Chapter 13: Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Aspects of Social Learning Theory
Chapter 13: Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Aspects of Social Learning Theory
Part 2: Basic Constructs in Rotter’s Social Learning Theory
Rotter’s early research focused on the need to understand human behavior and personality so that clinical psychologists might effectively help their patients. In the preface to Social Learning & Clinical Psychology, Rotter wrote:
…the practice of clinical psychology in many instances is unsystematic and confused when viewed from logical or rigorous scientific viewpoints. This confusion, however, is not a necessary condition but the result of the failure of the clinical psychologists’ training program to translate and relate the basic knowledge of experimental and theoretical psychology into the practical situations of the clinic, the hospital, and the school… (pg. viii; Rotter, 1954)
Given his emphasis on clinical psychology, Rotter focused on the clinician’s ability to predict behavior. According to Rotter, social learning theory assumes that the unit of investigation for the study of personality is the interaction between the individual and their meaningful environment. Although personality has unity, the individual’s experiences influence each other. As a result, personality is continuously changing since each person is always having new experiences. However, personality is also stable in some respects, since previous experiences influence new learning. Given the complexity of each individual, Rotter believed that in order to make reasonable predictions about behavior, it was necessary to examine four kinds of variables: behavior potential, expectancy, reinforcement value, and the psychological situation (Rotter, 1954, 1964, 1972; Rotter & Hochreich, 1975).
Behavior potential refers to the likelihood of a certain behavior occurring in the context of specific potential reinforcement. For example, in order to earn good grades, a student can rely on any number of possible behaviors, such as studying, cheating, skipping class to avoid a bad grade, etc. Each potential behavior can only be described as more or less likely than other potential behaviors, and included as potential behaviors are psychological reactions such as thoughts, emotions, and even defense mechanisms. Expectancy is defined as the probability held by the individual that reinforcement will follow one’s chosen behavior. Although Rotter preferred to avoid the concept that expectancy is subjective, he acknowledged that an element of subjectivity is involved. Regardless, it is the individual’s point of view, their expectations in a given situation, that are more important for predicting behavior than the realistic probability of a chosen behavior resulting in an expected reinforcement. Reinforcement value, quite simply, refers to the preference for a given reinforcer. To use Rotter’s own example, most people would consistently choose to be paid $10 dollars an hour rather than $1 an hour, if it were simply their choice. Finally, there is the psychologi