Psychology 2550A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Albert Bandura, Walter Mischel, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
14 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chapter 14 6/27/2014 4:55:00 PM
Development of the social cognitive level
Three major theoretical camps:
Freudians
Individual differences
Behaviorists
George Kelly
Each person is a scientist and an active agent in his or her own life
Personal constructs are the basic unit of personality, which became a
foundation also for the social cognitive level
The cognitive revolution
The cognitive revolution revolted against behaviorism which had made
mental processes and states taboo unscientific topics
Cognitive psychology made mental process and states a central topic, and
found ways to study them scientifically and experimentally
Albert Bandura: Social learning theory
Bandura showed that much of social learning occurs cognitively through
observation without any direct reinforcement administered to the learner
Learning through observation
Observational learning, or modeling, occurs without the learner’s receiving
direct external reinforcement, or even without the learner ever performing
the learned response
Humans learn from what others say and do, and what they see, hear, read,
whether it is intended to be taught or not
So, other people act as models, from whom we learn the probable
consequences of particular alternative behaviors
Importance of rules and symbolic processes
People usually do not need trial by trial “shaping”
They are helped by rules and self instructions that link discrete bits of
information
Verbal rules can help children learn the standards that they are supposed to
adopt
Cognition plays a role even in classical conditioning
The agentic, proactive person
Bandura emphasizes the human capacity to be agentic and exercise self-
regulation (being pro-active) and self reflection
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Human functioning reflects the continuous interplay of personal, behavioral
and environmental influences
“forethought” allows humans the ability to symbolize events and to
anticipate consequences
Self efficacy
The individual’s belief that he or she can successfully execute the behaviors
required by a particular situation
Perceived self-efficacy influences the goals people set and the risks that they
are willing to take
Those who view themselves as lacking self-efficacy are more vulnerable to
anxiety and depression
Bandura proposed that behavioral therapies and other interventions work by
enhancing the individual’s sense of self efficacy
Measuring self-efficacy expectancies
Self efficacy is assessed by asking the person to indicate the degree of
confidence that he or she can do a particular task
It tends to accurately predict the occurrence of relevant behaviors
Social cognitive reconceptualization of personality: Walter Mischel
He proposed the social cognitive reconceptualization of personality
He documented that objective evidence contradicted the traditional trait
assumption that people behave consistently across different situations
Understanding consistency in personality
Mischel proposed people as consistent if…then… situation-behavior patterns
People behave in ways that are consistent with the meanings that situations
have for them, leading to individual differences in personality that we see
Individual differences in if…then… signatures
Van Mechelen and colleagues classify people into different types of if…then…
signatures based on the kind of responses they give to specific types of
psychological situations
They wanted to predict the probability of certain types of individuals of
behaviors in specific types of situations
Social cognitive person variables: (1) Encodings (construals)
How do you see it?
Individuals differ stably in how they encode and categorize (see) people and
interpret events
These interpretations influence their subsequent reactions to them
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Each person is a scientist and an active agent in his or her own life. Personal constructs are the basic unit of personality, which became a foundation also for the social cognitive level. The cognitive revolution revolted against behaviorism which had made mental processes and states taboo unscientific topics. Cognitive psychology made mental process and states a central topic, and found ways to study them scientifically and experimentally. Bandura showed that much of social learning occurs cognitively through observation without any direct reinforcement administered to the learner. Observational learning, or modeling, occurs without the learner"s receiving direct external reinforcement, or even without the learner ever performing the learned response. Humans learn from what others say and do, and what they see, hear, read, whether it is intended to be taught or not. So, other people act as models, from whom we learn the probable consequences of particular alternative behaviors. People usually do not need trial by trial shaping .
