Social Cognitive approaches to Personality
The Psychology of personality
Overview and Key Points
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• Sees personality structure as involving cognitive/affective processes that are impacted on by
the environment
• Bandura’s social learning theory focused on interactions between person, behaviour and
environment
• Kelly’s personal construct theory focused on the meaning we attach to our environments
• Mischel’s cognitive-affective processing system focused on the interaction between the
person and the situation
3 Key Studies & Psychologists for Social Psychology and understanding individual differences
• Bandura: Social learning theory
• Kelly: Personal construct theory
• Mischel: The personality/situation interaction
Cognitive affective processing system
--
Key assumptions about the social cognitive approach
• Identifying & measuring personality traits is overly simplistic
• Thought and emotional processes are central to personality
• Most of these processes are conscious
• Personality therefore develops and changes through cognitive processes and social
interaction
Personality structures involve
• Expectations
• Beliefs,
• Behavioral standards
• Personal goals
, Consistency in a person across similar situations reflects a ‘behavioral signature
Main Methods used to understand Personality
• Self-report questionnaires
• Experiments
• Direct observation
Social-cognitive theories of personality
• Our behaviour and personalities are a response to our immediate conscious experiences and
our environment/situations
• Cognitive = about conscious thought processes
• Social = accounts for the environment and social world
• Looking from the inside out but also from the outside in
• able to think about ourselves and our lives (self-reflective)
• We have the capacity to influence our own experiences & destinies
• Our thinking processes interact with the social environment (thus ‘social-cognitive’)
• We are motivated by our own cognitions that involve self-efficacy beliefs, personal goals,
and evaluative standards
Criteria’s that should be met for a personality theory are
Empirical Validity
Description
Explanation
Testable Concepts
Applied Value
Comprehensiveness
Parsimony
Heuristic Value
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
BY BANDURA
The Psychology of personality
Overview and Key Points
------------------------------------------------------------------
• Sees personality structure as involving cognitive/affective processes that are impacted on by
the environment
• Bandura’s social learning theory focused on interactions between person, behaviour and
environment
• Kelly’s personal construct theory focused on the meaning we attach to our environments
• Mischel’s cognitive-affective processing system focused on the interaction between the
person and the situation
3 Key Studies & Psychologists for Social Psychology and understanding individual differences
• Bandura: Social learning theory
• Kelly: Personal construct theory
• Mischel: The personality/situation interaction
Cognitive affective processing system
--
Key assumptions about the social cognitive approach
• Identifying & measuring personality traits is overly simplistic
• Thought and emotional processes are central to personality
• Most of these processes are conscious
• Personality therefore develops and changes through cognitive processes and social
interaction
Personality structures involve
• Expectations
• Beliefs,
• Behavioral standards
• Personal goals
, Consistency in a person across similar situations reflects a ‘behavioral signature
Main Methods used to understand Personality
• Self-report questionnaires
• Experiments
• Direct observation
Social-cognitive theories of personality
• Our behaviour and personalities are a response to our immediate conscious experiences and
our environment/situations
• Cognitive = about conscious thought processes
• Social = accounts for the environment and social world
• Looking from the inside out but also from the outside in
• able to think about ourselves and our lives (self-reflective)
• We have the capacity to influence our own experiences & destinies
• Our thinking processes interact with the social environment (thus ‘social-cognitive’)
• We are motivated by our own cognitions that involve self-efficacy beliefs, personal goals,
and evaluative standards
Criteria’s that should be met for a personality theory are
Empirical Validity
Description
Explanation
Testable Concepts
Applied Value
Comprehensiveness
Parsimony
Heuristic Value
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
BY BANDURA
