Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:
Cognitive Social Learning
Theory(^548) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
What the researchers found perfectly supported the if-then framework of
person-situation interactions. For example, when the trait descriptor for the fictional
student was kiss-up, participants predicted that she would act very warmly toward
professors but not exceptionally warmly toward peers. In other words, ifthe target
of the interaction was of a high status (professor), thenthe student was very warm;
but ifthe target was not of high status, thenthe student was not warm. Similarly,
when the student was described as unfriendly, participants predicted she would be
rather warm toward people she knew well but not at all warm toward unfamiliar peo-
ple. These findings clearly demonstrate the average person understands that people
do not behave in the same manner in all situations—depending on their personality,
people adjust behavior to match the situation.
In other, but similar, research, Mischel and colleagues have conducted stud-
ies on the conditional nature of dispositions in an “I am... when.. .” framework
(Mendoza-Denton, Ayduk, Mischel, Shoda, & Testa, 2001). For instance, unconditional
self-evaluations are statements such as “I am good” or “I am stupid.” Conditional self-
evaluations, by contrast, are “I am good at tennis” or “I am smart when I am work-
ing on math problems.” These latter self-evaluations are more complex and situate
the person in a particular context. In addition, Mischel and colleagues argue that hav-
ing such a complex interactionist view of oneself should bode well for one’s emo-
tional life; that is, one will become less depressed when things do not go one’s way
and will not glorify oneself when things do not.
Mischel and colleagues set out to study these assumptions by examining
whether having a conditional (interactionist) self-evaluation would mollify negative
emotional reactions when confronted with failure (Mendoza-Denton et al., 2001).
The researchers asked university students to assess their views that intelligence and
personality were fixed and immutable. Then the students went through a procedure
that manipulated common failure experiences among students (failing an important
exam, giving an oral presentation that flops, and attending a party and having diffi-
culty socializing with anyone). This was done by having participants go into their
own cubicle, put on headphones, and listen to an audiotape that described these ex-
periences. Participants were instructed to actively imagine themselves going through
each one of these experiences. After listening to each vignette, the students rated their
self-evaluation, with half of the sample being given the task of rating themselves un-
conditionally: “I am a(n) __”; and the other half conditionally: “I am a(n) __
when __.” Then, in order to assess what effect these different self-evaluations
would have on emotional reactions, students had to imagine what they would have re-
ally felt had they been in each situation and rate it on a 1 (very sad) to 10 (very happy)
scale. The total emotion score was an average of the three situations.
The unconditional self-evaluations were coded into three distinct categories:
traits (“I am a failure”), states (“I am nervous”), and other (“I am going home now”).
The conditional “hedge” statements (when __) were coded into four distinct cate-
gories: internally focused conditionals (“when I don’t put in the time to write a good
paper”), externally focused conditionals (“when the professor grades me unfairly”),
situational descriptors (“when there is an oral presentation”), or other.
Results supported the prediction that students would feel more sadness in the un-
conditional self-evaluation condition than in the conditional one. Moreover, at least
when making unconditional self-evaluations, those who made trait-like self-evaluations
542 Part V Learning Theories