Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:
Cognitive Social Learning
Theory© The McGraw−Hill^547
Companies, 2009measures, and participants completed the measures, during face-to-face interviews
with one of the researchers in the participant’s home.
The researchers found that possessing an internal sense of control was posi-
tively related to all the personality variables measured, which means that those
who had a high sense of internal control also were more autonomous, took more
risks, had a stronger sense of social responsibility, were more tolerant (less au-
thoritarian), were more empathetic, and exhibited higher levels of altruistic moral
reasoning.
To test their primary prediction that personality could predict hero status, the
researchers used a statistical procedure that allowed them to pool all the participants
(heroes, bystanders, and the comparison sample of pre-war immigrants) and then use
each person’s scores on the personality variables to predict to which category each
participant belonged. In support of the researchers’ hypothesis, personality correctly
predicted who was a hero and who was not 93% of the time, which is a very high ac-
curacy rate for this type of analysis.
Further analysis revealed that those who put their own life on the line to assist
their persecuted neighbors had a higher sense of internal control than those who did
not offer assistance. And this makes perfect sense: If a person has an external sense
of control, believing that the outcome of events is all chance, then why would that
person ever risk his or her own safety to take action to help ensure the safety of oth-
ers? Having a generalized expectancy that your actions willhave a positive effect,
and that the outcome of events is notall chance, is a critical element to being able to
help others under extraordinary conditions.
Person-Situation Interaction
Walter Mischel has conducted a great deal of research on the complexities associ-
ated with personality, situations, and behavior. His research and theory of cognitive
social learning has generated even more research by many scholars in the field. Per-
haps the most important of these has been the recent research on the person-situation
interaction. The essence of this approach is summed up by the contextual contingency
between behavior and context in the statement “If I am in this situation, then I do X;
but if I am in that situation, then I do Y.” As we discussed in the section on the
cognitive-affective personality system, Mischel and Shoda developed conceptual
and empirical methods of investigating the person-situation interaction by simply
having participants respond to if-then situations.
In a recent study, elegant in its simplicity, one of Mischel’s students, Lara
Kammrath, and her colleagues demonstrated the “If... then.. .” framework very
clearly (Kammrath, Mendoza-Denton, & Mischel, 2005). The goal of the study was
to show that people understand the if-then framework and use it when making judg-
ments about others. Participants in this study were given just one trait of a fictional
female student and then asked to predict how warmly the student would behave in
several different situations. The single trait descriptor each participant received was
determined randomly from the following list: friendly, a kiss-up, flirtatious, shy, or
unfriendly. With just one of these traits in mind, participants then had to predict how
the fictional student would behave with peers, with professors, with women, with
men, with familiar people, and with unfamiliar people.
Chapter 17 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 541