Behavioral and Social-Cognitive Approaches to Personality

(a) Behaviorist Account of Personality. Behaviorists thought that what psychologists call personality was an expression of relationships between behavior, rewards, and punishment. Behaviorists avoided referring to personality traits and dispositions, but rather focused on how past experiences predict future behaviors. For example, whether someone tends to be pessimistic might be based on past experiences in which their behaviors failed to produce any desirable consequences. (b) Reciprocal Determinism and the Social-Cognitive Approach. According to Albert Bandura and colleagues, personality is a product of dynamic interactions between behavior and reinforcement, and, importantly, the beliefs, expectancies, and dispositions of the individual.