Download Social-Cognitive Perspective

Module 34 – Contemporary
Perspectives on Personality
The Trait Perspective
and
The Social Cognitive Perspective
Review: Perspectives on
Personality
 We are studying 4 perspectives on personality
 Psychoanalytic, Humanistic, Trait, and Social-Cognitive
 Trait perspective: People can be described by a limited set
of patterns of behavior or disposition to feel and act
 Eysenck & Eysenck’s 2 dimensions: Stability and extraversion
 Big 5: Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness
to new experience, and extraversion
 Questions about personality traits:
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Are there biological bases for personality? Yes, neurotransmitters
Are the traits stable? Yes, especially after adolescence
Are the traits genetically determined? Yes, partially
Does a person’s personality change across situations? No,
behaviors change, average tendencies for behavior remains stable
Contemporary psychology’s ways
of assessing personality
 Personality can be assessed by self-report: a personality
inventory
 a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items)
designed to measure a wide range of feelings and behaviors
 Assesses selected personality traits
 scored objectively
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
 the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality
tests – translated to 100 languages including Turkish
 originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still
considered its most appropriate use)
 NEO-PI-Revised Personality Inventory of Big 5:
translated and adapted to Turkish by Sami Gulgoz
Perspectives on Personality
Psychoanalytic
Humanistic
Trait
Social-cognitive
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Behaviors are influenced by the interaction
between persons and their social context
 Reciprocal Determinism: the interacting influences
between personality and environmental factors
Reciprocal determinism
Do we choose
our
environments?
People choose different environments:
preferences (personality)
People react to environments based on
personality (will influence future choices)
Repeated experiences in an environment will
change our reactions over time
BIOLOGICAL , PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND SOCIALCULTURAL FACTORS INFLUENCE PERSONALITY
The issue of personal control
Our sense of controlling our environments rather
than feeling helpless
 External Locus of Control
 the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s
personal control determine one’s fate
 Internal Locus of Control
 the perception that one controls one’s own fate
An extreme situation of lack of control: Learned
Helplessness
 the hopelessness and passive resignation an
organism learns when unable to avoid repeated
aversive events
Perceived control is basic to
adaptive human functioning
Uncontrollable
bad events
Perceived
lack of control
Generalized
helpless behavior
How helpless do we feel? Optimism vs.
pessimism
Pessimism: a negative attributional style explain bad events as externally determined,
stable, and global.
Optimism: a positive attributional style - explain
bad events as internally controllable, temporary,
and specific.
Both internal locus of control and optimism are
related to higher achievement, better dealing
with stress, less illness and faster recovery.
How can we “predict” behavior? Socialcognitive psychologists’ answer
Behavior is the product of personality and the
situation
Best predictor of behavior in a given situation is
past behavior in a similar situation
 We cannot predict behavior with personality only
 We cannot predict behavior by asking questions
about “what would you do if…”
 We can predict behavior if we create analogous
situations
Module 43 – Social Thinking
Attitudes and behaviors
Power of the Situation
Social Psychology
 Branch of psychology which studies how we think
about, influence, and relate to one another.
 TOPICS:
 Attributions: How do we try to understand each other?
 Attitudes: How are our behaviors in different environments
determined?
 How do attitudes change?
How do we think about and try to
understand one another?
 We attempt to understand each other’s behaviors
by making attributions:
 Dispositional attributions
 Situational attributions
 FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR: We
overestimate the influence of personality and
underestimate the influence of situations
 Napolitan & Goethals experiment: Conversations with a
woman: aloof/critical OR warm/friendly
 Two groups: expected spontaneous behavior / expected
behavior upon instruction
The Effects of Attribution
In the way we relate to each other in daily life
 Friends, partners, spouses, coworkers
In situations when we make decisions about
each other:
 Job interviews, courts, disciplinary hearings – murder
versus manslaughter
Political effects of attributions
 Why is there poverty? Why is there unemployment?
Why is there ignorance? Why is there illiteracy? Why
is there terrorism?
 Personal deficits  treatment of individuals
 Situational deficits  large scale policies
Attitudes and actions
Definition: Attitudes are feelings (based on our
beliefs) that predispose our reactions to our
environment (objects, people, and events)
 Cigarette smoking does not really kill.
 “White” lies don’t count as lies
Attitudes influence behavior (most of the time)
 What if there are other influences?
Does behavior influence attitudes?
Attitudes and Actions
Internal
attitudes
External
Influences
Behavior
How does behavior influence
attitudes?
“Foot-in-the-door” phenomenon
 Agree to a request for a small action  comply with a
larger demand
 Prisoners of war  changing political attitudes
Attitudes follow good behaviors and evil
behaviors
 Smoking campaigns
 Finnish paternity leave policy
Social roles influence attitudes
Roles are sets of expectations / prescriptions
about social positions.
Roles define how those in a certain position
ought to behave.
Roles affect our attitudes.
 Role of a meek female or an assertive male
 Management role
 Motherhood role
Stanford Prison Study
http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-14.htm
Stanford Prison Study
Subjects: physically and mentally healthy young
men who volunteered to participate for money.
They were randomly assigned to be prisoners or
guards.
Those assigned the role of prisoner became
distressed, helpless, and panicky.
Those assigned the roles of guards became
either nice, “tough but fair,” or tyrannical.
Study had to be ended after 6 days.