Social Cognitive Theory

Chapter 13
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE THEORY: APPLICATIONS, RELATED THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS, AND CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

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© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This presentation may be used and adapted for use in classes using the fourteenth edition of Personality. It may not be re-distributed except to students enrolled in such classes and in such case must be password protected to limit access to students enrolled in such classes. Students may not re-distribute portions of the original presentation.

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER
How do knowledge structures – especially cognitive “schemas” – contribute to personality functioning and help to explain individual differences?
How do personal goals and standards of self-evaluation differ from one person to another, and how do these differences relate to motivation and emotional life?
What is the role of self-efficacy beliefs and other self-referent thinking processes in psychological disorders and therapeutic change?
What are some scientific challenges that were not addressed in the original formulations of social-cognitive theory and how have they been addressed by contemporary developments in personality theory?

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Schemas: knowledge structures that guide and organize the processing of info
Example: new song on the radio sounds structured because one has acquired schemas for song structures
Schemas guide one’s interpretation of the sounds that comprise the song
Music from a different culture might sound chaotic!

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Markus (1977) : many of our most important schemas concern ourselves
People form cognitive generalizations about the self just as they do about other things
Different people develop different self-schemas
Self-schemas may account for the relatively unique ways in which idiosyncratic individuals think about the world around them

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Reaction-time measures: experimental methods in which an experimenter records not only the content of a person’s response, but also how long it takes the person to respond
People who possess a self-schema with regard to a given domain of social life should be faster in responding to questions regarding that life domain

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Markus (1977) identified people who possessed a self-schema regarding independence
Participants rated themselves as high or low on independence
Participants indicated the degree to which the personality characteristic was important to them
Those who had an extreme high or low self-rating and thought independence/dependence was important were judged as schematic
Participants then asked to rate whether a series of adjectives (some of which were semantically related to independence/dependence) were descriptive of themselves
Schematics made these judgments faster

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Andersen and Cyranowski (1994): women with differing sexual self-schemas would process interpersonal information differently and function differently in their sexual and romantic relationships
Women asked to rate themselves on a list of 50 adjectives, 26 of which were used to form a Sexual Self-Schema Scale (e.g., uninhibited, loving)
Asked to respond to measures that asked about sexual experiences and romantic involvement

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
Andersen and Cyranowski found that women with high scores on the Sexual Self-Schema Scale (particularly those with positive sexual self-schemas)
Were more sexually active
Experienced greater sexual arousal and sexual pleasure
Were more able to be involved in romantic love relationships
“Co-schematics (women who had both positive and negative schemas)” found to experience
High levels of involvement with sexual partners
High levels of sexual anxiety

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Schemas and Reaction-Time Methods
People tend to live complex lives in which they develop a number of different self-schemas
Different situations may cause different self-schemas to be part of the working self-concept: the subset of self-concept that is in working memory at any given time
Info about the self that is in consciousness, and guides behavior, at any given time changes dynamically as people interact with the ever-changing events of the social world

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Based Motives and Motivated Information Processing
Self-schemas motivate people to process information in particular ways
People often are biased toward positive views of the self, which can be explained by positing a self-enhancement motive
People also may be motivated to experience themselves as being consistent and predictable, reflecting a self-verification motive

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF AND SELF-SCHEMAS
Self-Based Motives and Motivated Information Processing
What happens when the two motives conflict?
Evidence suggests we generally prefer positive feedback but prefer negative feedback in relation to negative self-views
Positive life events can be bad for one’s health if they conflict with a negative self-concept and disrupt one’s negative identity
There are individual differences in this regard
We may be more oriented toward self-enhancement in some relationships and self-verification in other relationships

CURRENT APPLICATIONS
SELF-SCHEMAS AND HISTORY OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Meston, Rellini, and Heiman (2006) hypothesized that abuse experiences may alter self-schemas and do so in a long-lasting manner
Conducted a study whose participants were 48 women with a history of child sexual abuse
Also studied a group of 71 women who had not suffered from abuse experiences and who thus served as control participants.
To measure sexual self-schemas, Meston et al. administered the sexual self-schema scale in which people report on their perceptions of their own sexuality
Women with a history of abuse believed themselves to be less romantic and passionate; that is, they had lower scores on the romantic/passionate items of the sexual self-schema measure
Women who had experienced abuse years earlier had more negative emotional experiences in the present day
Women with lower romantic/passionate self-schemas reported more negative emotional experiences

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Different goals may lead to different patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior
Goals may be the cause of what one would interpret as different personality styles
Two ways of thinking about goals:
Learning goal: think about the task and all you can learn from it
Peformance goal: have the aim of
showing people how smart you are
avoiding embarrassment when you don’t know something
making a good impression

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Elliott and Dweck (1988) induced learning versus performance goals among grade school students performing a cognitive task
Some told that they were performing a task that would sharpen mental skills
Others told they were performing a task that would be evaluated by experts
Students’ beliefs in their ability on the task (i.e., their efficacy beliefs) were also manipulated
People who had a combination of performance goals and low beliefs in their ability were less likely than others to develop useful strategies on the task

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Elliott and Dweck (1988) recorded the degree to which people spontaneously expressed negative emotions while working on the task
Performance goal participants expressed much tension and anxiety when performing the task
“My stomach hurts” (Elliott & Dweck, 1988, p. 10)
Performance goals provides insight into what we commonly call “test anxiety”
Dweck’s social-cognitive analysis suggests that one might intervene by trying to change people’s patterns of thinking

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Implicit theories: those we possess, that guide our thinking, but that we may not usually state in words
Implicit theories of interest to Dweck and colleagues: whether or not psychological attributes are changeable
Entity theory: a particular characteristic or trait is viewed as fixed
Incremental theory: a particular characteristic or trait is believed to be malleable or open to change

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Children with an entity view of intelligence tend to set performance goals
If intelligence is fixed, then one interprets activities as a “performance” in which intelligence is evaluated
Children with an incremental view of intelligence tend to set learning goals
If intelligence can be increased, then natural to set the learning goal of acquiring experiences that increase it

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Tamir, John, Srivastava, and Gross, 2007 study
Students about to enter college were tested about whether they believed emotions to be malleable and controllable vs. fixed and uncontrollable
As hypothesized, students with incremental (malleable) beliefs concerning emotion showed better emotion regulation than did those with entity (fixed) beliefs
Throughout the first term, relative to those with entity beliefs concerning emotion, those with incremental beliefs received increasing social support from new friends
By the end of the freshman year, those with incremental beliefs were found to have more positive moods and generally better levels of adjustment than those with entity beliefs

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
LEARNING VERSUS PERFORMANCE GOALS
Causes of Learning versus Performance Goals: Implicit Theories
Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007): If one could turn entity theorists into incremental theorists, one should be able to reduce test anxiety and boost performance
Enrolled 7th-graders in an educational intervention designed to induce an incremental theory of intelligence
Students learned that the human brain changes when people study, growing new connections among neurons that increase a person’s mental abilities (a separate group did not receive this instruction)
By the end of the year, students who had been exposed to the intervention began to outperform the other students

Personality and the Brain: Goals
Are goals and evaluative standards distinct biologically from other kinds of thoughts?
D’Argembeau et al. (2009) asked participants to imagine future outcomes that either were or were not personal goals for them
(e.g., Future doctors imagined becoming a doctor and going deep-sea fishing)
Participants were in a brain scanner while imagining these two types of outcomes.

Personality and the Brain: Goals
D’Argembeau et al. (2009), cont’d.
Two brain regions were more active when people thought about personal goals than about future activities that were not goals for them
Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC)
Posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)
Why significant?

Personality and the Brain: Goals
D’Argembeau et al. (2009), cont’d.
The MPFC is needed to determine the self-relevance of events
The PCC has been shown to be active during autobiographical memory
Goals are psychologically rich mental contents that combine the detection of personally relevant occurrences in the environment with information stored in your “library” of autobiographical memories

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Goals and standards are psychologically distinct mechanisms
Goals are aims one hopes to achieve in the future
Standards are criteria used to evaluate events in the present
Just as it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of goals, it is valuable to distinguish among qualitatively different types of evaluative standards
Tory Higgins (1987, 1990, 2006) has expanded the scope of social-cognitive analyses of personality by showing how different types of evaluative standards relate to different types of emotional experiences and motivation

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Some evaluative standards represent achievement that people ideally would like to reach: ideal standards; aspects of the “ideal self”
Some self-guides represent standards of achievement that people feel they should or ought to achieve: ought standards; elements of the “ought self”
Different individuals may evaluate the same type of behavior using different standards
Some wish to quit smoking because they ideally would like to be more healthy
Others primarily feel a sense of responsibility to others to quit smoking

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
People experience negative emotions when they detect a discrepancy between how things really are going for them—or their “actual self”—and a personal standard
Discrepancies with different standards trigger different emotions
Between actual and ideal self: sadness or dejection
Between actual and ought self: agitation and anxiety

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Higgins, Bond, Klein, & Strauman (1986) identified two groups:
Those who predominantly have actual/ideal discrepancies
Those who predominantly have actual/ought discrepancies
In a subsequent session, emotional reactions were assessed as they envisioned themselves experiencing a negative life event
Although all participants envisioned the same event:
Those who had mostly actual/ideal discrepancies tended to become sad but not anxious
Those who had mostly actual/ought discrepancies became anxious but not sad

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
Self-Standards, Self-Discrepancies, Emotion and Motivation
Higgins (2006): people’s evaluative standards have implications for motivation
People who evaluate their actions primarily through ideal standards
Tend to have a “promotion” approach
Are motivated toward promoting well-being, by focusing on positive outcomes
People who evaluate their actions primarily through ideal standards
Tends to be “prevention-focused”
Are focused on preventing the occurrence of (or gaining an absence of) negative outcomes

CURRENT QUESTIONS
PERFECTIONISTIC STANDARDS: GOOD OR BAD?
High standards may cause people to excel. But are extremely high, perfectionistic standards necessarily a good thing?
Hewitt and colleagues find that perfectionistic standards make people vulnerable to psychological problems: depression, anxiety, eating disorders
Flett, Besser, and Hewitt (2005) studied perfectionism about a group of about 200 adults living in Israel
People who said that they needed to be perfect to meet the expectations of friends and family rated themselves as being more depressed
Friends saw them as depressed, too.
An adaptive lifestyle in the contemporary world may be one that mixes high standards of achievement with the capacity to accept oneself—including those aspects of self that are not perfect

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF PERSONALITY:
BELIEFS, GOALS, AND EVALUATIVE STANDARDS
STANDARDS OF EVALUATION
A “General Principles” Approach to Personality
“Personality variables” explain what people do on average
“Situational factors” explain variations around the average
Higgins’s work is a general principles approach to understanding personality and situational influences
People’s knowledge—including their ideal and ought standards for performance—explains consistencies in their emotion and behavior, since knowledge is an enduring aspect of personality
Knowledge mechanisms also explain situational influences
Different situations activate different aspects of knowledge and, in so doing, bring about different emotional and motivational patterns

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Social-Cognitive Theory: Three Limitations of 20th-Century Theory and Research
Social-Cognitive Personality Structures and Processes
In SC theory, distinction between structure and process is ambiguous
Social-cognitive Personality Assessment
In 20th century social-cognitive theory, measurement don’t always assess BOTH social-cognitive variables and the situations that activate them, which can vary from person to person
From Social-Cognitive Systems to Personality Consistency
Social-cognitive theorists criticized trait theory for not being able to explain cross-situational variability in trait-related behavior
Yet they never developed a social-cognitive explanation of where, and why, people display cross-situationally consistent personality styles

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Knowledge Structures and Appraisal Processes
Knowledge is enduring; it is a social-cognitive structure
Enduring mental representations; long-lasting concepts about oneself, other people, and the world at large
Self-knowledge refers to enduring mental representations of one’s own personal qualities and aspirations
Appraisals shift rapidly over time; they are social-cognitive processes
Ongoing evaluations of the relation between oneself and the surrounding (or upcoming) environment
Thoughts that run through your head when you encounter a challenge, for instance
Influence emotions and behavior
Knowledge influences appraisal processes

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Social-Cognitive Personality Assessment
In the KAPA model, the main assessment goal is to identify the knowledge structures that are most significant to an individual and the appraisals the person engages in when thinking about the challenges of his or her life
Two principles guide this search:
Assess knowledge and appraisal contextually
Rather than asking what people are like “in general,” KAPA assessments try to identify people’s primary thoughts as they encounter the varying contexts that make p their day
Be sensitive to idiosyncrasy
Rather than administering brief personality questionnaires with a fixed set of items, KAPA assessments allow people to describe themselves in their own words

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Cross-Situational Coherence in Self-Appraisals: Self-Schemas and Self-Efficacy Appraisals
KAPA model aims to understand how knowledge structures produce cross-situationally consistent patterns of personality functioning
Contrasting approach: (a) select a trait to study; (b) identify a set of situations, and associated response, that are thought to be good measures of the trait; (c) determine whether a group of people responds consistently across this fixed set of situations (see left panel of Figure 13.2)
Problems: (1) cross-situational consistency often low; (2) even if high, haven’t identified processes that explain consistency; and (3) strategy is not sensitive to idiosyncrasy

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Cross-Situational Coherence in Self-Appraisals: Self-Schemas and Self-Efficacy Appraisals
KAPA model suggests an alternative strategy which rests on two ideas (see right panel of Figure 13.2):
Self-schemas can produce cross-situational consistency in personality
Since schematic knowledge structures influence appraisal processes, the self-schema should produce consistent styles of personality across these different settings
Patterns of cross-situational consistency may vary idiosyncratically
A person might have a unique set of beliefs about themselves; the situations in which these beliefs may come into play may vary idiosyncratically

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Cross-Situational Coherence in Self-Appraisals: Self-Schemas and Self-Efficacy Appraisals
Example depicted in Figure 13.3:
Participants identified personal strengths and weaknesses (schematic personality qualities); “have a good time naturally” and “crabby and bitchy”
Then identified situations that were relevant to these qualities
People are found to display consistent self-efficacy appraisals across distinctive sets of situations – those in which their self-schemas come into play
When self-schemas are used to predict self-efficacy appraisals, people are found to have much higher appraisals of self-efficacy in situations that active positive self-schemas/personal strengths

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Cross-Situational Coherence in Self-Appraisals: Self-Schemas and Self-Efficacy Appraisals
Schematic knowledge structures have been found to predict cross-situational patterns of appraisal in studies of:
Adults contemplating their self-efficacy for performing everyday behaviors
Smokers contemplating situations in which they need to resist smoking urges
People seeking exercise who think about their ability to engage in different types of recreational activities
Adults using humor
Older adults reflecting on how their strengths and weaknesses might influence their ability to perform everyday challenging tasks

Contemporary developments in personality theory: the kapa model
Addressing the Limitations: The KAPA Model
Cross-Situational Coherence in Self-Appraisals: Self-Schemas and Self-Efficacy Appraisals
KAPA model can be tested empirically by using a priming manipulation to influence appraisals of self-efficacy
Prime schematic personal strength or weakness, then ask participants to appraise their self-efficacy for success on different challenging tasks
The priming of positive self-schemas raises self-efficacy appraisals in situations relevant to the self-schema (see Figure 13.4)

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
Assumptions common to technique of cognitive therapy:
Cognitions are critical in determining feelings and behaviors
The cognitions of interest tend to be specific to situations or categories of situations, though the importance of some generalized expectancies and beliefs is recognized.
Psychopathology arises from distorted, incorrect, maladaptive cognitions concerning the self, others, and events in the world

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
Assumptions common to technique of cognitive therapy:
Faulty, maladaptive cognitions lead to problematic feelings and behaviors, and these in turn lead to further problematic cognitions
Cognitive therapy involves a collaborative effort between therapist and patient to determine which distorted, maladaptive cognitions are creating the difficulty and then to replace them with other more realistic, adaptive cognitions
The unconscious is only important insofar as patients may not be aware of their routine, habitual ways of thinking about themselves and life. The emphasis is on changes in specific problematic cognitions rather than on global personality change

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Maladaptive behavior, including fears and phobias
Learned as a result of
Direct experience
Exposure to inadequate or “sick” models
Maintained through direct and vicarious reinforcement

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Social-cognitive theory emphasizes the role of dysfunctional expectancies and self-conceptions
People may erroneously expect painful events to follow some events or pain to be associated with specific situations
They then may act
To avoid certain situations
In a way that creates the situation they were trying to avoid

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, and Depression
Perceived inefficacy plays a central role in anxiety and depression
People with perceptions of low self-efficacy in relation to potential threats experience high anxiety arousal
It is not the threatening event per se but the perceived inefficacy in coping with it that is fundamental to anxiety
The perception of inability to cope may be complicated by the perceived inability to cope, a fear-of-fear response that can lead to panic

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, and Depression
Perceived inefficacy in relation to rewarding outcomes leads to depression
Individuals prone to depression
Impose excessively high goals and standards
Blame themselves for falling short of them
Low self-efficacy may contribute to diminished performance, leading to falling even further below standards and additional self-blame

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, and Depression
Discrepancies between performance and standards lead to high motivation when people believe they can accomplish the goal
Beliefs that the goals are beyond one’s capabilities because they are unrealistic will lead to abandoning the goal and perhaps to apathy, but not to depression
Depression occurs when a person feels inefficacious in relation to a goal but believes the goal to be reasonable

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy and Health
Strong, positive self-efficacy beliefs are good for your health
Weak, negative self-efficacy beliefs are bad for your health
Perceptions of self-efficacy to practice safer sexual behavior have been related to the probability of adopting safer sexual practices
Modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques have been used to increase self-efficacy beliefs and thereby reduce risky behavior

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy and Health
Changes in self-efficacy beliefs also have been found to be of importance in recovery from illness
Sometimes individuals recovering from a heart attack may have unrealistically high self-efficacy beliefs and exercise beyond what is constructive for them

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy and Health
Bandura and his associates’ research on perceived self-efficacy and immune system functioning
Snake phobics tested under 3 conditions:
Baseline control: no exposure to a snake
Perceived self-efficacy acquisition phase: subjects were assisted in gaining coping efficacy
Perceived maximal self-efficacy phase, once they had developed a complete sense of coping efficacy
Small amount of blood was drawn from the subjects and analyzed for the presence of cells that are known to help regulate the immune system

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy and Health
Analyses indicated that increases in self-efficacy beliefs were associated with increases in enhanced immune system functioning (increased level of helper T cells)
Although the effects of stress can be negative, the growth of perceived efficacy over stressors can have valuable adaptive properties at the level of immune system functioning

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CHANGE: MODELING, SELF-CONCEPTIONS, AND PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY
Therapeutic Change: Modeling and Guided Mastery
Modeling
Desired activities are demonstrated by models who experience positive consequences (or at least no adverse consequences)
Complex patterns of behavior to be learned are broken down into subskills to ensure optimal progress
Guided mastery
Individual not only views a model performing beneficial behaviors, but …