CHAPTER 16

ROTTER'S EXPECTANCY- REINFORCEMENT VALUE

MODEL

Social-learning Approach to Personality

• Four Major Concepts

– behavior potential - probability that a particular behavior will occur, as a function of the persons expectancies and the perceived value of the reinforcer secured by the behavior in a given situation.

– expectancy - cognition or belief about the property of some object or event.

– reinforcement value - importance of a given reinforcer to an individual in relation to other reinforcers, if the probabilities of attaining all of them are equal.

– psychological situation - meaning of the situation as it is defined by the person.

Social-learning Approach to Personality (cont.)

• Two Derivative Concepts

– freedom of movement - individuals expectancy that his or her behaviors will generally lead to success (high freedom of movement) or failure (low freedom of movement) in a given life area.

– minimal goal - dividing point between those outcomes that produce feelings of satisfaction and those that produce dissatisfaction.

Personality Development

• Not a stage theory; developmental process involves the acquisition and modification of expectancies and reinforcement values through contact with various socialization agents (e.g., parents, siblings, friends, teachers).

Therapeutic Assessment Techniques

• Major procedures

– Laboratory studies

– Clinical interview

– Projective tests

– Controlled behavioral tests

– Behavioral observation methods

– Personality questionnaires

• internal vs. external control of reinforcement - individuals belief that his or her behavior is self-determined (internal control) or determined by outside factors (external control).

• research with I/E Scale

Theory's Implications for Therapy

• Maladjusted People - those who behave in ways that society considers destructive; therapists need to help them change expectancies and reinforcement values that do not work.

– must learn a set of realistic expectancies

– must learn a set of realistic reinforcers

– must learn to discriminate between those situations that are likely to lead to behaviors that are appropriate and those likely to lead to behaviors that are inappropriate.

– must learn to eliminate behaviors that are undesirable and to learn those that are desirable.

Evaluative Comments

• Comprehensiveness - broad in scope.

• Precision and Testability - precise and testable.

• Parsimony - quite parsimonious.

• Empirical Validity - strong empirical support for the locus of control construct; rest of the theory remains untested.

• Heuristic Value - theory is stimulating to scholars in many areas, including learning theory, psychopathology, psychotherapy, personality development, and social psychology.

• Applied Value - strong applied value.