LESSON 18: BUSS: EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF PERSONALITY
o they were “by-products” of evolved adaptive strategies
Overview
 Artificial selection (breeding) – humans select particular desirable traits in a breeding species
 Natural selection – nature rather than people select the traits; traits become more common or
less common in species over long periods of time
 Sexual selection – members of the opposite sex find certain traits more appealing and
attractive than others and thereby produce offspring with those traits.
 Adaptations – evolved strategies that solve important survival and/or reproductive problems
(two problems sa life)
 By-products – traits that happen because of adaptations but are not part of the functional
design.
 Noise (random effects) – evolution produces random changes in design that do not affect
function.
Principles of Evolutionary Psychology
 Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were the first thinkers to argue for an evolutionary
perspective of psychological thought and behavior.
 A few decades later the American philosopher and psychologist William James did pick up on
this view and argued that psychology should focus on the function of the mind rather than its
parts.
 The term “evolutionary psychology” was coined in 1973 by biologist Michael Ghiselin (1973),
and later popularized by the anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides in
the early 1990s
o evolutionary psychology - scientific study of human thought and behavior from an
evolutionary perspective and focuses on four big questions.
 Why is the human mind designed the way it is, and how did it come to
take its current form?
 How is the human mind designed; that is, what are its parts and current
structure?
 What function do the parts of the mind have, and what is it designed to
do?
 How do the evolved mind and current environment interact to shape
human behavior?
Evolutionary Theory of Personality
 Evolutionary theory assumes that the true origins of these traits reach far back in ancestral
times
 true origin of personality is evolution: it is caused by an interaction between an ever changing
environment and a changing body and brain
 Evolution also starts with the assumption that individual members of any species differ from
one another
 “If natural selection winnows out maladaptive traits and over the long-term produces a
universal human nature then how can individuals consistently differ in their disposition to think
and behave (i.e., have personality)?”
 two solutions:
o personality differences were either “noise”
 The essence of Buss’s theory of personality revolves around adaptive problems and their
solutions or mechanisms
Nature and Nurture of Personality
 behavior and personality are caused by either internal qualities or external-environmental
ones
o Internal states and processes, from biological and physiological systems to
personality traits, come about from input from the environment
 Fundamental situational error - tendency to assume that the environment alone can produce
behavior void of a stable internal mechanism
 Fundamental attribution error – tendency to ignore situational and environmental forces when
explaining the behavior of other people and instead focus on internal dispositions.
o each of these views alone is incomplete because there are no such thing as purely
internal or purely external explanations of behavior.
o two must be involved and interact in any behavior.
 Evolved mechanism – good example of the interaction of nature and nurture because they
only exist in response to and with input from the environment.
 Evolution in general is inherently an interaction between biology and environment (nature and
nurture).
 One of the fundamental assumptions of evolutionary theory of personality is that these
adaptive qualities include consistent and unique dispositions to behave in particular ways in
particular contexts, in other words, personality traits.
Adaptive Problems and Their Solutions (Mechanisms)
 Two fundamental problems of adaptation:
o Survival (food, danger, protection, etc.)
o Reproduction
 Hostile forces of nature – diseases parasites, food shortages, harsh climate, predators, and
other natural hazards.
o Individuals who solve these problems most efficiently and effectively are most
likely to survive, and survival is a precondition for reproduction.
 Mechanisms – solutions to two basic problems of life.
o operate according to principles in different adaptive domains
o number in the dozens or hundreds (maybe even thousands)
o are complex solutions to specific adaptive problems (survival, reproduction)
 works specifically on the problem it solves and not other ones
 two specific main classes of mechanism:
o psychological mechanisms - operate by converting input into particular actions or
decision rules that help solve these adaptive problems; internal and specific
cognitive, motivational, and personality systems that solve specific survival and
reproduction problems; more specific to species to species.
o physical mechanisms - physiological organs and systems that evolved to solve
problems of survival; often shared by many species.
  willingness and capacity to cooperate and help the group on the one
hand or to be hostile and aggressive on the other
 agreeableness marks a person’s willingness to cooperate
o Conscientiousness
 one’s capacity and commitment to work
 careful and detail-oriented, focused and reliable
 Less conscientious people are less reliable and dependable and tend
to lack focus.
o Emotional stability (opposite of neuroticism)
 revolves around response to danger and threat
 involves one’s ability to handle stress or not
o Openness/intellect
 one’s propensity for innovation and ability to solve problems.
 willingness to try new things and a willingness to have novel
experiences
 explorers

Origins of Individual Differences

Evolved Mechanisms
 four distinct sources of individual differences:
 Psychological mechanisms relevant to personality can be grouped into three main categories: o environmental sources
o goals/drives/motives  early experiential calibration - childhood experiences make some
o emotions behavioral strategies more likely than others.
o personality traits  Ex. if people grow up without a father present, they are more
likely to be sexually active at a young age and have more
Motivation and Emotion as Evolved Mechanisms sex partners during adolescence and adulthood
 alternative niche specialization - different people find what makes them
 Two goals and motives that act as evolved mechanisms:
stand out from others in order to gain attention from parents or potential
o power (aggression, dominance, achievement, status, “negotiation of hierarchy”)
mates
o intimacy (love, attachment, “reciprocal alliance”)
 ex. Birth order ni Adler
 also referred to as adaptations since they directly affect the health and o heritable/genetic sources
well-being of a person.
 Body type, facial morphology, and degree of physical attractiveness
 emotions are adaptations because they directly alert the individual to situations that are either
o Nonadaptive sources
harmful or beneficial to his or her well-being
 do not benefit survival or reproductive success
o ex. if the harm is in the form of loss, then sadness is experienced
 neutral genetic variations – take the form of genetic mutations.
 Motivation and emotion are directly linked with stable personality traits o Maladaptive sources
 Motivation is part of personality  actively harm one’s chance for survival or decrease one’s sexual
Personality traits as Evolved Mechanisms attractiveness.
 Either genetic or environmental sources
 five main dimensions of personality (Big Five) can be best thought of as a way of  Genetic source: genetic defect – mutation is harmful to the person
summarizing the social landscape; they signal to other people our ability to solve survival and  Environmental source: environmental trauma – brain or spinal cord
reproductive problems. injuiry
 behavioral dispositions have adaptive significance:
Neo-Bussian Evolutionary Theories of Personality
o Surgency/extraversion/dominance
 experience positive emotional states and to engage in one’s  MacDonald furthered Buss’s theory with two main contributions:
environment and to be sociable and self-confident o tied personality more closely to evolved motivational and emotional
 driven to achieve and often tends to dominate and lead others systems
o Agreeableness
 o argued that the range of personality variation we see on the main
dimensions of personality is viable alternative strategies for maximizing
fitness
o also tied personality dimensions to evolved strategies for solving
adaptive problems
 behavioral strategies are connected either with motivation to
approach or avoid situations or with the emotional system of
negative or positive affect
o had four personality dimensions: dominance, conscientiousness,
nurturance, and neuroticism
 Nettle (2006) recently expanded on evolutionary theories of personality and
argued that Tooby and Cosmides’s (1990) argument that personality could not be
an adaptation failed to appreciate how environmental change and variability would
ultimately select for individual differences in behavior within a given species.
o evolution favors individual differences because one can never predict
what the future holds and which qualities will best match changes in the
environment.
Common Misunderstandings in Evolutionary Theory
A. Evolution Implies Genetic Determinism (Behavior as Set in Stone and Void of Influence from
the Environment)
 Evolution is all about the body changing due to changes in the environment.
o Nature and nurture
o Interaction between adaptation and input from the environment that
triggers the adaptations
 Epigenetics - change in gene function that does not involve changes in DNA
B. Executing Adaptations Requires Conscious Mechanism
 mechanisms (cognitive and personality) evolved to solve important problems of
survival and reproduction does not mean they require complex (conscious)
mathematical abilities to operate.
C. Mechanisms are Optimally Designed
 some adaptations are rather awkward.
 there is always a lag between adaptation and environment.
LESSON 19: SKINNER: BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS
Overview
 behaviorism – emerged from lab studies of animals and humans
 B.F. Skinner’s behavioral analysis – clear departure from the highly speculative
psychodynamic theories
 Radical behaviorism – doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs, such as ego, traits,
drives, needs, hunger, and so forth.
 Determinist – rejected the notion of volition or free will
o Human behavior does not stem from an act of the will, but like any observable
phenomenon, it is lawfully determined and can be studied scientifically.
 Environmentalist – psychology must explain behavior on the basis of environmental stimuli.
o The history of the individual rather than anatomy, provides most useful data for
predicting and controlling behavior
Precursors to Skinner’s Scientific Behaviorism
 Law of effect – learning takes place mostly because of the effects that follow a response.
o Two parts:
 Responses to stimuli that are followed immediately by a satisfier tend to
be “stamped in”
 responses to stimuli that are followed immediately by an annoyer tend
to be “stamped out”
o rewards (satisfiers) – strengthen the connection between stimulus and a response
o punishments (annoyers) – do not usually weaken this connection.
 punishing a behavior merely inhibits that behavior; it does not “stamp it
out.”
 work of John B. Watson
o the concepts of consciousness and introspection must play no role in the scientific
study of human behavior
o human behavior can be studied objectively
o also attacked notions of instinct, sensation, perception, motivation, mental states,
mind, and imagery
 each of these concepts is beyond the realm of scientific psychology.
Scientific Behaviorism
 behavior can best be studied without reference to needs, instincts, or motives
 psychology must avoid internal mental factors and confine itself to observable physical
events.
 Skinner did not deny the existence of internal states; but they are not explanations for
behavior
Philosophy of Science
 Scientific behaviorism allows for an interpretation of behavior but not an explanation of its
causes
Characteristics of Science  Stimulus generalization – response to a similar environment in the absence of previous
reinforcement.
 Science advances in a cumulative manner.
o Science is unique not because of technology but rather because of its attitude.
 Science is an attitude that places on empirical observation above all else.
Reinforcement
o three components:
 rejects authority - must stand the test of empirical observation  Has two effects:
 demands intellectual honesty - requires scientists to accept facts even o Strengthens the behavior
when these facts are opposed to their wishes and desires o Rewards the person
 suspends judgment – di nirurush (??)
 Reinforcers exist in the environment and are not something felt by the person
 science is a search for order and lawful relationships.
 Any behavior that increases the probability that the species or the individual will survive tends
o begins with observation of single events and then attempts to infer general
to be strengthened
principles and laws from those events.
 Positive reinforcement - positive consequence that, when added to a situation, increases the
o scientific method consists of prediction, control, and description.
probability that a given behavior will occur; involves the presentation or addition of a
Conditioning beneficial stimulus
 Negative reinforcement - Subtracting a negative consequence from a situation also increases
 classical conditioning (respondent conditioning) – response is draw out of the organism by a the probability that the preceding behavior will occur; requires the removal or subtraction of
specific, identifiable stimulus. an aversive condition
 Operant conditioning (Skinnerian conditioning) – behavior is made more likely to recur when it
is immediately reinforced Punishment

Classical Conditioning  Decrease behavior

 neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with—that is, immediately precedes—an

unconditioned stimulus several times until it is capable of bringing about a previously
unconditioned response, now called the conditioned response.
 Simplest example: reflexive behavior – responses are unlearned, involuntary, and common.
 Can also be responsible for more complex human learning like phobias, fears, and anxieties

Operant Conditioning

 Human behaviors are learned through operant conditioning

 Immediate reinforcement of a response Effects of Punishment
 Organism first does something and then is reinforced by the environment  Suppress behavior – does not tell them what they should do
o Reinforcement – increases the probability that the same behavior will occur again.  Conditioning of negative feeling by associating a strong aversive stimulus with the behavior
 Organism operates on the environment to produce a specific effect being punished
Shaping  Spread of its effects

Conditioned and Generalized Reinforcers

 experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then
closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself.
 Successive approximations – experimenter or the environment gradually shapes the final
complex set of behaviors
 Instances of operant conditioning:
o Antecedent – environment or setting where the behavior takes place
o Behavior – response
o Consequence – reward
 Operant discrimination – not an ability but a consequence of our reinforcement history
 Conditioned reinforcer – environmental stimuli that are not by nature satisfying but become so
because they are associated with such unlearned or primary reinforcers as food, water, sex,
or physical comfort
 Generalized reinforcer – associated with more than one primary reinforcer
o Attention, approval, affection, submission of others, and tokens (money)
Schedules of Reinforcement
  Continuous schedule – organism is reinforced for every response; increases the frequency of Cultural Evolution
a response but is an inefficient use of the reinforcer.
 Intermittent schedules - they make more efficient use of the reinforcer; produce responses  Selection - responsible for those cultural practices that have survived
that are more resistant to extinction; based either on the behavior of the organism or on Inner States
elapsed time; they either can be set at a fixed rate or can vary according to a randomized
program  can be studied just as any other behavior, but their observation is limited.
o Fixed-ratio schedule - organism is reinforced intermittently according to the
number of responses it makes. Self-Awareness
 Ratio – ratio of responses to reinforcers
 Each person is subjectively aware of his or her own thoughts, feelings, recollections, and
 Ex. FR 5 – pigeon is rewarded for every 5th peck it makes
intentions.
o Variable-ratio schedule – organism is reinforces after every nth response
 Mean of responses must be increased gradually to prevent extinction. Drives
 Ex. Slot machines
o Fixed-interval – reinforced for the first response following a designated period of  effects of deprivation and satiation and to the corresponding probability that the organism will
time. respond.
 Ex. FI 5 – organism is rewarded for its first response after every 5-
minute interval Emotions
o Variable-interval – reinforced after the lase of random or varied periods of time
 behavior must not be attributed to them
 Ex. VI 5 – organism is reinforced following random-length intervals that
 pleasant emotions tend to be reinforced, thereby increasing the probability that these
average 5 minutes.
behaviors would recur in the life of that individual.
Extinction
Purpose and Intention
 Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons:
 felt, ongoing purpose may itself be reinforcing
o they can simply be forgotten during the passage of time.
o they can be lost due to the interference of preceding or subsequent learning. Complex Behavior
o they can disappear due to punishment.
o Extinction - tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively  Skinner believed that even the most abstract and complex behavior is shaped by natural
weakened upon nonreinforcement. selection, cultural evolution, or the individual’s history of reinforcement.
 Operant extinction – experimenter systematically withholds reinforcement of a previously Higher Mental Processes
learned response until the probability of that response diminishes to zero.
 the fewer responses an organism must make or the shorter the time between reinforcers, the  human thought is the most difficult of all behaviors to analyze; but potentially, at least, it can
more quickly extinction will occur. be understood as long as one does not resort to a hypothetical fiction such as “mind.”

Human Organism Creativity

 According to Skinner (1987a), human behavior (and human personality) is shaped by three  creativity is simply the result of random or accidental behaviors (overt or covert) that happen
forces: to be rewarded.
o natural selection
o cultural practices Unconscious Behavior
o the individual’s history of reinforcement  people rarely observe the relationship between genetic and environmental variables and their
 behavior–environment interactions can change behavior (and even, thus, personality) in an own behavior, nearly all our behavior is unconsciously motivated.
individual’s own life time but also in the natural or cultural evolutionary history of an entire
group or species Dreams

Natural Selection  dreams as covert and symbolic forms of behavior that are subject to the same contingencies
of reinforcement as other behaviors are
 Individual behavior that is reinforcing tends to be repeated; that which is not tends to drop out.
  Dream behavior is reinforcing when repressed sexual or aggressive stimuli are allowed
expression
Social Behavior
 Individuals establish groups because they have been rewarded for doing so
Control of Human Behavior
 individual’s behavior is controlled by environmental contingencies.
Social Control
 Individuals act to form social groups because such behavior tends to be reinforcing.
o Groups, in turn, exercise control over their members by formulating written or
unwritten laws, rules, and customs that have physical existence beyond the lives
of individuals
 each of us is controlled by a variety of social forces and techniques, but all these can be
grouped under the following headings:
o operant conditioning
o describing contingencies
 Describing contingencies involves language, usually verbal, to inform
people of the consequences of their not-yet-emitted behavior
o deprivation and satiation
 even though deprivation and satiation are internal states, the control
originates with the environment
o physical restraint
 acts to counter the effects of conditioning, and it results in behavior
contrary to that which would have been emitted had the person not
been restrained
Self-Control
 as people can alter the variables in another person’s environment, so they can manipulate the
variables within their own environment and thus exercise some measure of self-control.
o they can use physical aids such as tools, machines, and financial resources to
alter their environment
 ex. a person may take extra money when going shopping to give
herself the option of impulse buying
o people can change their environment, thereby increasing the probability of the
desired behavior
 ex. a student wanting to concentrate on his studies can turn off a
distracting television set.
o people can arrange their environment so that they can escape from an aversive
stimulus only by producing the proper response
 ex. woman can set an alarm clock so that the aversive sound can be
stopped only by getting out of bed to shut off the alarm.
o people can take drugs, especially alcohol, as a means of self-control.
 ex. a man may ingest tranquilizers to make his behavior more placid.
o people can simply do something else in order to avoid behaving in an undesirable
fashion.
 ex. an obsessive woman may count repetitious patterns in wallpaper to
avoid thinking about previous experiences that would create guilt
The Unhealthy Personality
 techniques of social control and self-control sometimes produce detrimental effects, which
result in inappropriate behavior and unhealthy personality development.
Counteracting Strategies
 When social control is excessive, people can use three basic strategies for counteracting it—
they can escape, revolt, or use passive resistance
o Escape – people withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or
psychologically.
 difficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to
be mistrustful of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of
noninvolvement.
o Revolt - behave more actively, counterattacking the controlling agent
 vandalizing public property, tormenting teachers, verbally abusing other
people, pilfering equipment from employers, provoking the police, or
overthrowing established organizations such as religions or
governments.
o Passive resistance - more subtle than those who rebel and more irritating to the
controllers than those who rely on escape; stubbornness
Inappropriate Behaviors
 follow from self-defeating techniques of counteracting social control or from unsuccessful
attempts at self-control, especially when either of these failures is accompanied by strong
emotion.
 excessively vigorous behavior, which makes no sense in terms of the contemporary situation,
but might be reasonable in terms of past history.
 blocking out reality by simply paying no attention to aversive stimuli
 results from defective self-knowledge and is manifested in such self-deluding responses as
boasting, rationalizing, or claiming to be the Messiah.
 self-punishment, exemplified either by people directly punishing themselves or by arranging
environmental variables so that they are punished by others.
LESSON 20: BANDURA: SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
Overview
 social cognitive theory takes chance encounters and fortuitous events seriously; these
meetings and events don’t invariably alter one’s life path.
 How we react is more powerful than the event itself.
 Basic assumptions:
 o Plasticity - humans have the flexibility to learn a variety of behaviors in diverse
situations.
 Agreed that ppl can learn through direct experience but placed more
emphasis on vicarious learning (learning by observing others)
o Triadic reciprocal causation model – behavioral, environmental, and personal
factors.
 Two important environmental forces in TM:
 Chance encounters
 Fortuitous events
o Agentic perspective – capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of
their lives.
 Self-efficacy – important component of TRCM
 High self-efficacy = enhanced performance
 Proxy agency – ppl are able to rely on others for goods and services
 Collective efficacy – ppl’s shared beliefs that they can bring about
change
o Ppls regulate conduct through both internal and external factors
 external factors – ppl’s physical and social environment
 internal factors – self-observation, judgmental process, and self-
reaction
o moral agency – redefining the behavior, disregarding or distorting the
consequences of their behavior, dehumanizing or blaming the victims of their
behavior, and displacing or diffusing responsibility for their actions.
LEARNING
 humans are quite flexible and capable of learning a multitude of attitudes, skills, and
behaviors – result of vicarious learning
Observational Learning
 observation – allows ppl to learn without performing any behavior.
 People can learn, by observing models being reinforced.
 Much more efficient than learning through direct experience.
I. Modeling
 core of observational learning
 involves adding and subtracting from the observed behavior and generalizing from one
observation to another.
o involves cognitive processes and is not simply mimicry or imitation.
 involves symbolically representing information and storing it for use at a future time
 factors that determine if one will learn from a model:
o characteristics of the model – ppl are more likely to model high-status people,
competent individuals, and powerful people.
o Characteristics of the observer – ppl who lack status, skill, and power are most
likely to model.
o Consequences of the behavior being modeled – greater the value the observer
places n a behavior, the more likely the observer will acquire the behavior; learning
may be facilitated when the observer views a model receiving severe punishment.
II. Processes Governing Observational Learning
 Attention
o Before modeling, we must attend to that person
o Factors
 Individuals whom we frequently associate
 Attractive models
 Nature of the behavior being modeled – we observe behavior that we
think is important or valuable to us.
 Representation
o New response patterns must be symbolically represented in memory
o Symbolic representation need not be verbal.
o Verbal coding greatly speeds the process of OL; also helps us to rehearse
behavior symbolically (we tell ourselves over and over how we well perform the
behavior once given the chance)
o Rehearsal aids retention process.
 Behavioral Production
o We produce the behavior
o several questions about the behavior to be modeled:
 how can I do this? – we try out new behavior
 what am I doing? – we monitor ourselves
 am I doing this right? – we evaluate
 motivation
o OL is most effective when learners are motivated
o Performance is facilitated by motivation.
Enactive Learning
 complex human behavior can be learned when people think about and evaluate the
consequences of their behaviors.
 Consequences serve at least three functions:
o inform us of the effects of our actions – use it as guide for future actions
o motivate our anticipatory behavior – we are capable of symbolically representing
future outcomes and acting accordingly
o serve to reinforce behavior
TRIADIC RECIPROCAL CAUSATION
 human action is a result of an interaction among three variables—environment, behavior, and
person
o person – largely, but not exclusively, such cognitive factors as memory,
anticipation, planning, and judging.
o people possess and use these cognitive capacities, they have some capacity to
select or to restructure their environment.
  Cognition – partially determines which environmental events people
attend to, what value they place on these events, and how they
organize these events for future use.
Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
 Chance encounters – unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar with each other.
 Fortuitous events – environmental experience that is unexpected or unintended.
HUMAN AGENCY
 Humans have the capacity to exercise control over their own lives.
 Essence of humanness.
 people are self-regulating, proactive, self-reflective, and self-organizing and that they have
the power to influence their own actions to produce desired consequences.
 active process of exploring, manipulating, and influencing the environment in order to attain
desired outcomes.
I. Core Features of Human Agency
 Intentionality – acts a person performs intentionally; involves planning and actions.
o People continually change their plans as they become aware of the
consequences of their actions.
 Forethought – to set goals, to anticipate likely outcomes of their actions, and to select
behaviors that will produce desired outcomes and avoid undesirable ones.
 Self-reactiveness – ppl monitor their progress toward fulfilling those choices.
 Self-reflectiveness examiners of their own functioning; they can think about and evaluate
their motivations, values, and the meanings of their life goals, and they can think about the
adequacy of their own thinking.
II. Self-Efficacy
 people’s beliefs in their personal efficacy influence what courses of action they choose to
pursue, how much effort they will invest in activities, how long they will persevere in the face
of obstacles and failure experiences, and their resiliency following setbacks.
 self-efficacy combines with environment, prior behavior, and other personal variables,
especially outcome expectations, to produce behavior.
 In TRCM, nasa P factor siya.
 Foundation of human agency.
A. What is Self-Efficacy?
 people’s beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control over their own
functioning and over environmental events.
 efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency
 Efficacy – people’s confidence that they can perform certain behaviors.
 Expectancy – one’s prediction of the likely consequences of that behavior.
 Outcome – consequences of behavior, not the completion of the act itself.
B. What Contributes to Self-Efficacy?
 Mastery experiences – past performances; successful performances raises efficacy
expectancies; failure lower them.
o six corollaries:
 successful performance raises self-efficacy in proportion to the
difficulty of the task
 tasks successfully accomplished by oneself are more efficacious than
those completed with the help of others
 failure is most likely to decrease efficacy when we know that we put
forth our best effort
 failure under conditions of high emotional arousal or distress is not as
self-debilitating as failure under maximal conditions
 failure prior to establishing a sense of mastery is more detrimental to
feelings of personal efficacy than later failure
 occasional failure has little effect on efficacy, especially for people with
a generally high expectancy of success
 social modeling – vicarious experiences provided by other people.
o self-efficacy is raised when we observe the accomplishments of another person
of equal competence, but is lowered when we see a peer fail.
 Social persuasion – persuasion from others can raise or lower self-efficacy.
o Condition: a person must believe the persuader (if galing sa credible source, mas
may efficacious power)
 Physical and emotional states – strong emotion ordinarily lowers performance; emotional
arousal, if not too intense, is associated with increased performance.
III. Proxy Agency
 Proxy – indirect control over those social conditions that affect everyday living.
 Through proxy agency they can accomplish their goal by relying on other people.
 Downside: By relying too much on the competence and power of others, people may weaken
their sense of personal and collective efficacy.
IV. Collective Efficacy
 people’s shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desired results.
 confidence people have that their combined efforts will bring about group accomplishments
 two techniques for measuring collective efficacy:
o combine individual members’ evaluations of their personal capabilities to enact
behaviors that benefit the group
o measure the confidence each person has in the group’s ability to bring about a
desired outcome
 spring from the personal efficacy of man individuals working together.
 Several factors that can undermine collective efficacy:
o humans live in a transnational world; what happens in one part of the globe can
affect people in other countries, giving them a sense of helplessness.
o recent technology that people neither understand nor believe that they can control
may lower their sense of collective efficacy.
 o complex social machinery, with layers of bureaucracy that prevent social change. A. Redefine the Behavior
o tremendous scope and magnitude of human problems can undermine collective  people justify otherwise reprehensible actions by a cognitive restructuring that allows them to
efficacy. minimize or escape responsibility.
 They can relieve themselves of responsibility for their behavior by at least three techniques:
SELF-REGULATION o Moral justification - culpable behavior is made to seem defensible or even noble.
o Palliative comparisons – make advantageous comparison between that behavior
 people use both reactive and proactive strategies for self-regulation:
o reactively: attempt to reduce the discrepancies between their accomplishments and the even greater atrocities committed by others.
o Euphemistic labels
and their goal
o proactively: set newer and higher goals for themselves B. Disregard or Distort the Consequences of Behavior
I. External Factors in Self-Regulation  distorting or obscuring the relationship between the behavior and its detrimental
consequences
 Two ways:
o provide us with a standard for evaluating our own behavior.  three techniques:
o minimize the consequences of their behavior
o providing the means for reinforcement
o disregard or ignore the consequences of their actions.
II. Internal Factors in Self-Regulation o Distort or misconstrue the consequences of their actions.
A. Self-Observation
 We must be able to monitor our own performance, even though the attention we give to it C. Dehumanizing or Blame the Victims
need not be complete or even accurate.  kind, considerate, and gentle people have perpetrated acts of violence, insult, or other forms
B. Judgmental Process of mistreatment against these groups while avoiding responsibility for their own behavior
 Evaluate our performance D. Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
 Helps us regulate our behavior through the process of cognitive mediation  Displacement - placing responsibility on an outside source
 Personal standards – allow us to evaluate our performances without comparing them to the  Diffuse responsibility – spread it so thin that no one person is responsible
conduct of others DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR
 Standard of reference – self explanatory na e2
 Judgmental process is also dependent on the overall value we place on an activity.  dysfunctional behavior lends itself most readily to depressive reactions, phobias, and
 Performance attribution – how we judge the causes of our behavior. aggressive behaviors.
C. Self-Reaction I. Depression
 Ppl respond positively or negatively to their behaviors depending on how these behaviors  High goals → failure → depression
measure up to their personal standards  depressed people often undervalue their own accomplishments.
 people create incentives for their own actions through self-reinforcement or self-punishment  Result: chronic misery, feelings of worthlessness, lack of purposefulness, and pervasive
III. Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency depression.
 Two aspects of moral agency:  dysfunctional depression can occur in any of the three self-regulatory subfunctions:
o doing no harm to people o self-observation – people can misjudge their own performance or distort their
o proactively helping people memory of past accomplishments; exaggerate their past mistakes and minimize
 Self activation – self-regulatory influences are not automatic but operate only if they are their prior accomplishments.
activated. o Make faulty judgments – set their standards unrealistically high so that any
 Disengagement of internal control – by justifying the morality of their actions, they can personal accomplishment will be judged as a failure.
separate or disengage themselves from the consequences of their behavior o Self-reactions – depressed people judge themselves harshly and inclined to treat
themselves badly for their shortcomings
II. Phobias
 fears that are strong enough and pervasive enough to have severe debilitating effects on
one’s daily life.
 Phobias and fears are learned by direct contact, inappropriate generalization, and especially
by observational experiences.
III. Aggression
 when carried to extremes, can also be dysfunctional.
 aggressive behavior is acquired through observation of others, direct experiences with
positive and negative reinforcements, training, or instruction, and bizarre beliefs.
 Ppl continue to aggress for at least five reasons:
o They enjoy inflicting injury on the victim (positive reinforcement)
o they avoid or counter the aversive consequences of aggression by others
(negative reinforcement)
o they receive injury or harm for not behaving aggressively (punishment)
o they live up to their personal standards of conduct by their aggressive behavior
(self-reinforcement)
o they observe others receiving rewards for aggressive acts or punishment for
nonaggressive behavior.