Psychology of Personality: Social-Cognitive Theory

Self-Referent Cognitive Processes

  • Definition

    • Human actions and reactions are driven by cognitive processes, which include:

    • Competencies

    • Expectancies and Beliefs

    • Evaluative Standards

    • Personal Goals

Competencies (Skills that we can acquire through training and observational learning)

  • Interpretation of Personality Traits

    • Personality traits can be viewed as skills, such as:

    • Extroversion - Social skills.

    • Neuroticism - Emotional regulatory skills.

    • Conscientiousness - Impulse control skills.

  • Cognitive Skills (stress coping, problem-solving abilities, and adaptive thinking strategies)

  • Context-Specific Nature of Competencies

    • Unlike stable traits, skills can be acquired and vary significantly with context.

    • Skills can be developed through observational learning, contrasting with behaviorism which emphasizes direct conditioning.

Beliefs and Expectancies

  • Overview

    • influence how we respond

    • Examples provided:

    • Academic expectations (e.g., “Should I work hard for the final?”)

    • Personal relationship concerns (e.g., “Should I tell my crush my feelings?”)

    • Career decisions (e.g., “Should I apply for this scholarship?”)

  • Behaviorists typically focus solely on reward value rather than perceived reward dynamics.

Self-Efficacy Beliefs

  • Definition

    • Self-efficacy is the individual's perception of their capabilities for action in future situations (做唔做到）, a key predictor of accomplishments.

    • It differs from self-esteem in that it is not a broad evaluation or sense of self-worth.

  • Significance

    • Generally a better performance predictor than competencies or outcome expectations.

  • Assessment

    • Requires a microanalytic strategy tailored to specific contexts.

  • Acquired through experiences

  • Illustrative example: The Elephant and the Rope - An adult elephant's refusal to break free from a small rope due to past conditioning.

  • Parental Role

    • Parents significantly influence their children’s self-efficacy beliefs through encouragement and realistic feedback.

  • Impacts of Enhanced Self-Efficacy

    • Individuals with strong self-efficacy:

    • Challenge themselves with more difficult tasks.

    • Show persistence in their efforts.

    • Experience less anxiety during performance.

    • Organize thoughts better.

    • Exhibit improved overall performance.

Goals

  • Humans are agentic entities who set personal goals and actively manage the pursuit of these goals.

  • Types of Goals

    • Proximal Goals (short-term, specific).

    • Distal Goals (long-term, abstract).

    • Contain subjective meanings (e.g., growth vs. performance aims).

Goal-Setting and Feedback enhance Self-Regulation

  • Impact of Goals on Motivation

    • Long-term, abstract goals can demotivate; lower self-efficacy beliefs lead to lower goal setting.

    • Goals should align with personal values for optimal motivation and performance.

  • Achieving the goal by breaking down large aspirations into smaller, manageable steps.

  • effective feedback on progress increases performance, especially coupled with high self-efficacy judgments and self-evaluative judgments (know how to reflect, judge against standard)

Evaluative Standards

  • influenced by social and cognitive factors.

  • Impact of Self-Evaluative Reactions

    • Internal reinforcers include self-evaluative reactions like pride and guilt.

    • strengthened through successful experiences

  • Deindividuation Effects

    • Low self-awareness → lower evaluative standards.

Due to Moral Disengagement: convince themselves that their ethical standards don't apply to them in certain situations, such as accepting plagiarism in deadline fight situations, thinking others will do so too.

Personality as a Holistic System

  • Albert Bandura’s Principle of Reciprocal Determinism:

  • Interactions occur between environment, personal processes (such as efficacy beliefs and goals), and behavior.

Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS)

  • Mischel and Shoda’s Meta-Theory (2008)

    • Aims to unify personality theories by addressing strengths and weaknesses among existing frameworks.

    • Describes personality coherence, noting that its stability is revealed through observable patterns of behavior across situational variables.

    • Cognitive-Affective Units (CAUs)

      • Expectancies and beliefs

      • Affects

      • Goals and self-regulatory plans

      • Competencies and values

  • Behavior Encoding and CAUs

    • situational features (eg. difficult math questions), activating respective CAUs (I am competent, goal: three attempts, if can’t then ask someone else) that influences behavior; prior behaviors inform potential future reactions.

Implications for Personality Assessment

  • Critique of the Nomothetic Approach

    • The traditional nomothetic sweeping generalizations overlook the nuanced realities of individual variability across contexts, invalidating many trait theories.

  • Need for Repeated Within-Subject Designs

  • Interactivity of the CAPS

    • Behavior resulting from the CAPS will elicit environmental feedback, which can lead to consolidation of personality structures and equilibrium among the interacting variables.

    • Dismisses the necessity for non-scientific explanations for observed personality phenomena (i.e., the "law of attraction").

  • Role of CAPS as a Meta-Theory

    • Guides theoretical advancements related to various psychological phenomena, including self-schemas, personality beliefs, regulatory focus theory, etc.

Power of Observation and Vicarious Conditioning

  • Learning Through Observation

    • Skills and self-efficacy are greatly enhanced through observational learning, impacting areas ranging from sports to academics.

    • Referenced classical Bobo doll study showcasing children's learning via modeled behavior

Self-Control and the Marshmallow Test

  • Marshmallow Test Overview

    • Test measures self-control as it predicts future success and wellbeing based on the ability to delay gratification.

  • Trait vs. Trainable Skill

    • Contrasts conceptualizations of self-control as a fixed trait versus a trainable skill seen in social-cognitive research.

Observation Effects on Self-Control

  • Delayed Gratification Impact

    • Children who can delay gratification have exhibited notable differences in future choices based on observational learning experiences (e.g., Bandura & Mischel, 1965).

    • If seen a video to seek immediate gratification, high-delay children will do so too

Cognitive Strategies for Sustaining Delay of Gratification

  • Effective Techniques

    • Distraction - Focusing attention away from temptation (e.g., covering it up, singing).

    • Reinterpretation - Changing perceptions about the temptation (e.g., imagining it as a rock).

    • Focusing on cognitive units over emotional triggers (distance between temptation and self).

Research Development Inspired By Social-Cognitive Theory

Self-Schemas

  • Profile of Self-Schemas

    • Investors draw on self-schemas for self-perception impacting behavior.

    • Concepts shared include:

    • Self-enhancement motives - seeking to validate a positive image.

    • Self-verification motives - seeking confirmation even of negative attributes for authenticity.

  • Illustrative Case Study

    • Example of Sarah, a girl self-identifying as unathletic until prompted by a tennis success

    • Self-verification motive: I am not athletic, I am just doing well now, but maybe not later'

Implicit Theories and Mindsets

  • Incremental Theory - intelligence can be improved by training (brain as a muscle).

  • Entity Theory - Intelligence is fixed (genetic constraints).

  • Differing theories lead to distinct goal orientations:

  • Incremental theorists pursue learning-enhancing goals.

  • Entity theorists gravitate toward performance-driven goals.

Outcome Variations Based on Evaluation Standards

  • E. Tory Higgins’s Regulatory Focus Theory

    • Differentiates how goals frame emotional responses based on motivation:

    • Ideal Self - aspirations (X → disappointment)

    • Ought Self- obligations (I should) (X→ anxiety, guilt and shame)

  • Regulatory fit: when an individual's goal-pursuit strategy matches their underlying motivational orientation: strengthens commitment and improves outcomes

Conclusion

  • Comparative Analysis with Previous Theories

    • Social-Cognitive Theory (SCT) offers a multifaceted lens compared to:

    • Psychoanalytic Theory emphasizing conscious cognitive processes.

    • Behaviorist Theory contesting absolute influences of environment.

    • Phenomenological Psychology sharing scaffolding while focusing on cognitive-social variables influencing personality.