© McGraw-Hill Theories of Personality Rotter & Mischel Chapter 17 © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

© McGraw-Hill Outline Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory Biography of Julian Rotter Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory Predicting Specific Behaviors Predicting General Behaviors Maladaptive Behavior Psychotherapy Cont’d

© McGraw-Hill Outline Introduction to Mischel’s Personality System Biography of Walter Mischel Background of the Cognitive-Affective Personality System Cognitive-Affective Personality System Related Research Critique of Cognitive Social Learning Theory Concept of Humanity

© McGraw-Hill Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory Assumes Cognitive Factors Help Shape How People Will React to Environmental Forces Expectations of Future Events are Prime Determinants of Performance Focus on Interaction of People with Meaningful Environments Examination of Consistency or Inconsistency of Personality

© McGraw-Hill Biography of Rotter Born in Brooklyn in 1916 In high school, he became familiar with the writings of Freud and Adler In 1941, received a PhD in clinical psychology from Indiana University Published Social Learning and Clinical Psychology in 1954 Moved to the University of Connecticut in 1963 and has remained there since his retirement

© McGraw-Hill Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory Rests on Five Hypotheses –Humans interact with their meaningful environments –Human personality is learned –Personality has a basic unity –Motivation is goal directed –People are capable of anticipating events

© McGraw-Hill Predicting Specific Behaviors Behavior Potential Expectancy Reinforcement Value –Internal and external reinforcement –Reinforcement-reinforcement sequences Psychological Situation Basic Predicting Formula

© McGraw-Hill Predicting General Behaviors Generalized Expectancies Needs –Categories of needs Recognition-Status Dominance Independence Protection-Dependency Love and Affection Physical Comfort –Need components Need Potential Freedom of Movement Need Value General Prediction Formula Internal and External Control of Reinforcement Interpersonal Trust Scale

© McGraw-Hill Maladaptive Behavior Rotter defined maladaptive behavior as any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal Combination of high need value and low freedom of movement –That is, unrealistically high goals in combination with low ability to achieve them –Characterized by unrealistic goals, inappropriate behaviors, inadequate skills or unreasonably low expectancies of executing behavior

© McGraw-Hill Psychotherapy Bring Freedom of Movement and Need Value into Harmony Changing Goals –The role of the therapist Help patients understand the faulty nature of their goals Teach them ways to strive toward realistic goals Eliminating Low Expectancies –The role of the therapist Teach effective problem solving Help client to make distinction between past and present and teach assertiveness

© McGraw-Hill Introduction to Mischel’s Personality Theory Early Work Objected to Trait Theory Explanation of Behavior Cognitive Activities and Specific Situations Play Role in Determining Behavior Recently Have Advocated Reconciliation between Processing Dynamics and Personal Dispositions Approaches Holds that Behavior Stems from Relatively Stable Personal Dispositions and Cognitive-Affective Processes Interacting with a Particular Situation

© McGraw-Hill Biography of Mischel Born in Vienna in 1930 Second son of upper-middle-class parents When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, his family left for the U.S. Received his PhD from Ohio State University in 1956, where he worked under Rotter Published Personality and Assessment in 1968 Has taught at Colorado, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, where he remains as an active researcher

© McGraw-Hill Background of the Cognitive- Affective Personality System Consistency Paradox –Although both laypeople and professionals tend to believe that behavior is quite consistent, research suggests that it is not Person-Situation Interaction –Mischel believes that behavior is best predicted from an understanding of the person, the situation, and the interaction between person and situation

© McGraw-Hill Cognitive-Affective Personality System Behavior Prediction –Individuals should behave differently as situations vary Situation Variables –All those stimuli that people attend to in a given situation Cognitive-Affective Units –Encoding strategies –Competencies and self-regulatory strategies –Expectancies and beliefs –Goals and values –Affective responses

© McGraw-Hill Related Research Locus of Control and Holocaust Heroes –Midlarsky et al. (2005) Heroes had a higher internal locus of control Person-Situation Interaction –Kammrath et al. (2005) The average person understands that, depending on their personality, people adjust their behavior to match the situation –Mendoza-Denton et al. (2001) Conditional and interactionist self-evaluations buffer negative reactions to failure The social-cognitive interactionist conceptualization is more appropriate than traditional “decontextualized” views of personality

© McGraw-Hill Critique of Social Learning Theory High on Generating Research, Internal Consistency, Parsimony, and Ability to Organize Knowledge Average on Its Ability to Guide Action and to Be Falsified

© McGraw-Hill Concept of Humanity Free Choice over Determinism Teleology over Causality Conscious over Unconscious Social Factors over Biology Uniqueness over Similarity Rotter's view is slightly more optimistic whereas Mischel's is about in the middle