Psychology 3051 Psychology 305A: Theories of Personality Lecture 16 1.

Psychology 305 1

Psychology 305A: Theories of Personality

Lecture 16

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Scoring Your Questionnaire: NC

1. Reverse score items 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 16, and 17.

5 14 23 = 32 41 5

2. Sum your responses to the 18 items.

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Announcement

In order to attend a talk next week, I must change my office hour on Tuesday, November 13, from 11:30-12:30 to 2:30-3:30.

My office hour will return to it’s regular time the following week.

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1. What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality? (continued)

2. What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

The Learning and Cognitive Perspectives

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3. What are the goals of the cognitive perspective on personality?

4. What is the schematic view of cognitive processing?

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2. define the terms “observational learning” and “self-efficacy.”

By the end of today’s class, you should be able to:

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1. describe Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality.

3. distinguish between extrinsic, intrinsic, vicarious, and self-reinforcement.

4. identify determinants of self-efficacy.

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5. describe the therapeutic methods of systematic desensitization and exposure treatment.

6. distinguish between mastery modeling, coping modeling, and participant modeling.

7. distinguish between a schema, an exemplar, a prototype, and a fuzzy set.

8. describe the schematic view of cognitive processing.

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What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality? (continued)

• Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory emphasizes 5 concepts:

1. Drive

2. Cue

3. Response

4. Reinforcement

5. Habit Hierarchy

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Dollard and Miller argued that learning occurs when there is a change in the order of responses in a

habit hierarchy.

According to their theory, each person has unique habit hierarchies, and these unique habit hierarchies account for individual differences in personality.

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What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

• One of the most influential social-cognitive learning theories today was proposed by Albert Bandura.

• Bandura’s theory of personality emphasizes 2 broad concepts not recognized by early learning theorists:

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1. Observational Learning

Refers to learning through the observation of models.

Bandura described observational learning as a perceptual process: people learn what they attend to.

Observational learning accounts for our ability to learn both simple and complicated behaviours.

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Bandura argued that observational learning (a) is more efficient than learning through direct experience, (b) is the method by which most of our learning is accomplished, and (c) has evolved among humans because it enhances the probability of survival:

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“If human behaviour depended solely on personally experienced consequences, most people would not survive the hazards of early development. Of those who managed to outlive their mistakes, each would have to rediscover, through tiresome trial and error, what works and what fails in everyday transactions with their environment. Fortunately, people are spared many hazards and much tedium by their capacity to benefit from the experiences of others.” (Bandura, 1986)

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Observational learning does not require reinforcement. However, when reinforcement does occur, it facilitates learning.

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2. Self-Efficacy

Refers to an individual’s subjective belief about her/his ability to successfully perform a behaviour. High self-efficacy entails expectations of success; low self-efficacy entails expectations of failure.

Self-efficacy is not a global, trait-like characteristic. It varies from situation to situation.

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Research has demonstrated that individuals with high self efficacy in a given domain:

set more challenging goals for themselves.

persist longer in the pursuit of those goals.

recover more quickly from setbacks.

experience less fear, anxiety, and stress.

Example: Study of leg strength in men and women as a function of self-efficacy.

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Bandura maintained that self-efficacy is influenced by:

Mastery experiences (i.e., performance accomplishments).

Social modeling (i.e., vicarious experiences).

Social persuasion (i.e., verbal persuasion).

Emotional arousal (e.g., levels of fear and anxiety).

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Therapeutic methods derived from the learning perspective are designed to increase self-efficacy:

Systematic desensitization.

Exposure treatment.

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Modeling (mastery, coping, and participant modeling).

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Reminder

As noted in our course syllabus, you are only responsible for pages 287-298 and 304-314 of Chapter 12: The Cognitive Perspective.

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What are the goals of the cognitive perspective on personality?

• The cognitive perspective on personality has two primary goals:

1. to describe how the mind processes information (i.e., cognitive processing).

2. to relate individual differences in cognitive processing to personality.

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• In contrast to some other perspectives, the cognitive perspective highlights people’s capacity to overcome impulses and environmental influences through reason:

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“The image is one of the human being as an active, aware problem-solver, capable of profiting from an enormous range of experiences and cognitive capacities, possessing great potential for good or ill, actively constructing his or her psychological world, and influencing the environment but also being influenced by it in lawful ways …. It is an image that has moved a long way from the instinctual drive-reduction models, the static global traits, and the automatic stimulus-response bonds of traditional personality theories. It is an image that highlights the shortcomings of all simplistic theories that view behavior as the exclusive result of any narrow set of determinants, whether these are habits, traits, drives, reinforcers, instincts, or genes and whether they are exclusively inside or outside the person” (Mischel, 1976).

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What is the schematic view of cognitive processing?

• This view maintains that cognitive processing relies on the use of schemas.

• Schema: An organized knowledge structure about a concept, its attributes, and its relationships to other concepts; a network of associations related to a concept.

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Kind

Warmth

My grandmother

My mom

Mother

Thoughtful

Disciplinarian

Stay-at-home moms

June Cleaver

Love

Working moms

Hillary Clinton

Gloria Delgado-Pritchett

Mother Teresa

Exemplars

Prototype

Fuzzy set

Pregnancy

Mother Schema23

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• Schemas serve many functions:

facilitate recognition.

direct attention.

enhance the encoding of information into memory.

provide “default” information to fill in gaps.

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• Thus, schemas act as “cognitive filters” through which we perceive, process, and recall information.

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A father and his son were involved in a car accident in which the father was killed and the son was seriously injured. The father was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident and his body was taken to a local mortuary. The son was taken by ambulance to a hospital and was immediately wheeled into an operating room. A surgeon was called. Upon seeing the patient, the attending surgeon exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s my son!”

Can you explain this?

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1. What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality? (continued)

2. What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

The Learning and Cognitive Perspectives

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3. What are the goals of the cognitive perspective on personality?

4. What is the schematic view of cognitive processing?