Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:
Cognitive Social Learning
Theory(^518) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
Connecticut as director of the Clinical Training Program. He continued in that posi-
tion 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.
Among Rotter’s most important publications are Social Learning and Clinical
Psychology(1954); Clinical Psychology(1964); Applications of a Social Learning
Theory of Personality,with J. E. Chance and E. J. Phares (1972); Personality,with
D. J. Hochreich (1975); The Development and Application of Social Learning The-
ory: 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 Di-
rectors 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 believes 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 particular age of de-
velopment; 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 rejects
the notion that people are primarily motivated to reduce tension or seek pleasure, in-
sisting that the best explanation for human behavior lies in people’s expectations that
their behaviors are advancing them toward goals. For example, most college students
have a goal of graduation and are willing to endure stress, tension, and hard work in
order to reach that goal. Rather than reducing tension, the prospect of several diffi-
cult years of college classes promises to increase it.
512 Part V Learning Theories