike
2) Declarative knowledge: Knowledge we can state in words
- p.ex: if someone asks you a fact, you can state it
Social cognitive theory states that a focus on competencies has 2 implications, what are they?
1) Context specificity
→ when you talk about having a skill, you’re talking about it in a specific context, because these skills are only relevant in a specific context
→ Example: One may have excellent study skills, which are of little use when it comes to getting a date
2) Psychological change
→ Competencies are acquired through social interaction and observation of the social world
→ One lacking skills in a particular area can engage in new interactions to acquire new competencies
What is perceived self-efficacy?
- People’s perceptions of their own capabilities for action in future situations (very context specific)
→ expectation you have about the self
People with a higher sense of self-efficacy are more likely to…
→ Decide to attempt difficult tasks (if you feel like you can, you will)
→ Persist in their efforts
→ Be calm rather than anxious during task performance
→ Organize their thoughts in an analytical manner
People with a lower sense of self-efficacy are more likely to…
→ Often fail to attempt valuable activities
→ Give up when the going gets rough
→ Tend to become anxious during task performance
→ Become “rattled” and fail to think and act in a calm, analytical manner
What are the 4 information sources involved in self-efficacy appraisal?
1) Mastery experience: if we’ve never done something before, we won’t have super high self-efficacy
→ but with more experience, your self-efficacy grows
2) Vicarious experience: watching other people who are similar to you executing the same task, helps you gauge if you can do it
→ this is why it’s important to have representation
→ p.ex: a younger sibling seeing older sibling pursue studies
3) Social persuasion: Getting positive feedback from people
4) Physiological state: We use them as cues to know whether we can do things or not
→ p.ex: with a presentation, you feel your body trembling and sweating, these are cues indicating you think you can’t do it (cues of anxiety)
→ you can flip it (physical anxiety cues of arousal) by telling yourself you’re excited
What is the difference between self-efficacy expectations and outcome expectations?
- Outcome expectations: beliefs about the rewards and punishments that will occur if one performs a behaviour
-
Self-efficacy expectations: beliefs about whether one can perform the behaviour in the first place
→ Efficacy expectations generally more important than outcome expectations as a determinant of behaviour
What is Bandura’s microanalytic research strategy (in relation with self-efficacy)?
- People are asked to indicate their degree of certainty in performing specific behaviours in designated contexts
→ the assessment is very specific to the context
→ p.ex: “Do you think you are a good basketball player?” (much too vague for social-cognitive theory) vs. “How confident are you that you can make at least 75% of your free throws during a basketball game?” (this is more of an item used to measure self-efficacy) -
Situation-specific measures are employed to capture variability in self-efficacy perceptions
→ we’re only looking at individual responses in specific contexts, without averaging them (because we’re looking at context-specificity)
How does skill level tie into both self-efficacy perceptions and behaviour?
- Skill levels could influence both self-efficacy and behaviour, as well as count for the relation between them
→ Therefore, social-cognitivists experimentally manipulate perceived self-efficacy while holding people’s actual skill constant to see whether perceived self-efficacy causally influences behaviour
→ p.ex: we know we can lift a 5lb weight, but it is beyond my skill level to lift a 500lb
Define anchoring
- Thinking process that comes into play when people try to figure out the answer to a problem
→ p.ex: if we wanna anchor someone to give us a high number, we start with a high number
→ “What is the population in millions of the nation of Russia?” (there’s no anchoring here, the person can say anything) vs. “Do you think there are more or less than 639 million people living in Russia?”
→ 639 is too high, and is irrelevant to the real answer
→ Nonetheless, one might “anchor” one’s guess around the random value
→ the first thing that we see will drive our answer
What were the results of Cervone and Peake’s study (1986) where they manipulated perceived self-efficacy using anchoring (the effect of self-efficacy on performance)?
- Participants asked to judge whether they could solve “more or less than X” of the items
→ “X” was a number that corresponded to a high (high anchor condition) versus low (low anchor condition) level of performance
→ “X” appeared to be drawn out of a hat
→ People then judged exactly how many items they could solve
→ People with a high anchor had higher self-efficacy and high task persistence
→ People with a low anchor had lower self-efficacy and lower task performance than both the high anchor group and the control group
What are the 3 different ways that people may think about the world according to beliefs and expectancies of social cognitive theory?
1) Expectancies:People have beliefs about what the world actually is like and what things probably will be like in the future
→ (Beliefs that are directed to the future: expectancies)
2) Evaluative standards: People have thoughts about what things should be like; mental criteria for evaluating the goodness or worth of events
3) Goals: People have thoughts about what one wants to achieve in the future:
True or false: A primary determinant of our actions and emotions is our expectations about the future.
True
People have expectancies about… (3)
1) The likely behaviour of other people
→ p.ex: when in class, you have the expectancy for other students to sit and take notes, and the prof to stand up and teach
2) The rewards or punishments that may follow a certain type of behaviour
→ p.ex: you know that if you were to stand up and be obnoxious in class, you will be punished by others, which drives your behaviour to act a certain way
3) Their own ability to handle the stress and challenges
→ p.ex: you’re in uni because you know it’s a good challenge you can handle
According to beliefs and expectancies of self-efficacy, perceptions of self-efficacy have been shown to have diverse effects of experience and action. What are these effects? (4)
1) Selection
- Self-efficacy beliefs influence the goals individuals select
→ with higher self-efficacy, we will pick more challenging goals
2) Effort, persistence, and performance
- Individuals with high self-efficacy beliefs show greater effort and persistence, and perform better relative to individuals with low self-efficacy beliefs
3) Emotion
- Individuals with high self-efficacy beliefs approach tasks with better moods (i.e., less anxiety and depression) than individuals with low self-efficacy beliefs
4) Coping
- Individuals with high self-efficacy beliefs are better able to cope with stress and disappointments than are individuals with low self-efficacy beliefs
What are goals?
- Mental representations of the aim of an action or course of actions
→ People’s ability to envision the future enables them to set specific goals for action and thus, to motivate and direct their own behaviour
What do goals do? (4)
- Contribute to the human capacity for self-control
→ if we wanna have and pursue goals, we have to have good self-control - Guide us in establishing priorities and in selecting among situations
- Enable us to go beyond momentary influences and to organize our behaviour over extended periods of time
- May differ in their subjective meaning (e.g., “learning” vs.“performance” goals)
What are goal systems? (2 main elements)
1) Have a hierarchical structure
→ broad goal of getting undergrad, to more specific like passing personality class, to even more specific, doing well on application paper
2) Are not rigid or fixed
→ it’s much more complex than “goal causes behaviour”
People’s goals on a task may differ in a variety of ways, how do we differentiate these these types of goals?
1) Level of challenge (e.g., merely of passing a course vs. getting an A)
2) Proximity (e.g., completing paper for course vs. earning undergraduate degree)
→ Proximal goals often have a bigger influence on one’s current behaviour than do distal goals, which allow one to “slack off” in the present
→ more proximit will cause our behaviour more, because they’re more pressing
What are evaluative standards?
- The study of evaluative standards addresses how people acquire criteria for evaluating events and how these evaluations influence their emotions and actions
→ “Personal standards”: evaluative standards concerning one’s self; fundamental to motivation and performance
Evaluative standards often trigger ___ ___ or ___ ___ (e.g., pride vs. dissatisfaction).
Emotional reactions; self-evaluative reactions
- the way you evaluate yourself as you go, will influence your future behaviour
→ if you feel good about what you’ve written, you’ll feel pride and want to continue writing
How do people deal with deviations from their moral standards (+ evaluative standards)?
- Sometimes people don’t use their morality to influence behaviour
- When it is to their personal advantage, they morally disengage and rationalize their immoral behaviour
→ p.ex: when you know cheating on an exam is immoral, you rationalize by saying “well everyone else is cheating”, which allows you to engage in the behaviour, you are morally disengaging - Some people selectively “disengage” their moral standards when it is to their personal advantage to do so
- Disengagement of evaluative standards enables people to perform acts that they normally would not perform due to internalized moral sanctions
