Chapter 17: Rotter & Mischel – Cognitive Social Learning Theory

Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory

• Integrates behaviorist learning principles (e.g., reinforcement) with cognitive variables (e.g., expectancies, goals, values)

• Central assumption: People interpret, anticipate, and symbolically process events; these cognitions interact with environmental contingencies to guide behavior

• Rejects Skinnerian notion that immediate, external reinforcement solely shapes behavior; instead, future expectations and subjective meanings are prime determinants

• Two principal architects

  • Julian B. Rotter – interactionist, quantitative formulas for predicting behavior

  • Walter Mischel – emphasis on person–situation interaction and cognitive-affective processing

Biography of Julian Rotter

• Born Oct 22 1916, Brooklyn; third (youngest) son of Jewish immigrants

• Great Depression → family financial decline → concern for social injustice & situational effects on behavior

• Early exposure: Adler, Freud, Menninger found on library shelf; attended Adler’s lectures

• B.S. Brooklyn College (1937, chemistry major but psychology credits > chemistry)

• M.A. Univ. of Iowa (1938); Ph.D. Indiana Univ. (1941); internship Worcester State Hospital (met wife Clara)

• Army psychologist WWII (>3 yrs)

• Faculty: Ohio State (with George Kelly) → Univ. of Connecticut (1963–87)

• Major works: Social Learning & Clinical Psychology (1954); Clinical Psychology (1964); Rotter I-E Scale (1966); Interpersonal Trust Scale (1967)

• Honors: APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution (1988); Distinguished Contribution to Clinical Training (1989)

Rotter’s Social Learning Theory: Five Basic Hypotheses

• Humans interact with meaningful environments; subjective meaning mediates stimulus→response

• Personality is learned and modifiable throughout life

• Personality possesses basic unity via relatively stable evaluations of experiences

• Motivation is goal-directed; behavior serves movement toward goals rather than tension reduction

• Humans anticipate events; perceived progress toward anticipated goals is used to evaluate reinforcers (Empirical Law of Effect)

Predicting Specific Behaviors

• Four immediate variables

  • Behavior Potential (BP) – likelihood of a specific response in a given situation

  • Expectancy (E) – subjective probability that a behavior will produce a given reinforcement

  • Reinforcement Value (RV) – preference for one reinforcement vs. others when probabilities equal

  • Psychological Situation (s) – total of internal & external cues as perceived at a moment

• Basic Prediction Formula BP{x1,s1,ra} = f\left(E{x1,ra,s1} + RV{a,s1}\right)

  • Example: Likelihood La Juan rests head in boring lecture depends on expectancy that sleeping will occur plus value of sleep under those cues

Predicting General Behaviors

• Generalized Expectancies (GE) – mean expectancies built from prior analogous experiences

• Needs – categories of goal-directed behavior; semantic shift: focus on person (need) vs. environment (goal)

  • Six broad need categories with illustrative behaviors

  • Recognition-Status – e.g., excelling in bridge for praise

  • Dominance – persuading colleagues, directing others

  • Independence – declining help to repair bicycle

  • Protection-Dependency – asking spouse to care for you when ill

  • Love & Affection – doing favors to elicit warmth

  • Physical Comfort – turning on AC, hugging

• Need complex components

  • Need Potential (NP) – aggregate BP of behaviors that satisfy a need

  • Freedom of Movement (FM) – average expectancy of success for behaviors within need area

  • Need Value (NV) – average reinforcement value of outcomes within need area

• General Prediction Formula
  NP = f(FM + NV)

Internal–External Control of Reinforcement (Locus of Control)

• Core idea: people differ in generalized expectancy that their actions control outcomes

• I-E Scale (Rotter 1966) – 23 scored forced-choice items; high = external

• Misconceptions clarified

  • Scores indicate expectancy, not direct causes of behavior

  • Scale measures generalized, not situation-specific control

  • Internality–Externality is a continuum, not dichotomy

  • Extreme internal or external scores may be maladaptive

Interpersonal Trust Scale

• Interpersonal trust = expectancy that another’s word or promise is reliable

• 25 scored items, 5-point agree–disagree scale; high score = high trust

• High-trust individuals: less likely to lie/cheat, more respectful & popular, not more gullible

• Societal functioning relies on moderate–high interpersonal trust (food safety, mail, aviation, etc.)

Maladaptive Behavior (Rotter)

• Persistent actions that fail to move person toward goals

• Often produced by

  • High need value + low freedom of movement (unrealistic goals)

  • Inadequate skills/information → low FM

  • Faulty situation evaluation → underestimated abilities

  • Over-generalization from one area of failure to others

Psychotherapy (Rotter)

• Therapist = active problem-solving teacher within social interaction

• Goals: harmonize FM and NV; reduce avoidance & defense

• Two main strategies

  • Changing Goals

  • Resolve conflicts between competing needs (e.g., adolescent independence vs. dependency)

  • Redirect from destructive or overly lofty goals using reinforcement & education

  • Eliminating Low Expectancies

  • Teach new skills/information (assertiveness, interpersonal techniques)

  • Correct faulty evaluations of current situations

  • Counter maladaptive generalizations by reinforcing small successes

• Techniques: modeling, extinction of inappropriate behavior, perspective-taking, encouraging observational period (“quiet observer” experiment)

Biography of Walter Mischel

• Born Feb 22 1930, Vienna; Jewish family fled 1938 Nazi annexation → Brooklyn upbringing

• NYU undergrad; influenced by art, Freud, existentialists; MA City College of NY (clinical); social work in slums → skepticism of psychoanalysis & emphasis on empirical validation

• Ph.D. Ohio State (1956) under Rotter & influenced by George Kelly

• Fieldwork in Caribbean on spirit possession & delay of gratification

• Academic posts: Colorado, Harvard (with Allport), Stanford (with Bandura), Columbia Univ.

• Seminal book: Personality and Assessment (1968) – critique of trait prediction

• Honors: APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution (1982)

Background to Mischel’s Theory

• Initial stance against broad, decontextualized traits → “Consistency Paradox” (people seen as consistent, data show variability)

• Shift to reconciliation: stable traits and situation-linked variability coexist

Consistency Paradox

• Lay & professional belief in cross-situational trait consistency (e.g., honesty) vs. empirical correlations ≈ 0.30

• Hartshorne & May (1928) – honesty varied across test, game, party situations

Person–Situation Interaction

• Behavior = function of personal dispositions + specific situation cues

• Same person may act shy with women, bold with men; classification requires context

Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS)

• Proposed by Mischel & Shoda to solve paradox

• Each person shows a stable behavioral signature: “If A → X; if B → Y”

  • Example: If provoked by wife ⇒ aggression; if provoked by boss ⇒ submission

• Stability lies in the pattern of variability, not in invariant behaviors

Behavior Prediction Statement

• “If personality is a stable system that processes information about situations, then as situations vary, behavior will vary in a predictable pattern.”

Situation Variables

• When environmental cues are powerful & uniform (e.g., moving film), situation dominates

• When personal meanings diverge (e.g., job lay-off), person variables dominate

Cognitive-Affective Units (5 classes)

1. Encoding Strategies & Personal Constructs

   • Individual ways of categorizing stimuli; selective attention, subjective interpretation

2. Competencies & Self-Regulatory Strategies

   • Abilities, problem-solving skills, self-imposed goals, self-reinforcement

3. Expectancies & Beliefs

   • Behavior-Outcome ("If I study, then I’ll excel")

   • Stimulus-Outcome (lightning → thunder) – basis of classical conditioning

4. Goals & Values

   • Desired outcomes steer attention & planning; emotionally charged → stability

5. Affective Responses

   • Emotions, physiological reactions inseparable from cognitions; color all other units

Empirical Illustrations

• Delay of Gratification (Mischel & Ebbesen 1970): children who distracted themselves (altered encoding) could wait longer → cognitive transformation modulates behavior

• Locus of Control & Holocaust Heroes (Midlarsky et al. 2005)

  • Sample: 80 rescuers vs. 73 bystanders vs. 43 pre-war immigrants

  • Higher internal control associated with autonomy, risk-taking, empathy, social responsibility

  • Personality variables correctly classified hero status 93\% of cases

• If–Then Predictions of Warmth (Kammrath et al. 2005)

  • Participants inferred differing warmth of a “kiss-up” toward professors vs. peers → lay understanding of behavioral signatures

• Conditional Self-Evaluations & Emotion (Mendoza-Denton et al. 2001)

  • “I am good when I work hard” buffers sadness after imagined failures compared to unconditional “I am a failure”

Critique of Cognitive Social Learning Theory

• Research Support: extensive (esp. Rotter’s I-E scale; growing CAPS studies)

• Testability/Falsifiability: Moderate–high; formulas abstract but constructs measurable; CAPS yields testable if-then hypotheses

• Organization: Offers unifying framework linking learning, cognition, affect, and traits

• Practicality: Provides guidance for therapy (goal restructuring, skill training) and assessment (locus of control, behavioral signatures)

• Internal Consistency: Generally high; clear definitions; if-then logic coherent

• Parsimony: Relatively parsimonious given complexity of human behavior

Concept of Humanity (Rotter & Mischel)

• Determinism vs. Free Will: Interactionist; past learning + current cognitions, yet people set goals and select strategies (some choice)

• Nature vs. Nurture: Heavy emphasis on social learning; Mischel acknowledges genetic predispositions that influence CAPS patterns

• Past vs. Future: Forward-looking; anticipations of reinforcement and goals dominate

• Conscious vs. Unconscious: Lean conscious (explicit expectancies, plans), but recognize implicit affect & mis-evaluations

• Uniqueness vs. Universality: Rotter – moderate; formulas assume common variables. Mischel – uniqueness via individual behavioral signatures.

• Optimism vs. Pessimism: Guarded optimism; behavior change possible through learning & cognitive restructuring

Key Formulas & Definitions (Quick Reference)

• Empirical Law of Effect: Reinforcement = any event moving person toward a goal

• Basic Prediction Formula: BP = f(E + RV)

• General Prediction Formula: NP = f(FM + NV)

• Locus of Control: Generalized expectancy regarding control of reinforcement; Internal ↔ External continuum

• Interpersonal Trust: Expectancy that others’ communications are reliable

• Behavioral Signature: Stable if-then pattern of variability reflecting CAPS