Social-cognitive approach
Emerges from a behaviourist approach
= Behaviours with positive outcomes are reinforced
The same person may display different personality traits in different situations
= Based on past experiences in those situations
According to this belief, personality is how a person deals with the situations encountered in daily life
= How we construct situations in our own minds
= How we respond to those situations…
Person-situation debate
Trait theorists argue that individuals’ personalities are similar across situations
Social-cognitive theorists often argue that individuals’ personalities depend on the situation
There is strong evidence for both approaches
Rank-order stability may help resolve this debate
Personal constructs
Social-cognitive theorists argue that we base our behaviour on personal constructs, which we use to make sense of our worlds
We each organize the people in our lives in different ways
Let’s try it!
= Make a list of 10 important people in your life (number the list 1-10; they need not be in any order)
= How are people #3 and #6 psychologically similar to each other and different from #10?
= How are people #1 and #5 psychologically similar to each other and different from #3?
What dimensions did you use?
Social-cognitive psychologists argue that these dimensions that we choose tell us about our own personalities
Outcome expectancies
Another way that our personalities differ from one another is our outcome expectancies
= How we expect a behaviour to bring us closer to or further from our goals
What are your goals? For today? For this week? For this year? For life?
= What behaviour(s) do you think will lead you toward those goals?
= What behaviour(s) do you think will detract from those goals?
The different answers to these questions make up part of our personalities
Humanistic approach
The humanistic approach is radically different from the trait approach and the psychodynamic approach
= Humanistic theories have positive, optimistic view of human nature, believe that humans have free will
= Free will separates the humanistic approach from the psychodynamic and the trait approaches
The humanist approach argues that humans seek out a realization of their inner potential (self-actualization)
Pursuit of knowledge
= Expression of creativity
= Quest for spiritual enlightenment
= Desire to give back to society
Maslow’s needs hierarchy
Only when all other needs are met can a person achieve self-actualization
Humanists argue that our personality differences arise from environmental constraints against climbing our needs hierarchy
