Personality & Individual Differences

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Genetic influences on personality 

• Advances in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified specific genetic variants linked to traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness 

• Research highlights the significant role of heritability in personality, suggesting that genetics accounts for about 40-60% of individual differences 

Neuroscience and personality 

• Brain imaging studies have correlated specific brain structures and functions with personality traits. For instance, higher conscientiousness is associated with a larger prefrontal cortex 

• Differences in brain connectivity patterns have been linked to variations in trains like openness and agreeableness 

Environmental and cultural impacts 

• Cross- cultural studies reveal that cultural context significantly shapes personality expression and development. For example, collectivist cultures tend to score higher on traits related to social harmony 

  • Individualistic culture 

    • Self motivated to achieve goals 

  • Collectivist culture 

    • No individual it's about the group/ community 

• Longitudinal research shows how major life events (e.g., trauma, career changes) can lead to lasting changes in personality traits 

  • People who have been looked at over many many years, transitions are from one major life event to the next 

  • Transitions are like major stressor 

  • Trauma changes your personality 

  • Because conditions change, careers change which means the people change 

  • Nothing stays the same 

Personality and health 

• Studies consistently find that certain personality traits, such as a conscientiousness, are strong predictors of health outcomes and longevity 

  • Someone who is proactive with going to the doctor 

• The interplay between personality and mental health is increasingly understood, with traits like high neuroticism linked to a higher risk of mood disorders or impulsiveness linked to various personality disorders

  • Loss of control

    • I can control my own life or its destiny or other people 

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Personality development over the lifespan 

• Research shows that personality traits continue to evolve throughout the lifespan, with notable shifts during major life stages like adolescence and midlife 

• Findings suggest that while core personality traits remain relatively stable, significant changes can occur due to life experiences and intentional interventions 

Technology and personality assessment 

• The use of big and machine learning in personality assessment is on the rise, enabling more accurate and large- scale analysis of personality traits 

• Digital footprint, such as social media activity, have been used to predict personality traits with high accuracy, offering new methods for personality research 

  • Example: link of generation Z personality traits and level of anxiety 

Personality and social behavior  

• Investigations into social behavior have linked personality traits to social network dynamics, leadership styles, and interpersonal relationship 

• Traits like extraversion and agreeableness have been found to significantly influence social integration and support networks

Summary 

• These findings highlight the complexity and multifaceted nature of personality, encompassing 

  • Genetic 

  • Neurological (and neurophysiological) 

  • Environmental 

  • Social dimensions 

Chapter 1 

What is personality 

• Personality is an enduring and unique cluster of characteristics that may change in response to different situations 

• These characteristics (traits) influence behavior in different conditions 

• Are we the same people in all situations? (being online, in the social media, in formal gatherings, in a jobsetting, in a cocktail party, etc.)

• How we look like shapes other people’s perceptions of us 

Race & gender in the making of personality 

• The important of traditional gender stereotypes 

• Gender differences on specific personality factors 

• Examples: 

  • Women: greater emotional complexity in undergraduate education is USA 

  • Men: score lower in anxiety in Islamic population 

  • Mind the sociocultural context and the conditions

The role of culture 

• Evidence from cross- cultural psychology: culture constitutes a major determinant of personality variation 

Cultural beliefs 

• The notion of destiny (karma) in determining past and present actions & attributional styles 

• The pursuit of happiness 

• The meaning of illness (illness metaphors) 

• Success motivation 

• Recent finding: eastern cultures have become westernized 

• The prevalence of anorexia nervosa in under- developed (3rd world) countries 

Individualism 

• A core value in western cultures (competitiveness & assertiveness) 

• Individuality, independence, self- promotion, personal satisfaction, high achievement 

• Individualism exerting influence on the personality of citizens 

Child- rearing practices 

• Parenting styles 

  • Individualistic cultures: noncoercive, democratic, permissive (western cultures) 

  • Collectivistic cultures: authoritarian, restrictive, controlling 

  • child - rearing practices explain diversity in human personality 

Self- enhancement vs self- effacement 

• The tendency to promote oneself aggressively (western cultures) vs. the tendency to get critical towards oneself 

• These tendencies correlate with a range of other characteristics perceived as positive or negative depending on the culture and the condition 

• A major limitation in personality research: the vast majority of studies on human personality has been conducted on white american college students 

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Chapter 1 - part two o

Personality: what it is and why you should care! 

Assessment of personality 

• Evaluation of personality: used for 

  • Diagnosis 

  • Education 

  • Counseling 

  • Research 

• Principles of measurement: 

  • Reliability -> consistency of response to a psychological assessment device 

  • Validity -> Extent to which an assessment device measures what it is intended to measure 

Assessment methods 

• Self-report inventories 

• Clinical interviews 

• Online test administration 

• Behavioral assessment 

• Projective tests 

• Thought and experience samples

Self - report inventories 

• Objective measure 

• Subjects answer questions about their behavior and feelings 

• Advantages 

  • Objective scoring 

  • Quick assessment 

• Disadvantages 

  • Not suited for people who posses limited reading skills 

  • Tendency to provide socially desirable answers 

Online test administration 

• Advantages 

  • Less time-consuming and expensive 

  • Objective scoring 

  • Accepted by younger employees 

  • Prevents tests takers from looking ahead at questions to change their answers 

Projective tests 

• Projective techniques: 

• Rorschach Inkblot Technique 

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) 

• Word association 

Clinical interviews 

• Involves asking relevant questions about: 

  • Past and present life experiences 

Gender issues in assessment 

• Personality assessment in influenced by gender (gender- specific responding)

• Assessment measures indicate differential rates if diagnosis based on gender for emotional disorders(higher prevalence in women)

• Therapists may exhibit bias against women (gender- specific stereotypes) 

Ethnic issues in assessment 

• Prominent examples: 

  • Asians 

• Less likely to seek help for emotional problems 

  • African Americans 

• Personality tests used are biases 

  • Hispanics 

• Less likely to seek psychological treatment; prefer to seek mental health advice from their family physician 

• Other issues in personality assessment with regards to ethnicity 

  • Translation of personality tests 

  • Slang and colloquial expressions 

  • Problems arising from cross-culture application 

Personality assessment highlights 

• Asians tend to score: 

  • High in collectivism 

  • Low in assertive

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Clinical methods 

• Case study: detailed history of an individual 

• Contains data from various sources 

• Consistencies in the patients lives are used by theorists to generalize their findings 

• Advantages - provides an in-depth view of one's personality 

Experimental method 

• Involves determining effects of variable or events on behavior 

• An experimental situation is arranged by psychologists 

• Independent variable: variable that is manipulated 

• Advantages 

  • We controlled and systematic 

• Disadvantages 

  • Safety and ethical reasons restrict control over some aspects of personality and behavior 

  • Dependent variable is influenced by the subject’s attitude (towards the experimental conditions/ setting)

Virtual research method 

• Online test administration 

• Psychological test, opinion surveys, and subject responses to experimental stimuli 

• Advantages 

  • Fast responses 

  • Inexpensive 

  • res=ches broad range of subject 

• Disadvantages 

Correlational methods 

• Measures the degree of relationship between two variable 

• Expressed by the correlation coefficient, which ranges from -1.00 to +1.00 

The theory in the study of personality 

• Theory -> provides the framework to describe data in a meaningful way 

• A set of principles that must: 

  • Be testable and capable of stimulating research 

  • Be able to clarify and explain data by organizing those data 

Questions about human nature 

• Free will or determinism?

• Inherited nature or nurturing environment? 

• Dependent or independent of childhood?

• Unique or universal?

• Satisfaction or growth?
  Optimism or pessimism?

Personality research methods 

• Clinic methods 

• Virtual research method 

• Experimental method 

• Correlational method 

Chapter 2: sigmund freud: psychoanalytic theory 

The life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• Early years 

• Father was a strict authoritarian 

• Mother was extremely protective and loving 

• Possessed a high degree of self-confidence and an intense ambition to succeed 

• Explored the benefits of cocaine 

The life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) 

• Worder as a clinical neurologist 

• Studied with Charcot 

  • Alerted Freud to the possible sexual basis of neurosis 

• Personal sexual conflicts 

  • Possessed a negative attitude toward sex 

  • Was occasionally impotent during his marriage 

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The life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) 

• Experienced a severe neurotic episode 

• Developed his psychoanalytic practice 

• Psychoanalyzed himself through the study of his dreams 

• Published his work and developed a group of disciples 

Instincts 

• Mental representations of internal stimuli that drive a person to take action 

• Form of energy that connects needs and wishes of the mind 

• Freud's homeostatic approach - the news for balance 

• People are motivated to restore and maintain a physiological equilibrium 

3 systems of personality 

Types of instinct 

• Life instincts: eros or love 

  • Oriented towards survival

  • Libido: drives a person towards pleasurable behavior and thoughts 

  • Cathexis: Investment of psychic energy in an object or person 

• Death instincts: thanatos 

  • Unconscious drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression 

  • Aggressive drive: compulsion to destroy, conquer, and kill 

Freud’s levels and structures of personality 

The structure of personality 

• The superego 

  • Moral aspect of personality 

  • Two components: 

    • Conscience: contains behavior for which the child has been punished 

    • Ego-ideal: contains moral or ideal behavior for which a person should strive 

The construct of anxiety 

• Conflicts: threat for the ego 

• Neurotic anxiety 

  • Conflict between id and ego 

  • Example: I want to get coffee with my friends but i have a lecture 

  • When human needs conflict with already set plans 

• Reality anxiety 

  • Fear of tangible dangers 

  • Fear of earthquakes 

  • Fear of getting trapped in the elevator 

• Moral anxiety 

  • Conflict between id and superego 

  • Example: the it says that I want it and I want it now, and the superego says that you will never get it ever 

    • A lady falls in love with their boss, the it really wants to be with the lady but the superego says that it will never happen 

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The purpose of anxiety 

• Signals a problem with personality 

• Alerts the individual that the ego is being threatened 

• Induces intrapsychic tension in the individual 

• Becomes a drive the individual is motivated to satisfy 

The defense mechanisms 

• Ego strategies (tactics) to defend against anxiety provoked by conflicts of daily life 

• Characteristics: 

  • Involve denials or distortions of reality 

  • Operate unconsciously (revised) 

Major freudian defense mechanisms 

• Repression: involves unconscious denial of the existence of something that causes anxiety 

• Denial: involves denying the existence of a external threat or traumatic event 

• Reaction formation: involves expressing an id impulse that is the opposite if the one truly driving the person 

• Projection: involves attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else 

• Regression: involves retreating to an earlier, less frustrating period of life and displaying the childish and dependent behavior characteristic of that more secure time 

• Rationalization: involves reinterpreting behavior to make it more acceptable and less threatening 

• Displacement: involves shifting id impulses from a threatening or unavailable object to substitute object that is available 

• Sublimation: involves altering or displacing id impulses by diverting instinctual energy into socially acceptable behavior 

The stages of psychosexual development 

• Stages           

  • 1. Oral 

  • 2. Anal 

  • 3. Phallic 

  • 4. Latency 

  • 5. Genital 

• Ages 

  • 1. Birth - 1 

  • 2. 1 - 3 

  • 3. 4 - 5 

  • 4. 5 - puberty 

  • 5. Adolescence - adulthood 

• Characteristics 

  • 1. Mouth is the primary erogenous zone; pleasure derived from sucking: id is dominant 

  • 2. Toilet training (external reality) interferes with gratification received from defecation 

  • 3. Incestuous fantasies; oedipus complex; anxiety; superego development 

  • 4. Period of sublimation of sex instinct 

  • 5. Development of sex- role identity and adult social relationships

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Freud's theory is very important for the midterm 

Psychosexual development 

• Fixation: 

  • Portion of libido remains invested in one of the stages 

  • Caused due to excessive frustration or gratification 

The freudian notion of human nature 

• Freud’s view was deterministic 

• Ultimate goal in life - to reduce tension 

• Recognized universality in human nature 

• Personality is determined by early childhood interactions 

• Contended that psychoanalysis can create free will 

Major therapeutic techniques freud's psychoanalysis 

• Free association 

  • Saying whatever comes to mind 

  • Catharsis: expression of emotion expected to reduce symptoms 

  • Problems (some people are not talkative) 

  • Resistance: block or refusal or painful memories 

• Dream analysis 

  • Dres show represses desires, fears, and conflicts 

  • Types: 

    • Manifest content - actual dream events 

    • Latent content - hidden and symbolic meaning 

Freud's research 

• Research supports freud's concepts of: 

  • Influence of the unconscious 

• Freud used the case study method 

• Scientific research is done with subliminal perception subliminal perception: perception below the threshold of conscious awareness 

• Some concepts are difficult to measure 

Chapter 6 

Erik Erikson: Identity Theory 

The life of Erik Erikson (1902- 1994) 

• Mother gave birth out of wedlock 

• Was raised by his stepfather 

• Suffered from abandonment and had a long- standing identity crisis 

Erikson's career 

• Established a private psychoanalytic practice in america 

• Specialized in the treatment of children 

• Was invited to teach in the medical school of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale 

• Studied child - rearing practices of Sioux Indians 

The psychosocial stages of personality development 

• The epigenetic principle 

• Human development is governed by sequence of stages 

• Depend on hereditary factors 

• Development involves a series of conflicts and crises 

  • Crisis: turning point faced at each development stage 

• At every stage, the ego will consist primarily of the positive attitude 

• Will be balanced by some portion of the negative attitude 

• Basic strengths: motivating characteristics and beliefs 

• Derived from satisfactory resolution of the crisis at each developmental stage 

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Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development & basic strengths 

• Stages 

  • Oral-sensory 

  • Muscular-anal 

  • Locomotor-genital 

  • Latency 

  • Adolescence 

  • Young adulthood 

  • Adulthood 

  • Maturity - old age

• Ages 

  • Birth-1 

  • 1-3

  • 3-5

  • 6-11

  • 12-18

  • 18-35

  • 35-55

  • 55+ 

• Adaptive vs maladaptive ways of coping 

  • Trust vs mistrust 

  • Autonomy vs doubt, shame  

  • Initiative vs guilt 

  • Industriousness vs inferiority 

  • Identity cohesion vs identity confusion 

  • Intimacy vs isolation 

  • Generativiy vs stagnation 

  • Ego integrity vs despair 

• Basic strength 

  • Hope 

  • Will 

  • Purpose 

  • Competence 

  • Fidelity 

  • Love 

  • Care 

  • Wisdom 

MIDTERM 

• Freud's theory 

• Humanistic theory 

  • Carl Rogers 

• Social learning theory 

  • Albert Verdua 

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Basic weaknesses 

• Motivating characteristics from the unsatisfactory resolution of developmental crises 

  • Maldevelopment: When the ego consists solely of a single way of coping with conflict 

  • Maladaptive - when only the positive tendency is present 

  • Malignant - when only the negative tendency is present 

Questions about human nature 

• Free will and determinism 

• Nurture and nurture influence 

• Focused on the past and the present 

• Uniqueness and universality 

• Growth throughout life 

• Optimistic 

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Chapter 10 

Charl rogers: Self- Actualization theory

How I understand things around me and how i perceive things shape who I am 

How we make interpretations that is guided by our actualization tendency 

The life of Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987)

• Childhood: 

  • Lonely and believed his brother was favored over hm 

  • Parents were strict and religious 

  • When his family moved to a farm, the rural life invoked his interest in science 

• Early years: 

  • Studes ministry but later transferred to study clinical and educational psychology 

  • Diagnosed delinquent and underprivileged children 

  • Worked to bring clinical psychology to the mainstream 

  • Distinguished career 

• Later years: 

  • Underwent breakdown after he was unable to help a disturbed client 

  • Found himself after therapy 

  • Discovered the ability to give and receive love 

  • Formed deep emotional relationships with clients and others 

The notion of self & the tendency towards self - actualization 

• Research showed significance of self-insight in the formation of personality 

  • Actualization tendency 

    • Basic human motivation to actualize, maintain, and enhance self 

    • Process involves struggle and pain 

  • Organismic valuing 

    • Process of judging experience in terms of hindering or fostering actualization and growth 

    • Perception of experience influences behavior 

The experiential world 

• Reliable reality depends on one’s perception of experience 

• Perception changes with time and circumstance 

• Experiences become the basis for judgments and behaviors 

Class activity - 

• I am… kind 

• Today is… cold 

• Tomorrow,... is going to be a good day 

• People are… beautiful humans

• The world is… beautiful 

• Men are… oblivious to the world

• Women are… understanding 

• I need to… study for my exams 

• There for I will… go home and study

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The Development of the self in childhood 

• Infant develop a need for positive regard that guides behavior 

• Positive regard: Acceptance, love, and approval from others 

  • Universal and persistent need 

• Unconditional positive regard 

  • Approval granted regardless of a person's behavior 

• Positive self- regard 

  • Condition under which an individual grants himself/ herself acceptance and approval 

• Conditions of worth: 

  • Belief that a person is worthy of approval when he/ she: 

    • Expresses desirable behaviors 

    • Refrains from behaviors that brings disapproval 

  • Conditional positive regard 

    • approval , love, and acceptance for desirable behavior and attitudes 

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The development of the self in childhood

• Incongruence 

  • Discrepancy between one's self-concept and aspects of experience 

  • Experiences incongruent to one’s self-concept 

The fully functioning person 

• Self- actualization 

• Developing all facets of the self 

• Desired result of psychological development  

Characteristics of fully functioning persons 

• Awareness of all experience; open to positive as well as negative feelings 

• Freshness of appreciation for all experiences 

• Trust in one’s own behavior and feelings 

• Freedom of choice, without inhibitions 

• Creativity and spontaneity 

• Continual need to grow, to strive to maximize one’s potential in a state of actualizing 

Questions about human nature 

• Emphasis on free will 

• More focus on nurture influence

• More inclined to the present 

• Recognized uniqueness and universality 

• Growth process 

• Optimistic 

Assessment in Roger’s theory 

• Person-centered therapy 

  • Client is assumed to be responsible for changing his/ her personality 

  • Focus is on subjective conscious experiences 

  • Client is given unconditional positive regard 

• Encounter groups 

  • Group therapy technique 

  • People learn about their feelings and how they relate to one another 

  • Facilitators help members to gain insight 

• Psychological tests 

  • The experience inventory 

  • The experiencing scale 

Reflections on Rogers’s theory 

• Criticism: 

  • Disregard of unconscious factors that could confluence behavior 

  • Subjective reports may be distorted 

• Contributions: 

  • Was used widely to help veterans adjust to civilian life post world war ii 

  • Person- centered 

Chapter 9 

Abraham Maslow: Needs- hierarchy theory 

Personality development & the hierarchy of needs 

• Hierarchy of five innate needs 

• Arrangement of innate needs from the strongest to the weakest 

• Activates and directs behavior 

• Instinctoid needs: Maslow’s term for innate needs 

• Characteristics: 

  • Lower needs are greater in strength, potency, and priority 

  • Higher needs appear later in life 

  • Lower needs are deficit needs 

  • Failure to satisfy a lower need produces a crisis 

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More on the hierarchy of needs 

• Higher needs: 

  • Higher needs are growth (being) needs and contribute to personal growth 

  • Higher need gratification requires good external circumstances 

  • A need does not have to be fully satisfied before the next need becomes important 

• Physiological needs: 

  • Basic survival needs rare concern for 

Safety needs: key ideas 

• Stability, security, and freedom from fear 

• Important drive for children and neurotic adults 

• Desire an orderly and predictable world 

• Children prefer structure or routine 

• Neuritics avoid new experiences 

Belongingness & love needs 

• Expressed through relationship with friend, lover, social groups, and forms of social media 

• Failure to meet this need is a fundamental cause of emotional maladjustment 

Esteem needs: key ideas 

• Esteem from ourselves 

• Through feelings of self worth 

• Esteem from others 

• Through status, social success, and recognition 

• Lack of self-esteem leads to feelings of inferiority, helplessness, and discouragement 

The need for self-actualization: the ultimate need 

• Fullest development of the self 

• Necessary conditions 

• Freedom from societal or self-constraints 

• No distraction by lower needs 

• Secure in self-image and relationships 

• Realistic knowledge of self 

Cognitive needs: key ideas 

• Innate need to know and to understand 

• Second set of innate needs 

• Appear in late infancy and early childhood 

• Expressed as natural curiosity 

• Necessary for self-actualization

The study of self-actualizers 

• Metamotivation 

  • Motivation of self-actualizers 

  • Involves maximizing personal potential 

• Metaneeds

  • States of growth or being toward which self-actualizers evolve 

• Metapathology 

  • Thwarting of self-development related to failure to satisfy metaneeds 

Characteristics of self-actualizers 

• Efficient perceptions of reality 

• Acceptance of self, others, and nature 

• Spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness 

• Focus on problem outside self 

• Sense of detachment and need for privacy 

• Freshness of appreciation 

  • “Thank you”, “i'm grateful”

• Peak experience 

• Social interest 

•  Deep interpersonal relationships 

• Creativeness 

• Resistance to enculturation 

  • It is a good thing (positive) (healthy)

  • Keeping my distance and comparing believe systems 

  • Knowing my limits 

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March 7 @6:30pm in the library 

Reasons for failure to attain self-actualization 

• Self-actualization can be easily inhabited 

• Inadequate education 

• Improper child-rearing practices: overprotection or granting excessive permission 

• Jonah complex: 

  • Fear the maximizing one’s potential may lead to situation with which one cannot cope 

  • Requires courage 

  • Fear of success

  • Parents who set very high standard and children can't come to terms 

    • Making children not being able to reach the standard 

Questions about human nature 

• Free will 

• Interaction of nature and nurture 

• Focuses on the past and the present 

• Emphasize on uniqueness 

• Growth process 

• Optimistic 

Personality assessment in Maslow’s theory 

• Observed shared qualities in self-actualized individuals 

• Techniques used: 

  • Historical figures - analyzed biograpjical material and written records 

  • Living subjects - interviews, free association, and projective tests 

• Also: 

  • Personal oriented 

Research on Maslow’s theory 

• Focus: no formal approach was undertaken 

• Correlational studies 

• Hierarchy of needs: 

  • Belongingness need 

  • Self-esteem 

Self-determination theory 

• Contemporary outgrowth of self-actualization theory 

• Focuses on intrinsic motivation 

• Specifies basic needs 

  • Competence 

  • Autonomy 

    • Rely on myself 

  • Relatedness 

    • Not forgetting about other people 

Reflections on Maslow’s theory 

• Criticism: 

  • Collection of information is inconsistent and vague 

  • Characteristics of actualizers lack specificity and are difficult to describe 

  • Use of terms could be inconsistent and ambiguous 

• Contributions: 

  • His theory and the humanistic approach became popular 

  • Influenced the positive psychology movement 

  • Created impact in streams such as personality, social psychology, developmental psychology, and organizational behavior 

Chapter 13 

Albert Bandura: Modeling Theory 

The life of albert bandura 

• Parents stressed on the value of education 

• Challenged Skinner’s behaviorism 

• Awards: 

  • 1980- APA’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award 

  • 2006 - The American Psychological Foundation’s Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement 

Albert bandura’s approach 

• Observational learning: learning by observing other people’s behavior 

• Influenced by cognitive processes 

• Proposed that people learn through vicarious reinforcement 

• Vicarious reinforcement: observing the behavior of others, and the consequences of that behavior 

• Indirect reinforcement 

Modeling (social learning) 

• The bobo doll studies: 

  • Observing the behavior of a model and repeating the behavior 

  • Demonstrated through the bobo doll studies 

  • Children watched an adult attack the doll and modeled the violent behavior when left alone with the doll 

  • Were twice as violent than children who did not see the attack 

• Other modeling studies: 

  • Children’s behavior reflect their parents’ behavior 

  • Verbal modeling can induce behaviors 

• Disinhibition: 

  • Weakening of inhibitions by observing the behavior of a model 

  • Society’s models affect good, bad, abnormal, and normal behavior 

Characteristics of the modeling situation 

• Characteristics of the models: 

  • Similarity 

  • Age and sex 

  • Status 

  • Type of behavior displayed 

  • Size and weight 

• Characteristics of the observers: 

  • Age 

  • Attributes 

Reward consequences of behavior 

• Affects the extent of modeling 

• Prevails over characteristics of models and observers

Observational learning processes 

• Attentional processes 

  • Developing our cognitive processes and perceptual skills so that we can pay sufficient attention to a model, and perceiving the model accurately enough, to imitate displaying behavior. Example: staying awake during driver’s education class 

• Retention processes 

  • Retaining or remembering the model’s behavior so that we can imitate or repeat it at a later time; for this, we use our cognitive processes to form mental imagers and verbal description of the model’s behavior. Example:taking notes on the lecture material or the video of a person driving a car 

• Production processes

  • Translating the mental images or verbal symbolic representations of the model’s behavior into oir own overt behavior by physically producing the responses and receiving feedback on the accuracy of our continued practice. Example: getting in a car with an instructor to practice shifting gears and dodging traffic cones in the school parking lot 

• Incentive and motivational processes 

  • Perceiving that the model's behavior leads to a reward and thus expecting that our learning, and successful performance, of the same behavior will lead to similar consequences. Example: expecting that when we have mastered driving skills, we will pass the state test and receive a driver’s license 

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Incentive & motivational processes 

• Incentive to learn is influenced by the anticipation of reinforcement 

  • However: reinforcement is not always necessary 

Self- reinforcement 

• Self: a set of cognitive processes and structure concerned with thought and perception 

• Administering rewards or punishments to oneself based on personal stnadands 

• Failure to meet unrealistic standards causes emotional 

Self- efficacy 

• Self- efficacy 

  • Feeling of adequacy, efficiency, and competence in coping with life 

  • Low self-efficacy leads to feeling helpless, giving up quickly, and self- doubt 

  • People with high self - efficacy believe that they can overcome obstacles, persevere, have reduced fear or failure, and have increased analytical thinking abilities 

• Source of information about self- efficacy 

  • Performance attainment - prior achievements or failures 

  • Vicarious experiences - seeing others’ successful performance or failures 

  • Verbal persuasion - reminding people of thor abilities 

  • Physiological and emotional arousal - being calm and composed can lead to higher self- efficacy 

Ways of increasing self- efficacy 

• Exposing people to success experiences by arranging reachable goals 

• Exposing people to appropriate models who perform successfully 

• Providing verbal persuasion 

• Strengthening physiological arousal through proper diet, stress reduction, and exercise programs 

Developmental stages of self- efficacy 

• Childhood 

  • Infants try to exercise greater influence iver their physical and social environments 

  • Parental influence diminishes over time 

• Adolescence 

  • Success depends on the level of self- efficacy formed in early years 

  • Involves coping with new demands due to transitions 

• Adulthood 

  • Young adulthood period involves adjusting to new experiences 

  • During the middle years people reevaluate thor careers, and family and social lives 

• Old age