Social Cognitive Views of Personality. Behavior Therapy Assessment Contingencies Therapy Limitations

Social Cognitive Views of Personality

Behavior Therapy

Assessment

Contingencies

Therapy

Limitations

Behavior Therapy Assesment

Behaviors are thought of as a sample, not symbolic of something else

Dependent measure: Frequency of target behaviors

Place: relevant location

Behavior Therapy Contingencies

Contingencies:

What is reinforcing the target behavior?


Premack principle

Identifies reinforcers

What does the person do if they can choose

Used for the reinforcer for therapy

Relativity of reinforcers The ordering establishes a hierarchy of reinforcers

Nothing is intrinsically reinforcing


The contingency is folded back into the process

Ultimately, The distinction between assessment and treatment is artificial

Behavior Therapy Therapy

A number of applications have been developed:

Systematic Desensitization

Aversion therapy

Extinction of cravings

Flooding / Explosion therapy





Establish a hierarchy of phobic activities

Train a mutually exclusive response

Usually relaxation



Transference often starts with imaginative desensitization

In vivo desensitization is more effective

(foreshadowing SLT: the process works even better in conjunction with a model)


Aversion therapy


Aversion therapy

Associate the unwanted behavior with bad feelings

E.g.: treatment of alcoholism with antabuse

Problem: It’s tough to keep the client taking antabuse


Aversion therapy

Joke:


Aversion therapy

Joke: how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?


Aversion therapy


Answer:


Aversion therapy


Answer: only one, but the light bulb has to want to change


Aversion therapy


Answer: only one, but the light bulb has to want to change

For this reason, AT is very unpopular with both therapists and clients


Aversion therapy

For this reason, AT is very unpopular with both therapists and clients

What do you think, would you guys ever use AT?


Extinction of cravings associated with precipitating cues



Similar to systematic desensitization

Establish a hierarchy of cues that cause cravings

Teach them mutually exclusive response (relaxation)



Move up the hierarchy

Anecdote: Dr. Stote says this works with heroin, but not with meth





Similar to extinction in some ways

Establish a hierarchy of cues

Lock the client in with the cues

They will have an extreme sympathetic response

Keep them from escaping



Guthrie’s Contiguity Theory:

After a while the sympathetic response will diminish

Then the stimuli becomes associated with lower arousal levels



Move them up the hierarchy

Supposedly this therapy works very fast

(This sounds horrific; please don’t ever do this to me)

Behavior Therapy Criticisms

Criticisms:


Criticisms:

Symptom Substitution

Not real personality change



The traditional Freudian response

Is this just treating the symptoms, but not the causes?

If so, another symptom will just crop up elsewhere



There is no evidence for this

Treatment outcomes must be compared to controls

Sometimes clients develop other neuroses, but at the same rate as controls


Another criticism: personality change

Do these therapies actually change personality, or just surface behaviors?

It depends on the definition of personality, but


Another criticism: personality change

By any reasonable definition, YES

The client’s habitual behaviors change (the cause of their complaint)

The client’s self concept changes

Behavior Therapy The Limitations of BT

The Limitations of BT:

The problem needs to be only behavior



If the problem were distorted cognitions, the traditional BT has nothing to work with

E.g.: what if excessive perfectionism drives someone into depression



Do you think there are any problems that are truly only behavioral, with no cognitive component?



Do you think there are any problems that are truly only behavioral, with no cognitive component?

E.g. what did you make of the fact, noted earlier, that Systematic Desensitization works better with a model?



One possible rejoinder to this limitation:

Reinforce them to engage in more activities that they find joyous



One possible rejoinder to this limitation:

Reinforce them to engage in more activities that they find joyous

Does this sound reasonable to you?

Behavior Therapy

Discussion questions:

What do you make of the fact that all the therapies are so similar?

Is BT just a one-trick pony,

OR

Are these ingenious extensions of a fundamental principle?

Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Conceptions

(Mischel, 1974)

Ch. 12: Social Cognitive Conceptions1. Observational Learning (Bandura)2. Cognitive Affective Person System

(CAPS; Mischel)

Observational Learning

(Bandura, 1965)

4 Parts to Observational Learning1. Attention

2. Retention

3. Motor Production

4. Motivation

(Bandura, 1965)

4 Parts to Observational Learning

2. Retention

3. Motor Reproduction

4. Motivation

1. Attention

(Bandura, 1965)


3. Motor Production

4. Motivation

2. Retention

(Bandura, 1965)


2. Retention

4. Motivation

3. Motor Production

(Bandura, 1965)


2. Retention

3. Motor Production

4. Motivation

(Bandura, 1965)

CAPS “if…then…” ProfilesIntra-individual patterns of behavior variability: Behavior X

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Situations (conditions)

CAPS “if…then…” ProfilesChild #9

Profile stability: r=.89Child #28

Profile stability: r=.49

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Iteased warned

approached praised punishedteased warned

approached praised punished

Social Cognitive Processes

Self Schemas (Markus 1977): Traits one attributes to one’s self.

They guide attention and encoding. If one thinks “I am needy, whiny and irritating”

they will remember things about events that are relevant to that specific self attribution.

They organize knowledge and concepts about how one thinks one is perceived.


The Relational Self How one represents oneself is intimately

coupled with how one represents significant others and relations between self and significant other.

“I am truly my father’s son.”


Transference: The Work of Susan Anderson. Explains traditional Freudian concepts in

cognitive terminology. Something to think about while we discuss

her research in some detail: Is she doing more than just changing the jargon? (I’ll propose one answer a few slides down)


The representation of significant others affects how we judge/ remember/ feel towards new people.

These representations seem to work just as stereotypes do, but stereotypes are about groups of people, these representations are about single people.


Processes that act on these representations are universal, but content is personal.

Transference is the process of attributing features to a person because that person activates a SO representation (reminds you of someone important to you).

Does anyone remember doing this? I do this all the time.


How to show this? Subjects give descriptions of SO’s.

Weeks later, they read about descriptions of made up people, one based on the features of their SO.

They have a recognition memory test for the descriptions of the made up people.

False positives of SO features not mentioned in the description based on subjects’ SO.


False positives for positive and negative features.

SO rep does not even need to be primed to attribute features to novel person, chronic accessibility.

Transference seems to be the same processes as Source Amnesia and category based inference we have been discussing for weeks.


Activating SO reps affect how we evaluate people – You remind me of a jerk, therefore you are a jerk.

Can weakly activate moods – My SO makes me sad, so do you.

Activates facial expressions – I smile when I think of my mom, and I smile when I think of mommy-like people.


SO rep activates expectancies of if we will be accepted or received

SO rep activates working self-concept, how we view ourselves when with that SO.

If someone had a relationship in which they were hurt and mistreated, they will transfer that experience to new relationships.


All of these are chronically accessible, so someone may not share any features of your SO, but just having a similar role or relation to you can activate the SO rep and all these associations with your SO are transferred.


What has the cognitive terminology bought us?


The terminology activates a framework for experimentation. We transfer knowledge of research on concepts and memory to these issues to gain new insights that would not have been discovered in the lab under a 1920 view of psychology.


Causal Attributions: How to do people conceive of the causal forces that lead to the outcome of events in their life.

External vs Internal causes. Situation vs Ability Pride and Shame maximized by internal

attributions. How honest with yourself do you think you

are?


Learned Helplessness Feel life is too hard and one does not have

the ability to overcome their hardship. Leads to depression, inactivity and

pessimism. People who make internal attributions to bad

things and make external to good have more physical ailments and lead shorter lives.


Learned Optimism: When people attribute internal causes to good things, and are hopeful, they live longer and recover from illness quicker.

I can’t tell from the descriptions of these studies whether the attitude causes these health differences, or whether people are generally accurate at evaluating themselves and their lot in life.


Personality Assessment Social cognitive theories have promoted self

efficacy measures that are determined through specific situations, not gross judgments on general self esteem.

By focusing on specifics, the therapist can figure out the domains to work on to get at the more general states.

Cindy discussed “If….then…”


CBT and Beck: (Clinical people feel free to correct me at any point)

Goes beyond BT by considering how behaviors affect thoughts and feelings, and vice versa.

Looks at how we construct our reality. Directed at changing how people encode and

construe self and experiences.


One’s affect is based on how one construes self and place in world

Identify when one is interpreting world and self negatively

Connect negative thoughts and feelings to behaviors.

Replace negative with realistic thoughts Change predispositions that distort

experience.


From the brief summary in the text, I wonder how the therapist and patient relationship is different than traditional therapy. For a patient to accept a logical explanation of why some reality is wrong seems to first depend on the therapist showing empathy for their situation. Is this traditional aspect of therapy not part of CBT?

CBT from this short summary seems cold and impersonal, is this true?

Documents

Social Cognitive Views of Personality. Behavior Therapy Assessment Contingencies Therapy Limitations