Week 5 | Day 2 | PSYA02

Week 5 | Day 2 | PSYA02

Social-Cognitive Approach

• Social cognitive approach: Personality is how a person deals with the situations encountered in daily life
• Underlying assumptions
  • People note the consequences of their behaviour
  • People observe the behaviour of others across many situations
  • Out of these observations, they develop cognition about themselves
• Unique personalities occur because of our different cognition
• Theorists:
  • Albert Bandura
  • Julian Rotter
  • Walter Mischel

Bandura’s Self-System

• The self-system involves cognition that we use to observe, evaluate, and regulate our behaviour
  • Imitate the successful behaviour of others and avoid unsuccessful behaviour
  • Learn how to act appropriately in the situation and fit in
• Self-efficacy: (aka confidence) is how well we think we will perform in a given situation
  • Monitor your own behavior to determine when it is successful or not

Rotter’s Social Learning Perspective

• Locus of control: belief about how in control you are of the events that can happen to you
  • Internal = you’re in control
  • External = events out of your control
• Internal locus of control: better adjusted and able to cope with stressors
• External locus of control: learned helplessness and higher prevalence of maladaptive behaviour

The Delay of Gratification: The Power of “Willpower”

• Walter Mischel’s (2014) Marshmallow Test for delayed gratification (aka are you willing to sacrifice a small, sooner reward for a bigger, later reward)
  • Important for expression of personality
• 20 years after the original delay of gratification study, the researchers interviewed the participants
• The preschool children who waited for the larger reward (i.e. several marshmallows) were better-adjusted adults
  • Higher SAT scores + planned ahead + more mature
  • Physical health
  • Less drug abuse + criminal offence
• Delay of gratification is a core component of successful personality adjustment and predicts future success BUT his research was a little biased since they used kids from campus, which means socioeconomic status + background can determine future success and delayed gratification

The Biological Perspective

• The biological perspective: assume that certain biological processes serve to influence the underlying operation and expression of personality
  • Behavioural Genetics Perspective
  • Neurological Perspective: Physiological and Cortical Influences
  • Evolutionary PerspectiveEven if they were raised differently (100% DNA, different environment) personality comes from a lot od genetics

Neurological Perspective: Physiological and Cortical Influences

• Physiological Factors: Hormones and neurotransmitters.
  • Higher levels of testosterone are linked to dominance, aggression, persistence, and high-risk behaviour.
  • Lower levels of serotonin are associated with a greater willingness to engage in thrill-seeking activities
• Brain Activity: Arousal and inhibition.
  • Introverts have higher levels of arousal in ARAS

Evolutionary Perspective