Social-Cognitive Perspective

Remember Bandura?

• Social learning

• Linked traits with our current situations

• Behaviorists = environment CONTROLS us• Social cognitive = how environment and our self

interact– Goes beyond behaviorism to emphasize our cognitive

processes

• Reciprocal determinism– We are both products and architects of our

environments

Take the anxious person…

• How do they react to events?

• How may they have created that situation?– How does his or her

disposition create a choice in environment?

3 Ways of Reciprocal Influences

Conclusion:• Behavior emerges from the

interplay of internal and external influences

Personal Control: How to study personality

1. Correlate people’s feelings of control with their behaviors and achievements

2. By raising or lowering people’s sense of control and noting the effects

Internal vs. External Locus of Control

• Julian Rotter

• “The devil made me do it”

• “I didn’t study for my test”

• “I should have known better”

• “I have a dark cloud over my life”

• “Wow, that was luck!”

• “Must be my genetics…”

Internals

• Achieve more in school• Act more independently• Enjoy better health

– Why?

• Better at delaying gratification and coping with various stress– i.e. marital problems– How would Freud describe an “internals”

personality using his id, ego, and superego?

Depleting and StrengtheningSelf Control

• What is self control?– real life, and psychoanalytically speaking?

• How is it like a muscle?

• Requires energy• Can spill over into other places (+/-)

Learned helplessness vs. personal controls

• People who feel helpless often blame _______ locus of control

Learned Helplessness and Operant Conditioning

Human applications

• Under conditions of personal freedom and empowerment, people thrive

– West Berliners vs. East Berliners– Choice in college– Minorities in the majority classrooms– New job/work areas– Stable democracy = happy/sad people?

Optimism vs. Pessimism

• Based on how you explain +/- events– Hopeful– Attributional style of description – “I can’t do

this”

– Difference between mere fantasy and realistic positive expectations

Optimism and Health

• Outlive pessimists– Suppression of immune system due to stress

• Leads us to positive psychology– http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/

Excessive Optimism

• Too much is a bad thing– Would you prefer your surgeon or pilot be too

optimistic? What about worst-case scenarios?

• “Oh it won’t be me” HIV/AIDS rates

• Dumbfounded by low scoring

• Overconfidence effect

Conclusion

• Best means of predicting future behavior is NOT a personality test or an interview, it is the person’s PAST behavior– When that is unavailable, then you can

simulate (thru testing)

The Self

• Modern psych – the center of personality– Organizes thoughts, feelings, and actions

The Person-Situation Controversy

• We look for genuine personality traits that persist over time and across situations

• Although traits may be stable, consistency of behavior is not– Have you ever been described one way – and not

wanted to admit it’s true due to your own confirmation bias?

• What we find is people’s average outgoingness, happiness, or carelessness over many situations is predictable

Applications: Sam Gosling

• On first meeting, students disclose music preferences to each other – why?

• Bedroom and offices – reasonable and accurate predictability in terms of openness to new experiences

• Personal Web sites – think of your facebook or twitter: Why did you choose that profile picture? What does it say about you and what do you want to project out to the world?

• Email, tweets, texts – Don’t you feel like you have a good sense of tone when it comes to judging voice in voiceless communication?

Exploring the self

• Self-focused perspective does motivate, but also leads us to presume that others notice and judge us– SPOTLIGHT EFFECT: overestimating others’

noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, or blunders

Self-esteem

• One’s feeling of high or low self-worth• Feel good do good phenomenon

• Self-esteem effect: if you temporarily deflate people’s self-image they will be more likely to disparage others or express heightened racial prejudice– Examples?

• Secure self-esteem is less fragile because of a correlation with ____?__ locus of control

Self-serving bias

• Readiness to perceive oneself favorably– people accept more responsibility for good

deeds than for bad, and for successes rather than failures

– How does this go against Carl Roger’s 3 growth factors?