Chapter 18 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 531effects of McCarthyism in Ohio, and in 1963, he took a position at the University
of Connecticut as director of the Clinical Training Program. He continued in that
position until 1987, when he retired as professor emeritus. Rotter and his wife
Clara (who died in 1986) had two children, a daughter, Jean, and a son, Richard,
who died in 1995. Julian Rotter passed away at his home in Connecticut on Janu-
ary 6, 2014, at the age of 97.
Among Rotter’s most important publications are Social Learning and Clini-
cal Psychology (1954); Clinical Psychology (1964); Applications of a Social
Learning Theory of Personality, with J. E. Chance and E. J. Phares (1972); Per-
sonality, with D. J. Hochreich (1975); The Development and Application of Social
Learning Theory: Selected Papers (1982); the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank
(Rotter, 1966); and the Interpersonal Trust Scale (Rotter, 1967).
Rotter served as president of the Eastern Psychological Association and of
the divisions of Social and Personality Psychology and Clinical Psychology of the
American Psychological Association (APA). He also served two terms on the APA
Education and Training Board. In 1988, he received the prestigious APA Distin-
guished Scientific Contribution Award. The following year, he earned the Distin-
guished Contribution to Clinical Training Award from the Council of University
Directors of Clinical Psychology.
Introduction to Rotter’s Social
Learning Theory
Social learning theory rests on five basic hypotheses. First, it assumes that humans
interact with their meaningful environments (Rotter, 1982). People’s reaction to envi-
ronmental stimuli depends on the meaning or importance that they attach to an event.
Reinforcements are not dependent on external stimuli alone but are given meaning
by the individual’s cognitive capacity. Likewise, personal characteristics such as
needs or traits cannot, by themselves, cause behavior. Rather, Rotter believed that
human behavior stems from the interaction of environmental and personal factors.
A second assumption of Rotter’s theory is that human personality is
learned. Thus, it follows that personality is not set or determined at any par-
ticular age of development; instead, it can be changed or modified as long as
people are capable of learning. Although our accumulation of earlier experiences
gives our personality some stability, we are always responsive to change through
new experiences. We learn from past experiences, but those experiences are not
absolutely constant; they are colored by intervening experiences that then affect
present perceptions.
The third assumption of social learning theory is that personality has a basic
unity, which means that people’s personalities possess relative stability. People
learn to evaluate new experiences on the basis of previous reinforcement. This
relatively consistent evaluation leads to greater stability and unity of personality.
Rotter’s fourth basic hypothesis is that motivation is goal directed. He
rejected the notion that people are primarily motivated to reduce tension or seek
pleasure, insisting that the best explanation for human behavior lies in people’s
expectations that their behaviors are advancing them toward goals. For example,