Personality Theories and Character Analysis

Personality Theories and Character Analysis

Personality Theory: Social Cognition

Albert Bandura, is the founder of social cognitive theory, received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1952. In 1953, he was offered a position at Stanford University. In 1986, Bandura published his book: “Social Foundation of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.”

The SCT is based on behaviorism and social psychology. Behaviorism was the subject of significant debate on the possible existence of mediating processes between stimulus and response; indeed opinions were divided on whether the behavior was the consequence of reinforcements and punishments (Greene & Greene, 2008).

Some psychologists had already proposed the notion of mediator: one can think of William James with his notion of habit, and Freud's notion of drive. In 1930, Tolman defended the idea that another variable acted as a mediator between stimulus and response, then he introduced the concept of waiting. With the introduction of cognition, the three behavioral variables were collected for the development of the theory of social learning (SLT) that would give rise to social cognitive theory. SLT (social learning theory) presented the foundations of learning: reinforcement, punishment, extinction, and imitation of a model. Dollard and Miller added that the behavior is also motivated by certain needs (drive) and the response of an organism can serve as a stimulus to another (Greene & Greene, 2008). In case of Wade, his childhood memory of his father's treatment may have worked as a mediator, leading to aggressive response.

According to PSB, human being is no longer just a toy for the environment but an individual with an override control system face a behavioral response to a stimulus. Although there are different versions of SLT All agree on three basic principles:

Principle 1: The result of the response (such as reward or punishment) influences the probability of reproducing the same behavior in a given situation; principle also shared by behaviorism. There was many times, when Wade behaved angrily, and then we also saw that he repeated aggressive acts.

Principle 2: Human beings learn by observation and imitation, in addition, they can learn by participating personally in this learning. We give the name of vicarious learning this type of behavior, behavioral principle that no classic would have agreed. Observation and imitation by Wade may have been as a result of observing his father's behavior, during childhood.

Principle 3: People tend to model their behavior by observing some other whom they can identify; this identification is based on assessing the level of similarity that a person owes another, and the level of attachment linking this person to other.

Social Cognitive Theory

The SCT implies that thought is an active force that constructs reality for all of us, selecting the information, and choosing behaviors based on the expectations and values. Through feedback and reciprocity, the reality of an individual is formed through interaction of the environment and cognition. However, the information processing (attention, memory, ability to use symbols, and problem solving skills) changes over time, depending on the level of ...