Question

Consider a group of people sitting in a classroom acting very much alike: listening to the professor, taking notes, raising a hand to ask an occasional question. Now consider the same group of people at the beach on a sunny afternoon – some are swimming and riding the waves, some are reading quietly under an umbrella, some are sleeping in the sun, some are watching people, some are running and laughing and wrestling in the sea.

Using ideas from chapter 11 (such as The Big Five Trait perspective, Mischel’s ideas about situational factors, the Social Learning perspective, Conditions of Worth and Locus of Control), explain the similarity of their behavior in the classroom and the clear differences in their behavior at the beach.

Answer 1

Walter Mischel was of the view that trait factors were not an accurate predictors of the behaviors of people, instead a persons behavior was dependent on the situational cues. Here, the behavior of students is very different in the classroom setting and on the beach. The classroom environment demands the students to be quiet and listen, whereas, in the beach environment, they are free to do what they want to. The social learning theory suggests that individuals learn from observing the behaviors of others, and these students may have observed how other people behave in a classroom and how they behave on beach. And these students also learnt to behave in the same way.

Conditions of worth are condition or behaviors which we must fulfill in order for people to like or accept us. In the classroom, the students have to behave in certain way to get fulfill the conditions of worth, but in beach settings the they do have to.In the classroom, the locus of control of the students is more external, and on the beach it is more internal, that is why they are more in control of their individual behavior on the beach than in the classroom.

The differences in students behavior on the beach can be seen as a result of expression of different traits. The students who are reading may have high introversion, and those who are running and laughing may have high extroversion. Those who are riding the waves may have more openness to experience than those sitting under umbrella.