MEP - Behaviorism and Social Cognitive Theories of Personality Lesson

Learning Target:

  • Compare and contrast the behaviorist and social cognitive theories of personality with other theories of personality.

AP psychology course and exam description, effective fall 2020. (n.d.). https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-psychology-course-and-exam-description.pdf

Behavioral and Biological Theories of Personality

Behavioral Theory

Please take a minute to watch the video below to learn about Behavioral Theory.

Biological Theory

Watch the video below to learn more about Biological Theory.

The Social-Cognitive Perspective

In Social-Cognitive Theory, the interaction between behavior, environment, and personal factors is called reciprocal determinism.The Social-Cognitive Theory of personality emphasizes the interaction between a person and their situation. It stresses the importance of our conscious thought processes, self-regulation, and the impact of situational influences. The idea is that a person's thought processes are different in different situations, thus influencing his/her actions. We look to the environment to observe and are shaped by what we see (Bandura is back!) in terms of the consequences of behavior.

The interaction between behavior, environment and personal factors is called reciprocal determinism (the idea that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment). Each factor both influences and is influenced by the other factors. Our personalities are shaped by how we interpret and react to events, thus creating future situations we react to.

Personal Control

Personal control describes our sense of controlling the environment and our perception of how much it is controlling us. We study it by assessing the correlation between people's feelings of control, behavior, and achievements. We also create experiments to assess personal control by raising and lowering people's levels of control and noting the effects. Julian Rotter and Martin Seligman are key names associated with the study of personal control.

Psychologist Julian Rotter observed people in therapy and noticed that different people, given identical conditions for learning, learn different things. Some respond to reinforcement, while others do not. He found that some saw a direct correlation between their behavior and the rewards and punishments they were receiving.

Rotter believed there was indeed a link between behaviors and reinforcers. He coined the term locus of control to describe this link. A person with an internal locus of control sees a strong link between their behavior and reinforcement. They feel a sense of control over the environment and achieve more, have better health, are less depressed, and experience social success. An external locus of control describes a situation in which a person does not see much of a link between their behavior and what happens to them. They experience a sense of helplessness as they feel like they have no control over the environment. An external locus of control is characterized by feelings of low self-esteem, stress, and no control over your fate.

External locus of control can lead to a state of learned helplessness (a phenomenon in which exposure to inescapable and uncontrollable aversive events produces passive behavior). American psychologist Martin Seligman studied learned helplessness and found that when we perceive that we have no control we feel depressed, helpless, and hopeless.

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