MANUEL The Trait Controversy: Mischel's Challenge

The Trait Controversy: Mischel's Challenge

Traditional personality theories

• are trait and psychodynamic approaches

• view individual differences as broad, consistent characteristics influencing diverse behaviors

social learning theory

• posits that behavior varies across situations depending on consequences like rewards and punishments

Consistency arise

• when similar consequences occur across situations or when an individual cannot differentiate contexts

Example of Consistency

• punishment - increase behaviour

• reward - reinforce behaviour

• A child consistently rewarded for speaking across different settings learns to generalize that behavior

Sophisticated models

• how traits affect behavior in situations, developed by Mischel

Example of situational context of behavior

• aggressive people don't hit and yell all the time

• helpful people may act no different from others unless they see someone in need

• relationship between traits and behavior takes situations into account.

• trait of aggressiveness, influences behavior only under certain conditions = when a person feels angry or frustrated

situational context of behavior

• Thoughts & emotions results of prior experience with that situatsion.

• Moods, fantasies, plans, goals, and other internal reactions are triggered by specific situations.

situational approach

• it is consistent with people's everyday descriptions of behavior.

• Person does x when y

• there are consistent individual differences in situation-behavior relationships: study shows different expressions of aggression among children in different situastions

• Statistical analyses suggest that reactions to specific situations are influenced by both genetics and experience.

Another theoretical development suggests = trait-related behavior example

Consider conscientiousness behavior:

• An individual may be very conscientious sometimes (carefully proofreading a term paper)

• Moderately conscientious at other times

• And not at all careful at others.

• The situational context influences this variability

Cognitive Person Variables

• derived from cognition and from social learning

• adaptation to the environment, in the unique style of an individual.

Encoding strategies

• personal constructs

• concepts for describing situations and events.

personal constructs

• Trait terms, which people use to describe themselves and other people

• They are personal both in the sense that they describe individuals and in the sense that they vary from one person to another

Self-system

• Personal constructs that people use to describe themselves

• They are unique to each person.

concepts for describing situations and events

• people have different learning histories, thus the meaning of situations varies from person to person

personality prototypes

• abstract representations of particular personality types

• e.g. extroverts & introverts

• based on the prototype we can judge whether a particular individual is an introvert

• includes social stereotypes & prototypes of various kinds of love

• prototypes ranges from very broad categories to narrow ones

Cognitive behavioral construction competencies

• what a person can do

• what a person can think

competencies

• Include many learned behaviors and concepts

• Refer to what a person knows or is able to do

• requires providing incentives/reward for the performance of the behavior

Examples of cognitive and behavioral construction competencies

• Sexual gender identity

• Knowing the structure of the physical world

• Social rules and conversations

• Personal constructs about self and others

• Rehearsal strategies for learning

Expectancies

• behavior-outcome expectancies

• stimulus-outcome expectancies

• self-efficacy expectancies

they develop from experience in various situations

stimulus-outcome expectancies

• expectancies about how events will develop in the world, aside from their own actions

• e.g. “If Jerry is shouting, he may soon hit someone”

Self-efficacy expectancies

• Expectancies about whether one actually can do the behavior are termed

• Central to the cognitive social learning approach (Bandura & Mischel)

low self-efficacy expectancy example

believes that behaviour in a certain situation would not be possible

high behavior-outcome expectancy exmaple

• Student knows who believes that 12 hours of straight study would result in an A on an exam

SUBJECTIVE STIMULUS VALUES

• Refers to the extent to which a person regards an outcome as desirable or undesirable

• A person´s goal or values

• In learning terms, it is the value of the reward

SELF-REGULATORY SYSTEMS AND PLANS

• These are internal mechanisms that have powerful implications for behavior.

• important self-regulatory system is the ability to delay gratification

Examples of SELF-REGULATORY SYSTEMS

• People set performance goals for themselves

• They reward themselves

• They criticize themselves

Delay of Gratification

• the ability to defer present gratification for larger future goal

• skill that develops in childhood

Study of children with marshmellows showed that (Mischel)

• Delay is more difficult if the rewards are visible = and if the child is thinking about how wonderful the marshmallow will taste.

• The marshmallows are out of sight = ) and if the child is thinking about something else.

• delay of gratification is easier

• this basically suggests that: Adolescents who have difficulty controlling aggression can be taught to use imagery as a technique for increasing self-control.

• Personality is adaptational, and the personality characteristics = prepare an individual to cope with situations.

Mischel's model of personality = two competing approaches in personality

• approach that seeks to identify personality traits

• approach that minimizes individual differences (personality dynamics)

• delay of gratification shows how individual children learn to overcome the power of situations to gain self-control