What is it like to be a person? The social-cognitive approach is an approach that views personality in terms of how the person thinks about the situations encountered in daily life and behaves in response to them. Bringing together insights from social psychology, cognitive psychology, and learning theory, this approach emphasizes how the person experiences and interprets situations (Bandura, 1986; Mischel & Shoda, 1999; Ross & Nisbett, 1991; Wegner & Gilbert, 2000).

Researchers in social cognition believe that both the current situation and learning history are key determinants of behavior. These researchers focus on how people perceive their environments, how personality contributes to the way people construct situations in their own minds, and how people’s goals and expectancies influence their responses to situations.

At the core of the social-cognitive approach is a natural puzzle, the person-situation controversy, which focuses on the question of whether behavior is caused more by personality or by situational factors. This controversy began in earnest when Walter Mischel (1968) argued that measured personality traits often do a poor job of predicting individuals’ behavior. Mischel also noted that knowing how a person will behave in one situation is not particularly helpful in predicting the person’s behavior in another situation. For example, in classic studies, Hugh Hartshorne and M. A. May (1928) assessed children’s honesty by examining their willingness to cheat on a test and found that such dishonesty was not consistent from one situation to another. The assessment of a child’s trait of honesty in a cheating situation was of almost no use in predicting whether the child would act honestly in a different situation, such as when given the opportunity to steal money. Mischel proposed that measured traits do not predict behaviors very well because behaviors are determined more by situational factors than personality theorists were willing to acknowledge.

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Is there no personality, then? Do we all just do what situations require? It turns out that information about both personality and situation are necessary to predict behavior accurately (Fleeson, 2004; Mischel, 2004). Some situations are particularly powerful, leading most everyone to behave similarly regardless of personality (Cooper & Withey, 2009). At a funeral, almost everyone looks somber, and during an earthquake, almost everyone shakes. But in more moderate situations, personality can come forward to influence behavior (Funder, 2001). Among the children in Hartshorne and May’s (1928) studies, cheating versus not cheating on a test was actually a fairly good predictor of cheating on a test later—as long as the situation was similar. Personality consistency, then, appears to be a matter of when and where a certain kind of behavior tends to be shown (see the Culture & Community box).

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How can we understand differences in the way situations are interpreted? George Kelly (1955) long ago realized that these differences in perspective could be used to understand the perceiver’s personality. He suggested that people view the social world from differing perspectives and that these different views arise through the application of personal constructs, dimensions people use in making sense of their experiences. Consider, for example, different individuals’ personal constructs of a clown: One person may see him as a source of fun, another as a tragic figure, and yet another as so frightening that McDonald’s must be avoided at all costs.

Kelly proposed that different personal constructs are the key to personality differences and lead people to engage in different behaviors. Taking a long break from work for a leisurely lunch might seem lazy to you. To your friend, the break might seem an ideal opportunity for catching up with friends and wonder why you always choose to eat at your desk. Social-cognitive theory explains different responses to situations with the idea that people experience and interpret the world in different ways.

Social-cognitive theories also recognize that a person’s unique perspective on situations is reflected in his or her personal goals, which are often conscious. In fact, people can usually tell you their goals, whether they are to find a date for this weekend, get a good grade in psych, establish a fulfilling career, or just get this darn bag of chips open. These goals often reflect the tasks that are appropriate to the person’s situation and stage of life (Cantor, 1990; Klinger, 1977; Little, 1983; Vallacher & Wegner, 1985). For instance, common goals for adolescents include being popular, achieving greater independence from parents and family, and getting into a good college. Common goals for adults include developing a meaningful career, finding a mate, securing financial stability, and starting a family.

People translate goals into behavior in part through outcome expectancies, a person’s assumptions about the likely consequences of a future behavior. Just as a laboratory rat learns that pressing a bar releases a food pellet, we learn that “if I am friendly toward people, they will be friendly in return” and “if I ask people to pull my finger, they will withdraw from me.” So we learn to perform behaviors that we expect will have the outcome of moving us closer to our goals. Outcome expectancies are learned through direct experience, both bitter and sweet, and through merely observing other people’s actions and their consequences. Outcome expectancies combine with a person’s goals to produce the person’s characteristic style of behavior. We do not all want the same things from life, clearly, and our personalities largely reflect the goals we pursue and the expectancies we have about the best ways to pursue them.

People also differ in their expectancy for achieving goals. Some people seem to feel that they are fully in control of what happens to them in life, whereas others feel that the world doles out rewards and punishments to them irrespective of their actions. A person’s locus of control is the tendency to perceive the control of rewards as internal to the self or external in the environment (Rotter, 1966). People who believe they control their own destinies are said to have an internal locus of control, whereas those who believe that outcomes are random, determined by luck, or controlled by other people are described as having an external locus of control. These beliefs translate into individual differences in emotion and behavior. For example, people with an internal locus of control tend to be less anxious, achieve more, and cope better with stress than do people with an external orientation (Lefcourt, 1982). To get a sense of your standing on this trait dimension, choose one of the options for each of the sample items from the locus-of-control scale in TABLE 11.3.

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