This document provides a critical evaluation of Skinner's situationist and Bandura's dynamic approaches to personality. It discusses their differing views on determinism and the role of cognition/agency. While Skinner saw behavior as determined by environmental factors, Bandura emphasized reciprocal determinism between personal/cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences. The document also evaluates their theories in terms of parsimony, empirical validity, comprehensiveness, precision, and applied value, finding that while both made important contributions, Bandura's social cognitive theory provides a more comprehensive view of personality.
King's theory
Historical background.
Origin of the Conceptual Model
Strategies for Knowledge Development of the system framework.
King's theory Assumptions.
World View
Unique focus of the model
Basic paradigm concepts.
The three dimensional Nursing Process based on King's Theory.
Relationship Among the four Process of nursing .
Propositions of the model.
Concepts and Components of the framework.
Influences from other scholars.
Model of transaction
King's theory
Historical background.
Origin of the Conceptual Model
Strategies for Knowledge Development of the system framework.
King's theory Assumptions.
World View
Unique focus of the model
Basic paradigm concepts.
The three dimensional Nursing Process based on King's Theory.
Relationship Among the four Process of nursing .
Propositions of the model.
Concepts and Components of the framework.
Influences from other scholars.
Model of transaction
Splitting the affective atom: Divergence of valence and approach-avoidance mo...Maciej Behnke
Valence and approach-avoidance motivation are two distinct but closely related components of affect. However, little is known about how these two processes evolve and covary in a dynamic affective context.We formulated several hypotheses based on the Motivational Dimensional Model of Affect. We expected that anger would be a unique approach-related rather than avoidancerelated negative emotion. We also expected that high-approach positive emotions (e.g., desire) would differ from low-approach positive emotions (e.g., amusement) producing a stronger link between valence and approach-avoidance motivation. We also explored other dynamic properties of discrete emotions such as the difference between approach-avoidance motivation and valence as a marker of balance within affective components. We asked 69 participants to provide continuous ratings of valence and approach-avoidance motivation for eight standardized clips representing different discrete emotions. Using multilevel modeling, we established a significant relationship between valence and approach-avoidance motivation with high-approach emotions producing a stronger link between valence and approach-avoidance motivation compared to neutral states and lowapproach emotions. Contrary to expectations, we observed that individuals exhibited an avoidance response during anger elicitation. Finally, we found that awe was a distinct positive emotion where approach motivation dominated over valence. These findings are relevant to the theory and research on diverging processes within the core structure of affect.
Qno1. Why there is need to study organization behaviour in management degree? Highlight the importance of organization behaviour in organizational performance.
Qno2. To understand employee’s complex behaviour why we need to understand the role of psychology, social psychology, sociology and anthropology in organizational behaviour?
Qno3. High light important feature of employee’s intellectual ability, physical ability and ability-job fit.
Qno4. Describe the main components of attitude? How consistent are the attitude moreover commentary that does behaviour always follow from attitude.
Qno5. what is personality and how we can measure personality through different means?
Qno6. Describe following theories:
A. Hierarchy of need theory
B. Theory x and Y
C. Two factor theory
Qno7. How we can use changing the nature of work environment to motivate employees?
Qno8. What is perception and describe factors that influence perception?
Qno9. What are emotions and moods? Explain emotional labour and emotional intelligence?
Qno10. Define and classify groups. Explain five stage model of group.
Social Cognitive Theory
*
Originator
Albert Bandura, Ph.D. Bandura obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1952. In 1953, Bandura was offered a position at Stanford University.
*
Approximate Year of Origin
The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) stemmed from the Social Learning Theory (SLT), which has a rich historical background dating back to the late 1800's. Albert Bandura first began publishing his work on SLT in the early 1960's. In 1986, Bandura officially launched the SCT with his book Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.
*
Circumstances that led to the development of the Theory
The SCT has its origins in the discipline of psychology, with its early foundation being laid by behavioral and social psychologists. The SLT evolved under the umbrella of behaviorism, which is a cluster of psychological theories intended to explain why people and animals behave the way that they do.
*
Behaviorism
Behaviorism, introduced by John Watson in 1913, took an extremely mechanistic approach to understanding human behavior. According to Watson, behavior could be explained in terms of observable acts that could be described by stimulus-response sequences (Crosbie-Brunett and Lewis, 1993; Thomas, 1990). Also central to behaviorist study was the notion that contiguity between stimulus and response determined the likelihood that learning would occur.
*
Stimulus-response pathwayAre there some mediating factors between stimulus and response that regulate behavior? rewards or punishmentsFeedback Habit Freud's instinctTolman's cognitions
*
The ‘Social Self'
William James in 1890, whose notion of the 'social self' laid the foundation for the modern SLT tenet of the interaction between personal factors and the environment.
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), who extended Gestaltist's field theory by initiating a shift in psychology from a focus on the individual to a focus on processes between individuals
*
Adler
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) posited that a person's behavior is purposeful and motivated by a pursuit of goals.
the importance of one's perception of, and attitude toward, the environment as significant influences on behavior.
*
Tolman: Cognitions
In the 1930's, unobservable variables (or cognitions) played a mediating role between stimulus and response introduced the term expectancy.
*
Expectation = that something will happen
Expectancy= what will happen
The Social Learning Theory (SLT)
The Social Learning Theory (SLT) was officially launched in 1941 with Miller and Dollard's publication of Social Learning and Imitation.
Their SLT incorporated the principles of learning: reinforcement, punishment, extinction, and imitation of models.
Their book was written to explain how animals and humans model observed behaviors, which then became learned through environmental reinforcements.
*
This work expanded on the reciprocal relationship between environment and .
Splitting the affective atom: Divergence of valence and approach-avoidance mo...Maciej Behnke
Valence and approach-avoidance motivation are two distinct but closely related components of affect. However, little is known about how these two processes evolve and covary in a dynamic affective context.We formulated several hypotheses based on the Motivational Dimensional Model of Affect. We expected that anger would be a unique approach-related rather than avoidancerelated negative emotion. We also expected that high-approach positive emotions (e.g., desire) would differ from low-approach positive emotions (e.g., amusement) producing a stronger link between valence and approach-avoidance motivation. We also explored other dynamic properties of discrete emotions such as the difference between approach-avoidance motivation and valence as a marker of balance within affective components. We asked 69 participants to provide continuous ratings of valence and approach-avoidance motivation for eight standardized clips representing different discrete emotions. Using multilevel modeling, we established a significant relationship between valence and approach-avoidance motivation with high-approach emotions producing a stronger link between valence and approach-avoidance motivation compared to neutral states and lowapproach emotions. Contrary to expectations, we observed that individuals exhibited an avoidance response during anger elicitation. Finally, we found that awe was a distinct positive emotion where approach motivation dominated over valence. These findings are relevant to the theory and research on diverging processes within the core structure of affect.
Qno1. Why there is need to study organization behaviour in management degree? Highlight the importance of organization behaviour in organizational performance.
Qno2. To understand employee’s complex behaviour why we need to understand the role of psychology, social psychology, sociology and anthropology in organizational behaviour?
Qno3. High light important feature of employee’s intellectual ability, physical ability and ability-job fit.
Qno4. Describe the main components of attitude? How consistent are the attitude moreover commentary that does behaviour always follow from attitude.
Qno5. what is personality and how we can measure personality through different means?
Qno6. Describe following theories:
A. Hierarchy of need theory
B. Theory x and Y
C. Two factor theory
Qno7. How we can use changing the nature of work environment to motivate employees?
Qno8. What is perception and describe factors that influence perception?
Qno9. What are emotions and moods? Explain emotional labour and emotional intelligence?
Qno10. Define and classify groups. Explain five stage model of group.
Social Cognitive Theory
*
Originator
Albert Bandura, Ph.D. Bandura obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1952. In 1953, Bandura was offered a position at Stanford University.
*
Approximate Year of Origin
The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) stemmed from the Social Learning Theory (SLT), which has a rich historical background dating back to the late 1800's. Albert Bandura first began publishing his work on SLT in the early 1960's. In 1986, Bandura officially launched the SCT with his book Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.
*
Circumstances that led to the development of the Theory
The SCT has its origins in the discipline of psychology, with its early foundation being laid by behavioral and social psychologists. The SLT evolved under the umbrella of behaviorism, which is a cluster of psychological theories intended to explain why people and animals behave the way that they do.
*
Behaviorism
Behaviorism, introduced by John Watson in 1913, took an extremely mechanistic approach to understanding human behavior. According to Watson, behavior could be explained in terms of observable acts that could be described by stimulus-response sequences (Crosbie-Brunett and Lewis, 1993; Thomas, 1990). Also central to behaviorist study was the notion that contiguity between stimulus and response determined the likelihood that learning would occur.
*
Stimulus-response pathwayAre there some mediating factors between stimulus and response that regulate behavior? rewards or punishmentsFeedback Habit Freud's instinctTolman's cognitions
*
The ‘Social Self'
William James in 1890, whose notion of the 'social self' laid the foundation for the modern SLT tenet of the interaction between personal factors and the environment.
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), who extended Gestaltist's field theory by initiating a shift in psychology from a focus on the individual to a focus on processes between individuals
*
Adler
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) posited that a person's behavior is purposeful and motivated by a pursuit of goals.
the importance of one's perception of, and attitude toward, the environment as significant influences on behavior.
*
Tolman: Cognitions
In the 1930's, unobservable variables (or cognitions) played a mediating role between stimulus and response introduced the term expectancy.
*
Expectation = that something will happen
Expectancy= what will happen
The Social Learning Theory (SLT)
The Social Learning Theory (SLT) was officially launched in 1941 with Miller and Dollard's publication of Social Learning and Imitation.
Their SLT incorporated the principles of learning: reinforcement, punishment, extinction, and imitation of models.
Their book was written to explain how animals and humans model observed behaviors, which then became learned through environmental reinforcements.
*
This work expanded on the reciprocal relationship between environment and .
Toward a Psychology of HumanAgencyAlbert BanduraStanfo.docxedwardmarivel
Toward a Psychology of Human
Agency
Albert Bandura
Stanford University
ABSTRACT—This article presents an agentic theory of hu-
man development, adaptation, and change. The evolu-
tionary emergence of advanced symbolizing capacity
enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their imme-
diate environment and made them unique in their power to
shape their life circumstances and the courses their lives
take. In this conception, people are contributors to their
life circumstances, not just products of them. Social cog-
nitive theory rejects a duality between human agency and
social structure. People create social systems, and these
systems, in turn, organize and influence people’s lives. This
article discusses the core properties of human agency, the
different forms it takes, its ontological and epistemological
status, its development and role in causal structures, its
growing primacy in the coevolution process, and its influ-
ential exercise at individual and collective levels across
diverse spheres of life and cultural systems.
Conceptions of human nature have changed markedly over time.
In the early theological conceptions, human nature was ordained
by original divine design. Evolutionism transformed the con-
ception to one in which human nature is shaped by environ-
mental pressures acting on random gene mutations and
reproductive recombinations. This nonteleological process is
devoid of deliberate plans or purposes. The symbolic ability to
comprehend, predict, and alter the course of events confers
considerable functional advantages. The evolutionary emer-
gence of language and abstract and deliberative cognitive ca-
pacities provided the neuronal structure for supplanting aimless
environmental selection with cognitive agency. Human fore-
bears evolved into a sentient agentic species. Their advanced
symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates
of their immediate environment and made them unique in their
power to shape their life circumstances and the course of their
lives. Through cognitive self-regulation, humans can create
visualized futures that act on the present; construct, evaluate,
and modify alternative courses of action to secure valued out-
comes; and override environmental influences. In a later sec-
tion, this article discusses the growing ascendancy of human
agency in the coevolution process through the force of social and
technological evolution.
CORE PROPERTIES OF HUMAN AGENCY
Social cognitive theory adopts an agentic perspective toward
human development, adaptation, and change (Bandura, 1986,
2001). To be an agent is to influence intentionally one’s func-
tioning and life circumstances. In this view, personal influence
is part of the causal structure. People are self-organizing, pro-
active, self-regulating, and self-reflecting. They are not simply
onlookers of their behavior. They are contributors to their life
circumstances, not just products of them.
There ...
Momentary Assessment of Interpersonal Process in Psychotherapy.docxgilpinleeanna
Momentary Assessment of Interpersonal Process in Psychotherapy
Katherine M. Thomas and Christopher J. Hopwood
Michigan State University
Erik Woody and Nicole Ethier
University of Waterloo
Pamela Sadler
Wilfrid Laurier University
To demonstrate how a novel computer joystick coding method can illuminate the study of interpersonal
processes in psychotherapy sessions, we applied it to Shostrom’s (1966) well-known films in which a
client, Gloria, had sessions with 3 prominent psychotherapists. The joystick method, which records
interpersonal behavior as nearly continuous flows on the plane defined by the interpersonal dimensions
of control and affiliation, provides an excellent sampling of variability in each person’s interpersonal
behavior across the session. More important, it yields extensive information about the temporal dynamics
that interrelate clients’ and therapists’ behaviors. Gloria’s 3 psychotherapy sessions were characterized
using time-series statistical indices and graphical representations. Results demonstrated that patterns of
within-person variability tended to be markedly asymmetric, with a predominant, set-point-like inter-
personal style from which deviations mostly occurred in just 1 direction (e.g., occasional submissive
departures from a modal dominant style). In addition, across each session, the therapist and client showed
strongly cyclical variations in both control and affiliation, and these oscillations were entrained to
different extents depending on the therapist. We interpreted different patterns of moment-to-moment
complementarity of interpersonal behavior in terms of different therapeutic goals, such as fostering a
positive alliance versus disconfirming the client’s interpersonal expectations. We also showed how this
method can be used to provide a more detailed analysis of specific shorter segments from each of the
sessions. Finally, we compared our approach to alternative techniques, such as act-to-act lagged relations
and dynamic systems and pointed to a variety of possible research and training applications.
Keywords: psychotherapy, process, momentary assessment, spectral analysis, interpersonal circumplex
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how a novel method
for the study of moment-to-moment interpersonal processes can be
applied to psychotherapy sessions and to illustrate how this
method could enhance understanding of psychotherapy process.
To depict the value of this method, we apply it to Shostrom’s
(1966) well-known films in which a client, Gloria, met with three
prominent psychotherapists with differing theoretical orienta-
tions—Albert Ellis (rational– emotive), Frederick Perls (gestalt),
and Carl Rogers (client-centered). These filmed therapy sessions
are useful for our purpose because they are widely familiar (e.g.,
Reilly & Jacobus, 2008; Weinrach, 1990) and because we can
contrast our novel approach with previous research applying a
more conventional measurement approach to these s ...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology1977, Vol. 35, N.docxdonnajames55
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1977, Vol. 35, No. 9, 677-688
Self-Reference and the Encoding of Personal Information
T. B. Rogers, N. A. Kuiper, and W. S. Kirker
University of Calgary, Canada
The degree to which the self is implicated in processing personal information
was investigated. Subjects rated adjectives on four tasks designed to force
varying kinds of encoding: structural, phonemic, semantic, and self-reference.
In two experiments, incidental recall of the rated words indicated that adjec-
tives rated under the self-reference task were recalled the best. These results
indicate that self-reference is a rich and powerful encoding process. As an
aspect of the human information-processing system, the self appears to func-
tion as a superordinate schema that is deeply involved in the processing, inter-
pretation, and memory of personal information.
Present research and theory in personality
appear to be placing more and more empha-
sis on how a person has organized his or her
psychological world. Starting with Kelly's
(1955) formulation of personal constructs,
we see a gradual emergence of a number of
avenues of inquiry that use this as their focal
point. In person perception, the concept of
lay personality theory stresses that the ob-
server's analytic network of expected trait
covariations is an integral part of how he
processes (and generates) interpersonal data
(Hastorf, Schneider, & Polefka, 1970). Bern
and Allen (1974), in their embellishment of
Allport's (1937) idiographic position, argue
that an important determinant of predictive
utility of trait measurement is the manner
in which the respondent has organized his or
her view of the trait being measured. These
authors see the overlap between the respond-
ent's and the experimenter's concept of the
trait as a necessary prerequisite of predic-
tion. Attribution theory (Jones et al., 1971)
is another example of this increased accent
on personal organization. Here the emphasis
is on how the subject explains past behavior
This research was supported by a grant from the
Canada Council. We would like to thank the fol-
lowing persons for their useful ideas and comments
on earlier drafts: F. I. M. Craik, E. J. Rowe, P. J.
Rogers, H. Lytton, J. Clark, J. Ells, C. G. Costello,
and especially one anonymous reviewer.
Requests for reprints should be sent to T. B.
Rogers, Department of Psychology, The University
of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4.
and how these explanations are organized in
an attributional network. The common
thread in all of these contemporary research
areas is the notion that the cognitions of a
person, particularly their manner of organ-
ization, should be an integral part of our
attempts to explain personality and behavior.
Of concern in the present article is the
construct of self and how it is implicated in
the organization of personal data. Our gen-
eral position is that the self is an extremely
active and powerful agent in the organizati.
Personality theories try to unravel the nature of human beings. .docxssuser562afc1
Personality theories try to unravel the nature of human beings. There is a myriad of theories that various scholars have formatted to understand human behavior and the motives behind the actions they display. This discussion focuses on the differences and similarities between psychoanalytic and behavioral theories of personality. It concludes by identifying the theory that most aligns with me.
Key Idea
The psychoanalytic theory states that human behavior results from experiences between three sections of the mind: the id, the ego, and the superego. Jessica (2018) posited that the fundamental idea of this theory is that human growth is controlled by inner drives, unmet needs, and unconscious motivations from childhood. On the contrary, the behavioral theory focuses on how students acquire knowledge or learn, and its key idea is that all habits or behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment. Those hereditary influences have little impact on these behaviors (Jessica, 2018).
Differences
According to the psychoanalytic theory, humans’ innate drives and impulses are majorly inborn, and that the unconscious mind comprises instinctual drives and impulses (Phelps, 2015). The theory states that survival is linked to drives and instinctual drives and impulses. On human behavioral control, the psychoanalytic theory maintains that the unconscious drive plays a critical role in controlling human behavior.
Zhang (2020) maintained that the psychoanalytic theory usually refutes the idea that human behavior is shaped by the environment or external factors. Regarding the concept of human nature, the psychoanalytic theory states that humans are born evil. On the other hand, the behavioral theory tends to hold that cultural and sub-cultural conditioning shape an individual’s behavior. Consequently, the personality of an individual is formed. It also holds that human lives are already pre-determined even before they are born.
The behavioral model adopts treatment centered on core learning concepts and different learning mechanisms and strategies, including reinforcing (Phelps, 2015). It is utterly concerned with the idea of free will. The behaviorists assume that acceptable conditioning, reinforcement, imitation, modeling result in normal behavior. Moreover, the behaviorists are conscious that other key processes within the brain, including perception, might be taking place. Still, such activity is not assessed simply because it cannot be evaluated. However, the psychoanalytic theory depends heavily on suppositions and speculation. Although psychoanalytic theory can explain behavior, it cannot relate observable behavior to the force that brings about that behavior. As such, it is more theoretical than scientific as compared to behavioral theory. Similarly, the behavioral theory holds that cultural conditioning influences behaviors and personality, while psychoanalytical theory argues the unconscious mind shapes the behavior or personality..
A Critical Evaluation of Dynamic and Situationist Approaches to Personality
1. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
A Critical Evaluation of Dynamic and Situationist Approaches to
Personality
Lauren Gui
University of Sydney
2. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
Abstract
The study of personality has had an enduring and extensive history in psychology
with an abundance of theoretical paradigms. This essay discusses the aspects of
Skinner’s situationist view and Bandura’s dynamic view and reflects on the extent to
which they converge and diverge in their approach to personality. Subsequently, it
turns its attention to the evaluation of theoretical models posited in Skinner’s operant
learning theory and Bandura’s social cognitive theory, highlighting the importance of
recognising the therapeutic contributions of both theories in clinical and applied
psychology beyond their theoretical limitations.
3. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
A Critical Evaluation of Dynamic and Situationist Approaches to Personality
The study of personality has had an enduring and extensive history in psychology
with an abundance of theoretical paradigms. Each has sought to uncover the
psychology of the individual, and subsequently develop an insight to the nature of
human nature. One such paradigm was the behaviourist approach from which Skinner
drew his situationist view of personality and additionally, brought about the social-
cognitive paradigm encapsulating Bandura’s dynamic view of personality. This essay
will discuss the aspects of Skinner’s situationist view and Bandura’s dynamic view
and reflect on the extent to which they converged and diverged in their approach to
personality, namely through the degrees of individual autonomy, human agency, and
determinism observed through behaviour. Subsequently, the essay will direct its
attention on the evaluation of theoretical models posited in Skinner’s operant learning
theory and Bandura’s social cognitive theory, in light of their theoretical and
empirical legitimacy and heuristic and applied values.
Both Skinner and Bandura asserted personality as being shaped through learning of
behaviours in different settings. They regarded behaviour as the result of what is
learned from experience. However, there are different versions of the principle of
determinism that apply to behavioural psychology. Skinner’s situationist approach
was rooted in behavioural determinism, which posited behaviour as shaped by the
repeated response an individual receives from environmental stimuli. To Skinner
(1975), the three forces that shaped behaviour included natural selection, evolution of
cultural practices and the individual’s history of reinforcement. Natural selection
takes precedence of behaviours beneficial for survival to the species over those that
4. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
are deemed less beneficial. Similarly, selection was responsible for existing cultural
practices in societies. Lastly, the individual’s singular history of reinforcement
contingencies provided a unique behavioural blueprint.
Unlike Skinner (1975), who asserted that “it is the relation to environment that is of
primary concern in the analysis of behaviour”, Bandura emphasised the role of
cognitive factors in facilitating human action. Bandura’s dynamic approach is
entrenched in reciprocal determinism, which posits that personal factors in the form of
cognition, affect and biological events, behaviour and environmental influences create
interactions that result in a triadic reciprocity. Furthermore, it was not necessary for
each of the three reciprocal factors to be of equal strength or to make equal
contributions, as the relative potency of this triadic interaction of forces varies within
the individual, and with the situation. In other words, the relative influence of
behaviour, environment and person depended on which of the triadic factors was
strongest in a given situation (Bandura, 1977).
Despite outward theoretical differences Skinner, like Bandura, regarded humans as
highly adaptable beings, due to the shaping of behaviour by the principles of
reinforcement. Skinner subsequently reiterated this idea in his development of operant
conditioning theory of learning. According to Skinner (1990), operant conditioning is
the process whereby “behaviour is reinforced, in the sense of strengthened or made
more likely to occur, by certain kinds of consequences, which first acquired the power
to reinforce through natural selection”. Three conditions are required in order for
operant conditioning to occur, namely the antecedent, behaviour and the consequence
(Skinner). In addition, the probability of a behaviour recurring is made greater when
5. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
the response is immediately reinforced, simply because reinforcement increases the
likelihood of its repetition. He introduced four principal intermittent schedules of
reinforcement, which accounted for these differences in rate of response.
The place of human agency and the extent to which it is involved in the facilitation
of behaviour is a question that has both been extensively studied and dismissed by
Bandura and Skinner respectively. While Bandura places great importance on the
notions of individual autonomy and human agency in his theories of learning, Skinner
downplayed the role of human agency in his analysis of behaviour (Skinner, 1975),
and stressed the importance of confining the study of behaviour to the study of
observable phenomena, which were environmental influences. Consequently, the
notions of individual autonomy and human agency were omitted from consideration
in his analysis of behaviour.
While Skinner acknowledged the existence of “collateral products” such as traits,
drives, free will, perception, self-control, and internal events such as emotion,
memories, and thoughts; they were intrinsically unobservable and thus have “no
explanatory force; they are simply additional facts to be taken into account” (Skinner,
1975). He classified them as covert behaviours which were subject to the same
contingencies of reinforcement as overt behaviours, maintaining that while
individuals seemed to gain motivation from these inner events, self-control was in fact
dependent on environmental variables which were suitably manipulated to shape and
produce the desired course of behaviour (Feist & Feist, 2008). Likewise, Skinner held
that autonomy was a reinforcing concept that induced pleasure, influencing people to
subject themselves to environmental conditions that subsequently promoted the
6. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
probability of these constructs occurring. If reinforcement value was reduced or
removed, these concepts would be made redundant from behaviour (Feist & Feist,
2008).
In contrast, Bandura’s social cognitive theory of learning is a theory of motivation
and self-regulation. It attributes a salient role to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory
and self-reflective processes in human adaptation and change. He viewed people as
goal-oriented, self-organising, self-reflecting and self-regulating individuals rather
than the reactive organisms passively shaped by environmental forces as suggested by
Skinner (Funder, 2001). Thus, he highlighted the importance of observational
learning, which was the observation of other people’s behaviour that influences an
individual’s learning process through reinforcement. At the core of observational
learning was the process of modeling, a type of learning whereby individuals attempt
to replicate the observed behaviour through imitation.
Bandura’s four-step model of observational learning included attentional processes,
memory, reproduction of behaviour and motivation because of reinforcement. He
isolated four core features of human agency: intentionality, forethought, self-
reactiveness and self-reflectiveness (Bandura, 2001). Intentionality reflects an internal
proactive commitment to performing an action, forethought involves the anticipation
of likely outcomes and selection of behaviours that result in desirable outcomes, and
self-reactiveness allows for goal-setting (Feist & Feist, 2008). The last feature, self-
reflectiveness, involves a self-appraisal mechanism: self-efficacy.
7. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
Self-efficacy is defined as an individual’s beliefs in their capabilities to organise and
execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments (Bandura, 2006).
Individuals with high self-efficacy are more venturesome and likely to set more
challenging goals in general and tend to experience less anxiety, persist longer in their
pursuit of goals and recover quickly from setbacks in comparison to individuals with
low self-efficacy. Bandura (1977) postulated four principle sources of self-efficacy,
namely, mastery of experiences, vicarious experiences in social modeling, social
persuasion, and physical and emotional states.
The two aforementioned theories have laid theoretical foundations for the learning of
behaviour in the field of behavioural psychology. However, in order to appraise their
theoretical and empirical legitimacy, an evaluation of parsimony, empirical value,
comprehensiveness, precision and testability is needed to appreciate the heuristic and
applied values of these theories.
Ockham’s Razor is a principle of parsimony, which states that among competing
hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected based on the
falsifiability criterion. In view of this principle, it would be feasible to begin with the
identification of assumptions from both operant learning and social cognitive theory.
Operant conditioning rests on the main assumption of determinism, that each
behaviour is caused, and the cause can be traced to environmental stimuli connecting
the action to its biochemical bases. A second assumption is that evolutionary
continuity, that animal behaviour is informative of human behaviour and only
different in the degree of its complexity. Thirdly, a reductionist view understands
behaviour ultimately as the workings of the organism’s nervous system. Lastly,
8. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
empiricism dictated that only directly observable phenomena that could be measured
and manipulated were fit subjects for psychology.
On the other hand, social cognitive theory asserts the regulation of behaviour
through vicarious learning, which meant that any desired action could be achieved
through observation (Bandura, 1986). Secondly, the importance of cognition informs
the individual of likely consequences of prospective actions through anticipation, and
aids in forming beliefs and expectations of mastery of their own abilities. Thirdly,
behaviour is regulated through the interaction of triadic reciprocal forces. From this, it
appears that social cognitive theory appears to be more epistemologically
parsimonious but that operant conditioning, due to a fastidious effort to exclude non-
observable phenomena, appears to be more ontologically parsimonious.
Both Skinner and Bandura’s approaches rate high on their degree of empirical
validity. The Bobo doll experiments conducted by Bandura and his colleagues
demonstrated that aggression could be socially learnt based on modeling in
observational learning (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963; Comstock & Paik 1994).
McAuley (1985) examined Bandura’s self-efficacy model on female undergraduate
students assigned to groups varying in modeling and found self-efficacy to be ‘a
significant predictor of skill performance’, supporting Bandura’s theory that increases
in an individual’s efficacy levels facilitates an increase in coping skills.
Other studies conducted by Bandura and his colleagues observing the effect of
treatment procedures employed in creating high levels of achievement of mastery
instigated a rise in self-efficacy in the participants, succeeding in attenuating snake
9. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
phobias (Bandura & Adams, 1977; Bandura et al., 1980; McAuley, 1985). In another
example, it was discovered that higher order forms such as moral judgments are
socially learnt (Bandura and McDonald, 1963). Surprisingly, not much Skinnerian
empirical evidence has been documented. However, Skinner’s reinforcement
experiments in lever-pressing with rats and domestic pigeons placed in an operant
chamber box provided an insight into the principles of reinforcement, punishment and
optimal learning conditions for the acquisition of a task through shaping, the principle
of successive approximation which reinforced behaviours closer and closer to a target
behaviour (Skinner, 1948).
Skinner’s theories while largely influential in behavioural therapy, renders
personality irrelevant as it rejects mentalism and metaphysics. If a prerequisite of
personality theory requires a description of internal characteristics of the individual,
this excludes Skinner’s theory as a personality theory. However, his emphasis on the
environment challenges personality theory to consider personality from the situational
context, opening a potential avenue for further research. Bandura (1986) provides a
more comprehensive account of personality as he takes cognitive factors into account.
His work has integrated and clarified concepts from previous psychological forces,
such as advancing Skinner’s proposition that everything learnt can be done so through
observation.
Skinner’s work is of high falsifiability, due to the fact that he conscientiously only
included directly observable and measurable data in his experiments. Likewise, the
constructs posited by Bandura are consistent with his research findings. Funder
(2001) however, did note that little research has been conducted on the influence of
10. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
situations on behaviour. Currently, the evidence obtained has been typically collected
through the principle of subtraction which renders the ‘evidence’ questionable, as it
does not provide further enlightenment on the underlying crucial aspects of the
situation’s origin or its influence.
On the ability to generate further research, Skinner’s research rates lower than that
of Bandura’s. While Skinner’s theory of personality is based largely on his
experimental analysis of pigeons and rats and has ‘limited relevance to complex
human behaviour’, especially with regards to the ‘intermediary steps between
behavioural acquisition and responding’ (Carpenter, 1974; O’Donohue & Ferguson,
2001). In comparison, Bandura’s work has generated substantial research in the
education and health sectors.
In terms of applied value, Skinner’s work has provided a theoretical framework for
behavioural interventions employed in cognitive behavioural therapy (Plaud &
Vogeltanz, 1997). In comparison to Skinner, Bandura’s research has had an extensive
influence in psychology, namely in the fields of clinical psychology, social
psychology, health psychology and vocational counselling.
In conclusion, both theories have furthered broad insight into the mechanism of
behaviour and its nature. In terms of theoretical and empirical legitimacy, Bandura’s
social-cognitive approach is more comprehensive of personality as Skinner’s primary
focus was that of behaviour. Nevertheless, complementary aspects of both approaches
have enhanced the quality of social, educational and therapeutic services and neither
11. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
should be regarded as incomplete on account of the other’s limitations, but integrated
to provide a comprehensive framework of personality.
12. DYNAMIC AND SITUATIONIST APPROACHES IN PERSONALITY
References
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Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on
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Bandura, A., & McDonald, F.J. (1963). Influence of social reinforcement and the
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