SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORY
The evolution from traditional behavioral views of personality to more cogni-
tive approaches is probably best illustrated by the work of Albert Bandura
(1977a, 1986, 2001, 2006). Bandura rejects the behaviorist ’s depiction of
human beings as passive recipients of whatever stimuli life throws their way.
Certainly individuals respond to environmental events, and certainly they of-
ten learn characteristic behaviors as the result of rewards and punishments.
But people possess other capacities that are distinctly human. By reducingthe process through which people grow and change to the way a rat learns
to press a bar, strict behaviorists overlook some of the most important causes
of human behavior. Because these overlooked causes generally involve think-ing and symbolic processing of information, Bandura refers to his approach
as a social-cognitive theory.
Reciprocal Determinism
Bandura adds a new twist to the question of whether behavior is determined
by internal or by external forces. He argues that there are both internal andexternal determinants of behavior, but behavior is not determined exclusivelyJulian B. Rotter
1916 –
Julian Rotter first learned
about psychology in theAvenue J Library inBrooklyn, where he spent agreat deal of his grade
school and high schoolyears. One day, after
exhausting most of the books in other sections of thelibrary, he wandered over to the Philosophy andPsychology shelf. Among the first books he encoun-tered were Alfred Adler ’sUnderstanding Human
Nature and Sigmund Freud ’sPsychopathology of
Everyday Life. From that point on, he was hooked.
But for a time his love of psychology took a backseat
to the realities of the world. He decided to major inchemistry at Brooklyn College because “there was no
profession of psychology that I knew of. And in 1933,in the depths of the Great Depression, one majored
in a subject one could use to make a living ”(1982,
p. 343).
But circumstances soon intervened. One day during
his junior year, Rotter discovered that Alfred Adler wasteaching at the Long Island School of Medicine. Rotter
began attending the lectures. Eventually, Adler invitedRotter to attend the monthly meetings of the Society ofIndividual Psychology held in Adler’ s home.
Unfortunately, Adler died the next year.
Nonetheless, by then Rotter ’s enthusiasm for
psychology dictated that he go to graduate school. He
chose the University of Iowa so that he could studywith the famous Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin. Hewent to the University of Indiana for his PhD because itwas one of the few schools at the time to offer a degreein clinical psychology. He wanted an academicposition, but few were available when Rotter graduatedin 1941. After working in a hospital for a year, Rotterserved as a psychologist in the Army and later the AirForce during World War II.
Circumstances altered Rotter ’s career path again
following the war. The need for clinical psychologists
was suddenly high, but their numbers were few. Rotter
took a position at Ohio State University, finally
fulfilling his ambition to be a professional academicpsychologist. He stayed there until 1963, when hemoved to the University of Connecticut.
University of Connecticut, Department
of PsychologySocial-Cognitive Theory 353