play softball is determined by what you expect to happen. Of course, we base
our expectancies largely on how things turned out other times we were in this
situation. If you always do well after studying all night, you will develop an ex-
pectancy of receiving the reward again. If you never enjoy yourself playing soft-
ball, the expectancy of being rewarded for playing again is slim.
Of course, traditional behaviorists would make these same predictions.
People are more likely to engage in a behavior when it has been reinforced.
But Rotter and the behaviorists disagree on how to explain the behavior.
Behaviorists say that an operant conditioning association or habit has been
strengthened by the earlier experience. However, Rotter argues that the more
often people are reinforced for a certain behavior (for example, studying all
night and receiving an A), the stronger their expectancy that the behavior willbe reinforced in the future. Of course, expectancies are not necessarily accu-
rate. You might expect that studying for your SAT will result in a higher score,
even if in reality the studying has little effect. In this case, your expectancy will
probably predict your behavior better than the actual contingencies.
But what about situations we encounter for the first time? In these situa-
tions we rely on generalized expectancies —beliefs we hold about how often
our actions typically lead to reinforcements and punishments. According to
Rotter (1966), each of us can be placed along a continuum called locus of con-
trol. At one end of this dimension we find individuals with an extreme internal
orientation —those who believe that most of what happens to them is the re-
sult of their own actions or attributes. On the other end we find people whohold an extreme external orientation —those who maintain that much of what
happens to them is the result of forces outside their control, such as chance or
powerful others. As we will see in the next chapter, where we fall on this di-
mension has important implications in such areas as achievement and health.
The second component in Rotter ’s model is reinforcement value, the de-
gree to which we prefer one reinforcer over another. Naturally, the reinforce-
ment value we assign a certain outcome can vary from situation to situation.When we are lonely, social contact holds a higher reinforcement value than
when we aren ’t. Yet each of us also have reinforcers we almost always value
more than others. Some people consistently work hard, placing their job
ahead of family and recreation. We might call these people obsessive or
driven. But using Rotter ’s model, their personalities can be explained in terms
of the consistently high value they put on achievement.Behavior Potential (BP) = Expectancy (E) + Reinforcement Value (RV)
FIGURE 13.2 Rotter ’s Basic Formula for Predicting Behavior352 CHAPTER 13 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach