Question

. State the social/cognitive perspective on personality, and explain in your own words the concepts proposed by Bandura and Rotter. Give a detailed personal example of how one of these concepts applies to you

Answer 1

Though Bandura was a behavioural psychologist and agreed upon SKinner regarding the learned nature of behaviours, however in defining personality he came up with the whole new concepts of Reciprocal determinism and came up with the idea that personality does not only exhibit learned behaviours rather represent a complex interplay of cognition, behaviour and environment in such a way that all three influences each other and also influenced by each other; the very phenomenon was named as Reciprocal determinism. Julian rotter who was inspired by Bnduara has expanded his theory by adding up some more factors which he thought to determine own's personality. Rotter mainly explained personality on the basis of these factors- Behavior potential (The probability that a person will exhibit a particular behaviour in a specific situation) Expectancy (it is the subjective probability that how likely the behaviour will produce the desired outcome) Reinforcement Value (it refers to the desirability of the outcomes; the things people want to have high reinforcement value and vice versa). Apart from these given concepts Rotters also talked about the importance of self-control in the development of personality those are internal and external. While people with an internal locus of control believe that their efforts are being guided by some internal sources like their motivations, desires; people with an external locus of control are more into externalizing their success and failures.

Rotter's theory of self control (interl v/s external locus of control) can be applied to the academic setting. with a poor grade in exam, a student with internal locus of control might blame his/her preparation that he/she had to study hard. Whereas a student with external locus of control might blame the poor grades onto some other external factors such that questions being tough.