Chapter 17: Self-Regulation Chapter 15: Personal Constructs

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Chapter 17Self-RegulationChapter 15Personal
Constructs

• Theories of Personality
• May 9, 2003
• Class 14

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Self-Regulation Perspective

• Over the past two decades self-regulation theory
  has emerged to offer a whole new perspective on
  human behavior
• With its focus on the ways in which individuals
  direct and monitor their activities and emotions
  to attain their goals, the theory provides a
  dynamic framework for understanding the
  complexities of behavior in response to
  emotionally provocative events, such as illness
  and stressful experiences
• People are always striving to attain a goal
• This being a never-ending battle

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Constant Monitoring

• Behavior is regulated by cycles involving the
  monitoring of ones own status, comparison of
  status with expectations, and course correction
  when they dont match

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Self-Monitoring Life as theater

• There seems to be degrees to which people attend
  to and control the impression they make on others
  in social interactions
• High self-monitoring
• Very sensitive to how they are being perceived by
  others
• Good at adjusting how people see them
• Good actors
• Good at reading others

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Self-Monitoring Life as theater

• Low self-monitoring
• Either dont care or lack ability to detect how
  they are perceived by others
• Dont attempt to adjust

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From Cognitions to Behavior

• Motor schemas
• Information that helps us to produce behavior,
  action
• Information or schemas used for understanding,
  will influence later behavior
• Considering the role or memory
• As you think about a situation, you activate
  certain memory nodes
• Behavioral qualities linked to those nodes also
  become activated, making these behaviors more
  likely to occur

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Self-regulation and feedback control

• Feedback loop
• Self-regulating system
• Like thermostat in your house
• Regulate towards a goal, standard or reference
  value
• For example 68 degrees
• Perception of present situation or behavior
• Present temp. is 70 degrees
• Comparing present situation (or behavior) with
  goal  (comparator)
• 2 degrees too warm
• Change in behavior (or situation) if needed
• AC kicks on to cool house to 68 degrees

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Albert Bandura was involved with this theory as
well

• Self-regulation -- controlling our own behavior
  -- was the workhorse of human personality.  He
  suggests three important steps in this process
• 1.  Self-observation
• We look at ourselves, our behavior, and keep tabs
  on it.
• 2.  Judgment
• We compare what we see with a standard
• For example, we can compare our performance with
  traditional standards, such as rules of
  etiquette 
• Or we can create arbitrary ones, like Ill read
  a book a week 
• Or we can compete with others, or with ourselves

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Banduras self-regulation views

• 3. Self-response 
• If you did well in comparison with your standard,
  you give yourself rewarding self-responses
• If you did poorly, you give yourself punishing
  self-responses
• These self-responses can range from the obvious
  (treating yourself to a sundae or working late)
  to the more covert (feelings of pride or shame)

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Are you hard or easy on yourself?

• A very important concept in psychology that can
  be understood well with self-regulation is
  self-concept (better known as self-esteem)
• If, over the years, you find yourself meeting
  your standards and life loaded with self-praise
  and self-reward, you will have a pleasant
  self-concept (high self-esteem)
• If, on the other hand, you find yourself forever
  failing to meet your standards and punishing
  yourself, you will have a poor self-concept (low
  self-esteem).

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Implications of self-regulation model

• Behavior is purposeful
• Much effort to adjust behavior to meet criteria
  or goal
• Process of self regulation is continuous and
  never-ending
• For example maintaining good grades, job
  performance, etc.

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Research Methods on Self Regulation

• Evaluation of self through measure such as
  self-consciousness scale
• Hypothesis that self focus should increase
  comparator process
• Behavior should then shift to more closely
  correspond with goal
• Findings usually show that self attention caused
  greater conformity to the value or goal

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Self Regulation Therapy

• Effort is made to break down automatic thoughts/
  behaviors which may be maladaptive
• Then work to make desired responses more
  automatic (in place of problem responses)
• Often accomplished through imagery, role play,
  homework in real life settings
• Process of therapy is a feedback system
• Process of therapy is dynamic as goals, behavior
  are shifting
• Emphasis on problem solving skills (means-ends
  analysis)

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Potential Problems in self-regulation process

• At times, self regulation is driven by lower
  level goals
• We may temporarily lose sight of higher order
  goals
• For example
• When describing ourselves, tend to focus on what
  we DO, suggests importance of program level

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Potential Problems in self-regulation process

• Metaphor of human computer may depersonalize,
  doesn't consider free will, spirituality
• People try to match several values at once
• Form example
• Caring for family, completing work goals, etc.
• Can cause conflict

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George Kelly (1905-1967)

• Born in 1905 in Kansas
• He pursued undergraduate study for three years at
  Friends University followed by one year at Park
  College
• Here he graduated with the Bachelor's degree in
  physics and mathematics, but his interests had
  already begun to shift to social
  problems--perhaps in part because of experiences
  that he had gained in intercollegiate debates
• In line with this newly developing interest, he
  pursued graduate study in educational sociology
  at the University of Kansas
• His master's thesis was a study of the leisure
  time activities of workers in Kansas City, and he
  completed minor studies in labor relations and
  sociology

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Kellys Background

• At this point, George Kelly's activities expanded
  to include a wide range of teaching in different
  situations
• He was a part-time instructor in a labor college
  in Minneapolis
• He taught classes in speech for the American
  Bankers Association, and he taught an
  Americanization class for future citizens
• An additional brief spell as an aeronautical
  engineer in Wichita followed teaching experience
  in Iowa and at the University of Minnesota
• In 1929, he moved to the University of Edinburgh
  as an exchange scholar

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Kellys Background

• He then returned to the United States and became
  a graduate student in psychology at the State
  University of Iowa. In 1931, he received his
  Ph.D. with a dissertation dealing with common
  factors in speech and reading disabilities

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Kelly's Personal Construct Theory

• Kelly placed the emphasis on cognition in
  personality development
• Cognition includes the processes involved in
  thinking, problem solving and predicting events
  in the environment and Kelly believed that each
  of us acts like a natural scientist in that one
  of our prime needs is to predict and control
  events in our environment
• We think about what happens to us and we
  construct theories about what's going on,
  attempting to satisfy the drive to make sense of
  things

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A Hypothetical Example

• If you ask your normally helpful Psychology
  professor for help and he gives you the
  brush-off, you don't just leave it at that
• You try and figure out a reason
• Did you ask in the wrong way?
• Had you done something to upset him?
• Perhaps he's got problems that are causing him to
  have a bad day?
• You cast your mind back over his and your
  behavior and try to work out why this has
  happened, establishing a theory or two and trying
  to see how they fit the observed facts

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Like a scientist

• Just like a scientist you create your own way of
  seeing the world in which you live
• You builds constructs and try them on for size
• In an uncertain universe, the constructs we
  establish should, like a scientific hypothesis,
  also have predictive power

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Kelly's Personal Construct Theory

• In Kelly's view we all develop a set of personal
  constructs which we use to make sense of the
  world and the people in it
• Our construct systems are not static. They are
  confirmed or challenged every moment we are
  conscious

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Another hypothetical example

• If we believe that Arctic Airlines offers the
  best service in the world, and then we have a
  dreadful trip where everything goes wrong, we do
  one of two things
• We either adapt our construct system, altering
  our feelings about them in the light of our
  experience or we immunize our construct system,
  with thoughts like They must have been having a
  really bad day, or Yes, but the airport was so
  overcrowded they didn't stand a chance

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Our construct systems influence our expectations
and perceptions

• Also, if we're expecting Arctic Airlines to treat
  us well, we probably get on the plane in a better
  mood than we would on an airline which gave us
  poor treatment last time
• If our experience is that Arctic's cabin staff
  always smile when they meet us, we probably board
  the plane with a smile ourselves
• We might not notice when Arctic's service fails
  to live up to standard, but pay attention when it
  happens with the other airline
• Because our construct systems reflect our past
  experience, they also influence our expectations
  and behavior

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Some constructs, and some aspects of our
construct systems, are more important than
others

• The airline example repeats in every area of our
  experience
• We feel, think, and behave according to our
  construct system
• We adapt our constructs, immunize them, or have
  them confirmed
• Some of our constructs - those which represent
  our core values and concern our key relationships
  - are complex, quite firmly fixed, wide-ranging,
  and difficult to change
• Others, about things which don't matter so much,
  or about which we haven't much experience, are
  simpler, narrower, and carry less personal
  commitment