Week 8 - Social Cognitive Approach Flashcards
What are the main philosophical influences on behaviourism
aristotle, john loch, jeremy bentham, john stuart mill, epicurus
- What is empiricism?
- Where did originate from?
- What did empiricism respond to?
- Empiricism states that experience over reason/knowledge is central in gaining knowledge, the mind is tabula rasa - stimulated by the rise of experimental science
- Originated from the ancient greeks, but modern empiricism was developed in the 17th century in response to rationalism
- Rationalism assumed that knowledge can be gained independently from experience, (in born knowledge)
What is Associationism?
Who developed associationism?
- Associationism is the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one mental state with its successor states. It holds that all mental processes are made up of discrete psychological elements and their combinations
- developed by Aristotle, applied by Locke and Mill
What is an example of associatinism?
A crying child learns crying with receive attention/care
What is Hedonism and where did it originate from?
- Main goal in life is to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, people are motivated by pleasure and avoidance of pain
Eg. hedonism utilitarianism, an action is right if it maximums pleasure and minimises pain - Developed by Epicurus
What are the core tenets of behaviorism?
What is the focus?
How does it regard humans?
What does it assume about itself?
How is it formed?
- focuses mostly on the empirical approach and the external world,
- Creates us as animals,
- Claimed to be the best approach to knowledge
- formed by associationism by linking experiences together to learn + hedonistic goals
Was Pavlov a hardcore behaviorist?
- No = Pavlov was not a behaviourist, developed topology of personality based on dogs in studies, dogs have different temperaments and reactions to classical conditioning, temporally predisposed to have different types of personality
What did Pavlov believe about individual differences and nervous systems?
- Pavlov though genetic influences needed in individual differences, eg. weak nervous systems are
- melancholic = weak
- strong nervous system= chloric
- balanced = sanguine/phlegmatic
What did John Watson believe about behaviour?
- The environment completely determines who we become, regardless of tendencies, abilities, race of ancestors
- There are no internal causes in behaviour, coined behaviourism
- Rejected introspection, internal aspects are irrelevant and unreliable to science
- Conditioning is automatic and cannot be controlled by your own will, can explain all animal/human behaviour
What did Watson say about habits over traits in personality? (3)
- Personality is NOT about traits but only observable behaviour
- Personality is related to people’s habit systems (a system of behaviours in which people habitually engage)
- We can classify personality based on people’s dominant habit systems, situations release habit system as you learn solely through situations can learn and unlearn
What was Watson’s definition of personality?
- The “sum of activities that can be discovered by actual observation of behaviour over a long enough time to give reliable information”
“the end product of our habit systems”
What did B.F Skinner argue in behaviorism?
Rejects genetics and introspection:
- No mental entity can help us understand human and animal psychology
- Genetic influences cannot be manipulated and are not valuable as explanation
independent variables / no free will
- All human/animal behaviour is governed by external external independent variables
What did Skinner believe about “schedules of reinforcement” in predicting and controlling behaviour?
- Schedules of reinforcement are when a reward happens, it can predict the likelihood of a subsequent behaviour eg. variable ratio schedules can explain the addictive behaviour of gambling
- Behaviourist principles could help us create a perfect society, eg. control and manipulation can help create a utopia
What is operant conditioning?
- Behaviour is shaped by the consequences of our behaviour, the stimulus follows in time and the effects (reward/punishment) of behaviour determines whether we engage more or less frequently in the behaviour
How is operant conditioning the inverse of classical conditioning?
Do behaviour first, then stimulus occurs, influences the likelihood of doing more or less of the behaviour, RESPONSE OCCURS BEFORE THE STIMULUS
What are the 4 strengths of behaviourism?
- Influenced future cognitive theories
- Gets verifiable data, can explain and predict animal/human behaviour
- Parsimonious theory / no messy variables (eg. traits/cognitions)
- Useful for behavioural modification for both humans and animals
What are the 4 weaknesses of behaviourism?
(think about other cognitions)
- Is overambitious to explain groups/institutions/all behaviour, it was mainly studied animals and applied it to everything, eg. explaining human societies
- Criticised by Chomsky that it doesn’t explain language development, eg. innate language acquisition
- Ignored the social aspect of animals/humans - we learnt through observation and imitation, eg. monkeys copy others to wash potatoes, birds can imitate other birds songs
- Behaviorism ignores central parts of human behaviour: cognition, intention, awareness, eg. you can’t be influenced by behaviourist principles if you are not aware of the reward
What did Rotter argue about expectancies of reinforcement?
Rotter argued that expectancies of reinforcement are MORE important than reinforcement itself
What are specific vs. general expectancies? (Rotter)
- Specific expectancies are: beliefs if a particular reinforcement will follow a specific response in a specific situation
- General expectancies are about what/who CONTROLS situation, e.g. locus of control is related to generalised expectancies, an
- internal (belief that what happens to you happens because what you are doing) OR
external (belief that external things, fate/higher control, influence your behaviour and circumstances)
What did Bandura argue about the influence of observational learning?
- Observational learning is a highly active, complex and creative process, we create somewhat different behaviours in observing others, we may select to imitate specific behaviours and not others, especially those who are important, personal or authority
Self-efficacy = We need to carefully represent the behaviour in our own mind, be able to generate the behaviour
What is Reciprocal determinism? (Bandura)
the idea that persons, environment factors and behaviours tend to influence each other
Mischel and Shoda: what did they state about personality (if-then)
personality is a stable system that mediates how the individual selects, construes and processes social information and generates social behaviour
- Believed in “If … then” situation behaviour profiles = A person in a particular situation is likely to behave in a particular way
What else apart from the environment is important in Mischel’s Social Cognitive Theory of personality?
Environment is important but person’s social, cognitive and learning characteristics to explain personality/behaviour
What did Mischel believe about people and situation?
- The main unit of analysis is a person within a situation, cannot be independent in a situation
Eg. claiming someone is an extrovert is a problem as you are making assumptions of the person outside of situations
What did Mischel believe about traits?
Eg. traits tend to be too crude in describing people, it is a more complex and dynamic kind of cognitive and affective processing system
Traits aggregate something that we should NOT be aggregating
What did Mischel believe about behaviorism and debates of personality change?
- Mischel argued that classical behaviourism is wrong, needs to include cognitive and affective processing systems
- It is good that people are inconsistent in behaviour, as too much consistency might indicate you are too rigid and maladaptive
“Personality is stable, behaviour is variable”
What evidence was found for Mischel’s “if-then” theory?
- Evidence for the existence of individual differences in intra-individual variability and consistency
What are Mischel’s 5 main cognitive-affective processing units?
E
E
A
G
C
- Encoding strategies = select different aspects of environment/people/situations and assign meanings, we see the same thing differently or things over time
- Expectancies and beliefs: about the consequences of our behaviour in the social world for particular situations, and about self-efficacy of behaviour, eg. what we think we can do
- Affects = feeling/emotions/physical reactions, affective responses
- Goals and values = desirable outcomes and affective states, what we want to achieve
- Competencies and self-regulatory plans: what we are capable of doing and plans and strategies for organising action and affecting outcomes of our own behaviour and internal states
What are Mischel’s 3 parts to the cognitive-affective personality system?
- Encode = Situational features activate a mediating unit - encode a particular aspects of a situation
- Emotion/Expectancy = Encoding causes interactions between different cognitive affective units: affect or expectancy
- Behaviour = generation process = Influences a behaviour script, influences person’s behaviour
How does Mischel’s cognitive-affective theory differ to traditional types of conditioning?
It introduces the idea that the same person may be affected very differently by different situations, AND explains why different people react differently to the same situation
Conclusion = situations CANNOT be fully responsible for our behaviour
How is Mischel’s cognitive-affective approach similar to behaviorism and phenomenology?
- Similarity to behaviourism = particular situations release particular habit systems
- To phenomenological = the way people construct reality on particular situations
What is Dweck’s Social Cognitive Theory (1991) focused on?
Focused on MOTIVATIONAL aspects of personality related to achievement
What are the 2 kinds of goals posited in Dweck’s Social Cognitive Theory (1991)?
- Performance goals (Entity) = hold the idea that intelligence is fixed/uncontrollable, try to avoid negative judgement/gain praise
- Learning goals (Incremental) = hold the idea that intelligence is malleable, try to increase competences
How does confidence influence mood in performance and learning goals? (Dweck, 1991)
- In PERFORMANCE goals = If you have low confidence, you will feel helpless, if you have high confidence = you will be mastery-oriented
- In LEARNING goals = Regardless of your low or high confidence = you will be mastery-oriented
Outline the outcomes for learning and performance goals:
- Learning goals
- increases in intrinsic motivation
- less time and effect withdrawal, - effort attributions, planning
- higher grades
- greater improvement over time
- engaging in deeper processing - Ability/performance goals
- lower intrinsic motivation
- lower of self-worth
- lower ability attributions
- more time and effect withdrawal and rumination
- lower grades after bad performance
- higher grades after repeated good performance
What are 2 implications of Dweck’s motivational theory?
- Incorporates the role of the environment and influence of your self-theory of intelligence and other’s messages, eg. others tell you that your intelligence is fixed, you are more likely to have performance goals
- these have a profound effect on individual differences in motivation, and learning outcomes - self-theories motivate self-regulated learning - People’s implicit theories are open to influence both internal and external, and have an impact on learning, performance and behaviour, eg. grades
What are development goals (learning) and judgement goals (performance)?
Judgemental goals = related to judging or validating an attribute in oneself or in others, relating to intelligence, personality and morality,
if judgement goals are related to self-attributes then people strive towards positive goals but can lead to negative affect
Development goals = related to trying to develop an attribute, if relate to self attributes, then people attempt to acquire knowledge and skills, better resilient to peer rejection or criticism
How does influencing children’s ideas about intelligence lead to differences in their motivation for learning?
Childs praise for their INTELLIGENCE “you must be super smart” want to go back to the easier puzzles, because they thought the difficult ones meant they weren’t good or intelligent
while the child praised for their EFFORT wanted to keep trying the new puzzles (growth mindset)
What are the 2 types of the Self? (James, 1890)
- Me (the self as an OBJECT: i am friendly, i have blonde hair) / descriptions
- I (the self as a SUBJECT)
What 5 methods are used to measure the “self”?
- Questionnaire eg. the twenty statement test “who am i”
- Systematic observation of behaviour
- Self-reports & interviews
- Free descriptions of oneself
- Brain scans
Are the majority of the world’s idea of self individualistic or collective?
- Collective
The african self = shared by others, focused on one’s own tribune, focused on past generations
The japanese self = shared with others, focus on one’s own family
The native american self = located in the context of the tribe, separation
from tribe is destroying self-concept, harada = where i go, we go
The chinese self = highly relational self, “the self as a daughter, wife or mother”
How does the Western self differ to other collectivist conceptualisations of the self?
- Highly individualistic, dominant in psychology, sense of stability and lack of change, focused mostly on internal attributes and not shared by others
What 3 major things have affected the Western self? (specific historical and cultural origins)
- Protestantism (unique relationship to god)
- Enlightenment
- Capitalism
What are the 3 main views of the stability of the self?
- There is a stable self that thinks, feels and acts
- There is no stable self it is constantly changing and adapting to context
Alternative -
3. Some theories argue we only have one, several oran infinite number of selves: but Bandura says its not good to keep fragmenting the self
Strohminger (2017) studied conceptualisation of the self in psychologists, what did he find?
Do we have a true self?
found that there are many psychologists, eg. Maslow/Rogers believe there is a TRUE self and FALSE self, and argued that the self/true self have differences
What is the greatest limitation in studying the true self?
- we do not know if people have a true self, cannot study it or find it because:
the true self is radically subjective - moral/good aspects of self is subjective and is unverifiable, cannot demonstrate what someone is like deep down
What are the characteristics of the true self vs. the self?
The true self
- more moral
- positive valence dependent by default
- perspective-independent
- cross-culturally stable
The self
- encompass entire range of personality
- either positive/negative valence - perspective dependent (first/third person)
- cross-culturally variable)
Recap: does the self or the true self transcend culture?
true self (cross-culturally stable conceptualisation)
How is the self discussed differently in social-cognitive vs. trait approach?
Social cognitive processes focus on the general social and cognitive processes of personalities
Trait approaches primarily focus on the description and measurement of individual differences in the personality and how these predict important outcomes
How do we integrate traits with personality processes?
by studying different MODERATING and MEDIATING processes associated with traits and their outcomes
What did (Hampson 2012) find about integrating traits through MODERATING and MEDIATING processes?
What is a mediator vs. moderator variable?
A mediator variable EXPLAINS the relationship between two other variables, such that the IV does not explain the DV alone
A moderator variable AFFECTS the DIRECTION or MAGNITUDE of the relationship between two other variables
What’s an example of a mediator in learning goals and grades?
- mediator is deep processing
- learning goals is (indirectly) mediated by deep processing to affect course grade such that (learning goals can’t affect grades on their own)
Hampson, 2012: in what ways can a trait influence an outcome?
- View the trait is usually a PREDICTOR with an outcome
- A trait can be a predictor or a MODERATOR of an outcome
- A trait can also be MEDIATED / indirectly / by another variable to produce an outcome
What’s an example of a moderating factor in narcissism predicting aggression?
- The relationship between narcissism and aggression is MODERATED by levels of praise or threats
Such that praise moderates / lowers aggression levels while threats moderates / heights aggression
What are the 4 advantages of the social-cogntiive approach?
- Continued a rigorous and empirical research from behaviorism
- Variables are operationalised, measured/manipulated and observed
- Large and comprehensive approach focused on many aspects of personality
- Integrates environmental, social and personal variables in explaining behaviour
What are the 3 disadvantages of the social-cognitive approach?
- Non-systematic and poorly integrated research, its still inferior to trait approach in terms of assessment and measurement
- Too many small theories of models is unclear how they relate and too much focus on how they differ, too much fragmentation over integration
- Overlapping = many concepts from different models often overlap with each other
What are the 5 challenges of the social-cognitive approach?
- Integration with other approaches, eg. trait approach and each other within social-cognitive approach
- Develop a broad and testable framework for integrative theories
- Make variables of the self more clear, unclear about how variables relate to one another, multiple definitions of the self
- Superficial interest of validity and reliability, invent ad-hoc measures and don’t try to validate them
Which construct did Mischel prefer to supersede the construct of personality traits?
if … then contingencies
What are the 3 basic principles of learning?
- habituation
- classical conditioning
- operant conditioning
What is habituation?
How might habituation impact responses to life events?
a behavioral response decrement that results from repeated stimulation and that does not involve sensory adaptation/sensory fatigue or motor fatigue
it might lessen the impact of important life events—good and bad— over time
What is the S-R conception of personality?
based on classical conditioning, describes it as a repertoire of arbitrary stimulus-response associations
How might “learned helplessness” arise from classical conditioning?
If negative experiences appear to occur randomly the result can be “learned helplessness,” the feeling that life is unpredictable and uncontrollable
What are the 4 limitations of behaviorism that caused theorists to posit a new “Social Learning Theory”?
- It ignores emotion, motivation and thought
- It is primarily based on animals
- It ignores the social aspect of learning
- It treats the animal/person as passive
Which socio-cognitive theory combined aspects of psychoanalytical and behaviorist approaches?
- Dollard & Rotter’s theory on social-learning theory, the expectancy of the reward is more important than the reward itself
How does expectation influence behaviour in Bandura’s social-cognitive theory?
individuals expectancies of their own behavioural capacities affects what they will attempt to do (self-efficacy)
What are idiographic goals and what 3 things do they consist of?
- idiographic goals are unique to each individual
- includes current concerns (Klinger)
- personal projects (Little)
- personal strivings (Emmons)
What are nomothetic goals?
- common to all people, consist of:
- 3 primary goals: achievement, affiliation and power
- 5 primary goals: enjoyment, self-assertion, esteem, interpersonal success and avoiding negative affect
- 2 primary goals, (Freudian), love and work
What does Dweck’s theory of motivation argue?
everyone is a theorist who holds different views on changeability of intelligence and ability
Dweck: what are entity vs. incremental theorists?
- entity theorists see intelligence/ability as unchanging, purse judgement goals, response to failure with helplessness
- incremental theorists believe it is malleable, respond to failure with mastery, purse development goals
Norem: what motivational strategies do defensive pessimists use?
defensive pessimists follow the motivational strategy of imagining the worst outcomes and then seeking to avoid them, seems to work for some people
How do traits relate to motivational strategies?
all personality traits can be conceptualised in terms of strategies that people follow, eg. agreeable people follow a strategy of avoiding arguments and maintaining social equilibrium
What type of knowledge are emotions?
- procedural knowledge, only fully learned and expressed through experience/action
What stages are involved in emotional experience? / occur simultaneously
- appraisal
- physical response
- non-verbal behaviours
- motivation
What is the circumplex model of emotion?
emotions are aroused vs. unaroused and negative vs. positive OR contrasts emotions on dimensions of excited vs. bored, alarmed vs. seren
Recap: Mischels’ cogntiive affective personality system (CAPS) posits what model?
- if … then model of personality, how a person response distinctively to each situation
What is Dweck’s BEATs Beliefs Emotions, Action and Tendencies theory?
describes how basic motivations produce individual needs and desire for self=coherence / meaning in life
Is personality a verb or a noun?
both
what is learning in behaviorism?
a change in behaviour from an experience
what is functional analysis?
how a behavior is a function of an environment of the personal/animal
What is Me vs. I? (James)
Which one does psychology focus on?
- Me = object of self knowledge
- I = mysterious entity that does the knowing
- Psychology focuses on Me over I
What elements are compromised in the “me”?
everything we know and think we know, what we are life, declarative and procedural self-knowledge
What are the 4 purposes of the self?
- self-regulation
- information filtering
- understanding others
- maintaining identity
What is the declarative self?
- self esteem
- self opinion of oneself
- one’s self worth
Leary: what does self-esteem serve as?
- serves as a useful gauge of one’s social standing, problematic if too low or too high
What is self-schema?
wide range of knowledge about one’s psych attributes as a cognitive structure, assed via S-data or B data
Is one’s sense of self intact after brain damage?
- yes, even after specific memories are lost
What is the self-reference effect as a memory technique?
good way to remember something to relate it to onself
- What do discrepancies between one’s real and IDEAL self lead to?
- What do discrepancies between one’s real self and OUGHT self lead to?
- Depression
- Anxiety
What is procedural self?
aspect of self not available to conscious awareness, drives behaviour through deeply ingrained styles of thinking and relating to others
What is idea of relational selves?
- habitual ways we interact with others, a form of the procedural self
What is the idea of implicit selves?
notions of what we are like that affect our behaviour but under our conscious awareness, measured by IAT (Implication Association Test), can predict behaviour over overt self reports for shyness and extraversion
How can the procedural self be changed?
through practice, feedback and other procedural knowledge
Do we have many selves or a really real self?
- Bandura thought multiple selves raises philosophical difficulties, and constant sense of self is more healthy
- James = the I appears to be part of the self that remains the most constant across situations and life “the really real self”
What the ontological vs. epistemological self?
- ontological self (I) = mysterious inner self of thinking, observation and experience, called the I
- epistemological self (me) = conscious knowledge of one’s personality traits and experiences
