6 - Mischel's Cognitive Social Learning Theory

cognitive-affective personality theory

holds that behaviour stems from relatively stable personal dispositions and cognitive affective process interacting with a particular sitaution

consistency paradox

observation that clinical intuition and the perceptions of laypeople suggest that behaviour is consistent, whereas research finds that it is not

person-situation debate

launched by Mischel’s critique of perosnality traits

fundamental attribution

individual's tendency to attribute another's actions to their character or personality, while attributing their behaviour to external situational factors outside of their control

* trait psychologists have committed this in an attempt to explain the behaviour of others

situationism

behaviour is hihgly situation specific

person-situation interaction

* Mischel argued that traits were unstable form one situation to another
* behaviour is shaped by personal dispositions PLUS specific cognitive and affective processes
* objected idea that traits are predictors of behaviour
* “if I am in this situation, then I do X; but if I am in that situation, then i do Y”
* people intuitively think this, upheld by the study about the girl who is either friendly, teachers pet, etc. and people thought she would act differently to different people

cognitive-affective personality system

accounts for variability across situations as well as stability of behaviour within a person

* most sophisticated learning approach
* apparent inconsistencies in behaviour are potentially predictable behaviours that reflect stable patterns of variation within a person
* if-then profiles

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behavioural signatures of personality

stable patterns of behaving differently in different situations

behaviour prediction

if personality is a stable system that processes the information about the situations, external or internal, then it follows that as individuals encounter different situations, their behaviours should vary across the situations

* if-then theory
* assumes some temporal stability of personality, but behaviours vary

situation variables

conditions that influence person’s choice of reward

* 8th grader reward experiment

8th grader situation variable experiement

* those successful waited for valuable, contingent rewards
* those who failed took immediate, less valuable rewards
* those who got no information made decisions based on their expectancies

cognitive-affective units

psychological, social, and physiological aspects of people that cause them to interact with their environment in a relatively stable pattern of variation


1. encoding strategies
2. competencies and self-regulatory strategies
3. expectancies and beliefs
4. goals and values
5. affective responses

encoding strategies

(cognitive-affective unit)

people’s ways of transforming stimulus inputs into information about themselves, other people, and the world

* same person may encode similar events in different ways depending on the situation
* children can change the way environmental events are experienced by focusing on different aspects of stimuli
* \

competencies and self-regulatory strategies

(cognitive-affective unit)

competencies: people’s cognitive and behavioural construction of what they can and cannot do, based on their observations of the world, themselves, and others

self-regulatory strategies: techniques used to control one’s own behaviour through self-imposed goals and self-produced consequences

* this aspect is more stable
* apparent consistency of traits may be rooted in intelligence, which is stable over time

expectancies and beliefs

(cognitive-affective unit)

how we behave in a given situation is closely connected to our specific expectancies and beliefs about the consequences of each behavioural possibility

* behaviour outcome expectancy and stimulus outcome expectancy

behaviour outcome expectancy

we learn to behave in ways that will lead to valued outcomes or enact behaviours that were reinforced in the past

stimulus outcome expectancy

various stimuli that influence consequences of behaviour

goals and values

(cognitive-affective unit)

people do not react passively to situations but are active and goal directed

* fairly stable, deeply connected with emotion

affective responses

(cognitive-affective unit)

emotions, feelings, and physiological reactions

* interconnected with cognition

biochemical-genetic level

individuals differ in diverse biochemical-genetic-somatic factors that may be conceptualized as predispositions

predispositions

* help to construe dispositions
* influences personality relevant aspects of self
* impacts psychological CAPS system
* interacts with conditions throughout development and influence how person thinks, feels, and acts

marshmallow tests

* wait: higher SAT scores, educational achievement, greater self-worth, better coping with stress
* couldn’t resist: 30% more likely overweight, develop borderline personality disorder features

redirecting attention

looking away or attending to something other than the object

cognitive reframing

direct away from hot features (yumminess) and towards cold features (cylinder shape)

critique of CAPS

* logical issues
* research utility
* how much info will we really gain from this?