Running head: SOCIAL COGNITIVE LEARNING 1

Abigail Floriano-Monarrez

Rotter and Mischel Social Cognitive Learning Theory

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Social Cognitive Learning

Rotter and Mischel’s theory focus on personality being a process and how a person

interprets the world. They explained that social factors highly influence what a person does, and

they also emphasized that cognition was essential in understanding people’s selection of

information and how they interpret it. They are both social cognitive theorists. This paper will

touch on both Rotter and Mischel’s theory.

Rotter’s theory starts with knowing that cognitions are essential to mentally processing

information and understanding the information just received. Having to focus on one self-

interpretations depending on one’s emotions and behaviors. He mentioned that the behavioral

potential had two parts to it: the expectancy and the reinforcement. The expectancy refers to

predicting what will occur, for example if someone had studied for a test in the past and passed

the exam they studied for, they are likely to predict that outcome. Reinforcement is how much it

matters to the person in a psychological situation, for example they studied the test, passed, and

that being a positive outcome would make them more likely to repeat a certain action.

An important idea that comes out of Rotter’s theory is the Locus of control. Described as

an individual’s idea that they can control/direct experiences and incidents that can affect their

life. There are two parts to the locus of control: internal and external. Internal is when there is

relationship with effort and the outcome. The more a person is aware that they are responsible

for their own experiences when they have control over their effort. External is when it is believed

that the reason something had a certain outcome was due to luck, teacher was not helpful, or any

other outside factor. Rotter also had another aspect to his theory, maladaptive behaviors.

Maladaptive behaviors can be seen when looking at one’s goals and their expectancies, setting

goals too high “I’ll do it right every time” for example. Arogundade (2010) had a study in which
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teachers in Queensland, when frustrated, had tons of work pressure, and/or emotional exhaustion

were tested how they moderated their locus of control and where they pointed their frustration.

Those who had an external locus of control would show behaviors that in turn did not help them

at all, very counterproductive and blaming outside factors (Arogundade,2010).

Mischel’s theory starts with the idea of processes in situations which interact with

personal dispositions, this means that if a person is really assertive, yes that will come out in

certain situations but in other circumstances that assertiveness can be toned down or not shown

at all, a person brings more than a disposition to a situation. A person is often consistent with

this and the changes can be very predictable.

Mischel also had a system that went by the name CAPS (cognitive affective personality

system), it has five cognitive affective units which are psychological, physiological, and social

aspects of a person that causes them to interact with their surroundings in a predictable way

(pattern-like). Mischel (1998) describes it being that the five units being part of a personality

system that is a network of many things be related to one another. CAPS is seen to be unique in

each person and some aspects of it are deactivated while other parts of it are actively working

(Mischel, 1998). The five units being encoding, competencies, expectancies/beliefs,

goals/values, and affective responses (emotionality). Encoding is how a person takes in

information and processes it. Competencies is someone knowing what she/he cannot do, this unit

tends to be stable. Expectancies/beliefs come from experiences and the interpretations of them a

person may have, this kind of behavior is only controlled by the person that has experienced a

situation and has interpreted it a certain way. Goals/values are ideas that are taken to every

situation, consistent. Affective responses are a person’s tendency to act a certain way towards a
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situation. Mischel and Rotter both believed that personality was a process and cognition was

essential to understanding a person’s motives.

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References

Arogundade, O., & Itua, O. (2010). LOCUS OF CONTROL AND SELF-ESTEEM AS

PREDICTORS OF TEACHERS' FRUSTRATION IN LAGOS STATE SECONDARY

SCHOOLS. Ife Psychologia, 18(2), 339-351.

Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1998). Reconciling processing dynamics and personality

dispositions. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 229-58.