Theories of Personality

Rotter & Mischel

Outline
- Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory
- Biography of Julian Rotter
- Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory
- Predicting Specific Behaviors
- Predicting General Behaviors
- Maladaptive Behavior
- Pschotheraphy
Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory
- Assumes cognitive factors help shape how people will react to
environmental forces.
- Expectations of future events are prime determinants of performance.
- Focus on interaction of people with meaningful environments.
- Examination of consistency of inconsistency of personality.
Biography of Rotter
- He was born in Brooklyn in 1916
- In High School, he became familiar with writings of Freud and Adler
- In 1941, He received a PhD in clinical psychology from Indiana
University
- Published Social Learning and Clinical Psychology in 1954
- Moved to the University of Connecticut in 1963 and has remained
there since his retirement.
Introduction to Rotter’s Social Learning Theory

Rests on Five Hypotheses

- Humans interact with their meaningful environments
- Human Personality is learned
- Personality has a basic unity
- Motivation is goal directed
- People are capable of anticipating events
Predicting Specific Behaviors
● Rotter attempts to predict behavior.
● Four Variables:
○ Behavioral Potential (BP)
○ Expectancy
○ Reinforcement Value
○ Psychological Situation
Predicting Specific Behaviors

● Four Variables:
○ Behavioral Potential (BP)
■ is the possibility that particular response will occur at a given time and place.
Predicting Specific Behaviors

● Four Variables:
○ Expectancy
■ refers to a person’s expectation that some specific reinforcement or set of
reinforcements will occur in a given situation
Predicting Specific Behaviors

● Four Variables:
○ Reinforcement Value
■ which is the preference a person attaches to any reinforcement when the
probabilities for the occurrence of a number of different reinforcements are all
equal.
● Internal Reinforcement
● External Reinforcement
Predicting Specific Behaviors

● Four Variables:
○ Psychological Situation - defined as that part of the external and internal world to
which a person is responding.
Basic Prediction Formula
● Consider the case of La Juan, an academically gifted college student who is
listening to a dull and lengthy lecture by one of her professors. To the internal
cues of boredom and the external cues of seeing slumbering classmates,
what is the likelihood that La Juan will respond by resting her head on the
desk in an attempt to sleep?
Predicting General Behaviors
● Generalized Expectations
● Needs
○ Categories of Needs:
■ Recognition – Status
■ Dominance
■ Independence
■ Protection/Dependency
■ Love & Affection
■ Physical Comfort
Need Components

● Need potential
○ refers to the possible occurrence of a set of functionally related behaviors directed toward
satisfying the same or similar goals.
■ Freedom of Movement - It
is one’s overall expectation of being
reinforced for performing those behaviors that are directed
toward satisfying some general need.
■ Need Value - is the degree to which she or he prefers one set of
reinforcements to another
General Prediction Formula
Internal and External Control of
Reinforcement - Locus
of control
● At the core of Rotter’s social learning theory is the notion that reinforcement does not
automatically stamp in behaviors but that people have the ability to see a causal
connection between their own behavior and the occurrence of the reinforcer

● People strive to reach their goals because they have a generalized expectancy that
such strivings will be successful.

>>Internal Control
>>External Control
Interpersonal Trust Scale
How to Measure I-E Control?
• To assess internal and external control of reinforcement, or locus of control,
Rotter (1966) developed the Internal-External Control Scale, basing it on the
doctoral dissertations of two of his students, E. Jerry Phares (1955) and
William H. James (1957)
• The I-E Scale attempts to measure the degree to which people perceive a
causal relationship between their own efforts and environmental
consequences.
• People who score high on internal control generally believe that the source
of control resides within themselves and that they exercise a high level of
personal control in most situations.
• People who score high on external control generally believe that their life is
largely controlled by forces outside themselves, such as chance, destiny, or the
behavior of other people
Maladaptive Behavior
- Rotter defined maladaptive behavior as any persistent behavior that fails to
move a person closer to a desired goal
- Combination of high need values and low freedom of movement

* That is, unrealistically high goals in combination with low ability to achieve
them

* Characterized by unrealistic goals, inappropriate behaviors, inadequate

skills or unreasonably low expectancies of executing behavior
Psychotherapy
- Bring Freedom of Movement and Need Value into Haromony
- Changing Goals
* The role of the therapist
1. Help patients understand the faulty nature of their goals
2. Teach them ways to strive toward realistic goals and eliminating Low
Expectancies
* The role of the therapist
1. Teach effective problem solving
2. Help client to make distinction between past and present and teach
assertiveness
Concept of Humanity
- Free Choice over Determinism
- Teleology over Causality
- Conscious over Unconscious
- Social factors over Biology
- Uniqueness over Similarity
- Rotter’s view is slightly more optimistic whereas Mischel’s is about in the
middle.