0390435333.pdf

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

V. Learning Theories 17. Rotter and Mischel:

Cognitive Social Learning

Theory

© The McGraw−Hill^541

Companies, 2009

informed that they had failed; and the third group received no information. The boys
were then asked to choose between an immediate, less valuable, noncontingent re-
ward and a delayed, more valuable, contingent reward. Consistent with Mischel’s in-
teraction theory, students who had been told that they had succeeded on the earlier
similar task were more likely to wait for the more valued reward that was contingent
on their performance; those who were informed that they had previously failed
tended to choose an immediate, less valuable reward; and those who had received no
earlier feedback made choices based on their original expectancies for success; that
is, students in the no-information group who originally had high expectancies for
success made choices similar to those who believed that they were successful,
whereas those who originally had low expectancies for success made choices simi-
lar to those who believed that they had failed. Figure 17.2 shows how situational
feedback interacts with expectancy for success to influence choice of rewards.
Mischel and his associates have also shown that children can use their cogni-
tive processes to change a difficult situation into an easier one. For example, Mischel
and Ebbe B. Ebbesen (1970) found that some children were able to use their cogni-
tive ability to change an unpleasant wait for a treat into a more pleasant situation. In
this delay-of-gratification study, nursery school children were told that they would
receive a small reward after a short period of time, but a larger treat if they could
wait longer. Children who thought about the treat had difficulty waiting, whereas
children who were able to wait the longest used a variety of self-distractions to avoid
thinking about the reward. They looked away from the treat, closed their eyes, or
sang songs in order to change the aversive waiting situation into a more pleasant one.
These and other research results led Mischel to conclude that both the situation and
various cognitive-affective components of personality play a role in determining
behavior.

Cognitive-Affective Units

In 1973, Mischel proposed a set of five overlapping, relatively stable person variables
that interact with the situation to determine behavior. More than 30 years of research
have caused Mischel and his associates to broaden their conception of these

Chapter 17 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 535

Made choices based on

earlier expectancy

for success

Chose less valuable

noncontingent rewards

Chose more valuable

contingent rewards

Obtained failure No information

Everyone works on a series of problems

Everyone measured for expectancy for success

Obtained success

FIGURE 17.2 Model used by Mischel and Staub (1965).