Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:
Cognitive Social Learning
Theory© The McGraw−Hill^535
Companies, 2009In summary, Rotter believes that a therapist should be an active participant in
a social interaction with the patient. An effective therapist possesses the characteris-
tics of warmth and acceptance not only because these attitudes encourage the patient
to verbalize problems but also because reinforcement from a warm, accepting ther-
apist is more effective than reinforcement from a cold, rejecting one (Rotter, Chance,
& Phares, 1972). The therapist attempts to minimize the discrepancy between need
value and freedom of movement by helping patients alter their goals or by teaching
effective means of obtaining those goals. Even though the therapist is an active prob-
lem solver, Rotter (1978) believes that eventually patients must learn to solve their
own problems.
Introduction to Mischel’s
Personality Theory
In general, personality theories are of two types—those who see personality as a dy-
namic entity motivated by drives, perceptions, needs, goals, and expectancies and
those who view personality as a function of relatively stable traits or personal dis-
positions. The first category includes the theories of Adler (Chapter 3), Maslow
(Chapter 10), and Bandura (Chapter 16). This approach emphasizes cognitive and af-
fective dynamics that interact with the environment to produce behavior.
The second category emphasizes the importance of relatively stable traits of
personal dispositions. The theories of Allport (Chapter 13), Eysenck (Chapter 14),
and McCrae and Costa (Chapter 14) are in this category. This approach sees people
as being motivated by a limited number of drives or personal traits that tend to ren-
der a person’s behavior somewhat consistent. Walter Mischel (1973) originally ob-
jected to this trait theory explanation of behavior. Instead, he supported the idea that
cognitive activities and specific situations play a major role in determining behavior.
However, more recently, Mischel and his colleagues (Mischel & Shoda, 1998, 1999;
Mischel, Shoda, & Mendoza-Denton, 2002) have advocated a reconciliation between
the processing dynamics approach and the personal dispositions approach. This
cognitive-affective personality theoryholds that behavior stems from relatively
stable personal dispositions and cognitive-affective processes interacting with a par-
ticular situation.
Biography of Walter Mischel
Walter Mischel, the second son of upper-middle-class parents, was born on February
22, 1930, in Vienna. He and his brother Theodore, who later became a philosopher
of science, grew up in a pleasant environment only a short distance from Freud’s
home. The tranquillity of childhood, however, was shattered when the Nazis invaded
Austria in 1938. That same year, the Mischel family fled Austria and moved to the
United States. After living in various parts of the country, they eventually settled in
Brooklyn, where Walter attended primary and secondary schools. Before he could
accept a college scholarship, his father suddenly became ill, and Walter was forced
to take a series of odd jobs. Eventually, he was able to attend New York University,
Chapter 17 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 529