Social Cognitive Theory
Chapter 13
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORY: APPLICATIONS, RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS, AND CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH
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QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER
How do knowledge structures – especially cognitive “schemas” – contribute to personality functioning and help to explain individual differences?
How do personal goals and standards of self-evaluation differ from one person to another, and how do these differences relate to motivation and emotional life?
What is the role of self-efficacy beliefs and other self-referent thinking processes in psychological disorders and therapeutic change?
What are some scientific challenges that were not addressed in the original formulations of social-cognitive theory and how have they been addressed by contemporary developments in personality theory?
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Schemas: knowledge structures that guide and organize the processing of info
Example: new song on the radio sounds structured because one has acquired schemas for song structures
Schemas guide one’s interpretation of the sounds that comprise the song
Music from a different culture might sound chaotic!
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Markus (1977) : many of our most important schemas concern ourselves
People form cognitive generalizations about the self just as they do about other things
Different people develop different self-schemas
Self-schemas may account for the relatively unique ways in which idiosyncratic individuals think about the world around them
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Reaction-time measures: experimental methods in which an experimenter records not only the content of a person’s response, but also how long it takes the person to respond
People who possess a self-schema with regard to a given domain of social life should be faster in responding to questions regarding that life domain
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Markus (1977) identified people who possessed a self-schema regarding independence
Participants rated themselves as high or low on independence
Participants indicated the degree to which the personality characteristic was important to them
Those who had an extreme high or low self-rating and thought independence/dependence was important were judged as schematic
Participants then asked to rate whether a series of adjectives (some of which were semantically related to independence/dependence) were descriptive of themselves
Schematics made these judgments faster
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Andersen and Cyranowski (1994): women with differing sexual self-schemas would process interpersonal information differently and function differently in their sexual and romantic relationships
Women 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)
Asked to respond to measures that asked about sexual experiences and romantic involvement
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Andersen and Cyranowski 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 pleasure
Were more able to be involved in romantic love relationships
“Co-schematics (women who had both positive and negative schemas)” found to experience
High levels of involvement with sexual partners
High levels of sexual anxiety
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
People tend to live complex lives in which they develop a number of different self-schemas
Different situations may cause different self-schemas to be part of the working self-concept: the subset of self-concept that is in working memory at any given time
Info about the self that is in consciousness, and guides behavior, at any given time changes dynamically as people interact with the ever-changing events of the social world
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Based Motives and Motivated Information Processing
Self-schemas motivate people to process information in particular ways
People often are biased toward positive views of the self, which can be explained by positing a self-enhancement motive
People also may be motivated to experience themselves as being consistent and predictable, reflecting a self-verification motive
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Based Motives and Motivated Information Processing
What happens when the two motives conflict?
Evidence suggests we generally prefer positive feedback but prefer negative feedback in relation to negative self-views
Positive life events can be bad for one’s health if they conflict with a negative self-concept and disrupt one’s negative identity
There are individual differences in this regard
We may be more oriented toward self-enhancement in some relationships and self-verification in other relationships
CURRENT APPLICATIONS
SELF-SCHEMAS AND HISTORY OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Meston, Rellini, and Heiman (2006) hypothesized that abuse experiences may alter self-schemas and do so in a long-lasting manner
Conducted a study whose participants were 48 women with a history of child sexual abuse
Also studied a group of 71 women who had not suffered from abuse experiences and who thus served as control participants.
To measure sexual self-schemas, Meston et al. administered the sexual self-schema scale in which people report on their perceptions of their own sexuality
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
Women who had experienced abuse years earlier had more negative emotional experiences in the present day
Women with lower romantic/passionate self-schemas reported more negative emotional experiences
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Different goals may lead to different patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior
Goals may be the cause of what one would interpret as different personality styles
Two ways of thinking about goals:
Learning goal: think about the task and all you can learn from it
Peformance goal: have the aim of
showing people how smart you are
avoiding embarrassment when you don’t know something
making a good impression
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Elliott and Dweck (1988) induced learning versus performance goals among grade school students performing a cognitive task
Some told that they were performing a task that would sharpen mental skills
Others told they were performing a task that would be evaluated by experts
Students’ beliefs in their ability on the task (i.e., their efficacy beliefs) were also manipulated
People who had a combination of performance goals and low beliefs in their ability were less likely than others to develop useful strategies on the task
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Elliott and Dweck (1988) recorded the degree to which people spontaneously expressed negative emotions while working on the task
Performance goal participants expressed much tension and anxiety when performing the task
“My stomach hurts” (Elliott & Dweck, 1988, p. 10)
Performance goals provides insight into what we commonly call “test anxiety”
Dweck’s social-cognitive analysis suggests that one might intervene by trying to change people’s patterns of thinking
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Implicit theories: those we possess, that guide our thinking, but that we may not usually state in words
Implicit theories of interest to Dweck and colleagues: whether or not psychological attributes are changeable
Entity theory: a particular characteristic or trait is viewed as fixed
Incremental theory: a particular characteristic or trait is believed to be malleable or open to change
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Children with an entity view of intelligence tend to set performance goals
If intelligence is fixed, then one interprets activities as a “performance” in which intelligence is evaluated
Children with an incremental view of intelligence tend to set learning goals
If intelligence can be increased, then natural to set the learning goal of acquiring experiences that increase it
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Tamir, John, Srivastava, and Gross, 2007 study
Students about to enter college were tested about whether they believed emotions to be malleable and controllable vs. fixed and uncontrollable
As hypothesized, students with incremental (malleable) beliefs concerning emotion showed better emotion regulation than did those with entity (fixed) beliefs
Throughout the first term, relative to those with entity beliefs concerning emotion, those with incremental beliefs received increasing social support from new friends
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
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007): If one could turn entity theorists into incremental theorists, one should be able to reduce test anxiety and boost performance
Enrolled 7th-graders in an educational 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 did not receive this instruction)
By the end of the year, students who had been exposed to the intervention began to outperform the other students
Personality and the Brain: Goals
Are goals and evaluative standards distinct biologically from other kinds of thoughts?
D’Argembeau et al. (2009) asked participants to imagine future outcomes that either were or were not personal goals for them
(e.g., Future doctors imagined becoming a doctor and going deep-sea fishing)
Participants were in a brain scanner while imagining these two types of outcomes.
Personality and the Brain: Goals
D’Argembeau et al. (2009), cont’d.
Two brain regions were more active when people thought about personal goals than about future activities that were not goals for them
Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC)
Posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)
Why significant?
Personality and the Brain: Goals
D’Argembeau et al. (2009), cont’d.
The MPFC is needed to determine the self-relevance of events
The PCC has been shown to be active during autobiographical memory
Goals are psychologically rich mental contents that combine the detection of personally relevant occurrences in the environment with information stored in your “library” of autobiographical memories
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Goals and standards are psychologically distinct mechanisms
Goals are aims one hopes to achieve in the future
Standards are criteria used to evaluate events in the present
Just as it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of goals, it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of evaluative standards
Tory Higgins (1987, 1990, 2006) 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: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Some evaluative standards represent achievement that people ideally would like to reach: ideal standards; aspects of the “ideal self”
Some self-guides represent standards of achievement that people feel they should or ought to achieve: ought standards; elements of the “ought self”
Different individuals may evaluate the same type of behavior using different standards
Some wish to quit smoking because they ideally would like to be more healthy
Others primarily feel a sense of responsibility to others to quit smoking
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
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
Discrepancies with different standards trigger different emotions
Between actual and ideal self: sadness or dejection
Between actual and ought self: agitation and anxiety
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Higgins, Bond, Klein, & Strauman (1986) identified two groups:
Those who predominantly have actual/ideal discrepancies
Those who predominantly have actual/ought discrepancies
In a subsequent session, emotional reactions were assessed as they envisioned themselves experiencing a negative life event
Although all participants envisioned the same event:
Those who had mostly actual/ideal discrepancies tended to become sad but not anxious
Those who had mostly actual/ought discrepancies became anxious but not sad
COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY: BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Higgins (2006): people’s evaluative standards have implications for motivation
People who evaluate their actions primarily through ideal standards
Tend to have a “promotion” approach
Are motivated toward promoting well-being, by focusing on positive outcomes
People who evaluate their actions primarily through ideal standards
Tends to be “prevention-focused”
Are focused on preventing the occurrence of (or gaining an absence of) negative outcomes
CURRENT QUESTIONS
PERFECTIONISTIC STANDARDS: GOOD OR BAD?
High standards may cause people to excel. But are extremely high, perfectionistic standards necessarily a good thing?
