Cognitive and Social Aspects of Personality - Research Paper Example

Vicarious learning Vicarious learning is also known as observational or social learning. People learn many things around them through observation. At this point, it is important for them to observe, retain and replicate the behavior they observed. Vicarious learning is a way to learn behavior by observing rather than actually doing it. This can be clearly illustrated by understanding that there are many behaviors and some are learned by not actually performing them. For example, unacceptable behaviors are most likely not to be performed. Absenteeism and tardiness are unacceptable behaviors in the workplace. An employee does not need to be absent or late most of the time just to be able to learn from these behaviors. Learning from observed behaviors however depends on the person’s attention, motor reproduction, motivation and their ability to retain them. Their willingness to learn depends on the intensity or impact of the actual learning they obtained from those behaviors they observed. For instance, if absenteeism would mean loss of one’s job, then those personnel who have maximum value for their job would usually refrain from being absent or late in their work. Learned behavior is performed The things that determine the performance of learned behavior include outcome expectancies, and attributes of the model and observer. Under outcome expectancies, a behavioral scientist believes that a certain behavior leads to a specific outcome (Maddux, Sherer & Rogers, 1982). This belief leads to the point that learned behaviors are actually performed at some point because they usually create outcomes. Thus, under the assumption of outcome expectancies, a learned behavior is determined to produce specific outcomes. There are various behavioral models and some of them are very complex. These models are said to have behavior attributes which actually help determine whether a learned behavior is performed. Finally, observers have subjective judgment which definitely could help determine whether the learned behavior is actually performed. From their personal testimony of a person’s behavior, they could clearly differentiate if there are notable behaviors that a certain individual manifests out from the learned behaviors. Remarkable changes must be evident on the person’s behavior especially if the learned behaviors are already performed. Vicarious learning in personality development It has been long noted that a person’s personality development is associated with social learning acquired through experience, peers, gender and culture. This is relevant in the case of a child’s personality development particularly in academic performance, level of aggression, fear, and dependency (Zimmerman, 2001; Askew & Field, 2007). As the child continues to grow mature as adult, the basic experiences in the past mold his or her character because various behaviors were encountered in his or her growing years through social learning. As a human being, a child is able to associate with other children and learn from them. This learning absolutely includes children understanding the behavior of others and later applies them too in their lives. Children are susceptible to be influenced by various behaviors because they are all associated with their growth as personality development intertwined with the process of human development. #2 Internal locus of control Internal locus of control is an integral part of people’s beliefs that at some point they have control over some string of events that naturally occur in their lives. This particularly is integrated with an individual’s perceptions about things in the environment. For example, some people may perceive that their level of poverty is not affected by their external environment, but they have control over it. In the first place, some of their behaviors such as idleness may result to poverty. In this case, they have internal locus of control over their own experience. If an individual has something to do with the outcome of events, then they basically got internal control on it. This is basically observed in situations in which an individual has so many things to rely on his or her self. For instance, a good example is making and saving money. It is hard to earn or save money especially in the event of economic and financial meltdown. From this experience or observation, an individual is able to learn many things from it so there comes an opportunity to find ways and means on how to make or save money. This is absolutely true among the lives of many Americans who happened to experience the adverse impacts of the economic downturn. At this point in their lives, their very own self is the one who can eventually help them survive the crisis. This is a mere proof that in certain situations, the internal locus of control exists within an individual’s life. External locus of control Unlike the internal locus of control, the external locus of control is based on the belief that outcomes of events are out of an individual’s control and luck, powerful others and internality controlled them instead. This is evident among individuals who believe the power or ability of lucky charms that can possibly do in their lives. This is also evident in the ideology about the existence of God who has all the power to control the entire universe. External locus of control is not centered on one’s self, but it is about believing to a certain principle that there are things that a self has no ability at all to affect or influence certain outcomes. The nature for instance is something that human can hardly imagine to control over time. The natural process within the food chain and within the ecology is something that is out of man’s control. Although at some point human can alter or influence them, it is a living proof that the existing principles in nature cannot exist as man made. Locus of control and physical health Locus of control is associated with physical health of a person. For instance, a health conscious individual would refrain from eating unhealthy foods and pursue physical exercise to ensure normal health function of the body. Although the nature may somehow promote certain illnesses, an individual still has something to do so as not to be affected by them through taking food supplements or by receiving a shot of vaccines just to strengthen the immune system. Locus of control and mental health There are things in life that may come which may be out of control such a death of a love one, accident, aging and more. The only way to know if a person is mentally healthy having experienced some of these uncontrolled events is their ability to accept them and learn to go on with a positive outlook in life (McFadden & Basting, 2010). This depicts the fact that in uncontrolled situation, a mentally healthy person learns to control his or her thoughts about everything else. People can eventually control what thoughts they want to retain in their mind. For example, it is found out that people with addictive behaviors can actually help control their thoughts through self-regulation which leads to diverting themselves to other productive things (Wood & Neal, 2007). #3 I would like to choose someone from politics. He is Barack Obama, a renowned successful politician in the world in our time. His ability to run the entire United States is based on certain decisions. There were advocates telling that some of his decisions are right, but others would just simply say wrong about them. This is basically out of Obama’s control knowing that every person has certain beliefs about different things and they might be learning differently from what they perceived from their immediate environment. This depicts the concept of social learning and locus of control. At some point, Obama has control over his decisions. Unfortunately, he does not have control over what some persons would say about his decisions knowing that there are varying social experiences that everyone should learn. This means that social learning in this case aims to cover three important components which particularly include personal, behavioral and the environment (Wang & Wu, 2008). As a president and a renowned world leader, Obama therefore needs to learn more from the perspective of social learning in order to create a better grasp of internal and external locus of control. On the other hand, Obama is not an exception to the rule as how other people learned things from their immediate environment. Most of Obama’s decisions are based on his detailed understanding about the ongoing affairs of the state. Moreover, he is absolutely certain that the issues facing the United States are to be strongly faced with remarkable certainty. Some of them are learned from the previous administration of the state and this depicts the importance of social learning. It is therefore important to understand that nobody should judge right away how Obama is running the state knowing that there are things that may hinder good decisions because of some issues of his past which basically have created impact on his recent behaviors (Zimmerman, 2001). Although from the perspective of outcome expectancy, Obama will be able to learn things from his every learned behavior, it is not still an assurance that he has control over everything from the perspective of external locus of control. References Askew, C., & Field, A. P. (2007). Various learning and the development of fears in childhood. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 45, 2616-2627. Maddux, J. E., Sherer, M., & Rogers, R. W. (1982). Self-Efficacy Expectancy and Outcome Expectancy: Their Relationship and Their Effects on Behavioral Intentions. Cognitive Therapy and Research. 6, 207-211. McFadden, S. H., & Basting, A. D. (2010). Healthy Aging Persons and Their Brains: Promoting Resilience Through Creative Engagement. Clinics in Geriatric Medicine. 26, 149-161. Wang, S. L., & Wu, P. Y. (2008). The role of feedback and self-efficacy on web-based learning: The social cognitive perspective. Computers & Education. 51, 1589-1598. Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A New Look at Habits and the Habit-Goal Interface. Psychological Review. 114, 843-863. Zimmerman, B. J. (2001). Social Learning, Cognition, and Personality Development. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 14341-14345. Read More