The social cognitive on personality psychology is a theory that puts a lot of emphasis on processes of cognition like thinking and judging in character development. The cognitive processes lead to learned behaviors central to the personality of an individual. This means by observing a role model; a person may choose to adopt as well as emphasizing a particular trait and behavior.
Walter Mischel is a researcher of person who did a marvelous work that contributed a lot to shape the social cognitive theory of personality. In 19968, he ignited a controversy in the field of personality research by criticizing the trait theories and proposed his new argument that a person’s behavior regarding a trait is not consistent always, before his research. The trait theory argued that one’s behavior is always dependent on a trait such as consciousness and sociability, where the traits are consistent in all situations. Mischel did an experiment that emphasized that the behaviors of a person are not due to his traits but fundamentally dependent on situational cues, that is the needs of a particular situation (Huprich, 2015).
The ideas of the trait theory conflicted with Mischel’s theory which brought about a person and situation debate. For instance, if someone is considered as generous, will that person be generous in all situations? The idea here is that people change depending on situations; therefore traits only could not be used to predict behaviors. This is why Walter later researched and concluded that both trait and situation were important in predicting behavior. This argument, however, contradicted the trait theory on only using internal traits to account for behavior.
In emphasizing on the fact that the situation should be used to predict behavior, mischel encourages other researchers to focus on incorporating situational findings in their experiments as they look for consistencies that self-control. Later findings found that there was no consistency of behavior across different situation but rather within the same situation (Scott, 2016).
Mischel later suggested is found on stable patterns of the relation between the behavior and the situation forming personality signatures that are different. This means that if a certain situation occurs, it results in another behavior. According to his argument, it’s better to define a person through a certain situation rather than merely defining that person with their traits. In this way mischel emphasized the significance of physical, social and the forces of the environment in shaping a behavior.
Mischel also contributed a lot on social regulation. This refers to a person having the ability to set as well as working towards a goal. This mostly relates to the capacity to delay gratification, which is the concept of oneself denying a reward in present time to get a reward that is better in future. In his experiment where he examined the mental processes of children that make them forego a reward and wait for a better one in future. At the end of the experiment, he realized that children differ in their self-control degree. Some have good self-control and this translated to their academic performance and good behaviors while those with poor self-control had poor performance and behavioral problems.
Today, most psychologists put consideration in both situations and personal factors when it comes to understanding behaviors. Hence this approach to personality emphasizes the importance of both the situation and the perception of a person to a situation. People use cognitive processes to interpret a certain context instead of using the situation and thus behave in accordance to that interpretation.
References
Huprich, S. K. (2015). The cognitive-affective processing system model of personality pathology: Ready-made for theoretical integration. Kansas.: Wichita State University.
Scott, W. D. (2016). Social Cognitive Personality Assessment: A Case Conceptualization Procedure and Illustration. . Cognitive and Behavioral Practice,, 79-98.
