PSY 405 Week 3 Behavioral and Social-Cognitive Theories Example

Praise for Results and the Midnight Inbox: Behavioral and Social-Cognitive Views of a Principal

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/405: Theories of Personality

Week 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The principal and her history are composites written for a model paper; theory and research come from the sources listed.

Behavioral theories explain personality as the sum of learned behavior patterns, shaped by consequences. Social-cognitive theories add that people's beliefs, expectations and goals guide behavior and that person and environment shape one another. This paper applies both to Renée Castillo, the composite principal analyzed in earlier weeks.

A History of Reinforcement

From a behavioral view, Renée's perfectionism is learned. As a child, perfect report cards and smooth nights at the restaurant earned her father's warm praise, while mistakes drew sharp criticism or cold silence. Achievement was positively reinforced; errors were punished. Over years, behaviors that prevented errors, double-checking, working late and taking over others' tasks, became strong habits.

What Keeps the Behavior Going Now

Behavior persists because of current consequences, not just history. Renée's midnight rewriting of teachers' lesson plans is negatively reinforced: it reduces her anxiety about the rating, and that relief makes the behavior more likely next time. It is also positively reinforced by occasional praise from the district for her "hands-on" leadership. The costs, exhaustion and resentful teachers, arrive later and less predictably, so they shape behavior less.

Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura (1989) described people as agents who influence their own lives through forethought, self-regulation and self-reflection, within a system of reciprocal causation in which personal factors, behavior and environment influence one another. People are neither driven solely by inner forces nor shaped passively by surroundings.

Each direction appears in Renée's life. Her belief that outcomes depend on her personal control, a person factor, leads her to micromanage, a behavior. Micromanaging changes her environment: teachers stop taking initiative and wait for her corrections. That environment confirms her belief that nothing happens without her, completing the loop. A district culture of weekly data reviews adds environmental pressure that feeds the same belief.

Self-Efficacy and Expectations

Self-efficacy, confidence in one's ability to perform specific tasks, is high for Renée in most areas: she believes she can lead, teach and solve problems. Her self-efficacy for delegating, however, is low; she doubts that she can let go without disaster. Rotter's concept of locus of control adds that she holds a strong internal locus: she sees outcomes as caused by her own actions. This orientation fueled her success but turns into self-blame when an outcome, such as a rating influenced by many factors, goes badly.

Renée's belief that nothing improves without her makes her teachers wait for her, which then proves the belief.

Self-Control and Its Roots

Mischel et al. (1989) reviewed studies in which preschool children could receive a small treat immediately or a larger one if they waited alone with the treat in view. Children differed in how long they waited and in the strategies they used, such as distracting themselves. Children who waited longer were, years later, described by parents as more academically and socially competent and coped better with frustration and stress, and they scored higher on college admission tests.

Watts et al. (2018) tested this finding with a larger, more diverse sample and controls for family background and early cognitive ability. The link between waiting time in preschool and test scores in adolescence was about half the size of the original estimate, and after controls it shrank to a small effect. The results suggest that early self-control is partly a reflection of family circumstances and early abilities rather than a powerful independent predictor.

Renée's exceptional self-control, studying after long restaurant shifts, may reflect a disposition, but the replication reminds us that her circumstances, responsibility, routines and clear expectations, likely built it as much as any inborn trait.

Observational Learning in Her History

Renée did not learn only from consequences to herself. Night after night, she watched her father handle a full dining room, fix every problem personally and refuse help from staff he did not trust. Bandura's work on observational learning suggests that children acquire such patterns by watching models they admire, even before they are rewarded for copying them. Renée's leadership style, taking over rather than coaching, closely resembles the model she watched for a decade.

If-Then Patterns

Social-cognitive theorists also note that people show stable situation-behavior pairings: in one kind of setting, one kind of response. Renée is patient and encouraging when a student struggles but controlling when a teacher's work will be seen by the district. Her behavior is consistent within each kind of situation, even though it looks inconsistent overall. Recognizing these signatures helps predict when she is most likely to slip into micromanaging.

Changing the Pattern

The strength of this tradition is that it suggests concrete change. Renée could build self-efficacy for delegating through small mastery experiences, giving one department full control of a unit plan and observing the results. Changing reinforcement contingencies helps: she could replace midnight rewrites with a scheduled weekly review, reducing the anxiety-relief cycle, and reward teachers' initiative publicly. Reframing the rating as the product of many factors, not her personal failure, would adjust her expectations.

Comparing With Earlier Weeks

The psychodynamic view from Week 1 explained Renée's drive as an inner standard absorbed from her father; the behavioral view explains the same pattern through reinforcement and requires no unconscious agency. The trait view from Week 2 described her conscientiousness and neuroticism; the social-cognitive view explains how beliefs and environments turn those traits into specific behaviors and suggests how to change them.

Limits

Behavioral explanations can seem mechanical, saying little about the meaning Renée attaches to her work or her sense of purpose. Social-cognitive theory addresses beliefs but gives less attention to emotion and identity, which the next week's humanistic and existential perspectives emphasize.

Conclusion

Renée's perfectionism can be understood as a learned pattern, built by early reinforcement and maintained by current relief from anxiety, and as part of a reciprocal system in which her beliefs, behavior and school environment reinforce one another. Research on self-control, including a careful replication, shows how circumstances shape traits that look inborn. This view offers the most practical path to change so far in the course.

References

Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44(9), 1175-1184. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.9.1175

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2658056

Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the marshmallow test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159-1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661