component of personality

component of personality

CHAPTER 12=13

In this discussion, you will reflect upon how goals (a component of personality) impact success.

First, read the assigned sections from Chapters 12 and 13 of your textbook on the social-cognitive theory of personality, specifically pages 411–414 of Chapter 13. Then watch the TED Talk: Carol Dweck: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve. As you read these chapters and watch the video, also consider how goals (a component of personality) can impact success.

Next, in your initial post, answer the following questions:

How does thinking about goals differently (performance versus learning) affect performance and success?

Do you believe, as the socio-cognitive theorists do, that all learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of the person, environment, and behavior?

How can you apply these findings to your education, work, or personal life?

Bring in information from the text, as well as the video to support your answers

“Do you remember your first day of high school? Perhaps, you don’t care to! What could be more unnerving than not knowing how to act, especially in an environment where “fitting in” is paramount? Although she was really anxious and unsure of what to expect, one young woman decided to approach the first day of high school as an opportunity to learn. Her plan was to model herself after the most successful seniors in the school. She paid close attention to what they talked about, what they wore, where they went, and when they went there. Soon, she was the coolest freshman in the class.

This young woman was very influenced by her new environment, but she was also an active agent in choosing how to respond to that influence. This idea—that behavior is the result of an interaction between the person and the environment—is a key concept in the social‐cognitive theory of personality. This theory is distinctive in its emphasis on the social origins of behavior and the importance of cognition (thought processes) in human functioning. People are viewed as capable of actively directing their own lives and learning complex patterns of behavior in the absence of rewards. Social‐cognitive theory has developed considerably during the past few decades and today is an important force in the science of personality.

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER

1. What is the role of thinking, or “cognitive,” processes in personality?

2. How do people learn complex social behaviors?

3. How can one scientifically analyze people’s capacity for personal agency, that is, their ability to influence their actions and the course of their own development?

4. In what ways do variations—as opposed to consistencies—in a person’s behavior reveal the nature of his or her personality?

Social‐cognitive theory has roots in the behavioral/learning tradition (Chapter 10). Beginning in the 1950s, some theorists tried to shift learning theo- ry’s focus from animals in boxes to social learning: the acquisition of new patterns of behavior by humans acting in a social world. It is also rooted, in part, in the

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RELATING SOCIAL‐ COGNITIVE THEORY TO THE PREVIOUS THEORIES

tradition pioneered by George Kelly: the study of cognition, including the cognitive structures that people use to interpret events. By synthesizing and advancing beyond these past traditions, theorists created a social‐cognitive approach that has risen to prominence in contemporary personality science.

In crafting their theory, social‐cognitivists tried to overcome the limitations of prior theories of personality (the ones covered in our previous chapters). Their critiques of past theories constitute a good introduction to the social‐cognitive approach (see Bandura, 1986, 1999, 2012; Mischel, 1999, 2012).

To the social‐cognitivist, psychoanalysts overemphasize unconscious forces and the influence of early childhood experience. Social‐cognitive theorists place greater emphasis on conscious self‐reflection and argue that critical developmen- tal processes occur not only in early childhood but throughout the life course (Artistico et al., 2011).

Social‐cognitive theorists question the core premise of trait theory: that person- ality can be understood in terms of overall, average tendencies (i.e., average trait levels). They believe that personality is revealed in both average levels of behavior and patterns of variability in action. Are you shy with some people but outgoing with others? Motivated on some tasks but lazy on others? Social‐cognitive theory sees such variability as revealing of personality structure (Mischel & Shoda, 2008).

Social‐cognitive theorists question the adequacy of evolutionary psychol- ogy. How, they ask, can an evolutionary perspective explain the vast changes in human social life observed from one historical period to another (Bandura, 2006; Bussey & Bandura, 1999). A century ago, evolutionary psychologists might have explained why women are evolutionarily predisposed to stay at home rather than entering the workforce. Now that women have entered the workforce in massive numbers, such an explanation makes little sense.

Finally, social‐cognitive theory rejects the behavioristic argument that environ- mental stimuli control behavior. People also have a capacity for self‐control. Cognitive capabilities, they argue, enable people to shape the course of their own development (Bandura, 2006). These capabilities also allow people to learn new patterns of behavior by observation, or “modeling,” even in the absence of rein- forcement (Table 12.1).

Many contemporary personality psychologists have contributed to social‐ cognitive theory (Cervone & Shoda, 1999b). However, two of them have made extraordinarily seminal contributions that mark them as the primary social‐ cognitive personality theorists: Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel. Although they focus on somewhat different aspects of personality functioning, their con- tributions complement one another and contribute to a coherent body of social‐ cognitive theory and research.

Table 12.1 Distinguishing Features of Social‐Cognitive Theory

1. Emphasis on people as active agents 2. Emphasis on social origins of behavior 3. Emphasis on cognitive (thought) processes 4. Emphasis on both average behavioral tendencies and variability in behavior 5. Emphasis on the learning of complex patterns of behavior in the absence of rewards

A VIEW OF THE THEORISTS

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ALBERT BANDURA (1925–)

Albert Bandura grew up in northern Alberta, Canada. After graduating from the University of British Columbia, he pursued graduate work in clinical psychology at the University of Iowa, known for its excellence in research on learning processes. In an interview, Bandura indicated that he “had a strong interest in conceptualizing clinical phenomena in ways that would make them amenable to experimental test, with the view that as practitioners we have a responsibility for assessing the efficacy of a procedure, so that people are not subjected to treatments before we know their effects” (quoted in Evans, 1976, p. 243).

After obtaining his Ph.D. at Iowa in 1952, Bandura joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he has spent his entire career. Work on social factors that con- tribute to children’s development of aggressive behavior resulted in two books with Richard Walters, his first graduate student: Adolescent Aggression (Bandura & Walters, 1959) and Social Learning and Personality Development (Bandura & Walters, 1963). The latter volume, in particular, laid the foundations for the social‐cognitive perspective Bandura developed throughout the latter third of the 20th century. In 1969, Principles of Behavior Modification (Bandura, 1969) reformulated the practice of behavior therapy by directing therapists’ attention to the thinking processes of their clients, rather than to the environmental factors and conditioning processes emphasized by behaviorists (Chapter 10).

Since the 1970s, Bandura has focused on “self‐processes,” that is, thinking pro- cesses involving self‐conceptions and personal goals (1977, 1997). He contends that self‐processes give people the capacity for personal agency, that is, the capac- ity to affect their own behavior and experiences. Bandura’s social‐cognitive theory thus is an “agentic” conception of human nature (Bandura, 1999, 2001, 2012). Bandura examines how interpersonal, social, and socioeconomic conditions influence people’s self‐referent beliefs (Bandura, 2006).

Bandura’s monumental Social Foundations of Thought and Action (Bandura, 1986) organized a vast body of knowledge about personality processes, structures, and development within a social‐cognitive framework. It stands as the definitive statement of his theoretical position.

Bandura has received innumerable rewards and honors. They include the presidency of the American Psychological Association (APA), APA’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the William James Award from “the Association for Psychological Science (APS) for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology, and honorary degrees from universities through- out North America and Europe.

WALTER MISCHEL (1930–)

Walter Mischel was born in Vienna and lived his first 9 years “in easy playing dis- tance of Freud’s house.” He describes the possible influence of this period as follows:

When I began to read psychology Freud fascinated me most. As a student at City College (in New York, where my family settled after the Hitler‐ caused forced exodus from Europe in 1939), psychoanalysis seemed to provide a comprehensive view of man. But my excitement fizzled when I tried to apply ideas as a social worker with “juvenile delinquents” in New York’s Lower East Side: somehow trying to give those youngsters “insight” didn’t help either them or me. The concepts did not fit what I saw, and I went looking for more useful ones.

SOURCE: Mischel, 1978, personal communication.

Characterizations of individuals on common trait dimensions (such as “Conscientiousness” or “Sociability”) provided useful overall summaries of their average levels of behavior but missed, it seemed to me, the striking discriminativeness often visible within the same person if closely observed over time and across situations. Might the same person who is more caring, giving, and supportive than most people in relation to his family also be less caring and altruistic than most people in other contexts? Might these variations across situations be meaningful stable patterns that characterize the person enduringly rather than random fluctuations? If so, how could they be understood and what did they reflect? Might they be worth taking into account in personality assessment for the conceptualization of the stability and flexibility of human behavior and qualities? These questions began to gnaw at me and the effort to answer them became a fundamental goal for the rest of my life.

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In addition to critiquing previous approaches, in 1973, Mischel provided an alternative: a set of social personal variables (Mischel, 1973; discussed later). They were designed to explain the discriminativeness of behavior, that is, how people discriminate between situations (even seemingly similar ones) and vary their actions from one situation to the next. “Might the same person who is more car- ing, giving, and supportive than most people in relation to his family also be less caring and altruistic than most people in other contexts?” Mischel asks. “Might these variations across situations be meaningful stable patterns that characterize the person enduringly?” (Mischel, in Pervin, 1996, p. 76). Such questions drove Mischel’s work, including his development of a “systems” perspective in which personality is understood as a complex, interconnected system of cognitive and affective processes that are activated by features of social situations (Mischel & Shoda, 2008).

In terms of his view of human nature, Mischel suggests that while genes are important in shaping personality, there remains great potential for personality change: “I think, therefore I can change what I am” (2014, p. 278).

Mischel’s numerous honors include his receipt of the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Clinical Psychology Division of the APA, APA’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the William James Award from the APS, and election to the US National Academy of Sciences. He also has served as Editor of Psychological Review, psychology’s leading publication outlet for theoretical papers.

Bandura’s and Mischel’s scientific impact is particularly noteworthy. A quanti- tative review (Haggbloom et al., 2002) of the impact of 20th‐century psychologists found that both Bandura and Mischel were among that century’s top 25 most influential figures, with the work of only three psychologists—Skinner, Piaget, and Freud—having greater impact than Bandura’s. A 2007 analysis of the most cited book authors in the humanities and social sciences found Bandura’s work to be more frequently cited than that of any other psychologist.

The simplest way to understand the social‐cognitive theory’s view of the person SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE

is to ask, “What is a person?” What makes some beings “persons” and others “not persons”? Three psychological qualities of persons are unique. People (1) reason about the world using language, (2) contemplate not only present circumstances but also past and hypothetical future events, and (3) reflect on themselves, thinking about themselves and their own thinking.

Curiously, many prior personality theories did not emphasize these uniquely human abilities. Psychoanalysts highlighted animalistic impulsive forces. Behaviorists treated people as machines and based theories on research with animals. Trait theorists report that the Big Five personality traits are found in animals, too (Gosling & John, 1999). Social‐cognitive theory, by contrast, cent- ers its attention on uniquely human cognitive capacities (Bandura, 1999). As Mischel puts it:

The image is one of the human being as an active, aware problem‐ solver, capable of profiting from an enormous range of experiences and cognitive capacities, possessing great potential for good or ill, actively

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constructing his or her psychological world, and influencing the environment but also being influenced by it in lawful ways. . . . It is an image that has moved a long way from the instinctual drive‐reduction models, the static global traits, and the automatic stimulus‐response bonds of traditional personality theories.

SOURCE: Mischel, 1976, p. 253.

Many personality theorists have remained outside of the mainstream of psychological science. Freud, Rogers, and Kelly, for example, barely took notice of advances in the overall science of psychology. Social‐cognitivists take a different approach. They try to capitalize on advances throughout psychology, as well as related sciences of human nature (Cervone & Mischel, 2002). They pursue an integrative task: to synthesize knowledge from diverse fields into a coherent portrait of human nature and the differences among persons.

A second feature of the social‐cognitive view of personality science is its emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual. Social‐cognitive theorists employ idiographic (see Chapter 7) methods to capture the idiosyncrasies of individuals (cf. Molenaar & Campbell, 2009).

Finally, Bandura and Mischel have pursued practical applications of their theoretical ideas. They stress that a bottom line for evaluating a theory is whether it yields practical tools that benefit human welfare.

The personality structures emphasized by social‐cognitive theory mainly involve cognitive processes. Four structural concepts are particularly notewor- thy: competencies and skills, expectancies and beliefs, behavioral standards, and personal goals.

COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS

The first type of personality structure in social‐cognitive theory is skills, or competencies. The core insight of the theory is that the differences between people we observe may not be caused only by the differences in emotions or motivational impulses, as other theories have emphasized. Instead, the dif- ferences may reflect variations in people’s skill in executing different types of action. Some people may, for example, act in an introverted manner because they lack the social skills that are required to execute socially effec- tive extraverted acts. Others may be conscientious because they have acquired a large degree of cognitive skills that enable them to adhere to social norms.

Of particular interest to social‐cognitive theorists, then, are cognitive com- petencies and skills in solving problems and coping with the challenges of life (Cantor, 1990; Mischel & Shoda, 1999, 2008). Competencies involve both ways of thinking about life problems and behavioral skills in executing”

solutions to them. They involve two types of knowledge: procedural and declarative knowledge (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). Declarative knowledge is the knowledge that we can state in words. Procedural knowledge refers to the cognitive and behavioral capacities that a person may have without being able to articulate the exact nature of those capacities; the person can execute the behavioral “procedure” without being able to say how he or she did it. For example, you may be good at cheering up a friend who is feeling depressed, yet you may not be able to say in words precisely what it is that you do that enables you to succeed at this task. Competencies, then, involve a combination of declarative and procedural knowledge.

A focus on competencies has two implications. The first involves context specificity. The term refers to the fact that psychological structures that are relevant to some social situations, or contexts, may be irrelevant to others. Context specificity is a natural feature of skills (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). A person may have excellent study skills, but these are of little use when it comes to getting a date or resolving an argument. Different contexts present different challenges that require different competencies. A person who is com- petent in one context may not be competent in another. This emphasis on context specificity (also see Chapter 14) differentiates social‐cognitive theory from trait approaches (Chapters 7 and 8), which feature context‐free personality variables. Social‐cognitive theory generally rejects context‐free variables— particularly when discussing cognitive competencies. The last thing social‐ cognitivists would do is to assume that one person is “generally more competent” than another. Instead, they recognize that any person’s competencies may vary considerably from one domain of life to another.

The second implication involves psychological change. Competencies are acquired through social interaction and observation of the social world (Bandura, 1986). People who lack skills in a particular area of life can change. They can engage in new interactions and new observations of the world and thereby acquire new competencies. The ideas of social‐cognitive theory there- fore can be applied directly to clinical applications that are designed to boost people’s life skills (Chapter 13).

BELIEFS AND EXPECTANCIES

The other three social‐cognitive structures can be understood by considering three different ways that people may think about the world (Cervone, 2004). One set of thoughts involves beliefs about what the world actually is like and what things probably will be like in the future. These thoughts are called beliefs and—when the beliefs are directed to the future—expectancies. A second class of thinking involves thoughts about what things should be like. These thoughts are evaluative standards, that is, mental criteria (or standards) for evaluating the goodness or worth of events. A third class of thinking involves thoughts about what one wants to achieve in the future. These thoughts are called personal goals. In addition to competencies, then, the other three main social‐cognitive personality structures are beliefs and expectancies, evaluative standards, and goals. First, we will consider beliefs and expectancies, which we will refer to simply as “expectancies” here because social‐cognitive theory so strongly emphasizes the role people’s beliefs about prospective future events have in personality functioning.

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Social‐cognitive theory contends that a primary determinant of our actions and emotions is our expectations about the future. People have expectancies concerning topics such as the likely behavior of other people, the rewards or punishments that may follow a certain type of behavior, or their own ability to handle the stress and challenges. It is this system of thoughts about the future that constitutes the person’s expectancies.

As was the case with skills and competencies, a person’s expectations may vary considerably from one situation to another. Everyone expects that the same action might elicit different reactions in different situations (e.g., loud, jovial behavior at a party vs. a church). People naturally discriminate among situations, expecting different opportunities, rewards, and constraints in dif- ferent settings. Although researchers sometimes do study generalized expecta- tions, most social‐cognitive investigators study expectancies in a domain‐linked manner. In other words, they assess people’s expectancies with regard to spe- cific areas, or domains, of their life. Social‐cognitive theorists recognize that the capacity to vary expectations and behavior from one situation to another is basic to survival. No animal could survive if it failed to make such discrimi- nations. Because of their tremendous cognitive capacity, humans make an incredible variety of discriminations among situations.

A key point in the social‐cognitive approach is that, when forming expectan- cies, people may group together situations in ways that are highly idiosyn- cratic. One person may group together situations involving school versus social life and, perhaps, have high expectations in one domain and low expec- tations in the other. Another person may think of situations in terms of relax- ing circumstances versus circumstances that make him or her anxious—where both relaxing and anxiety‐provoking circumstances could occur both at school and in social life. Yet another person may possess a cognitive category that involves “opportunities to get a date”—where those opportunities could be relaxing or anxiety provoking and could arise in social settings or at school. People naturally “slice up” the situations of their lives in different ways and, thus, may display idiosyncratic patterns of expectancies and social behavior. According to social‐cognitive theorists, the essence of personality lies in these differing ways in which unique individuals perceive situations, develop expectations about future circumstances, and display distinct behavior pat- terns as a result of these differing perceptions and expectations.

This focus on expectancies differentiates social‐cognitive theory from behaviorism. In behaviorism, behavior was understood as being caused by reinforcements and punishments in the environment. In contrast, in social‐ cognitive theory, behavior is explained in terms of people’s expectations about rewards and punishments in the environment. This is an important difference. The shift to studying expectations, as opposed to merely environmental events, enables the social‐cognitive theorist to explain why two different people may react differently to the same environment. The two people may experience similar environmental events, yet develop different expectations about what is likely to happen in the future.

The Self and Self‐Efficacy Beliefs

Although some of our expectations concern other people, expectations of par- ticular importance to personality functioning involve the self. Bandura (1997, 2001) has been at the forefront in emphasizing that people’s expectations about

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their own capabilities for performance are the key ingredient in human achievement and well‐being. He refers to these expectations as perceptions of self‐efficacy. Perceived self‐efficacy, then, refers to people’s perceptions of their own capabilities for action in future situations.

Why are self‐efficacy perceptions so important? It is because self‐efficacy perceptions influence a number of different types of behavior that, in turn, are necessary for human achievement. Consider some area of life in which you have achieved success. For example, if you are a reader of this textbook, you probably were quite successful in high school and thereby succeeded in gain- ing admission to college. What was required for this success? You had to (1) decide to commit yourself to college admission, (2) persist in study in order to learn material in high school and achieve high grades, and when taking important exams, you had to (3) remain calm, and (4) think in a highly analytical manner. It is precisely these four behavioral mechanisms that are influenced by self‐efficacy perceptions (Bandura, 1997). People with a higher sense of self‐efficacy are more likely to decide to attempt difficult tasks, to persist in their efforts, to be calm rather than anxious during task performance, and to organize their thoughts in an analytical manner. In contrast, people who ques- tion their own capabilities for performance may fail even to attempt valuable activities, may give up when the going gets rough, tend to become anxious during task performance, and often become rattled and fail to think and act in a calm, analytical manner (colloquially speaking, one might say that a person with a low sense of self‐efficacy tends to choke on difficult activities).

It is important to recognize that Bandura conceptualizes perceived self‐efficacy as different from self‐esteem. Self‐esteem refers to people’s overall evaluation of their personal worth. Perceived self‐efficacy, in contrast, refers to people’s appraisals of what they are capable of accomplishing in a specific situation.

Self‐efficacy beliefs: Self‐efficacy beliefs are based in part on experiences with success and failure. Mark Wohlers was a successful pitcher until he lost control, to the extent that he bounced the ball to the plate or threw it over the batter’s head. His confidence plummeted from what had been a very high level to near zero. Trying to regain his confidence, he said: “Confidence comes with success. The way I pitched the other day built a little more confidence. . . . It’s just getting out there and having success.”

A second distinction of importance concerns the difference between self‐ efficacy expectations and outcome expectations (Bandura, 1977). Outcome expectations are beliefs about the rewards and punishments that will occur if one performs a given type of behavior. Self‐efficacy expectations are beliefs about whether one can perform the behavior in the first place. Suppose you are considering what major to choose in college. You might believe that there are high rewards (e.g., high financial income in the future) if you were to major in electrical engineering. You would, then, have high outcome expectations with respect to electrical engineering. But you might also think that you are not personally capable of executing the behaviors (e.g., passing all the math, physics, and engineering courses) required to major in electrical engineering. You would have low self‐efficacy expectations with respect to electrical engi- neering. Social‐cognitive theory contends that efficacy expectations generally are more important than are outcome expectations as a determinant of behav- ior. If people lack a sense of efficacy for accomplishing something, the rewards associated with accomplishing that goal are probably irrelevant to them. You are unlikely to select electrical engineering as your major, despite its financial attractions, if you have a low sense of self‐efficacy for completing the required courses.

In terms of assessment, Bandura emphasizes what he calls a microanalytic research strategy. According to this strategy, detailed measures of perceived self‐efficacy are taken before performance of behaviors in specific situations. Specifically, people are asked to indicate their degree of certainty in perform- ing specific behaviors in designated contexts. A self‐efficacy scale for athletic performance in, for example, the sport of basketball would not ask a vague question such as “Do you think you are a good basketball player?” (The ques- tion is vague because the word “good” is so ambiguous: Good compared to your teammates? Compared to a member of the NBA—a collegiate basketball player? Compared to your little brother?) Instead, test items would describe specific actions and accomplishments and ask people to indicate their confi- dence in attaining them: For example, “How confident are you that you can make at least 75% of your free throws during a basketball game?” or “How confident are you that you can dribble upcourt with a basketball even if you are covered by a skilled defensive player?” This assessment strategy follows directly from the theoretical considerations in the preceding section. In terms of theory, Bandura recognizes that self‐efficacy perceptions may vary, for any individual, from one situation to another. In terms of assessment methods, then, situation‐specific measures are employed in order to capture this varia- bility. Such measures are much better for capturing the psychological charac- teristics of the individual. Global self‐concept measures are criticized because they “[do] not do justice to the complexity of self‐efficacy perceptions, which vary across different activities, different levels of the same activity, and differ- ent situational circumstances” (Bandura, 1986, p. 41).

Self‐Efficacy and Performance

A basic claim of social‐cognitive theory is that self‐efficacy perceptions causally influence behavior. If you think critically about such claims, you may already have a counterargument: Maybe self‐efficacy perceptions do not really play a causal role. Maybe some other factor is really the cause. Another possible factor

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is a person’s actual level of skill. Skill levels might influence both self‐efficacy perceptions and behavior and account for the relation between perceived self‐efficacy and motivated action. For example, everyone has a high sense of self‐efficacy for picking up a 5‐pound weight (we’re confident that we can do it) and a low sense of self‐efficacy for picking up a 500‐pound weight (we perceive ourselves as incapable of doing it). But there’s no need to appeal to the notion of perceived self‐efficacy to explain why we actually can lift the light- weight and not the heavy one. Our behavior can be understood simply in terms of our inherent physical capacities. How, then, do we know that we ever need to appeal to the notion of perceived self‐efficacy to explain behavior?

Social‐cognitivists have addressed this question through experimental strat- egies. The idea is to experimentally manipulate perceived self‐efficacy while holding other factors—such as people’s actual skills—constant. Once self‐efficacy perceptions are manipulated experimentally, one can see whether the variations in perceived self‐efficacy causally influence behavior.

Of course, one needs a strategy for manipulating perceived self‐efficacy. Ideally, the manipulation would be simple and subtle, to ensure that it influ- enced perceived self‐efficacy but did not also influence people’s actual skills on the task.

One research strategy has been to employ a technique known as “anchor- ing” manipulations. Anchoring refers to a thinking process that comes into play when people try to figure out the answer to a problem. What often hap- pens is that the final answer that people reach is greatly influenced by what- ever people happen to think of first when they try to solve the problem; their final answer is “anchored on” their initial guess. Surprisingly, this occurs even when the initial guess is determined by factors that are completely random and obviously irrelevant to the problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). For example, imagine you are trying to guess a numerical quantity such as the population in millions of the nation of Russia. Suppose that just before you make your estimate, someone pulls a random number out of a hat, reads it aloud—“639”—and then asks, “Do you think there are more or less than 639 million people living in Russia?” You would know that 639 is way too high, and you would know that it also is irrelevant to the real answer because it was cho- sen randomly. Nonetheless, if you respond like most research participants in anchoring studies, when you then guessed the actual population, your guess would be much higher than if you never had been exposed to the random value. (“Hmm,” you might think, “it can’t be 639 million. Um . . . maybe it’s 400 million.”) Your final guess would be “anchored” in the direction of the large number. Conversely, if you first were exposed to a low anchor value (e.g., in our population example, the value 20 million), your final guess would probably end up lower. (“Hmm, 20 million, that can’t be right. Maybe it’s, um . . . 70 mil- lion.”) The presentation of random anchor values, then, is a way of experimen- tally manipulating people’s judgments.

Cervone and Peake (1986) applied anchoring techniques to the question of self‐efficacy judgment and behavior. Prior to performing a task that had a series of items, participants were asked to judge whether they could solve “more or less than X” of the items. In high and low anchor conditions, the “X” was a number that corresponded to a high versus low level of performance. This number appeared to be random, literally drawn out of a hat. People then judged exactly how many items they could solve (their level of self‐efficacy on the task). Findings indicated that the anchoring manipulation affected perceived self‐efficacy; participants exposed to high and low random numbers had high and low self‐efficacy perceptions (Figure 12.1, left panel). This circumstance, then, is exactly what one needs to test the claim that self‐efficacy causally influ- ences behavior; thanks to the anchoring manipulation, people differ in perceived self‐efficacy while being the same on other factors, such as actual skills on the task. To provide this test, the experimenters asked people to work on the task and measured their behavioral persistence (i.e., how long they tried working on the problems before giving up). Variations in self‐efficacy were found to create corresponding variations in behavior (Figure 12.1, right panel). The groups that had high versus low self‐efficacy perceptions differed in their subsequent behavior—even though the high versus low differences were created experi- mentally and merely by presenting random anchor values.

Such findings provide strong evidence for a central aspect of social‐cognitive theory, namely, that people’s subjective perceptions of themselves have a unique causal influence on their own behavior. Even when a seemingly irrele- vant situational factor causes people to have relatively high or low judgments of self‐efficacy, these judgments can affect subsequent decisions and actions.

Self‐efficacy beliefs also influence how people cope with disappointments and stress in the pursuit of life goals. Research generally suggests that human functioning is facilitated by a personal sense of control (Schwarzer, 1992). Self‐efficacy beliefs represent one aspect of such a sense of control. A study of women coping with abortion demonstrated the importance of self‐efficacy beliefs in coping with stressful life events (Cozzarelli, 1993). In this research, women about to obtain an abortion completed questionnaire measures of personality variables such as self‐esteem and optimism, as well as a self‐ efficacy scale measuring expectations concerning successful post‐abortion coping. For example, the scale included items asking about whether the women thought they would be able to spend time around children or babies

Level of self-efficacy

Level of task persistence

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comfortably and whether they would continue to have good sexual relations following abortion. Following abortion and then 3 weeks later, measures of mood and depression were obtained (e.g., the degree to which the women were feeling depressed, regretful, relieved, guilty, sad, good). The results clearly supported the hypothesis that self‐efficacy was a key determinant of post‐ abortion adjustment. The contribution of personality variables such as self‐esteem and optimism was also related to post‐abortion adjustment. However, their effects appeared to occur through their contribution to feelings of self‐efficacy.

In sum, perceptions of self‐efficacy have been shown to have diverse effects on experience and action, in the following ways:

Selection: Self‐efficacy beliefs influence the goals individuals select (e.g., individuals with high self‐efficacy beliefs select more difficult, challeng- ing goals than do those with low self‐efficacy beliefs).

Effort, persistence, and performance: Individuals with high self‐efficacy beliefs show greater effort and persistence and perform better relative to individuals with low self‐efficacy beliefs (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998).

Emotion: Individuals with high self‐efficacy beliefs approach tasks with better moods (i.e., less anxiety and depression) than individuals with low self‐efficacy beliefs.

Coping: Individuals with high self‐efficacy beliefs are better able to cope with stress and disappointments than are individuals with low self‐efficacy beliefs. Bandura summarizes the evidence concerning the effects of self‐efficacy beliefs on motivation and performance as follows: “Human betterment has been advanced more by persisters than by pessimists. Self‐belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self‐disbelief assuredly spawns failure” (1997, p. 77).

Although self‐efficacy beliefs are discussed here in the section on structure, one can correctly infer that they play an important role in the social‐cognitive view of motivation.

GOALS

The third type of personality structure in social‐cognitive theory is goals. A goal is a mental representation of the aim of an action or course of actions. A basic tenet of social‐cognitive theory is that people’s ability to envision the future enables them to set specific goals for action and, thus, to motivate and direct their own behavior. Goals, then, contribute to the human capacity for self‐control. Goals guide us in establishing priorities and in selecting among situations. They enable us to go beyond momentary influences and to organize our behavior over extended periods of time.

A person’s goals are organized in a system. In a goal system, some goals are more central or important than others. Goal systems often are understood as having a hierarchical structure. Goals at a higher level in the hierarchy (e.g., get accepted into law school) organize lower‐level goals (e.g., get good grades in college), which, in turn, organize lower‐level aims (e.g., study for exams). Goal systems, however, are not rigid or fixed. People may select among goals,

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depending on what seems most important to them at the time, what the opportunities in the environment appear to be, and their judgments of self‐ efficacy for goal attainment.

People’s goals on a task may differ in a variety of ways (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002). One obvious variation is in the level of challenge, or difficulty, of goals. For example, in a college class, some people may have the goal merely of passing the course, whereas others may adopt the challenging goal of get- ting an A in the class. Another variation involves the nearness, or proximity, of goals. One person may set a proximal goal, that is, a goal that involves an aim that is coming up soon. Others may set distal goals, that is, goals that specify achievements that are far in the future. For example, if one’s goal is to lose weight, a proximal goal might be losing 1 pound each week, whereas a distal goal would be losing 12 pounds in the next 3 months. Research find- ings indicate that proximal goals often have a bigger influence on one’s current behavior than do distal goals (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Stock & Cervone, 1990). In part, this is because distal goals allow one to “slack off” in the present. For example, the person who wants to lose 12 pounds in 3 months might convince herself that she can go off her diet 1 week and still meet the long‐term aim.

In addition, goals may differ in a manner that involves the subjective mean- ing of an activity. On any challenging task, some people may have the goal of developing more knowledge and skills on the task; the meaning of the task is that it is an opportunity to learn. Others, in contrast, may be more concerned with goals such as not embarrassing themselves in front of others. These dif- ferences between “learning” and “performance” goals (Dweck & Leggett, 1988) are discussed in Chapter 13.

Goals are related to the previous social‐cognitive personality construct: expectancies. Expectancies influence the process of goal setting. When select- ing goals, people generally reflect on their expectations about their perfor- mance. People with higher perceptions of self‐efficacy often set higher goals and remain more committed to them (Locke & Latham, 2002). Conversely, goals may influence expectancies and may interact systematically with expec- tancies as people work on tasks and receive feedback on their performance (Grant & Dweck, 1999). For example, suppose you take an exam and learn that your score was identical to the average score in the class. If your goal was merely to learn something about the course material and to earn a passing grade, then you might be perfectly satisfied with your performance. However, if your goal was to perform exceptionally well in the course in order to impress your friends and your professor, then you might interpret the average grade very negatively and become discouraged, especially if your expectations are that you no longer can achieve your ultimate aims in the course.

EVALUATIVE STANDARDS

The fourth personality structure in social‐cognitive theory is evaluative stand- ards. A mental standard is a criterion for judging the goodness, or worth, of a person, thing, or event. The study of evaluative standards, then, addresses the ways in which people acquire criteria for evaluating events and how these evaluations influence their emotions and actions.

Of particular importance in social‐cognitive theory are evaluative standards concerning one’s self, or “personal standards.” Personal standards are funda- mental to human motivation and performance. Social‐cognitive theory recog- nizes that people commonly evaluate their ongoing behavior in accordance with internalized personal standards. As an example, imagine that you are writing a term paper for a course. What are you thinking about? On the one hand, you have in mind the content of the material for the paper: the main facts you have to cover, the thesis you are trying to develop, and so forth. On the other hand, inevitably you will find yourself thinking of something else. You will be thinking about the quality of your own writing. You will evaluate whether the sentences you have written are good enough or have to be revised. In other words, you have in mind evaluative standards that you use to judge the goodness or worth of your own behavior. Much of the writing and revising process is one in which you try to alter your own behavior (i.e., your writing) to bring it in line with your own personal standards for writing.

Evaluative standards often trigger emotional reactions. We react with pride when we meet our standards for performance, and we are dissatisfied with ourselves when we fail to meet our own standards. Bandura refers to such emotions as self‐evaluative reactions; we evaluate our own actions and then respond in an emotionally satisfied or dissatisfied way toward ourselves as a result of this self‐evaluation (Bandura, 1986). These emotional reactions con- stitute self‐reinforcements and are important in maintaining behavior over extended periods of time, particularly in the absence of external reinforcers. Thus, through such internal self‐evaluative responses as praise and guilt, we are able to reward ourselves for meeting standards and to punish ourselves for violating them.

Social‐cognitive theory thus emphasizes that evaluative standards are cen- tral to behavior that we call “moral” versus “immoral.” Some of the evaluative standards that we learn involve ethical and moral principles concerning the treatment of other people. Although everyone in a given society may be famil- iar with such principles, sometimes people do not use them to regulate their own behavior. For example, everyone knows that it is wrong to steal things from a store or to include plagiarized material in a term paper, yet some people still do these things; they selectively “disengage” their moral standards when it is to their personal advantage to do so (Banduraet al., 1996). People who dis- engage their moral standards say things to themselves that temporarily enable them to disregard their own standards for behavior. For example, a student who is tempted to cheat on a test might say something like “Everybody cheats on tests, so it must be ok.” The disengagement of evaluative standards enables people to perform acts that they normally would not perform due to internal- ized moral sanctions.

A study by Osofsky et al. (2005) provides a striking example of this point. The evaluative standard of relevance to their study was the moral sanction against killing a fellow human being. Everyone possesses moral standards indicating that killing is wrong. Yet some people in U.S. society kill people as part of their profession; they are executioners who carry out death penalties. How do they do it? How can people who, in general, believe that killing is bad execute prisoners? To answer this question, Osofsky et al. studied personnel who work at maximum‐security prisons. Prison personnel differed in the

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degree to which they were involved in the execution process. Some personnel were relatively uninvolved in executions (e.g., they counseled the prisoner’s family members), whereas others were highly involved (e.g., they administered lethal injections). Osofsky et al. asked all participants to complete a scale measuring the tendency to disengage from moral standards involving execu- tions. They found that the degree to which people displayed moral disengage- ment varied as a function of their level of involvement in executions. Prison personnel who were directly involved in executions displayed much higher levels of moral disengagement than did others; they were more likely to endorse statements such as “An execution is merciful compared to a murder” and “Nowadays the death penalty is done in ways that minimize the suffering of the person being executed” (Osofsky et al., 2005). Such statements enable one temporarily to disregard, or “disengage,” prohibitions against killing.

The study of evaluative standards is another point that differentiates social‐ cognitive theory from behaviorism. In a behavioristic experiment, the experi- menter determines the evaluative standards. He or she decides that a given number of lever presses by a rat, for example, are enough presses to receive a reinforcement. Social‐cognitive theorists note that such experiments fail to address a basic fact of human life. In the human case, evaluative standards are not always set by an outside agent. They are determined by the individual. People have their own personal standards for evaluating their own behavior. Ongoing behavior, then, is determined by this internal psychological system, not by forces in the environment, as the behaviorists had argued.

THE NATURE OF SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE PERSONALITY STRUCTURES

In social‐cognitive theory, the four personality structures we have reviewed— beliefs and expectancies, goals, evaluative standards, and competencies and skills—are not treated as four independent “objects” in one’s mind. Instead, these four personality structures should be understood as referring to distinct classes of thinking. Each of the four is a cognitive subsystem within the overall system of personality. The theoretical claim is that cognitions about what the world actually is like (beliefs), about one’s aims for the future (goals), and about how things normatively should be (standards) play distinct roles in per- sonality functioning and, thus, should be treated as distinct personality struc- tures. Similarly, the declarative and procedural knowledge that gives people the capacity to act in an intelligent, skilled manner (competencies) is seen as being psychologically distinct from beliefs, goals, and evaluative standards and, thus, as constituting a distinct personality structure.

Given this view of cognition and personality, the social‐cognitive theorist would never assign to a person a single score that is supposed to represent “how much” of each variable the person has. Social‐cognitive theorists believe that personality is far too complex to be reduced to any simple set of scores. Instead, each of these four personality structures refers to a complex system of social cognition. People have a large number of goals, a wide spectrum of beliefs, an array of evaluative standards, and a diversity of skills. Different per- sonality structures come into play in different social situations. By studying this complex system of social‐cognitive structures and its interaction with the social world, the social‐cognitive theorist tries to grapple with the true com- plexity of the individual.

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Social‐cognitive theory addresses the dynamics of personality processes in two SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE

different ways. The first involves general theoretical principles. Social‐cognitive theorists have presented two theoretical principles that they think scientists should use when analyzing the dynamics of personality processes. One is an analysis of the causes of behavior, which is called reciprocal determinism. The other is a framework for thinking about internal personality processes, which is called a cognitive–affective processing system (CAPS) framework.

After we review these two ideas—reciprocal determinism and the CAPS model—we will consider the second way in which social‐cognitive theory addresses personality processes. By way of preview, this second way is by ana- lyzing psychological functions that are of particular importance in a scientific analysis of personality and individual differences. Three types of psychological functions have received particular attention: (1) observational learning (or learning through “modeling”), (2) motivation, and (3) self‐control.

RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM

Bandura (1986) has introduced a theoretical principle known as reciprocal determinism. This principle addresses the issue of cause and effect in the study of personality processes.

The problem Bandura is trying to solve is the following. When analyzing a person’s behavior, one generally needs to consider three factors: the person, his or her behavior, and the environmental setting in which the person acts. In this three‐part system, how are we to analyze causes and effects? What causes what? Should one say that the person, with his or her personality attributes, is the cause of behavior (as implied in some trait theories of personality)? Should one say that the environment is the real cause of behavior (as argued by the behaviorists)? Bandura thinks we should not say either of these things because both statements are too simplistic. Instead, he argues that causality is a “two‐way street.” Stated more formally, causality is reciprocal. The three factors under consideration—behavior, personality characteristics, and the environment— are each a cause of one another. The factors are reciprocal determinants. Bandura’s principle of reciprocal determinism, then, contends that personality, behavior, and the environment must be understood as a system of forces that mutually influence one another across the course of time.

To understand this principle intuitively, imagine yourself in conversation with someone whom you find attractive. You might smile, look attentive, and try to alter the topics of conversation in a manner that makes a good impres- sion on the other person. Now, from the perspective of a personality scientist, how are we to understand causality in this conversation? What causes what? On the one hand, one could say that the environment causes your behavior. The other person’s physical and social attractiveness has caused you to act in a certain way. This is not incorrect; yet it is insufficient. The environment is something that you interpreted, and your particular interpretations are influ- enced by beliefs and feelings of yours—that is, your personality characteris- tics. Further, your ability to make a good impression depends on your social skills—another feature of your personality. In addition, your behavior alters the environment you experience. If you skillfully make a good impression, then the other person will be in a better mood, will like you more, will be smiling, will be attentive to you, and so on. In other words, through your own actions, you will have created a more positive social environment. Finally, if you are successful, your behavioral success may alter your mood and your sense of self; there will be an influence of your own behavior on your own per- sonality. It is futile to isolate one factor as “the cause” and the other as “the effect” in such a system. Instead, personality, behavior, and the environment must be understood as factors that reciprocally determine one another.

The principle of reciprocal determinism constitutes a rejection of the views of other theories. Some theories explain behavior primarily in terms of inner forces: the inner conflicts of psychoanalysis, the motive for self‐actualization of the phe- nomenological theories, the genetically determined dispositions of the trait theo- ries, and the evolved psychological modules of evolutionary psychology. Others explain behavior in terms of external forces—behaviorism being the paradigm case. Bandura rejects this entire discourse about “inner versus outer” or “internal versus external” forces as woefully inadequate because it fails to recognize that the person’s internal psychology and the social environment influence one another reciprocally. People are influenced by environmental forces, but they also choose how to behave. The person is both responsive to situations and actively constructs and influences situations. People select situations as well as are shaped by them; social‐cognitive theorists regard the capacity to choose the type of situation that one will encounter as a critical element of people’s capacity to be active agents influencing the course of their own development.

PERSONALITY AS A COGNITIVE–AFFECTIVE PROCESSING SYSTEM (CAPS)

In recent years, social‐cognitive theorists increasingly have emphasized that personality should be understood as a system. The term system generally refers to something that has a large number of interacting parts. The behavior of the system reflects not only the isolated parts but also the ways in which the parts are interconnected. Systems with a very large number of highly integrated parts often exhibit highly complex and coherent forms of behavior, even if the parts are relatively simple. Dynamic interactions among the parts give rise to the system’s complexity. An example of this is the brain. It performs remarka- bly complex actions despite the fact that its parts—neurons—are relatively simple. The complex interconnections among the parts give rise to the brain’s complex capabilities (Damasio, 1994; Edelman & Tononi, 2000).

Social‐cognitive theory views personality as a complex system. Social‐ cognitive variables do not operate in isolation from one another. Instead, the various cognitions and affects interact with one another in an organized fashion; as a result, there is an overall coherence to personality functioning (Cervone & Shoda, 1999b).

A systems view of structure has been articulated by Mischel and Shoda (2008). They present a cognitive–affective processing system (CAPS) model of personality. The CAPS model has three essential features. First, cognitive and emotional personality variables are seen as being complexly linked to one another. It is not merely the case that people have a goal (e.g., get more dates), a level of competency (e.g., low dating skills), a particular expectancy (e.g., low perceived self‐efficacy for dating), and certain evaluative standards and self‐ evaluative reactions (e.g., feeling emotionally dissatisfied with oneself when it comes to dating). Instead, their personality system features these cognitions

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and affects and interrelations among them. Thoughts about one’s goals may trigger thoughts about skills, which in turn trigger thoughts about self‐efficacy, all of which may affect one’s self‐evaluations and emotions.

The second key feature of the CAPS model concerns the social environment. In this model, different aspects of social situations, or “situational features,” activate subsets of the overall personality system. For example, a situation in which you are in a conversation with someone about a date they had last week- end may activate the system of goals and expectancies involving dates outlined in the preceding paragraph. In contrast, a conversation about politics, sports, or classes at school may activate an entirely different set of cognitions and affects.

The third feature follows naturally from the second one. If different situa- tional features activate different parts of the overall personality system, then people’s behavior should vary from one situation to another. Suppose, hypo- thetically, that an individual’s personality system contains negative thoughts and feelings about their dating skills but positive thoughts and feelings about their academic abilities. Situational features that activate one versus the other concern (dating vs. academic performance) should produce, in the individual, entirely different patterns of emotion and action. Although the individual’s personality system is stable, his or her experiences and action nonetheless should change from one situation to another as different subsets of the overall personality system become active. This is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the CAPS model. It contends that not only average levels of behavior but also variations in behavior are a defining aspect of personality.

Empirical research by Mischel and his associates illustrates the CAPS approach (Shoda et al. 1994). Children were observed in various settings—for example, woodworking, cabin meeting, classroom, mealtime, playground, watching TV—for 6 weeks during summer camp. Researchers coded the type of social interaction that occurred in each of the situations, for example, whether the given child was interacting with a peer or an adult counselor and whether the interaction was positive (e.g., child praised) or negative (e.g., child teased). The researchers also recorded the child’s behavior in that situation, attending to behavior of different types: verbal aggression (e.g., provoking, threatening), physical aggression (hitting, pushing), whining or babyish behav- ior, complying or giving in, and talking prosocially. These observations were hourly, 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 6 weeks—an average of 167 hours of observation per child. This yielded an extensive record of expressions of per- sonality in social context.

When analyzing these data, the investigators plotted if–then profiles. In an if – then profile analysis, one plots an individual person’s behavior in each of a variety of different situations. One then determines if the individual’s behavior varies systematically from one situation to another. One might be able to deter- mine that “if” the person encounters a particular type of situation, “then” that person tends to act in a certain manner. The “ifs” and “thens” may vary from one person to another. The profile analysis thus captures idiosyncratic tenden- cies exhibited by unique individuals.

What, then, were the findings? Of course, there was evidence of considera- ble differences in behaviors expressed in different situations. People do behave differently in different types of situations. In general, behavior is different on the playground than in the classroom, in a cabin meeting than in woodwork- ing. And, of course, there were individual differences in average expressions of

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each of the five observed types of behavior. As trait theorists suggest, there are individual differences in average expressions of behavior across situations. However, the more critical question for social‐cognitive theory is whether indi- viduals can be described in terms of their distinctive patterns of situation– behavior relationships. In other words, do individuals differ in their patterns of behavior even if their overall levels are the same? Can two individuals express the same average level of aggressive behavior, be the same on a trait such as aggressiveness, but differ in the kinds of situations in which they express their aggressiveness? Mischel and his associates indeed found clear evidence that individuals have distinctive, stable profiles of expressing particu- lar behaviors in specific groups of situations.

Consider, for example, the verbal aggression profiles of two individuals in relation to five types of psychological situations (Figure 12.2). Clearly, the two differ in their profiles of expressing verbal aggression across the various situa- tions. Each behaves reasonably consistently within specific groups of situations but differently between groups of situations. Averaging behavior across situa- tions would mask such distinctive patterns of situation–behavior relationships.

Interestingly, laypersons—that is, people who are not trained profession- ally in psychology—appear naturally to recognize the importance of if–then variability in action. This was demonstrated in recent studies by Kammrath et al. (2005). In one study, laypersons were asked how they expected people with different personality characteristics to behave in different situations. Results indicated that laypersons did not anticipate that people would act in a uniform, consistent manner in different contexts. Instead, they anticipated if–then variability; they expected that people’s behavior would vary substan- tially from one situation to another. In a second study, participants were told about the actions of individuals whose behavior varied distinctively across different situations. Research participants were not befuddled by these viola- tions of traitlike consistency in behavior. Instead, they inferred that people possessed motives that explained their patterns of variability in conduct (Kammrath et al., 2005).

What can be concluded from this program of research? Mischel and his asso- ciates suggest that individuals have distinctive profiles of situation–behavior relationships, which are called behavioral signatures. “It is this type of intra‐individual stability in the pattern and organization of behavior that seems especially central for a psychology of personality ultimately devoted to under- standing and capturing the uniqueness of individual functioning” (Shoda et al., 1994, p. 683). Mischel and colleagues emphasized that these unique patterns of behavior would be completely overlooked if one merely asked about people’s overall, average behavioral tendencies. Two people who, for example, display the same average level of anxiety may be fundamentally different people. An if–then profile analysis might reveal that one person is anxious in achievement settings and the other is anxious when it comes to romantic relationships. The analysis would indicate that different people have different personality dynamics— despite the fact that they might happen to get the same score on “global trait anxiety” if a researcher averages together their responses in the different situa- tions of their lives. The basic message Mischel and colleagues send to other psychologists, then, is this: Don’t average together the different situations of their lives! Instead, look closely at individuals and the distinctive patterns of variability in action that they display in different circumstances.

To summarize the social‐cognitive view of motivation, a person develops goals or standards that serve as the basis for action. People consider alterna- tive courses of action and make decisions on the basis of the anticipated out- comes (external and internal) and the perceived self‐efficacy for performing the necessary behaviors. Once action has been taken, the outcome is assessed in terms of the external rewards from others and one’s own internal self‐evaluations. Successful performance may lead to enhanced self‐efficacy and either a relaxa- tion of effort or the setting of higher standards for further effort. Unsuccessful performance or failure may lead to giving up or continued striving, depending on the value of the outcome to an individual and to his or her sense of self‐ efficacy in relation to further effort.

OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING (MODELING)

So far, we have outlined four personality structures that are central to social‐ cognitive theory and have reviewed two theoretical principles that Bandura and Mischel use to understand the nature of personality and the causes of behavior. We now can see these theoretical ideas put into action. Social‐ cognitive theorists use these theoretical principles to understand two main psychological activities, or what we will call here two psychological functions: (1) acquiring new knowledge and skills, particularly through processes of observational learning and (2) exerting control over, or self‐regulating, one’s own actions and emotional experiences.

The first of these two psychological functions concerns the question of how people acquire knowledge and skills. How do we learn social skills? How do we acquire particular beliefs, goals, and standards for evaluating our behavior? Previous theories commonly have overlooked these questions. There is little explicit discussion of the acquisition of beliefs and social skills in most of the previous theories we have discussed. The theory that addressed the topic most explicitly was behaviorism. As you will recall, behaviorists claim that people learn things through a trial‐and‐error learning process called shaping, or suc- cessive approximation. Over a large series of learning trials, reinforcements

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gradually shape a complex pattern of behavior. Although there are lots of errors at first, through reinforcement processes, behavior gradually approxi- mates a desired pattern.

In a profoundly important development for psychology, Albert Bandura suc- ceeded in explaining the shortcomings of this behavioral theory and in provid- ing psychology with an alternative theoretical explanation. In retrospect, the shortcomings of the behavioral approach seem obvious. Sometimes, learning simply cannot be through trial and error because the errors are too costly.

As an example, consider the first time you ever drove a car. According to the behaviorists, reinforcements and punishments would gradually shape your safe driving behavior. On Day 1 of driving, you might get into 9 or 10 traffic accidents, but due to reinforcement processes on Day 2, you might only have five or six accidents, and after a few more trials, the errors would disappear and the environment would have shaped safe driving behavior. Is this what actually happened? We sure hope not! In reality, the first time you sat behind the wheel—before you ever had been reinforced or punished for specific driv- ing behaviors—you already were able to drive a car fairly adequately. What needs to be explained is the human capacity to learn such skills in the absence of prior rewards and punishments.

Social‐cognitive theory explains that people can learn merely by observing the behaviors of others. The person being observed is called a model, and this observational learning process is also known as modeling. People’s cognitive capacities enable them to learn complex forms of behavior merely by observ- ing a model performing these behaviors. As Bandura (1986) has detailed, peo- ple can form an internal mental representation of the behavior they have observed and then can draw upon that mental representation at a later time. Learning by modeling is evident in innumerable domains of life. A child may learn language by observing parents and other people speaking. You may have learned some of the basic skills for driving (where to put your hands and feet, how to start the car, how to turn the wheel) merely by observing other drivers. People learn what types of behavior are acceptable and unacceptable in differ- ent social settings by observing the actions of others.

This modeling process can be much more complex than simple imitation or mimicry. The notion of “imitation” generally implies the exact replication of a narrow response pattern. In modeling, however, people may learn general rules of behavior by observing others. They then can use those rules to self‐ direct a variety of types of behavior in the future. Bandura’s conceptualization of modeling also is narrower than the psychodynamic notion of identification. Identification implies an incorporation of broad patterns of behavior exhib- ited by a specific other individual. Modeling, in contrast, involves the acquisi- tion of information through observation of others, without implying that the observer internalizes entire styles of action exhibited by the other individual. The individual who is observed in the process of observational learning (i.e., the model) need not be someone who is physically present. In contemporary society, much modeling occurs through the media. We may learn styles of thought and action from people whom we never meet but whom we merely observe on television or other media sources. A social concern is that television often models antisocial behavior such as aggression; research indicates that exposure to high levels of aggression in the media when one is a child can cause people to learn aggressive patterns of behavior that are evident later in life. Huesmann and colleagues (Huesmann et al., 2003) performed a long‐term longitudinal study on the question of whether exposure to violence in the media during childhood leads to higher levels of aggression later in life. Among both men and women, people who witnessed high levels of violence when they were 6‐10 years old turned out to be more aggressive in early adulthood. The link between media violence in childhood and aggression in adulthood held up

© The New Yorker Collection 1978 Everett Opie from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.

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even when the researchers statistically controlled for factors other than media exposure (e.g., socioeconomic status) that might possibly be correlated with levels of aggression. Bandura’s research on modeling clearly has important social implications.

Acquisition versus Performance

An important part of the theory of modeling is the distinction between acquisition and performance. A new, complex pattern of behavior can be learned or acquired regardless of reinforcers, but whether or not the behav- ior is performed will depend on rewards and punishments. Consider, for example, the classic study by Bandura and his associates to illustrate this distinction (Bandura et al., 1963). In this study, three groups of children observed a model expressing aggressive behavior toward a plastic Bobo doll. In the first group, the aggressive behavior by the model was not followed by any consequences (No Consequences); in the second group, the model’s aggressive behavior was followed by rewards (Reward); and in the third group, it was followed by punishment (Punishment). Following observation of the model’s aggressive behavior, children from the three groups were pre- sented with two conditions. In the first condition, the children were left alone in a room with many toys, including a Bobo doll. They were then observed through a one‐way mirror to see if they would express the aggres- sive behaviors of the model (No Incentive condition). In the next condition, the children were given attractive incentives for reproducing the model’s behavior (Positive Incentive condition).

Two relevant questions can be asked. First, did the children behave aggres- sively when they were given an incentive to do so as opposed to when they were not? Many more imitative aggressive behaviors were shown in the Incentive condition than in the No Incentive condition (Figure 12.3). In other words, the children had learned (acquired) many aggressive behaviors that were not performed under the No Incentive condition but were performed under the Incentive condition. This result demonstrated the use of the distinc- tion between acquisition and performance. Second, did the consequences to the model affect the children’s display of aggressive behavior? Observation of behavior in the No Incentive condition indicated clear differences; children who observed the model being punished performed far fewer imitative acts than did children in the model Rewarded and No Consequences groups (Figure 12.3). This difference, however, was wiped out by offering the children attrac- tive incentives for reproducing the model’s behavior (Positive Incentive). In sum, the consequences to the model had an effect on the children’s perfor- mance of the aggressive acts but not on the learning of them.

Vicarious Conditioning

A number of other studies have since demonstrated that the observation of consequences to a model affects performance but not acquisition. The differ- ence between acquisition and performance suggests, however, that in some way the children were being affected by what happened to the model; that is, either on a cognitive basis, on an emotional basis, or both, the children were responding to the consequences to the model. The suggestion here is that the children learned certain emotional responses by sympathizing with the model, that is, vicariously by observing the model. Not only can behavior be learned through observation, but emotional reactions such as fear and joy can also be conditioned on a vicarious basis: “It is not uncommon for individuals to develop strong emotional reactions toward places, persons, and things without having had any personal contact with them” (Bandura, 1986, p. 185).

The process of learning emotional reactions through observing others, known as vicarious conditioning, has been demonstrated in both humans and animals. Thus, human subjects who observed a model expressing a condi- tioned fear response were found to develop a vicariously conditioned emo- tional response to a previously neutral stimulus (Bandura & Rosenthal, 1966). Similarly, in an experiment with animals, it was found that an intense and persistent fear of snakes developed in younger monkeys who observed their parents behave fearfully in the presence of real or toy snakes. What was par- ticularly striking about this research is that the period of observation of their parents’ emotional reaction was sometimes very brief. Further, once the vicari- ous conditioning took place, the fear was found to be intense, long lasting, and present in situations different from those in which the emotional reaction was first observed (Mineka et al., 1984).

Although observational learning can be a powerful process, one should not think that it is automatic or that one is bound to follow in the footsteps of others. Children, for example, have multiple models and can learn from parents, siblings, teachers, peers, and television. In addition, they learn from their own direct experience. Beyond this, as children get older, they may actively select which models they will observe and attempt to emulate.

Mean number of different imitative responses reproduced

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CURRENT APPLICATIONS

DON’T BLAME ME—IT WAS THAT VIDEO GAME!

In November 2002, a teenager in the state of Wisconsin was arrested for auto theft. This was no minor case of theft: The teen was charged with stealing about a 100 vehicles! What could cause such behavior? Hostile impulses buried deep in the teen’s uncon- scious? A lifelong trait of criminality?

As reported by the Associated Press, the teenager himself had a much simpler expla- nation: “He had been inspired by the video game “Grand Theft Auto.” In the game, players control animated figures who vio- lently battle law enforcement officials as they go on crime rampages, including the theft of autos. As the local police chief in Wisconsin reported, after playing this game for many hours, the teenager felt that steal- ing real cars would be “challenging and fun.” In the language of social‐cognitive theory, the game provided psychological models of illegal behavior, including the anticipated benefits (fun, challenge) of that behavior.

This, of course, is just a single, isolated case. It does not provide scientific evidence that playing video games actually contrib- uted to this particular teenager’s behavior. Nor does it answer the key question: In general, does playing a lot of violent video games cause a person to act more violently in the real world?

This question can be answered. It can be done by evaluating a large number of cases in which one can measure both game playing and real‐world aggression. One then can determine the overall degree to which exposure to violent and criminal acts in video games is related to real‐world aggres- sive behavior.

The psychologists Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman have provided an anal- ysis of this sort. They analyzed the results obtained in 35 research reports examining

the relation between violent video game playing and various measures of real‐world aggression. Their sample included more than 4,000 participants who had taken part in both correlational studies (i.e., studies correlating game playing and aggression) and experimental studies (i.e., studies in which exposure to violence in video games was controlled experimentally).

As the authors summarize, the results of their analyses “clearly support the hypo- thesis that exposure to violent video games poses a public‐health threat to children and youths, including college‐age individuals” (Anderson & Bushman, 2001, p. 358). In both experimental and nonexperimental studies, higher exposure to violence in video games was linked to higher levels of aggres- sion, as well as to lower levels of prosocial behavior. The overall correlation between levels of violent game playing and levels of aggression was a little under 0.2. Although a correlation of this size means that there are many people who play violent video games and yet are not violent in other aspects of their life, it nonetheless is large enough to indicate that violent game playing can have a detrimental effect on large numbers of people.

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Subsequent research by the authors indi- cates one way in which game playing has its effects (Bushman & Anderson, 2002). Playing violent games produces a “hostile expectation bias.” In this experimental research, people played either a nonviolent or a violent video game. They subsequently were asked whether various interpersonal conflicts depicted in stories (that were not part of the game) involved feelings of aggression and hostility on the part of the story characters. People who had played the violent game subsequently were biased to think that the story charac- ters were feeling and acting aggressively and

were having aggressive thoughts. This result implies that people who play violent video games may, in their day‐to‐day life, more fre- quently think that other people around them are having hostile, aggressive thoughts. This, of course, could contribute to hostile feelings and actions on their part.

It appears, then, that “fun” and “challenge” are not the only feelings created by violent video games.

SOURCES: Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Associated Press, November 14, 2002. Bushman & Anderson, 2002.

SELF‐REGULATION AND MOTIVATION

As we have just reviewed, one central personality process in social‐cognitive theory is the acquisition of knowledge and skills, which is commonly accom- plished through observational learning. A second process concerns putting that knowledge into action. In other words, it involves questions of human motivation.

Social‐cognitive theory addresses human motivation primarily by examin- ing the motivational impact of thoughts related to oneself, or self‐referent thinking. The general idea is that people commonly guide and motivate their own actions through their thinking processes. Key thinking processes often involve the self. Consider your own motivational processes as they relate to this course in personality psychology. You may have enrolled in the course because you expected that you would find the material interesting. You may have calculated an expected grade you could earn in the course; in selecting this course, you may have avoided other course options in which you expected that you might earn a low grade. During the time you have been in the course, you may have set personal goals for performance in the class and may have guided your own studying by reminding yourself that “I’ve got to finish read- ing these chapters before the midterm exam!” It is these personal expectations, personal goals, and talking to oneself that social‐cognitive theory sees as being at the heart of human motivation.

The general term for personality processes that involve the self‐directed motivation of behavior is self‐regulation (Gailliot et al., 2008). The term is meant to imply that people have the capacity to motivate themselves: to set personal goals, to plan strategies, and to evaluate and modify their ongoing behavior. Self‐regulation involves not only getting started in goal attainment but also avoiding environmental distractions and emotional impulses that might interfere with one’s progress.

The process of self‐regulation inherently involves all of the social‐cognitive personality structures that we have reviewed thus far. People regulate their behavior by setting personal goals and by evaluating their ongoing behavior according to evaluative standards for performance. Expectancies also are criti- cal; in particular, high expectations of self‐efficacy may be necessary if people are to persevere in their goals despite running into setbacks along the way.

In its study of self‐regulation, social‐cognitive theory emphasizes the human capacity for foresight—our ability to anticipate outcomes and make plans accordingly (Bandura, 1990). Thus, according to Bandura, “most human moti- vation is cognitively generated” (1992, p. 18). People vary in the standards they set for themselves. Some individuals set challenging goals, others easy goals; some individuals have very specific goals, others ambiguous goals; some emphasize short‐term, proximal goals, while others emphasize long‐range, distal goals (Cervone & Williams, 1992). In all cases, however, it is the anticipa- tion of satisfaction with desired accomplishments and dissatisfaction with insufficient accomplishments that provides the incentives for our efforts. In this analysis, people are seen as proactive rather than as merely reactive. People set their own standards and goals, rather than merely responding to demands from the environment. Through the development of cognitive mech- anisms such as expectancies, standards, and self‐evaluation, we are able to establish goals for the future and gain control over our own destiny (Bandura, 1989a, 1989b, 1999). Thus, growth and development involve changes in cogni- tive mechanisms associated with self‐regulation. With such development, there is increased potential for self‐regulation.

Self‐Efficacy, Goals, and Self‐Evaluative Reactions

Research in social‐cognitive theory has examined how these multiple personality processes—self‐efficacy perceptions, goals, and self‐evaluation of one’s ongoing behavior—combine to contribute to self‐regulation. Bandura and Cervone (1983) studied the effects of goals and performance feedback on motivation. The hypoth- esis tested was that performance motivation reflects both the presence of goals and the awareness of how one is doing relative to standards: “Simply adopting goals, whether easy or personally challenging ones, without knowing how one is doing seems to have no appreciable motivational effects” (p. 123). The assump- tion was that greater discrepancies between standards and performances would generally lead to greater self‐dissatisfaction and efforts to improve performance. However, a critical ingredient of such efforts is self‐efficacy judgments. Thus, the research tested the hypothesis that self‐efficacy judgments, as well as self‐ evaluative judgments, mediate between goals and goal‐directed effort.

In this research, subjects performed a strenuous activity under one of four conditions: goals with feedback on their performance, goals alone, feedback alone, and absence of goals and feedback. Following this activity, described as part of a project to plan and evaluate exercise programs for postcoronary reha- bilitation, subjects rated how self‐satisfied or self‐dissatisfied they would be with the same level of performance in a following session. In addition, they recorded their perceived self‐efficacy for various possible performance levels. Their effortful performance was then again measured. In accord with the hypothesis, the condition combining goals and performance feedback had a strong motivational impact, whereas neither goals alone nor feedback alone had comparable motivational significance (Figure 12.4). Also, subsequent effort was most intense when subjects were both dissatisfied with substandard performance and high on self‐efficacy judgments for good attainment. Neither dissatisfaction alone nor positive self‐efficacy judgments alone had a comparable effect. Often, effort was reduced where there were both low dissatisfaction with performance and low perceived self‐efficacy. There was, then, clear evidence that goals have motivating power through self‐evaluative and self‐ efficacy judgments.

Performance feedback and self‐efficacy judgments also are important to the development of intrinsic interest. Psychologists have been able to enhance stu- dents’ interest in learning and performance by helping them to break down tasks into subgoals, helping them to monitor their own performance, and pro- viding them with feedback that increased their sense of self‐efficacy (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Schunk & Cox, 1986). Intrinsic interest thus develops when the person has challenging standards that provide for positive self‐evaluation when met, as well as the sense of self‐efficacy in the potential for meeting those standards. It is such intrinsic interest that facilitates effort over extended periods of time in the absence of external rewards. Conversely, it is difficult to sustain motivation where one feels that the external or internal self‐evaluative rewards are insufficient or where one’s sense of efficacy is so low that a posi- tive outcome seems impossible. Self‐perceived inefficacy can nullify the moti- vating potential of even the most desirable outcomes. For example, no matter how attractive it might seem to become a movie star, people will not be moti- vated in that direction unless they feel that they have the necessary skills. In the absence of such a sense of self‐efficacy, becoming a movie star remains a fantasy rather than a goal that is pursued in action.

SELF‐CONTROL AND DELAY OF GRATIFICATION

Sometimes you need to do something, but you can’t get yourself to do it. For example, you might need to start working on a term paper that is due at the end of the semester, but for some reason, you can’t get yourself to start actually

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doing the writing. It is under these circumstances that clear goals and standards for performance and a strong sense of self‐efficacy are beneficial.

Now, we turn to a different type of psychological problem. Sometimes, you need to stop doing something. There may be some behavior that you find quite enjoyable, but it is socially inappropriate and/or potentially harmful to your- self or others. Smoking, overeating, and driving your car down the highway at 100 miles per hour are obvious examples. Here, the psychological challenge is the opposite of the one we analyzed previously. You need to curtail the intrinsi- cally enjoyable behavior. You need to control your impulsive reactions because, in the long run, it is better if you do not give in to them. When these cases of self‐control involve putting off something good in the present in order to attain something better in the future (e.g., not having that extra piece of pie now so that, in the future, one will be in better health), the phenomenon is referred to as “delay of gratification.”

Learning Delay of Gratification Skills

Research in social‐cognitive theory suggests that people’s capacity to delay gratification has a social basis. Modeling and observational learning are important to the development of performance standards for success and reward that serve as a basis for delay of gratification. Children exposed to models who set high standards of performance for self‐reward tend to limit their own self‐rewards to exceptional performance to a greater degree than do children who have been exposed to models who set lower standards or to no models at all (Bandura & Kupers, 1964). Children will model standards even if they result in self‐denial of available rewards (Bandura et al., 1967) and will also impose learned standards on other children (Mischel & Liebert, 1966). Children can be made to tolerate greater delays in receiving gratification if they are exposed to models exhibiting such delay behavior.

The effects of a model on delay behavior in children are well illustrated in research by Bandura and Mischel (1965). Children found to be high and low in delay of gratification were exposed to models of the opposite behavior. In a live‐model condition, each child individually observed a testing situation in which an adult model was asked to choose between an immediate reward and a more valued object at a later date. The high‐delay children observed a model who selected the immediately available reward and commented on its benefits, whereas the low‐delay children observed a model who selected the delayed reward and commented on the virtues of delay. In a symbolic‐model condition, children read verbal accounts of these behaviors, the verbal account again being the opposite of the child’s pattern of response. Finally, in a no‐model condition, children were just apprised of the choices given the adults. Following exposure to one of these three procedures, the children were again given a choice between an immediate reward and a more valuable reward. The results were that the high‐delay children in all three conditions significantly altered their delay of reward behavior in favor of immediate gratification. The live‐ model condition produced the greatest effect (Figure 12.5). The low‐delay chil- dren exposed to a delay model significantly altered their behavior in terms of greater delay, but there was no significant difference between the effects of live and symbolic models. Finally, for both groups of children, the effects were found to be stable when the tests were readministered four to five weeks later. As mentioned previously, the performance of observed behaviors clearly is influenced by the observed consequences to the model. For example, children who watch a film in which a child is not punished for playing with toys that were prohibited by the mother are more likely to play with prohibited toys than are children who see no film or see a film in which the child is punished (Walters & Parke, 1964). The old saying “Monkey see, monkey do” is not com- pletely true. It would be more appropriate to say “Monkey sees reward or is not punished, monkey does.” After all, the monkey is no fool.

Mischel’s Delay of Gratification Paradigm

In addition to the issue of social influences such as modeling on delay of grati- fication, another question involves the exact cognitive processes that enable people to control their impulses. What can you do if you want to control your impulses? What mental strategies enable people to delay gratification? Much insight into this question comes from an exceptionally informative line of research pioneered by Mischel (1974, 2014) and Metcalfe and Mischel (1999).

In Mischel’s delay of gratification paradigm, often described as “the marsh- mallow experiment,” an adult who is interacting with a young child (usually one of preschool age) informs the child that she needs to leave the child alone for a few minutes. Before leaving, the adult teaches the child a game. The game involves two different rewards. If the child can wait patiently until the adult comes back, she gets a large reward (e.g., a few marshmallows). If the child simply cannot wait for the adult to return, the child can ring a bell and the adult will return immediately; however, if this happens, the child earns only a smaller reward (e.g., one marshmallow). The child, then, can earn the larger

Percent of immediate-reward responses

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reward only by delaying gratification. The dependent measure is how long children are able to wait before ringing the bell.

A critical experimental manipulation in this setting is whether children can see the reward—or, phrased more technically, whether the rewards are availa- ble for attention. In one experimental condition, children could see the rewards. In another, the rewards were not available for attention; they simply were covered up. This simple experimental manipulation proved to have a huge effect on children’s delay abilities. When the rewards were covered up, most children were able to wait a relatively long time. But when the children were looking at the rewards, they had an enormously hard time controlling their impulses. It appears that looking at rewards that one is not supposed to have primarily is a frustrating experience that children have a hard time handling (Mischel, 1974). Being unable to look at the rewards, then, makes the situation easier to handle.

Subsequent work showed that the key factor in delay of gratification is what is going on in children’s minds as they try to wait for the large reward. Children do well at the task if they employ cognitive strategies that distract them from the attractive qualities of the rewards. If children are taught to think about how marshmallows resemble some nonfood object (e.g., clouds), or are asked to form mental images in which they think of the rewards as if they are merely photos rather than real things, or are taught to sing songs to themselves or play other mentally distracting games during the delay period, then they are able to delay gratification even if the rewards are in sight (Mischel & Baker, 1975; Mischel & Moore, 1973; Moore et al., 1976). “Thus, what is in the children’s heads—not what is physically in front of them—crucially affects their ability to purposefully sustain delay in order to achieve their preferred but delayed goals. . . . If the children imagine the real objects as present they cannot wait long for them. In contrast, if they imagine pictures of the objects, they can wait for long time periods” (Mischel, 1990, p. 123). Imagining a mere picture of the object is a “cool” encoding (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999), that is, a way of think- ing about the stimulus that does not activate “hot,” impulsive emotional sys- tems. People seem more capable of controlling their emotional reactions, then, when they focus their attention on less emotional features of a given situation. The impact of “hot” versus “cool” encoding for interpersonal behavior is reviewed in Chapter 14.

Mischel’s delay of gratification findings vividly illustrate the human capacity for self‐control. It is instructive to contrast his social‐cognitive approach with behaviorism. The behaviorist looking at Mischel’s paradigm might have argued that the main determinant of children’s behavior would be the reward contingencies. The problem with that argument is that chil- dren in the different experimental conditions all had exactly the same reward contingencies; they all got the same small and large rewards based on the same behavior. Mischel’s research, then, illustrates the power of something that classic behaviorism never thought of, namely, mental representations of rewards.

Do individual differences in delay of gratification ability in childhood persist into later years of life? To find out, researchers studied children in the delay studies years later, when they were adolescents. They related delay of gratification scores in preschool to adolescent measures of cognitive and

SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE THEORY OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT 399

social competence (as rated by parents) and to the adolescents’ verbal and quantitative SAT scores. Childhood delay of gratification ability predicted adolescent outcomes, with high‐delay children becoming adolescents who were more able to control their emotions and who obtained higher SAT scores (Shoda et al., 1990).

Delay ability in childhood also predicts health‐related outcomes. When researchers related delay ability at age 4 to body mass index measured at age 11, they found that children who were poor at delaying gratification were more likely to become overweight (Schlam et al., 2013; Seeyave et al., 2009). This result is consistent with research showing that the ability to control impulses and emotions is relatively stable across the life span and contributes to impor- tant life outcomes such as academic performance, alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, and monetary spending (Gailliot et al., 2008).

CURRENT QUESTIONS

WHAT DOES THE MARSHMALLOW TEST MEASURE AND WHAT ARE ITS SOCIAL POLICY IMPLICATIONS?

Mischel’s marshmallow experiment has been described as “one of the most famous and delightful experiments in modern psy- chology” (Brooks, 2011; Mischel, 2014). The concept of delay of gratification and related concepts (e.g., self‐regulation, willpower, ego strength, conscientiousness) are among the most widely studied in the social sciences (Duckworth, 2011). But questions have been raised about the concept, its measurement, and its social policy implications.

Does the marshmallow test measure the ability to delay gratification or might it mea- sure something else, such as trust, the ability to think about and have confidence in the future, or perhaps even intelligence (Bourne, 2014; Konnikova, 2013)? Are all the seem- ingly related concepts really the same or are they different? Is it really self‐control and do early measures of it really have pre- dictive power? Recent research addressing these issues suggests the following conclu- sions: (1) The various self‐control concepts and related measure are associated with one

another but are not identical (Duckworth & Kern, 2011). (2) The concept of self‐control is distinct from that of intelligence or socio- economic status (Duckworth, 2011; Moffitt et al., 2011). (3) Measures of self‐control, includingthemarshmallowtask,havesignifi- cant predictive power in terms of later func- tioning in areas such as school success, occupational success, physical and mental health, and lack of criminal convictions (Duckworth & Carlson, in press; Duckworth et al., 2013; Moffitt et al., 2011).

But what of the social policy implica- tions? Is self‐control a fixed personality characteristic, either by genes or by the ear- liest years of the environment (or the inter- action between the two), or can it be modified by early intervention programs, to the benefit of individuals and society? According to one recent review, there is evidence that school‐ based interventions, targeting both individual cognitive strategies and the school culture, provide proof that self‐regulation can be culti- vated (Duckworth & Carlson, in press).

More recently, Mischel and colleagues have explored not only cognitive pro- cesses, but also brain mechanisms that underlie adaptive self-control. In this work, they combine traditional self-report measures with brain imaging tech- niques to address self-control at multiple levels of analysis (Berman et al., 2013; Mischel, 2012; Mischel & Ayduk, 2011; and see Personality and the Brain).

Delay of Gratification

As you’ve just seen, individual differences in the ability to delay gratification are detectable early in childhood and often persist into the later years of life. A challenge for research on personality and the brain is to identify the neural bases of these differences among individuals.

Note that we said neural “bases,” plural. At a psy- chological level of analysis, there is not one, but two, components to delay of gratification: (1) the impulsive desire to attain a reward and (2) cognitive strategies that people use to avoid acting on that impulse. One should expect, then, that a biological analysis will iden- tify at least two areas of the brain that might contribute to individual differences in delay ability: a brain system underlying impulsive reactions to rewards and another brain system that underlies the ability to devise cognitive strategies.

Researchers who have searched for these brain regions have done so in a study that was conducted with an interesting group of participants: adults who, when they were children, participated in Mischel’s delay of gratification experiments (Casey et al., 2011). By studying this population, the researchers could relate childhood delay of gratification abilities to adulthood brain activity. They expected to find links from child- hood to adulthood because self‐control abilities are relatively consistent across the life course.

Two types of participants were identified: people who were either (1) consistently good or (2) consist- ently poor at delaying gratification in childhood. These people, as adults, were asked to attempt a task that required them to control their impulses. In the task, called a go/no‐go task, the participants have to either press a button (go) or inhibit their tendency to press the button (no go) in response to different stimuli that are shown rapidly on a video screen. The ability to control

the urge to press the button (when pressing it is inap- propriate) taps some of the same mental control abili- ties that are needed to delay gratification in the original Mischel research paradigm. Participants per- formed the go/no‐go task while in a brain scanner. The researchers thus could search for variations in the brain that corresponded to variations in delay of grati- fication ability.

As expected, they found such variations in not one but two regions of the brain:

— One region was in the frontal lobes. The brain’s frontal lobes are a higher‐level brain region critical to the human ability to make plans and to control the flow of one’s own actions, espe- cially when choosing between two courses of action. Delay ability was found to be positively related to activity within the frontal lobes. People who (as children) were better at self‐ control displayed (as adults) more activity in this brain region.

— The other was a brain structure known as the striatum, which is found in a lower region of the brain. The striatum is known to be involved in the processing of information about rewards. Delay ability related negatively to activation in this region. People who had less delay of grati- fication ability in childhood displayed more brain activation in this reward‐processing area of the brain as adults. The researchers suggest that this high level of activation in the striatum may overwhelm the frontal lobes’ ability to con- trol behavior (Casey et al., 2011).

The research, then, provides insight into two neural bases of individual differences in the ability to delay gratification.␣

In addition, there is an action component to this research in terms of school‐ based intervention programs to improve self‐control mechanisms in young children (Duckworth & Carlson, in press).

SUMMARY OF THE SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE VIEW OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

In addition to the importance of direct experience, social‐cognitive theory emphasizes the importance of models and observational learning in personal- ity development. Individuals acquire emotional responses and behaviors through observing the behaviors and emotional responses of models (i.e., the processes of observational learning and vicarious conditioning). Whether acquired behaviors are performed similarly depends on directly experienced consequences and the observed consequences to models. By experiencing direct external consequences, individuals learn to expect rewards and punish- ments for specific behaviors in specific contexts. Through vicarious experiencing of consequences to others, individuals acquire emotional reactions and learn expectancies without going through the often painful step of experiencing consequences directly. Thus, through direct experience and observation, through direct experiencing of rewards and punishments, and through vicarious conditioning, individuals acquire such important personality characteristics as competencies, expectancies, goals/standards, and self‐efficacy beliefs. In addition, through such processes, individuals acquire self‐regulatory capacities. Thus, through the development of cognitive competencies and standards, people are able to anticipate the future and reward or punish themselves for relative progress in meeting chosen goals. The latter self‐produced conse- quences are of particular significance in maintaining behavior over extended periods of time in the absence of external reinforcers.

It is important to recognize that social‐cognitive theory is opposed to views that emphasize fixed stages of development and broad personality types. According to Bandura and Mischel, people develop skills and competencies in particular areas. Rather than developing consciences or healthy egos, they develop competencies and motivational guides for action that are attuned to specific contexts. Such a view emphasizes the ability of people to discriminate among situations and to regulate behavior flexibly according to internal goals and the demands of the situation.

CHAPTER 13

SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE THEORY: APPLICATIONS, RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS, AND CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

Chapter Focus

A college senior was trying to work on his medical school applications late one evening but found himself so paralyzed by anxiety that he could get nothing accomplished. How could he cope with the possibility of not getting accepted anywhere? His family is counting on him to be a doctor! His friends would think he was a big braggart if he didn’t get into a medical school after his years of talk about being premed! These thoughts so preoccupied him that he failed to complete his applications by the deadlines. He eventually sent them in, but by being late, he significantly worsened his chances of getting into medical school. Thus, his own behavior had increased the likeli- hood that the unwanted outcome would become a reality.

This young man is doing something that is extremely common. When working on a task, people often think about not only the task at hand (the admissions information, in this case) but about themselves (their goals, hopes, and fears). These thoughts may cause one to do worse; they distract people from the task at hand, create anxiety, and thus undermine performance. A psychologist might say that these thoughts are “dysfunctional”: They work (or “function”) badly for people, undermining their efforts to succeed.

Basic research in social‐cognitive theory has explored the impact of beliefs, goals, and standards on people’s emotions and behavior, including nega- tive emotions that undermine performance. In clinical applications of this research, psychologists have developed ways to alter dysfunctional beliefs. This chapter examines these extensions and applications of social‐cognitive theory. In concluding sections of the chapter, we evaluate social‐cognitive theory, in part by comparing it to personality theories you learned about previously in the text.

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER

1. How can the study of knowledge structures, or schemas, inform the understanding of personality and self‐concept?

2. Are there qualitatively different types of goals and standards of self‐ evaluation that have different effects on a person’s motivation and emotional life?

403

404 3.What is the role of disordered self‐efficacy beliefs and other cognitive

distortions in abnormal psychological functioning?

4. How can a social‐cognitive analysis of personality contribute to the development of effective psychotherapies?

In Chapter 12, you learned that social‐cognitive theory explains personality in terms of basic thinking—or cognitive—capacities. The main theorists, Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel, try to understand how people’s cognitive capaci- ties develop as people interact with the social world.

As you will recall from the previous chapter, the following were three of these cognitive personality variables:

␣␣ People’s beliefs about the self and the world

␣␣ Their personal aims or goals

␣␣ The evaluative standards that people use to judge the goodness or worth of their own actions and those of others

The basic idea of social‐cognitive theory is that beliefs, goals, and standards— as well as competencies for performing behaviors—contribute to the unique- ness and coherence of our personality. In other words, these social cognitions explain consistent, coherent patterns of emotion and behavior. Consider an example close at hand. Why are you reading this textbook now, when you could be hanging out with friends, listening to music, watching TV, napping, tanning, snacking, and so forth? It probably is because (1) you believe that you need to read the book to do well in the personality course in which you’re enrolled, (2) you have the goal of doing reasonably well in the course, and (3) you know you would evaluate yourself negatively (i.e., you’d feel bad about yourself) if you spent your whole day napping, tanning, and snacking instead of working.

These cognitions—beliefs, goals, and evaluative standards—have two important qualities. First, they are socially acquired. If you had been raised by kindly woodland creatures in a forest rather than by people in a human society, you would not have the same beliefs, goals, and standards that you have now. Second, they are enduring; you generally have the same beliefs, goals, and evaluative standards from 1 day to the next. Beliefs, goals, and evaluative standards thus are “social‐cognitive” personality variables that contribute to enduring, consistent patterns of behavior.

In this chapter, we review contemporary research on each of these three social‐cognitive components of personality. As you will see, some of the research programs that we review will be those that were spearheaded by Bandura or Mischel, the primary social‐cognitive theorists we discussed in Chapter 12. But others have been initiated by other personality scientists. Numerous researchers analyze personality by examining the role of social‐ cognitive processes and structures. Their efforts extend and complement the work of Bandura and Mischel and, in so doing, contribute to a broad social‐ cognitive tradition in contemporary personality psychology.

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY

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BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF‐SCHEMAS

It is human nature to be self‐reflective. People do not merely interact with the world. They reflect on their own interactions and, in so doing, develop beliefs about what they themselves are like. Self‐referent beliefs are central to personality functioning. A wide range of phenomena—emotions, motivation, the flow of ideas that constitute our mental life—are affected by our thoughts about ourselves. Events elicit emotional reactions and become motivating when they are seen as relevant to our sense of self.

As noted previously, the study of self‐concept was relatively neglected during much of psychology’s history, particularly in the first three‐fourths of the 20th century. But in a remarkable coincidence of timing, the intellectual scene shifted in 1977. A number of scientists, working independently, published seminal papers in which aspects of self‐concept figured prominently. These included Bandura’s (1977) initial statement of self‐efficacy theory (Chapter 12), research showing that self‐relevant information is more memorable than other types of information (Rogers et al., 1977), and work, which we will now discuss, by Markus (1977) on what are called self‐ schemas. As a result of these earlier developments, the study of the self now flourishes (Leary & Tangney, 2012).

The idea that the mind contains schemas has a long history. The 18th‐ century German philosopher Immanuel Kant recognized that we make sense out of new experiences by interpreting events in terms of preexisting ideas in the mind (Watson, 1963). These preexisting mental structures are what he referred to as schemas. Schemas are knowledge structures that we use to bring order to what otherwise might be a chaotic jumble of stimuli. To illustrate, suppose you listen to a new song on the radio. In terms of the physical stimuli involved, the sound might seem chaotic: There’s some banging on a drum, some noises from a synthesizer, a few guitar chords, somebody singing something, and somebody else singing something else. And all these different sounds occur at the same time! Chaos! Yet, of course, it isn’t chaos. It sounds to you like an ordered, structured, meaningful piece of music. It sounds this way because you have acquired mental schemas for song structures, and these schemas guide your interpretation of the information (i.e., the sounds that comprise the song). The role of schemas becomes clear if you hear music of a form with which you are not at all familiar, that is, music for which you are lacking a musical schema. If, for example, you hear music from a different culture or contemporary symphonic music that is not written according to traditional harmonies, rhythms, and melodic structures, it might sound chaotic to you—even though it surely sounds structured and orderly to its com- poser. This is because you lack the musical schemas that are necessary to make sense of the sounds.

Schemas, then, are structures of the mind that we use to make sense of the world around us. Phrased more technically, schemas are knowledge structures that guide and organize the processing of information. A schema, then, is far more than just a stored list of facts. A schema instead is an organized network of knowledge (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Smith, 1998) that commonly is of such complexity that it may be impossible for a person to state its contents. For example, you may not be able to state in words all the knowledge of music that you possess (the sounds of instruments, patterns of rhythm and melody, etc.). Yet you surely can use that knowledge to understand and evaluate new songs.

Markus (1977) recognized that many of our most important schemas concern ourselves. In a key step forward in the study of social cognition and personality, she suggested that the self is a concept or category like any other concept or category and that people form cognitive generalizations about the self just as they do about other things. People, then, develop self‐schemas. Through interaction with the social world, we develop generalized knowledge structures concerning ourselves. These elements of self‐knowledge guide and organize information processing when we encounter new situations.

Importantly, different people—with their different interpersonal, social, and cultural life experiences—develop different self‐schemas, that is, schemas with different content. For example, one person might have an independence/ dependence self‐schema; in other words, she might commonly think of herself as an independent person, might possess a lot of knowledge about this personality characteristic of hers, and might interpret situations according to their relevance to independence. Another person might possess a schema organized around the concept of guilt/innocence and might use this schema to interpret many situations, even though a guilt/innocence schema might not even be present in most other persons. Self‐schemas, then, may account for the relatively unique ways in which idiosyncratic individuals think about the world around them.

Self‐Schemas and Reaction‐Time Methods

An important aspect of Markus’s work was that she provided not only theoretical ideas about self‐schemas but also methodological tools to study self‐schemas. A key research method employed by Markus (1977) was reaction‐time measures. Reaction‐time measures are experimental methods in which an experimenter records not only the content of a person’s response (e.g., whether he or she says “yes” or “no” in response to a question) but also how long it

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takes the person to respond to the question. Reaction‐time measures are directly relevant to the central idea associated with the notion of self‐schemas. The idea is that schemas guide information processing. People who possess a self‐schema with regard to a given domain of social life should, then, be faster in responding to questions regarding that life domain. Reaction‐time measures therefore provide the index of speed of response that is necessary to test this theoretical idea.

To illustrate the logic of reaction‐time methods, suppose you happen to be someone who spends hours a week doing volunteer service in which you are helpful to other individuals in your community. As a result, you may have developed a self‐schema regarding your “helpfulness.” Now, suppose that both you and another person, who rarely does volunteer service, are in a study in which you are asked the question, “Are you a helpful person?” Both of you may say “yes.” Even the other person, who only occasionally volunteers, may say that, “yes,” he or she is helpful. However, despite your similar “yes” responses, self‐schema theory would expect that you would differ in the speed with which you make your responses. Compared to the other person, you should be faster to say that, “yes,” you are helpful. Your preexisting self‐schema regarding helpfulness should speed your information processing.

This is exactly the sort of result that Markus (1977) found and that has been replicated by subsequent investigators. Markus first identified people who possessed a self‐schema regarding independence (the attribute she happened to use in her study). She did this by using a two‐step method in which partici- pants (1) rated themselves as high or low on independence and (2) indicated the degree to which the personality characteristic was important to them. Only people who had an extremely high or low self‐rating and thought that independence/dependence was important to their personality were judged as being schematic for the attribute; the idea is that we tend to develop schemas about personal attributes that we view as socially important to our lives. Subsequently, participants were asked to rate whether a series of adjectives (some of which were semantically related to independence/dependence) were descriptive of themselves. Exactly as predicted, participants who possessed a schema made these judgments faster. Specifically, independent‐schematic participants rated independent adjectives more quickly than dependent adjectives, and dependent‐schematic persons identified dependent adjectives faster than independent traits (Markus, 1977).

Research on self‐schemas by Markus and others suggests that, once we have developed ways of thinking about ourselves (our self‐schemas), there is a strong tendency for them to be maintained. We seem to be biased to pay attention to, to remember, and to judge as being true information that is consistent with our schemas about ourselves. Schemas, then, guide the processing of information, and in so doing, they also create self‐confirming biases.

An illustration of how self‐schemas are not only related to the processing of information but to action as well comes from research on schemas, sexual behavior, and romantic involvement. The researchers tested the idea that women with differing sexual self‐schemas would process interpersonal information differently and function differently in their sexual and romantic relationships (Andersen & Cyranowski, 1994). Women were asked to rate themselves on a list of 50 adjectives, 26 of which were used to form a Sexual Self‐Schema Scale (e.g., uninhibited, loving, romantic, passionate, direct). They also were asked

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to respond to measures that asked about sexual experiences and romantic involvement. Clear evidence was found that women with high scores on the Sexual Self‐Schema Scale, particularly those with positive sexual self‐schemas, were more sexually active, experienced greater sexual arousal and sexual pleas- ure, and were more able to be involved in romantic love relationships relative to women with low scores on the scale. “Coschematics,” that is, women who had both positive schemas organized around their ability to experience sexual passion and negative schemas involving sexual conservatism or embarrassment, were found to experience high levels of involvement with sexual partners yet also to experience relatively high levels of sexual anxiety (Cyranowski & Andersen, 1998). These experiences, in turn, could further influence views about the self, creating a self‐confirming bias in which schemas contribute to experiences that, in turn, confirm the original schemas.

Any given individual does not possess merely one self‐schema. Instead, people tend to live complex lives in which they develop a number of different views of themselves. For example, it may not be the case that you are either a hardworking student, or a loyal friend, or a good dancer at parties, or an anxious test taker. Instead, you well could be all four of these things; that is, you may possess self‐schemas concerning all four of these aspects of self. The different self‐schemas would tend to come to mind in different settings. Different situational cues may cause different self‐schemas to enter working memory and, thus, to be part of the working self‐concept (Markus & Wurf, 1987), that is, the subset of self‐concept that is in working memory at any given time. Self‐ concept thus is dynamic; the information about the self that is in conscious- ness, and guides behavior, at any given time, changes dynamically as people interact with the ever‐changing events of the social world.

Contemporary research on social cognition and self‐concept suggests that the self is not a single, unitary thing. Instead, people commonly possess multiple self‐schemas. The different self‐schemas frequently are related to one another; for example, using the example in the preceding section, there may be links between your view of yourself as hardworking and as someone who is anxious when it comes to taking tests, and friendship and dancing at parties may provide an important break from the academic routine of college life. Recognizing these relations, investigators have suggested that, rather than a single self‐schema, people tend to possess a “family of selves” (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987)—that is, a collection of self‐views that may be as diverse as are different members of the same family, yet that may share some family resemblances. According to this view, you are many things, in many places, with many people. Thus, you have many contextualized selves, each with a set of features. The features of these contextualized selves, this family of selves, will overlap in some ways and be distinctive in others. Each of us, then, has a family of selves, the contents and organization of which are unique. Within this family of selves, there may be a prototypic self, a self‐concept in relation to which we say, “This is what I am really like.” And within this family of selves, there may be fuzzy selves or parts of us that we are not sure how they fit in relation to the other selves.

Self‐Based Motives and Motivated Information Processing

Self‐schemas do not merely provide information that is used in thinking, in the way that an encyclopedia might provide information that is used in answering a trivia question. Self‐schemas also motivate people to process information in particular ways. Motivational processes, then, are often self‐based (Kwan et al., 2004; Leary, 2007). Two motives in relation to the self have been emphasized in research on social cognition and personality: motives for self‐enhancement and for self‐verification (Swann, 2012; Swann & Bosson, 2008).

Your intuitions may tell you that people are biased toward seeing them- selves in a positive light. For example, when you get a bad grade on an exam, you might be prone to think of how poorly written or unfair the exam was; conversely, when you get a good grade, the professor might seem like an exam‐ writing genius. Much research is consistent with such intuitions. People often are biased toward positive views of the self (Tesser et al., 1989).

These biases can be explained by positing a self‐enhancement motive. People may be motivated to establish and maintain a positive self‐image. This motive causes us to prefer positive to negative feedback, to overestimate our positive attributes (Dunning et al., 2004), and to enhance our self‐images by selectively comparing ourselves to people who are faring less well than our- selves (Wood, 1989).

Yet a motive to self‐enhance may not fully explain motivated features of information processing. People also may be motivated to experience them- selves as being consistent and predictable. People like to see themselves as being basically the same person from 1 day to the next. The psychologist William Swann suggests that people have a self‐verification motive (Swann, 2012; Swann & Bosson, 2008; Swann et al., 2003)—that is, a motive to solicit from others information that confirms aspects of their self‐concept. A person who is extraverted, for example, may present herself to others in ways that maintain her extraverted self‐concept (e.g., the person might talk about all the outgoing things she did at a wild party last weekend). In this way, the person maintains a stable, predictable sense of self.

This may seem obvious, but the nonobvious part of Swann’s view is the sug- gestion that people even seek self‐confirmation when they have negative sche- mas, that is, a person with a negative self‐schema will seek out information and social feedback that confirms the negative self‐schema, becoming in a sense his or her own worst enemy. For example, depressives who have negative self‐ schemas can seek out self‐verifying information that serves to maintain their negative self‐image and their depression (Giesler et al., 1996). More generally, in accord with his emphasis on self‐verification, Swann presents evidence to the effect that people gravitate toward relationships with people who see them as they see themselves. Thus, not only are persons with positive self‐concepts more committed to spouses who think highly of them than to spouses who think poorly of them, but persons with negative self‐concepts are more commit- ted to spouses who think poorly of them than to spouses who think well of them (De La Ronde & Swann, 1998; Swann et al., 1994). In the words of the come- dian Groucho Marx, “I’d never join a club that would have me as a member.”

What happens, then, when the two motives conflict? If push comes to shove, do we prefer accurate feedback or positive feedback, the disagreeable truth or what fits our fancy, to be known for who we are or to be adored for who we would like to be (Strube, 1990; Swann, 1991)? In other words, what happens when our cognitive need for consistency or self‐verification conflicts with our affective need for self‐enhancement, what Swann has called the cognitive– affective crossfire (Swann et al., 1987; Swann et al., 1989)? A complete answer to this question is not at hand. The evidence to date suggests, however, that generally we prefer positive feedback but would rather have negative feedback

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CURRENT APPLICATIONS

SELF‐SCHEMAS AND HISTORY OF SEXUAL ABUSE

The first theory of personality discussed in this book, that of Freud, devoted much attention to an experience that is utterly trau- matic and unfortunately common: sexual abuse. Given the importance of the topic, you may have expected that subsequent, newer personality theories also would address it in detail. If so, you would have been disap- pointed. As you have seen from previous chapters, personality theorists working in traditions other than psychodynamic theory devoted much less attention to this problem than Freud did.

Recent work, however, has applied the social‐cognitive principles discussed in this chapter—particularly the work of Markus and of Andersen and Cyranowski—to the study of women with a history of sexual abuse. Meston et al. (2006), researchers at the University of Texas and at the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, hypothesized that abuse experiences may alter self‐schemas and do so in a long‐lasting manner. To test this idea, they conducted a study whose participants were 48 women with a history of child sexual abuse; these were women who reported coercive sexual activity prior to the age of 16. (The women were, on average, in their late 20s at the time of the study.) They also studied a group of 71 women who had not suffered from abuse experiences and who thus served as control participants. To measure schematic beliefs

about the self and sexual behavior (i.e., sexual self‐schemas), Meston et al. adminis- tered the sexual self‐schema scale developed by Anderson and Cyranowski. In this scale, people report on their perceptions of their own sexuality, for example, whether they perceive themselves as romantic, passion- ate, arousable, inhibited, and so forth.

Their results indicated that women with a history of abuse had different self‐ schemas than women who were not abused. Specifically, women with a history of abuse believed themselves to be less romantic and passionate; that is, they had lower scores on the romantic/passionate items of the sexual self‐schema measure. The childhood abuse experiences, then, did alter people’s enduring sense of self.

The researchers also asked women in the study to report on whether they experience negative emotions (fear, anger) during sexual experiences. Data analyses indicated that women who had experienced abuse years earlier had more negative emotional experi- ences in the present day. Also, among women with abuse experiences, there was a significant association between sexual schemas and emo- tion: Women with lower romantic/passionate self‐schemas reported more negative emo- tional experiences (Meston et al., 2006). The changes in self‐schemas resulting from abuse experiences in childhood, then, were linked to emotions experienced years later.

in relation to negative self‐views. Accordingly, there is evidence that life events inconsistent with the self‐concept can lead to physical illness, even if these events are positive (Brown & McGill, 1989). In other words, positive life events can be bad for one’s health if they conflict with a negative self‐concept and disrupt one’s negative identity. At the same time, there are individual differ- ences in this regard, and we may be more oriented toward self‐enhancement

411 Exam

in some relationships and self‐verification in other relationships. For example, there is evidence that self‐enhancement is more important during the early stages of a relationship, but self‐verification becomes increasingly important as the relationship becomes more intimate (Swann et al., 1994).

LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS

Self‐schemas, discussed previously, concern people’s beliefs about their personal qualities. Other elements of personality that are important to social‐ cognitive approaches to personality are people’s goals for behavior. As we discussed in our previous chapter, social‐cognitive personality theorists regard goals, which are mental representations of the aim of an action or course of actions, as central to human motivation.

In our previous chapter, we discussed research showing that the presence versus absence of clear goals on a task greatly affects people’s motivation. Here, we discuss contemporary research on a phenomenon that is related yet slightly different. On any given activity, people may possess different types of goals. Different people may think about an activity differently; different thoughts about goals to be achieved may run through people’s minds as they perform the same task. These different goals may lead to different patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior; the goals, in other words, may be the cause of what one would interpret as different personality styles. Although a number of useful distinctions among types of goals have been drawn, one particularly valuable distinction differentiates “learning” goals from “performance” goals.

In their social‐cognitive theory of personality, development, and achieve- ment motivation, Carol Dweck and her colleagues (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Grant & Dweck, 1999; Olson & Dweck, 2008) differentiate between learning goals and performance goals. The goals are different ways in which people may think about a challenging activity. The difference can be understood through a simple example. Suppose you are working on a group project and are about to present your part of the project to others in the group who will discuss its strong and weak points. Right before the presentation, you might focus your attention on how their feedback will provide information that can help you to improve your work. If so, you have a learning goal: You are striving to learn from others, in order to increase your ability and achievement. Alternatively, you might focus on the personal impression you’ll make on the other people; you might try to “look smart” and to avoid doing anything that will make you look stupid. If so, you would have a performance goal: the aim of “putting on a good performance” for others who will be evaluating your abilities.

People with learning versus performance goals experience activities differ- ently, particularly if they are not confident in their abilities. In one study (Elliott & Dweck, 1988), students were given information designed to induce either learning goals (students were told that the task would sharpen their mental skills) or performance goals (students were told that their performance would be evaluated by experts) on a problem‐solving task. Students’ beliefs in their ability on the task were also manipulated through provision of bogus feedback on a prior activity. The researchers measured task performance and also asked students to think out loud while they attempted the task; the think‐ aloud process provided a record of the thoughts running through their minds during task performance. The research yielded two key results:

— Students with performance goals and low beliefs in their ability per- formed poorly. The measure of task performance indicated that they were less likely than others to devise useful strategies for solving the task.

— Students with performance goals and low beliefs in their ability also become distracted from the task itself. The think‐aloud measure indi- cated that, unlike students with learning goals, those with performance goals became tense, anxious, and worried about why they weren’t doing better on the task. (“My stomach hurts” [Elliott & Dweck, 1988, p. 10], one of them said.)

The findings show that performance goals can create a pattern of thought and emotion that we commonly call “test anxiety.” As you know, some people become highly anxious when taking a test and, as a result, perform more poorly than they would have if they had remained calm. Dweck’s social‐ cognitive approach identifies a type of thinking that is an underlying cause of this anxiety.

Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories

Why do some people adopt learning goals on tasks, whereas others adopt per- formance goals? A primary factor is that different people hold different implicit theories about intelligence. Different implicit theories prompt people to adopt different types of goals (Dweck, 2012).

Implicit theories are ideas that guide our thinking but that we may not usu- ally state in words; we possess the ideas implicitly, even if we do not state them explicitly. Dweck and colleagues are particularly interested in one aspect of people’s implicit theories about intelligence: whether intelligence is fixed or changeable (e.g., Dweck, 1991, 1999; Dweck et al., 1995). People who hold an entity theory of intelligence believe that intelligence levels are fixed. According to another set of beliefs, known as an incremental theory, intelligence is acquired gradually and naturally changes over time.

Differences in implicit theories have implications for the goals people set and their responses to failure (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Children with an entity

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view of intelligence tend to set performance goals; if one thinks that intelligence is a fixed entity, then it is only natural to interpret activities as a test of one’s intelligence—that is, as a “performance” in which one’s intelligence is evalu- ated. Conversely, children with an incremental view of intelligence tend to set learning goals. If intelligence can be increased, then, it is natural to set the learning goal of acquiring experiences that increase one’s intelligence. Thus, different implicit theories lead people to set different goals that, in turn, have different implications for emotion and motivation.

This theoretical analysis has practical implications. If one could change peo- ple’s implicit theories—turning entity theorists into incremental theorists—one

Goals

As you’ve seen, goals are distinct psychological vari- ables in the social‐cognitive approach to personal- ity. Are they also distinct biologically? In other words, might there be unique activity in the brain when people think about goals and standards for evaluating perfor- mance? Recent advances in the study of personality and the brain indicate that the answer is yes.

Before turning to these advances, note that a key word in the paragraph in the preceding section is “dis- tinctive.” There is no question that when people set goals and contemplate standards of evaluation, they do so using their brains. The question is whether these thoughts are underpinned by regions of the brain that differ from those that are active when people think about other types of cognitive content.

A research team in Europe has investigated neural systems that underlie people’s ability to formulate per- sonal goals (D’Argembeau et al., 2009). To determine whether goal‐related thinking activates unique neural systems, the researchers asked participants to imagine future outcomes that either were or were not personal goals for them (e.g., if you had the goal of becoming a doctor and had no particular interest in ever going deep‐sea fishing, those future outcomes, respectively, would and would not represent personal goals). Participants were in a brain scanner while imagining these two types of outcomes.

The brain‐imaging results revealed two brain regions that were more active when people thought about per- sonal goals than about future activities that were not goals for them: the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and

the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). These regions are significant for the following reasons:

— The MPFC is needed to determine the self‐ relevance of events. Many everyday occurrences (a passing car, a randomly overhead conversa- tion) are irrelevant to your well‐being, but some (a passing car containing a friend you were looking for, a conversation about someone you’re hoping to get to know better) are highly relevant to you. The MPFC is active in detecting and processing information about the self‐relevant events.

— The PCC has been shown to be active during autobiographical memory, that is, memory of events that one has experienced in the past. PCC activation during the personal goals task, then, suggests that activity in the brain relates here‐and‐now goals to memories of past events. (Using our example in the preceding section, if you contemplated your goal of becoming a doctor, the goal‐related thinking would, thanks to the PCC, activate autobiographical memo- ries, such as discussions you’ve had with friends and family about becoming a physician.)

This brain research, then, has psychological impli- cations. It reminds us that goals are psychologically rich mental contents that combine the detection of per- sonally relevant occurrences in the environment with information stored in your “library” of autobiographi- cal memories.

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should be able to reduce their test anxiety and boost their performance. With this goal in mind, Blackwell et al. (2007) enrolled seventh graders in an educa- tional intervention designed to induce an incremental theory of intelligence: Students learned that the human brain changes when people study, growing new connections among neurons that increase a person’s mental abilities. A separate group of students did not receive this instruction. The academic per- formance of both groups was monitored during an academic year. By the end of the year, students who had been exposed to the intervention began to out- perform the other students. The findings, then, suggest that an intervention can change this social‐cognitive personality structure, implicit theories, and that the change can have beneficial effects.

Dweck’s analysis of implicit theories applies to domains beyond theories of intelligence. People also differ in theories about emotions. Some believe emo- tions to be malleable and controllable (“Everyone can learn to control their emotions”), whereas other see emotions as fixed and uncontrollable (“No mat- ter how hard they try, people can’t really change the emotions that they have”). Research conducted with students making the transition from high school to college shows that people with these different theories have substantially dif- ferent outcomes. Students with incremental (malleable) beliefs are better able to regulate their emotions and receive more social support from new friends they meet at college. By the end of the freshman year, those with incremental beliefs were found to have more positive moods and generally better levels of adjustment than those with entity beliefs (Tamir et al., 2007).

In conclusion, it should be noted that Dweck (2008) sees these beliefs and implicit theories as central to personality functioning and as potential areas of therapeutic change.

STANDARDS OF EVALUATION

In Chapter 12, you learned that another personality variable important to social‐cognitive theory is self‐evaluative standards, which are criteria people use to evaluate the goodness or worth of themselves and their actions. Standards are related to, yet differ from, goals (Boldero & Francis, 2002; Cervone, 2004). Goals are aims one hopes to achieve in the future. Standards are criteria used to evaluate events in the present. For example, if you are watching an ice skating performance, you might evaluate the performance as good or bad according to standards you have used for judging the performance of skaters. You might have these standards whether or not you, personally, have the goal of being a figure skater. Goals and standards, then, are psycho- logically distinct mechanisms. Much work in personality psychology indicates that people regulate their behavior by evaluating whether their actions are consistent with internalized standards for performance (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Carver et al., 2008; Cervone et al., 2006).

Our review of Dweck’s work, in the preceding section, showed that it is valu- able to distinguish among qualitatively different types of goals. Similarly, it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of evaluative stand- ards (Dweck et al., 2003). An exceptionally fruitful line of theory and research by the psychologist Higgins (2006, 2012, 2014; Higgins & Scholer, 2008) has expanded the scope of social‐cognitive analyses of personality by showing how different types of evaluative standards relate to different types of emotional experiences and motivation. Much work in personality psychology indicates that people regulate their behavior by evaluating whether their actions are consistent with internalized standards for performance (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Carver et al., 2008; Cervone et al., 2006).

Our review of Dweck’s work, in the preceding section, showed that it is valu- able to distinguish among qualitatively different types of goals. Similarly, it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of evaluative stand- ards (Dweck et al., 2003). An exceptionally fruitful line of theory and research by the psychologist Higgins (2006, 2012, 2014; Higgins & Scholer, 2008) has expanded the scope of social‐cognitive analyses of personality by showing how different types of evaluative standards relate to different types of emotional experiences and motivation.

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY 415 Self‐Standards, Self‐Discrepancies, Emotion, and Motivation

The psychological phenomenon of interest to Higgins can be illustrated with an example. Suppose two people are reading in a college library some night late in the semester, both are unhappy with how they have been doing in a course, and both are behind in course readings as the semester draws to a close. And imag- ine they take a break from their work to discuss how they’re doing. “I’m really anxious about this class,” one person says tensely. “I wanted an A, but I don’t even think I can get a B.” “I’m not anxious,” says the other, dejectedly. “I’m really depressed about this class. I wanted an A, but I don’t even think I can get a B.”

What’s going on here? How can one explain why the two people have differ- ent emotional reactions to the same event? Why is one vulnerable to becoming anxious, the other to becoming depressed? Higgins suggests it is because they are evaluating the event with different types of standards. Although they both “want” the same thing, an A, the subjective nature of that standard of perfor- mance differs from one person to the other. The critical distinction is the dif- ference between standards that represent “ideals” versus “oughts.” Some evaluative standards represent achievement that people ideally would like to reach. They represent types of behavior that one values positively. Higgins calls these ideal standards, or aspects of the “ideal self.” (In this way, Higgins’s anal- ysis is similar to that of Rogers, Chapter 5.) Alternatively, some evaluative standards represent standards of achievement that people feel they should or ought to achieve. The standards represent duties or responsibilities. These are termed ought standards, or elements of the “ought self.”

Higgins’s analysis is important to the study of personality and individual differences because different individuals may evaluate the same type of behav- ior using different standards. Recent work demonstrates this point with a behavior of importance to health: smoking. People who are similar in that they all want to quit nonetheless differ in their evaluative standards regarding quit- ting. Some wish to quit primarily because they ideally would like to be health- ier; smoking for them violates an ideal standard. Others primarily feel a sense of responsibility to others to quit smoking (e.g., to avoid bothering others with cigarette smoke); smoking for them violates an ought standard (Shadel & Cervone, 2006).

A key insight of Higgins’s is that different types of standards, ought versus ideal, trigger different types of negative emotions (Higgins, 1987, 1996). There “are two steps to Higgins’s reasoning: (1) People experience negative emotions when they detect a discrepancy between how things really are going for them— or their “actual self”—and a personal standard. These self‐discrepancies are cognitive mechanisms that contribute to emotional experience. (2) Discrepancies with different (ideal vs ought) standards trigger different emotions. Discrepancies between the actual and ideal self cause people to feel sad or dejected; failing to meet one’s ideal standards is a loss of positive outcomes that brings on sad- ness. Discrepancies between the actual and ought self cause agitation and anx- iety; the possibility of not achieving one’s obligations is a potential negative outcome that is threatening.

To test these ideas, Higgins et al. (1986) first assessed individual differences in self‐discrepancies. They identified one group of people who predominantly have actual/ideal discrepancies and a second set who predominantly have actual/ought discrepancies. To do this, Higgins and colleagues employed a simple questionnaire in which people listed attributes they believed they (1) actually possessed, (2) ideally would like to possess, and (3) believed they should, or ought to, possess. In a subsequent experimental session, these peo- ple’s emotional reactions were assessed as they envisioned themselves experi- encing a negative life event. Although all participants envisioned the same event, they experienced different emotions. People whose self‐descriptions fea- tured many actual/ideal discrepancies tended to become sad but not anxious when thinking about the negative outcome. People whose self‐described attrib- utes featured mostly actual/ought discrepancies became anxious but not sad.

These findings, then, suggest that self‐discrepancies are a cognitive basis for individual differences in emotional experience. However, you might be thinking that the findings are not entirely convincing. They are only correlational; different types of self‐discrepancies are correlated with different emotional reactions. As we discussed back in Chapter 2, experimental—rather than merely correlational— research would provide evidence that is more convincing.

A great advantage of Higgins’s work is that he is able to provide such experi- mental evidence. Ought and ideal standards are elements of knowledge, and elements of knowledge can be experimentally primed, that is, made more men- tally salient through a procedure that activates the knowledge. A second study, then, experimentally manipulated self‐discrepancies through priming. People who possessed both actual/ideal and actual/ought self‐discrepancies were assigned at random to conditions that primed either ideal standards or ought standards. Priming alternative standards led to different emotional reactions. When ideal self‐discrepancies were primed, participants felt dejected. When ought standards were primed, they felt agitated. Thus, an experimental manip- ulation of cognition led to changes in emotion.

Much subsequent research has yielded evidence consistent with Higgins’s core idea that discrepancies with ideal versus ought standards lead to different emotional experiences. This includes clinical research with social phobics and clinically depressed patients, who exhibit predominantly actual/ought and actual/ideal discrepancies, respectively (Strauman, 1989). Higher levels of neuroticism and lower levels of subjective well‐being are experienced by peo- ple whose self‐descriptions indicate a discrepancy between how they really think they are and how they judge who they think they ought to be (Pavot et al., 1997). The existence of self‐discrepancies has health implications, having been found to decrease the effectiveness of the functioning of our

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY 417

immunological system in fighting disease (Strauman et al., 1993). Clinical researchers have begun to develop therapeutic techniques to reduce discrep- ancies between the actual and ideal self (Strauman et al., 2001).

Higgins (2006, 2014) emphasizes that evaluative standards have implica- tions not only for emotional experience but also for motivation. People who evaluate their actions primarily through ideal standards tend to have a “promotion” approach to their activities. In other words, they are moti- vated toward promoting well‐being, which they do by focusing on positive outcomes (either attaining positive outcomes or avoiding their loss once

CURRENT QUESTIONS

PERFECTIONISTIC STANDARDS: GOOD OR BAD?

Much of contemporary society has a hard‐ driving, motivated quality to it. We value people who achieve. We teach children—in classrooms, on stage, on playing fields, and so forth—to set high standards of achieve- ment. In the language of social‐cognitive theory, society models and rewards the adoption of high standards for performance. Our contemporary society promotes high standards—sometimes so high that people evaluate themselves via standards that are perfectionistic, that is, standards that indicate that anything less than perfect performance is unacceptable.

High standards may cause people to excel. But are extremely high, perfectionistic stan- dards necessarily a good thing? It “astounds me,” a contemporary psychologist says, that “people have said that self‐oriented perfec- tionism is adaptive . . . I don’t think needing to be perfect is in any way adaptive.” The psychologist Paul Hewitt of the University of British Columbia should know; for years, he has studied perfectionism, examining the psychological qualities that are associated with perfectionistic tendencies. Hewitt and colleagues find that perfectionistic standards make people vulnerable to psychological problems: depression, anxiety, and eating dis- orders. People with perfectionistic standards

may excel yet suffer a cost. Hewitt, for example, relates the case of a perfectionistic student who worked so hard on a course that he got an A1 but then became depressed, thinking that if he had been a better student, he would have gotten the grade without working so hard!

Research findings are consistent with this anecdotal evidence in suggesting a link between perfectionistic standards and feel- ings of depression. For example, Flett et al. (2005) studied perfectionism about a group of about 200 adults living in Israel. People completed a perfectionism inventory (a self‐ report measure of perfectionistic tendencies), rated whether they experienced symptoms of depression, and had close friends rate whether they were experiencing symptoms of depression. People who said that they needed to be perfect to meet the expecta- tions of friends and family rated themselves as being more depressed. Their friends saw them as depressed, too.

An adaptive lifestyle in the contemporary world may be one that mixes high standards of achievement with the capacity to accept oneself—including those aspects of self that are not perfect.

SOURCES: Benson, 2003; Flett et al., 2005.

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they have been attained). A premed student with a promotion focus might dwell on the benefits of a medical career or the importance of not lowering his or her high grade point average. In contrast, a focus on ought standards tends to make one prevention focused, that is, focused on preventing the occurrence of (or gaining an absence of) negative outcomes. In our previ- ous example, a prevention‐focused premed student might focus on the pos- sibility of not being admitted to med school and might view good class performance primarily as a way in which one avoids this negative outcome. Different motivational processes come into play when one is prevention versus promotion focused (Shah & Higgins, 1997), and people’s actions feel more natural to them when their activities fit their primary motivational orientation (Higgins, 2006).

A “GENERAL PRINCIPLES” APPROACH TO PERSONALITY

Higgins’s analysis of cognition, emotion, and individual differences has a theo- retical advantage that is a bit subtle, yet highly significant. It concerns the explanation of consistencies in behavior as opposed to variations in behavior from one situation to another. As we have discussed previously, some personal- ity psychologists treat consistencies in behavior as an indication of an indi- vidual’s personality, whereas variations are explained in terms of the power of situations to influence behavior. In this approach, “personality variables” explain what people do on average, and “situational factors” explain variations around the average. As Higgins recognizes, this sort of thinking yields a very unsatisfying science of persons. It is unsatisfying because different, and seem- ingly unrelated, theoretical principles have to be invoked to explain one versus another behavior by the same person.

In contrast, Higgins’s work yields general principles; he describes it as a general principles approach to understanding personality and situational influences. People’s knowledge—including their ideal and ought standards for performance—explains consistencies in their emotion and behavior, since knowledge is an enduring aspect of personality. But knowledge mechanisms also explain situational influences. Different situations activate different aspects of knowledge and, in so doing, bring about different emotional and motivational patterns. Thus, one obtains an integrated account of personal and situational influences on emotion and behavior in which one set of com- mon, general principles explains both consistency in thought and action that results from personal influences and variability in thought and action that results from situational influences.

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS

Thus far in discussing social‐cognitive theory, we primarily have reviewed core theoretical principles and basic research that supports them. We now turn to a key area of application of this theory and research: the psychological clinic. Clinical applications of cognitive theory have been of enormous significance in the past quarter‐century. Indeed, in many clinical settings and training pro- grams, the cognitive approach has become the most predominant of all theoretical orientations. “There is no one theory or technique of cognitive therapy. Instead, there are different approaches, often tailored to specific problems, that share some com- mon assumptions:

1. Cognitions (attributions, beliefs, expectancies, memories concerning the self, and others) are viewed as critical in determining feelings and behaviors. Thus, there is an interest in what people think and say to themselves.

2. The cognitions of interest tend to be specific to situations or categories of situations, though the importance of some generalized expectancies and beliefs is recognized.

3. Psychopathology is viewed as arising from distorted, incorrect, maladaptive cognitions concerning the self, others, and events in the world. Different forms of pathology are viewed as resulting from differ- ent cognitions or ways of processing information.

4. Faulty, maladaptive cognitions lead to problematic feelings and behav- iors, and these in turn lead to further problematic cognitions. Thus, a self‐fulfilling cycle may set in whereby persons act so as to confirm and maintain their distorted beliefs.

5. Cognitive therapy involves a collaborative effort between the therapist and the patient to determine which distorted, maladaptive cognitions are creating the difficulty and then to replace them with other more realistic, adaptive cognitions. The therapeutic approach tends to be active, structured, and focused on the present.

6. In contrast with other approaches, cognitive approaches do not see the unconscious as important, except insofar as patients may not be aware of their routine, habitual ways of thinking about themselves and life. Further, there is an emphasis on changes in specific problematic cogni- tions rather than on global personality change.

In this section, first we will consider the clinical applications that follow directly from social‐cognitive theory, and then we will consider other clinical applications that, while they do not follow directly from the work of Bandura and Mischel, are part of the more general social‐cognitive approach to pathol- ogy and change.

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF‐CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF‐EFFICACY

According to social‐cognitive theory, maladaptive behavior results from dys- functional learning. Like all learning, maladaptive responses can be learned as a result of direct experience or as the result of exposure to inadequate or “sick” models. Thus, Bandura suggests that the degree to which parents themselves model forms of aberrant behavior is often a significant causal factor in the development of psychopathology. Again, there is no need to look for traumatic incidents in the early history of the individual or for the underlying conflicts. Nor is it necessary to find a history of reinforcement for the initial acquisition of the pathological behavior. On the other hand, once behaviors have been

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learned through observational learning, it is quite likely that they have been maintained because of direct and vicarious reinforcement. Recall the research on the vicarious conditioning of emotional responses. Monkeys who observed their parents express a fear of snakes developed a conditioned emotional response that was intense, long‐lasting, and generalized beyond the context in which it was first learned. Thus, it is suggested that observational learning and vicarious conditioning may account for a great proportion of human fears and phobias.

Although the learning of specific overt behaviors and emotional reactions is important in psychopathology, increasingly social‐cognitive theory has come to emphasize the role of dysfunctional expectancies and self‐conceptions. People may erroneously expect painful events to follow some events or pain to be associated with specific situations. They then may act so as to avoid certain situations or in a way that creates the very situation they were trying to avoid. An example is the person who fears that closeness will bring pain and then acts in a hostile way, resulting in rejection by others and presumably confirming the expectancy that closeness leads to disappointment and rejection.

Cognitive processes also play a role in psychopathology in terms of dysfunctional self‐evaluations, in particular in terms of perceived low self‐ efficacy or perceived inefficacy. Remember that perceived self‐efficacy is the perception that one can perform the tasks required by a situation or cope with a situation. In perceived inefficacy, one feels that one cannot perform the nec- essary tasks or cope with the demands of the situation. Thus, according to social‐cognitive theory, it is perceived inefficacy that plays a central role in anxiety and depression (Bandura, 1997).

Self‐Efficacy, Anxiety, and Depression

Let us first consider the role of perceived self‐efficacy in anxiety. According to social‐cognitive theory, people with perceptions of low self‐efficacy in relation to potential threats experience high anxiety arousal. It is not the threatening event per se but the perceived inefficacy in coping with it that is fundamental to anxiety. Research indicates that those who believe they cannot manage threatening events experience great distress. They may also develop further dysfunctional cognitions such as a preoccupation with what may happen. In other words, the anxious person may focus attention on the disaster that lies ahead and on his or her inability to cope with it, rather than focusing on what might be done to cope with the situation. The perception of inability to cope with the situation may then be complicated further by the perceived inability to cope with the anxiety itself, a fear‐of‐fear response that can lead to panic (Barlow, 1991).

Whereas perceived inefficacy in relation to threatening events leads to anxi- ety, perceived inefficacy in relation to rewarding outcomes leads to depression; that is, depression represents the response to perceived inability to gain desired rewarding outcomes. Part of the problem with depressives, however, may be their excessively stringent standards. In other words, individuals prone to depression impose upon themselves excessively high goals and standards. When they fall short of these exacting standards, they blame themselves and their lack of ability or competence for what has happened. Excessive self‐ criticism is, in fact, often a major feature of depression. In sum, although

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perceived self‐inefficacy to fulfill desired goals is fundamental to depression, part of the problem may be the excessive goals themselves. In addition, the low self‐efficacy beliefs may contribute to diminished performance, leading to fall- ing even further below standards and additional self‐blame (Kavanagh, 1992). Just such a relationship was found in a study of childhood depression. In this study, perceived social and academic inefficacy was found to contribute to depression directly as well as indirectly through problem behaviors that inter- fered with future social and academic success (Bandura et al., 1999). Thus, a self‐defeating cycle was established wherein low self‐efficacy contributed to depression and problem behaviors, which in turn contributed to further per- ceived inefficacy and depression.

Bandura (1992) raises the interesting point that discrepancies between standards and performance can have varied effects that can lead to greater effort, to apathy, or to depression. What determines which effect will occur? According to Bandura, discrepancies between performance and standards lead to high motivation when people believe they have the efficacy to accom- plish the goal. Beliefs that the goals are beyond one’s capabilities because they are unrealistic will lead to abandoning the goal and perhaps to apathy but not to depression. For example, a person may say “This task is just too hard” and give up, perhaps becoming frustrated and angry but not depressed. Depression occurs when a person feels ineffective in relation to a goal but believes the goal to be reasonable; therefore, that person feels he or she must continue to strive to meet the standard. Thus, the effects of a discrepancy between standards and performance on effort and mood depend on self‐efficacy beliefs and on whether the standard is perceived to be reasonable, possible to achieve, and important.

The relationships between depressed mood and discrepancies between standards and performance constitute a two‐way street. Not only do these dis- crepancies create depressed emotions; depressed emotions contribute to the existence of these discrepancies. Evidence on this point comes from research that experimentally manipulates people’s moods (Cervone et al., 1994; Scott & Cervone, 2002), as well as work that compares depressed and nondepressed persons (Tillema et al., 2001). The findings indicate that when people are feel- ing bad, they tend to have more perfectionistic standards. When in a bad mood, routine outcomes seem less satisfactory; as a result, people are satisfied only with superior attainments. These higher standards for performance com- monly exceed the level of performance people think they actually can attain (Cervone et al., 1994).

Self‐Efficacy and Health

One of the most active areas of social‐cognitive research has been that on the relation between self‐efficacy beliefs and health. The social‐cognitive theory of health promotion and disease prevention focuses on four structures previously noted: knowledge of health risks and benefits of different health practices, per- ceived self‐efficacy that one can control one’s health habits, outcome expectan- cies about the expected costs and benefits of different health practices, and health goals people set for themselves and strategies for realizing them (Bandura, 2004). Not surprisingly, self‐efficacy beliefs are the focus of much health‐related research. The results of this research can be easily summarized: Strong, positive “self‐efficacy beliefs are good for your health; conversely, weak and negative self‐efficacy beliefs are bad for your health (Schwarzer, 1992). Self‐efficacy beliefs affect health in two major ways: They affect health‐related behaviors and they impact physiological functioning (Contrada et al., 1990; Miller et al., 1996). Self‐efficacy beliefs affect both the likelihood of developing various illnesses and the process of recovery from illness (O’Leary, 1992).

Self‐efficacy beliefs have been related to various behaviors including ciga- rette smoking, alcohol use, and condom use with relation to pregnancy and AIDS. For example, perceptions of self‐efficacy to practice safer sexual behav- ior have been related to the probability of adopting safer sexual practices. Modeling, goal setting, and other techniques have been used to increase self‐ efficacy beliefs and thereby reduce risky behavior (O’Leary, 1992). Changes in self‐efficacy beliefs also have been found to be important to the process of recovery from illness. For example, in recovery from a heart attack, it is impor- tant to have an appropriate amount of physical activity. That is, sometimes individuals recovering from a heart attack may have unrealistically high self‐ efficacy beliefs and exercise beyond what is constructive for them. In these cases, patients must monitor their self‐efficacy beliefs to bring them into closer accord with reality and, correspondingly, to help them form healthier exercise patterns (Ewart, 1992).

Turning to the relation between self‐efficacy beliefs and bodily functioning, there is evidence that high self‐efficacy beliefs buffer the effects of stress and enhance the functioning of the body’s immune (disease‐fighting) system. There is evidence that excessive stress can impair the immune system, whereas reducing stress can enhance its functioning (O’Leary, 1990). In an experiment designed to examine the impact of perceived self‐efficacy for controlling stress- ors on the immune system, Bandura and his associates found that perceived self‐efficacy indeed enhanced immune system functioning (Wiedenfeld et al., 1990). In this research, subjects with a phobia (excessive fear of snakes) were tested under three conditions: a baseline control involving no exposure to a snake, a perceived self‐efficacy acquisition phase during which subjects were assisted in gaining a sense of coping efficacy, and a perceived maximal self‐ efficacy phase once they had developed a complete sense of coping efficacy. During these phases, a small amount of blood was drawn from the subjects and analyzed for the presence of cells that are known to help regulate the immune system. For example, the level of helper T cells, known to play a role in destroying cancerous cells and viruses, was measured. These analyses indi- cated that increases in self‐efficacy beliefs were associated with increases in enhanced immune system functioning, as evidenced, for example, by the increased level of helper T cells. Thus, although the effects of stress can be negative, the growth of perceived efficacy over stressors can have valuable adaptive properties at the level of immune system functioning.

Therapeutic Change: Modeling and Guided Mastery

Bringing about beneficial behavior change is a critical goal to Bandura and other social‐cognitivists. Bandura embraces this goal while warning that it should be pursued cautiously; therapeutic procedures should be applied clini- cally only after the basic mechanisms involved are understood and after the effects of the methods have been adequately tested.

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According to Bandura, the change process involves not only the acquisition of new patterns of thought and behavior but also their generalization and maintenance. The social‐cognitive view of therapy consequently emphasizes the importance of changes in the sense of efficacy. The treatment approach most emphasized by social‐cognitive theory is the acquisition of cognitive and behavioral competencies through modeling and guided mastery. In mode- ling, desired activities are demonstrated by various models who experience positive consequences, or at least no adverse consequences. Generally, the complex patterns of behavior to be learned are broken down into subskills and increasingly difficult subtasks so as to ensure optimal progress. In guided mas- tery, the individual not only views a model performing beneficial behaviors, but clients also are assisted in performing the behaviors themselves. In social‐ cognitive theory, the firsthand experience of behavioral success is expected to produce the most rapid increases in self‐efficacy and performance. In sum, in contrast with therapeutic approaches that emphasize verbal communication, social‐cognitive theory prescribes mastery experiences as the principal vehicle of personal change (Bandura, 1997).

Much research on therapeutic modeling and guided participation has been carried out, beginning with work by Bandura and colleagues on the problem of snake phobias (Bandura, 1977). A small percentage of the population suf- fers from an extreme, irrational fear of snakes that can interfere with their daily life. Bandura hypothesized that therapeutic treatments would help people to overcome their fears only if these treatments increased people’s self‐ perceptions of their personal capability to cope with the fear‐inducing situation. In other words, the hypothesized psychological mechanism that is key to change is perceived self‐efficacy.

Bandura and colleagues tested this hypothesis through their microanalytic research strategy. They conducted an experiment in which chronic snake pho- bics were assigned to one of three conditions: participant modeling (the thera- pist models the threatening activities and the subjects gradually perform the tasks, with therapist assistance, until they can be performed alone), modeling (the subjects observe the therapist perform the tasks but do not engage in them), and a control condition (Bandura et al., 1977). Both before and after these conditions, the subjects were tested on a Behavioral Avoidance Test (BAT), consisting of 29 performance tasks requiring increasingly threatening interactions with a red‐tailed boa constrictor. The final task involved letting the snake crawl in their laps while holding their hands at their sides. To deter- mine the generality of change, subjects were also tested after treatment with a dissimilar threat—a corn snake. To test the role of perceived self‐efficacy, the researchers conducted a highly detailed assessment in which they measured snake phobics’ perceived self‐efficacy for performing each of a series of increas- ingly challenging behaviors with a snake (e.g., walking to within 5 ft of a snake, touching a snake, picking up a snake, etc.). The self‐efficacy assessments were taken before treatment, after treatment but before the second administration of the BAT, following the second administration of the BAT, and again 1 month following completion of treatment.

The results indicated that, as expected, participant modeling produced the strongest changes in behavior. More important for the study of perceived self‐ efficacy, changes in self‐efficacy perceptions and changes in behavior were extremely closely related. This was true at both the between‐group level

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(i.e., one experimental group vs another) and the within‐group level (i.e., one individual versus another, within the same experimental condition). At the between‐group level, the groups that achieved the greatest changes in self‐ efficacy perceptions also achieved the greatest changes in behavior. At the individual level, self‐efficacy judgments (before the second BAT) were uniformly accurate predictors of performance; that is, strong self‐efficacy judgments were associated with higher probabilities of successful task performance. The self‐efficacy/behavior relations were remarkably large; Bandura and colleagues (1977) report a correlation of 0.84 between level of self‐efficacy and subse- quent approach behavior. Self‐efficacy expectations were even better predic- tors of future performance than was past performance! Follow‐up data indicated that the subjects not only maintained their gains in self‐efficacy and approach behavior but also achieved further improvements. In sum, the data supported the utility of guided participation and the social‐cognitive view that treatments improve performance because they raise expectations of personal efficacy (also see Bandura & Adams, 1977; Bandura et al., 1977; Bandura et al., 1982; Williams, 1992).

This social‐cognitive approach subsequently has been used in the treatment of a wide variety of difficulties. For example, studies have demonstrated the utility of developing coping skills and increased self‐efficacy in handling test anxiety (Smith, 1989) and of vulnerability to assault in women (Ozer & Bandura, 1990; Weitlauf et al., 2001). In the latter case, women who partici- pated in a modeling program in which they mastered the physical skills needed to defend themselves against unarmed sexual assailants gained increased free- dom of action and decreased avoidant behavior. Fundamental to all of these studies is the experience of mastery that leads to a therapeutic increase in perceived self‐efficacy.

It is important to determine whether positive effects of therapy endure and generalize to multiple aspects of a person’s functioning. Skeptics of modeling and guided mastery approaches might expect to see little evidence of enduring change or of generalization beyond, for example, the specific phobia treated. However, research suggests that the effects often are enduring and transfer to self‐efficacy beliefs in other areas as well (Cervone & Scott, 1995; Williams, 1992). Bandura describes such effects as follows:

Psychological treatments have traditionally attempted to change human behavior by talk. In the sociocognitive view, human functioning can be enhanced more dependably and fundamentally by mastery experiences than by conversation. In translating this notion to therapeutic practice for phobic disorders, my students and I evolved a powerful guided mastery treatment. It eradicates phobic behavior and biochemical stress reactions, eliminates phobic ruminations and recurrent nightmares, and creates positive attitudes toward formerly dreaded threats. These striking changes are achieved by everyone in a brief period. The changes endure. In follow‐up assessments, we discovered that the participants not only maintained their therapeutic gains, but made notable improvements in domains of functioning quite unrelated to the treated dysfunction. “Shoda et al. (2013) has initiated an effort to directly translate the CAPS theoretical system into the therapeutic situation, an effort that fits within the federal government’s emphasis on research programs that translate basic sci- ence into clinical practice. The focus of this program is the identification of the nature of situations that a client experiences as highly stressful and the psy- chological reactions they trigger. To obtain a stress vulnerability signature, the client is asked to make a daily diary of ratings of stressful situations and the situational characteristics of them. Note the emphasis on situations that are specific to the individual client, in particular the psychological situation, a procedure that is termed the highly repeated within person (HRWP) approach. In keeping with the CAPS approach, rather than an emphasis on generally stressful situations or mean levels of stress for the individual, it is the situa- tional variability within the individual that is of interest. Whereas one client may be vulnerable to feeling excluded, another may be vulnerable to feeling irritated, and a third to feeling he or she has let others down.

In addition to the mapping of the stress vulnerability signature, there is an assessment of maladaptive coping strategies. Illustrative of such strategies are blaming the self or others, avoidance, and wishful thinking. Again, these are assessed in terms of the individual client rather than some general emphasis on maladaptive strategies. Following assessment of situations and strategies, a stress management program is introduced, called the cognitive–affective stress management training (C‐ASMT) program. This is a six‐session interven- tion program that targets the maladaptive cognitions through procedures such as cognitive restructuring and relaxation. For example, the client may be instructed to consider statements to the self such as “What is the worst possi- ble outcome? How likely is this?” and to apply relaxation procedures that have been taught in the sessions. In other words, the focus is on altering specific problematic cognitions and increasing specific coping skills.

Although to date only applied to relatively few individual clients, the results are described as encouraging and are viewed as consistent both with the CAPS theory and Bandura’s emphasis on the importance of enhanced self‐efficacy as fundamental to psychological well‐being.

Having considered the direct clinical applications of social‐cognitive theory, we can turn to some of the more general clinical applications that follow from current cognitive approaches.

The work of cognitively oriented psychologists has been very important in the area of stress, coping, and health (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004). Lazarus, whose work has been very influential in this area, suggests that psychological stress depends on cognitions relating to the person and the environment (Lazarus, 1990). In this cognitive approach to stress and coping, stress is viewed as occurring when the person views circumstances as taxing or exceed- ing his or her resources and endangering well‐being. Involved in this approach are two stages of cognitive appraisal. In primary appraisal, the person evalu- ates whether there is anything at stake in the encounter, whether there is a threat or danger. For example, is there potential harm or benefit to self‐esteem? Is one’s personal health or that of a loved one at risk? In secondary appraisal,

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the person evaluates what, if anything, can be done to overcome harm, prevent harm, or improve the prospects for benefit. In other words, secondary appraisal involves an evaluation of the person’s resources to cope with the potential harm or benefit evaluated in the stage of primary appraisal.

There are different ways of coping with any given situation. A key distinc- tion is one that differentiates between problem‐focused coping, which refers to attempts to cope by altering features of a stressful situation, and emotion‐focused coping, which refers to coping in which an individual strives to improve his or her internal emotional state, for example, by emo- tional distancing or the seeking of social support. Research by Folkman, Lazarus, and colleagues has developed a questionnaire to assess coping, the Ways of Coping Scale, and has explored the health implications of different coping strategies.

This research suggests the following conclusions (Folkman et al., 1986; Lazarus, 1993):

1. There is evidence of both stability and variability in the methods indi- viduals use to cope with stressful situations. Although the use of some coping methods appears to be influenced by personality factors, the use of many coping methods appears to be strongly influenced by the situ- ational context.

2. In general, the greater the reported level of stress and efforts to cope, the poorer the physical health and the greater the likelihood of psychologi- cal symptoms. In contrast, the greater the sense of mastery, the better is the physical and psychological health.

3. Although the value of a particular form of coping depends on the con- text in which it is used, in general, planful problem solving (“I made a plan of action and followed it” or “Just concentrate on the next step”) is a more adaptive form of coping than escape avoidance (“I hoped a mira- cle would happen” or “I tried to reduce tension by eating, drinking, or using drugs”) or confrontative coping (“I let my feelings out somehow” or “I expressed anger to those who caused the problem”).

In addition to this conceptual analysis of stress and coping, the therapist requires practical procedures to reduce stress. Such a procedure has been developed by Meichenbaum (1995), whose stress inoculation training proce- dure is based on a cognitive view of stress. In accord with Lazarus’s view, Meichenbaum suggests that stress be viewed in cognitive terms; that is, stress involves cognitive appraisals, and individuals under stress often have a variety of self‐defeating and interfering thoughts. In addition, such self‐defeating cog- nitions and related behaviors have a built‐in self‐confirmatory component (e.g., people get others to treat them in an overprotective way). Finally, events are perceived and recalled in ways that are consistent with a negative bias. Meichenbaum’s stress inoculation procedure is designed to help individuals cope better with stress and is seen as analogous to medical inoculation against biological disease.

Stress inoculation training involves teaching clients the cognitive nature of stress, followed by instruction in procedures to cope with stress and change faulty cognitions and, finally, training in the application of these procedures in “actual situations. In terms of the cognitive nature of stress, the effort is to have the client become aware of such negative, stress‐engendering, automatic thoughts as “It is such an effort to do anything” and “There is nothing I can do to control these thoughts or change the situation.” The important point here is that the person may not be aware of having these automatic thoughts and, thus, must be taught to be aware of them and their negative effects. In terms of coping procedures and correction of faulty cognitions, clients are taught relaxation as an active coping skill and taught cognitive strategies such as how to restruc- ture problems so that they appear more manageable. In addition, clients are taught problem‐solving strategies, such as how to define problems, generate possible alternative courses of action, evaluate the pros and cons of each pro- posed solution, and implement the most practicable and desirable one. Clients also are shown how to use coping self‐statements such as “I can do it,” “One step at time,” “Focus on the present; what is it I have to do?” “I can be pleased with the progress I’m making,” and “Keep trying; don’t expect perfection or immediate success.” Finally, through imagery rehearsal and practice in real‐ world situations clients learn how to feel comfortable with the use of these procedures. In imagery rehearsal, the client imagines various stressful situa- tions and the use of the coping skills and strategies. Practice involves role‐ playing and modeling involving the therapist as well as practice in real‐world situations.

The stress inoculation training procedure is active, focused, structured, and brief. It has been used with medical patients about to undergo surgery, with athletes to help them deal with the stress of competition, with rape victims to help them deal with the trauma of such assaults, and in the work environ- ment to teach workers more efficient coping strategies and to help worker– management teams consider organizational change.

ELLIS’S RATIONAL‐EMOTIVE THERAPY

Albert Ellis was a former psychoanalyst who developed a therapeutic system of personality change known as rational‐emotive therapy (RET) (Ellis, 1962, 1987; Ellis & Harper, 1975) or, equivalently, rational‐emotion behavior theory (REBT; e.g., Ellis & Tafrate, 1997). There are two primary theses behind Ellis’s work on psychological distress and its treatment.

The first thesis is that people do not respond emotionally to events in the world but to their beliefs about those events. Ellis conveys this idea simply, by suggesting an “ABC” of RET (Ellis, 1987). An activating (A) event may lead to a consequence (C) such as an emotional reaction. A person unfamiliar with Ellis’s analyses may think that the A caused the C, that is, that the activating event is the cause of the emotional consequence. But not so, according to Ellis. “We . . . create Beliefs (Bs) between A and C. Our Bs about A largely determine our response to it” (Ellis & Tafrate, 1997, p. 31). This first premise of RET, then, is identical to the central premise of the social‐cognitive approach to personality, namely, that people’s enduring belief systems are immediate deter- minants of their experiences and actions.

Ellis’s second thesis is more unique. It is his claim that the beliefs that cause psychological distress have a particular quality: They are irrational; that is, they are beliefs that no rational person would, upon reflection, wish to have because the beliefs are sure to bring about one’s own psychological distress.

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According to Ellis, then, the causes of psychological difficulties are irra- tional beliefs or irrational statements we make to ourselves: beliefs, for exam- ple, that we must do something, that we have to feel some way, and that other people always should treat us in a certain manner. Suppose a person thinks, “If good things happen, bad things must be on the way” or “If I express my needs, others will reject me.” These thoughts are irrational in that persons who think these things are dooming themselves to psychological distress.

Cognitive therapists often distinguish among alternative types of thinking that are maladaptive. The distinctions among them are not terribly important; nonetheless, listing a few can give you an idea of the type of negative thinking that Ellis and similar therapists wish to change in therapy:

Faulty reasoning. “I failed on this effort, so I must be incompetent.” “They didn’t respond the way I wanted them to, so they must not think much of me.”

Dysfunctional expectancies. “If something can go wrong for me, it will.” “Catastrophe is just around the corner.”

Negative self‐views. “I always tend to feel that others are better than me.” “Nothing I do ever turns out right.”

Maladaptive attributions. “I’m a poor test taker because I am a nervous person.” “When I win, it’s luck; when I lose, it’s me.”

Memory distortions. “Life is horrible now and always has been this way.” “I’ve never succeeded in anything.”

Maladaptive attention. “All I can think about is how horrible it will be if I fail.” “It’s better not to think about things; there’s nothing you can do anyway.”

Self‐defeating strategies. “I’ll put myself down before others do.” “I’ll reject others before they reject me and see if people still like me.”

Ellis’s therapy techniques are designed to force people to reflect on their own thinking. Rational‐emotion therapists try to make people aware of the irrationality of their own thoughts, so that they can replace these thoughts with calm, rational thinking. Therapists use a variety of techniques—logic, “argument, persuasion, ridicule, humor—in an effort to change the irrational

beliefs that cause psychological distress.

BECK’S COGNITIVE THERAPY FOR DEPRESSION

Like Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck is a former psychoanalyst who became disen- chanted with psychoanalytic techniques and gradually developed a cognitive approach to therapy. His therapy is best known for its relevance to the treat- ment of depression, but it has relevance to a wider variety of psychological disorders. According to Beck (1987), psychological difficulties are due to auto- matic thoughts, dysfunctional assumptions, and negative self‐statements.

The Cognitive Triad of Depression

Beck’s cognitive model of depression emphasizes that a depressed person sys- tematically misevaluates ongoing and past experiences, leading to views of the self as a loser, the world as frustrating, and the future as bleak. These three negative views are known as the cognitive triad and include negative views of the self such as “I am inadequate, undesirable, worthless,” negative views of the world such as “The world makes too many demands on me and life repre- sents constant defeat,” and negative views of the future such as “Life will always involve the suffering and deprivation it has for me now.” In addition, a depressed person is prone to faulty information processing, such as in magni- fying everyday difficulties into disasters and overgeneralizing from a single instance of rejection to the belief that “Nobody likes me.” It is these think- ing problems, these negative schemas, and cognitive errors that cause depression.

Research on Faulty Cognitions

Considerable research has examined whether faulty cognitions are related to symptoms of depression, as Beck’s theory anticipates. Much research in the 1980s and 1990s provided evidence that was consistent with Beck’s model (Segal & Dobson, 1992). Compared to nondepressed individuals, depressed persons appeared to focus more on themselves (Wood et al., 1990), to have more accessible negative self‐constructs (Bargh & Tota, 1988; Strauman, 1990), and to have a bias toward pessimism rather than optimism, particularly in relation to the self (Epstein, 1992; Taylor, 1989).

Much of the early research on cognition and depression employed “concur- rent” research designs, that is, research plans in which cognitions and depres- sive symptoms are measured at the same time. Concurrent designs have a big drawback: It is hard to know if relations between cognition and depression reflect (1) the influence of cognition on depression (as Beck and other cogni- tive theorists predict), (2) the influence of depressed emotions on cognition, or (3) the influence of some third factor that affects both cognition and depres- sion (e.g., negative life events that affect people’s beliefs and emotional experi- ences). Cognitive theories can be evaluated more convincingly through the use of “prospective” research designs, that is, research in which cognitive factors are measured at one point in time and are used to predict the development of depressive symptoms at later times.

430 CHAPTER 13 SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE THEORY

Fortunately, in recent years, investigators have turned to prospective research designs. For example, Hankin et al. (2005) asked participants, at the outset of a study, to complete a questionnaire that measured their tendencies to engage in negative patterns of thinking that were thought to predispose per- sons to becoming depressed. They then asked these same research participants to complete a daily diary for a period of 35 days. Individual differences in the tendency to thinking negatively, as assessed at the outset of the study, pre- dicted the subsequent occurrence of depressive symptoms; that is, the cogni- tive factor predicted depressive symptoms during the following 35 days during which people completed the diary (Hankin et al., 2005).

One of the puzzling questions for psychologists who emphasize the role of faulty cognitions in depression is the following: What happens to the faulty cog- nitions when the depression has lifted? This question is important because once a person has experienced a serious depression, the tendency for that person is to fall into a relapse or another depression. Why should this be the case if the faulty cognitions are gone? There is some evidence that the faulty cognitions that make the person vulnerable to depression are latent and become manifest only under conditions of stress (Alloy et al., 1999). For example, people vulnerable to depres- sion may retain negative attitudes toward the self that only become manifest and operational when they experience blows to their self‐esteem. The task of therapy, then, is to affect fundamental change in these cognitions as well as to make the person aware of the conditions under which they become operational.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy of depression is designed to identify and correct distorted conceptualizations and dysfunctional beliefs (Beck, 1993; Brewin, 1996). Therapy generally consists of 15–25 sessions at weekly intervals. The approach is described as involving highly specific learning experiences designed to teach the patient to monitor negative, automatic thoughts; to recognize how these thoughts lead to problematic feelings and behaviors; to examine the evidence for and against these thoughts; and to substitute more reality‐oriented inter- pretations for these biased cognitions. The therapist helps the patient to see that interpretations of events lead to depressed feelings. For example, the fol- lowing exchange between the therapist (T) and the patient (P) might occur:

P: I get depressed when things go wrong, like when I fail a test. T: How can failing a test make you depressed? P: Well, if I fail, I’ll never get into law school. T: So failing the test means a lot to you. But if failing a test could drive

people into clinical depression, wouldn’t you expect everyone who failed the test to have a depression? Did everyone who failed get depressed enough to require treatment?

P: No, but it depends on how important the test was to the person. T: Right, and who decides the importance? P: I do.

SOURCE: Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979, p. 146.

In addition to the examination of beliefs for their logic, validity, and adaptiveness, behavioral assignments are used to help the patient test certain

maladaptive cognitions and assumptions. This may involve the assignment of activities designed to result in success and pleasure. In general, the therapy focuses on specific target cognitions that are seen as contributing to the depres- sion. Beck contrasts cognitive therapy with traditional analytic therapy in terms of the therapist’s being continuously active in structuring the therapy, in the focus on the here and now, and in the emphasis on conscious factors.

Beck’s cognitive therapy has been expanded to include the treatment of other psychological difficulties, including anxiety, personality disorders, drug abuse, and marital difficulties (Beck, 1993). The idea is that each difficulty is associated with a distinctive pattern of beliefs. Whereas in depression the beliefs concern failure and self‐worth, in anxiety, for example, they concern danger. There is evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive therapy (Antonuccio et al., 1997). Although the distinctive therapeutic features of cognitive therapy and whether changes in beliefs are the key therapeutic ingredients remain to be determined (Dobson & Shaw, 1995), evidence suggests that therapeutic change indeed follows cognitive change (Tang & De Rubeis, 1999a, 1999b).

Twenty years ago, Jim was assessed from various theoretical points of view: psy- choanalytic, phenomenological, personal construct, and trait. At the time, social‐ cognitive theory was just beginning to evolve, and thus, he was not considered from this standpoint. Later, however, it was possible to gather at least some data from this theoretical standpoint as well. Although comparisons with earlier data may be problematic because of the time lapse, we can gain at least some insight into Jim’s personality from this theoretical point of view. We do so by considering Jim’s goals, reinforcers he experiences, and his self‐efficacy beliefs.

Jim was asked about his goals for the immediate future and for the long‐ range future. He felt that his immediate and long‐term goals were pretty much the same: (1) getting to know his son and being a good parent, (2) becoming more accepting and less critical of his wife and others, and (3) feeling good about his professional work as a consultant. Generally, he feels that there is a good chance of achieving these goals but is guarded in that estimate, with some uncertainty about just how much he will be able to “get out of myself” and thereby be more able to give to his wife and child.

Jim also was asked about positive and aversive reinforcers, things that were important to him that he found rewarding or unpleasant. Concerning positive reinforcers, Jim reported that money was “a biggie.” In addition, he empha- sized time with loved ones, the glamor of going to an opening night, and gener- ally going to the theater or movies. He had a difficult time thinking of aversive reinforcers. He described writing as a struggle and then noted, “I’m having trouble with this.”

Jim also discussed another social‐cognitive variable: his competencies or skills (both intellectual and social). He reported that he considered himself to be very bright and functioning at a very high intellectual level. He felt that he writes well from the standpoint of a clear, organized presentation, but he had not written anything that is innovative or creative. Jim also felt that he was very skilled socially: “I do it naturally, easily, well. I can pull off anything and have a lot of confidence in myself socially. I am at ease with both men and women, in both professional and social contexts.” The one social concern”

“noted was his constant struggle with “how egocentric I should be, how personally to take things.” He felt that sometimes he takes things too personally: “My security is based on how I’m doing with others. I put a lot of energy into friend- ships, and when I’m relating well, I feel good.”

In terms of self‐efficacy beliefs, Jim had many positive views of himself. He believes that he does most things well; he is a good athlete, a competent con- sultant, bright, and socially skilled. Does he have areas of low self‐efficacy? Jim mentioned three: that he does not genuinely accept his wife, a difficulty “getting out of myself so that I can be genuinely devoted to others,” and, third, creativity—“I know I’m not good at being creative, so I don’t try it.”

It also was informative to consider irrational beliefs, dysfunctional thoughts, and cognitive distortions. Jim described his tendency to overpersonalize: “This is a problem of mine. If someone doesn’t call, I attribute it to a feeling state in relation to me. I can feel terribly injured at times.” In his responses to the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (Hollon & Kendall, 1980), he reported hav- ing the following thoughts frequently: “I’ve let people down,” “I wish I were a better person,” “I’m disappointed in myself,” and “I can’t stand this.” These frequent thoughts have to do with his not being as loving or generous as he would like, his being very demanding of himself professionally and in athlet- ics, his obsession about things that might go wrong, and his intolerance of things not going his way. For example, he cannot stand to be in traffic and will say “I can’t stand this. This is intolerable.” Jim did not think much of Ellis’s work, and an interview suggested that he didn’t have many irrational beliefs, yet on a questionnaire, he checked four out of nine items as frequent thoughts of his: “I must have love or approval”; “When people act badly, I blame them”; “I tend to view it as a catastrophe when I get seriously frustrated or feel rejected”; and “I tend to get preoccupied with things that seem fearsome.” He also described his tendency to catastrophize if he is going to be late for a movie: “It’s a calamity if I’m going to be one minute late. It becomes a life and death emergency. I go through red lights, honk the horn, and pound on the wheel.” This is in contrast to his own tendency to be at least a few minutes late for virtually all appointments, though rarely by more than a few minutes.

In some ways, the social‐cognitive data on Jim are more limited than those associated with the previous theories of personality. We learn about important aspects of Jim’s life, but clearly, there also are major gaps. There are two reasons for this. First, only a limited amount of time was available for assessment. Second, and perhaps more important, social‐cognitive theorists have not devel- oped comprehensive personality assessment tests; only recently have social‐ cognitive investigators turned their attention explicitly to questions of personality assessment (Cervone et al., 2001). In part, the previous lack of attention reflected social‐cognitive theory’s conviction that systematic research and the testing of hypotheses, rather than the in‐depth study of individuals, are critical to building a scientifically valid personality theory. It perhaps also reflected the social‐ cognitive criticism of traditional approaches to assessment that emphasize broad personality consistencies across many domains. In this regard, it is inter- esting that Jim had difficulty articulating differences in his functioning in various areas. In this sense, he functions much more like a traditional personality theorist than like a social‐cognitive theorist, although with further questioning he probably would have been able to specify ways in which his goals, reinforcers, competencies, and self‐efficacy beliefs varied from context to context.

From a social‐cognitive perspective, what can be said about Jim as he approaches midlife? We see that in general Jim has a strong sense of self‐efficacy in relation to intellectual and social skills, though he feels less efficacious in rela- tion to creative thought and the ability to be loving, generous, and giving to people who are dear to him. He values money and financial success but has set- tled more on family intimacy and the quality of his work as a consultant as goals for the future. He has a strong sense of individual responsibility and belief in personal control over events. There is a streak of pessimism and depression to him. He is bothered by concerns about the approval of others, by his perfection- ism and impatience, and by a tendency to worry about things. He tends to be self‐controlled in coping with stress rather than avoiding problems or escaping from them. Generally, he sees himself as a competent person and is guardedly optimistic about his chances of achieving his goals in the future.

SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION: THE DATABASE

We turn now to a critical evaluation of this last of the personality theories we present, social‐cognitive theory (Table 13.1). As in our prior evaluations, we first assess the quality of the scientific observations that furnish the database on which the theory rests.

On this criterion, social‐cognitive theory excels. Bandura, Mischel, and col- leagues have built their theory on a systematic accumulation of objective scien- tific evidence. A particularly outstanding feature of this database is its diversity. To test claims that social‐cognitive processes causally influence personality functioning, social‐cognitivists have run controlled laboratory experiments. To study the development of individual differences, they have run correlational studies and employed longitudinal methods. To study behavior change, they have conducted clinical outcome studies. The participants in their studies have been diverse: children, adolescents, and adults; people suffering from psycho- logical distress; and high‐functioning members of the population at large. They have employed a variety of research methods: self‐report questionnaires,

Table 13.1 Summary of Strengths and Limitations of Social‐Cognitive Theory

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Strengths

1. Has impressive research record 2. Considers important phenomena

3. Shows consistent development and elaboration as a theory.

4. Focuses attention on important theoretical issues.

Limitations

1. Is not a systematic, unified theory 2. Contains potential problems associated

with the use of verbal self‐report

3. Requires more exploration and elaboration as a theory development in certain areas (e.g., motivation, affect, system properties of personality organization)

4. Provides findings concerning therapy theoretical issues that are tentative rather than conclusive

434 CHAPTER 13 SOCIAL‐COGNITIVE THEORY

Social‐Cognitive Theory at a Glance

Theorist or Theory

Social‐cognitive theory

Structure

Competencies, beliefs, goals, evaluative standards

Process

Cognitive and affective processing system functions in reciprocal interaction with the social environment, especially in observational learning, self‐ regulated motivation, and self‐control

parental and peer reports of personality, direct observations of behavior in natural settings, and measures of cognitive processes in the laboratory.

Of all the approaches to personality, social‐cognitive theory and the trait theories are built on the largest and most systematic sets of scientific evidence. This surely is why they long have been the two most influential frameworks in modern personality science (Cervone, 1991).

THEORY: SYSTEMATIC?

Social‐cognitive theory has many strengths. But its ability to provide a theory that is systematic—that is, in which all theoretical elements are coherently interrelated—is not one of them. Social‐cognitive theory does not provide an overarching network of assumptions that coherently ties together all elements of the theoretical perspective. The approach sometimes functions more as a strategy or framework for studying personality than a fully specified theory.

The absence of a fully complete and systematic theory becomes evident if one imagines the task of comprehensively assessing personality from a social‐cognitive perspective. The theory indicates the sort of things one should assess: beliefs about the self, including self‐efficacy beliefs, goals and standards for behavior, competencies, and so forth. But there is no simple yet comprehen- sive assessment scheme of the type provided by the trait theories. (Of course, the social‐cognitive theorist would argue that the trait theorists’ schemes are too simple and thus would reject their approach.) This is because there is no simple yet comprehensive theoretical depiction of the whole person.

Recent years have seen greater efforts at systematization, including work that endeavors to specify the overall nature, or “architecture,” of social‐cognitive personality systems (Cervone, 2004; see Chapter 14).

THEORY: TESTABLE?

Social‐cognitive theorists unquestionably have succeeded in providing a per- sonality theory that is testable. This is evident if one reflects on the research studies we have reviewed in the past two chapters. They could have come out differently; the social‐cognitive hypotheses could have been proven wrong. It is possible that participant modeling would not have been such a success, or that attentional factors would not have been so important to delay of gratifica- tion, or that self‐efficacy beliefs would have been unrelated to behavior once one controlled for “third variables.” In these and numerous other cases, “social‐cognitive theorists defined their constructs with clarity and provided measurement tools and experimental methods that enabled their ideas to be tested. On this criterion, social‐cognitive theory gets high marks.

THEORY: COMPREHENSIVE?

Social‐cognitive theory is quite comprehensive. Theorists have addressed questions of motivation, development, self‐concept, self‐control, and behavioral change. The approach even addresses a topic that is skipped in most other person- ality theories: the learning of social skills and other behavioral competencies.

Yet there also are ways in which social‐cognitive theory lacks comprehensive- ness. Some aspects of the human experience simply have received little attention from social‐cognitive theorists. For example, biological forces of maturation would appear important to people’s experiences of the world; sexual feelings in adolescence or a desire for parenting in adulthood may reflect biological rather than social and cognitive features of personality. But these maturational factors receive relatively little formal attention in social‐cognitive theory. Inherited temperament may interact with social experience in the development of social‐ cognitive systems, but these interactions have received less attention in research than they deserve. Other important types of experience—for example, mental conflict, feelings of alienation or anomie, existential concerns about death— similarly have not been systematically targeted in social‐cognitive theorizing. Social‐cognitive theory has expanded gradually over the years. Expansions that include topics such as those listed here are a challenge for future work.

APPLICATIONS

Social‐cognitive theorists have succeeded admirably in applying their theory to the solution of social problems and the alleviation of psychological distress. Indeed, no personality theory exceeds the social‐cognitive theorists’ level of success on this point. Both Bandura and Mischel were trained as clinicians, and this surely heightened their awareness of the need to apply basic theory to practical concerns.

Two features contribute greatly to social‐cognitive theorists’ success in relat- ing theory to practice. One is that they did not artificially separate “basic” and “clinical” research. Instead, they pursued basic research questions in clinical contexts; for example, the first experimental tests of self‐efficacy theory were done in a clinical setting (with snake phobics). The other is that the social‐ cognitive theorists wrote books that were central to the professional training of many other psychologists who, in turn, advanced psychological applications. “Bandura’s (1969) volume on behavior therapy was used as a textbook by many clinicians who advanced cognitive‐behavioral therapy in the last third of the 20th century. Mischel’s (1968) volume on personality assessment and prediction taught applied psychologists lessons about the limitations of behavioral predic- tions based on traditional psychodynamic or trait‐theoretic assessments.

MAJOR Social‐cognitive theory is a current favorite among academic personality psychologists. Many clinicians also would label themselves social‐cognitive psychologists. The two main social‐cognitive theorists, Bandura and Mischel, are two of the most eminent figures to be found in any branch of the psycho- logical sciences. Numerous factors have contributed to the success of the approach. Some were cited in this chapter: its large and systematic database, the testability of its formulations, and the applicability of its theoretical prin- ciples. Yet one last meritorious feature should be noted. It is that social‐cognitive theorists have been open to change. They have incorporated ongoing scientific advances into their theory, modifying features of the work as facts dictate. A comparison of Social Learning and Personality Development (1963) by Bandura and Walters with the latest formulations of social‐cognitive theory (Bandura, 2006; Mischel & Shoda, 2008) testifies to the rapid evolution of the approach. The early work is described by the authors themselves as a “socio‐ behavioristic approach” (Bandura & Walters, 1963, p. 1). The recent work is miles from behaviorism, with theorists now explicating the uniquely human cognitive capabilities that are the basis of human agency. We anticipate that social‐cognitive theory will continue to evolve in the years ahead.”

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