A person’s pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. Personality Four Main Theories: Psychoanalytic Theory Humanistic Theory Social-Cognitive Theory Trait Theory A person’s pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

Basic Ideas Proposed by Albert Bandura (the Bobo Doll guy!) Personality/behavior is a combination of learning (social) and mental processes (cognitive) Emphasizes external events and how we interpret them

Reciprocal Determinism How we interact with the environment shapes who we are and vice versa

Self-Efficacy Our perceived ability to succeed How likely you are to succeed at some specific goal This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy for ourselves!

Exploring the Self Spotlight Effect Self Esteem Self-Serving Bias overestimating others noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders Self Esteem one’s feelings of high or low self-worth Self-Serving Bias readiness to perceive oneself favorably

Social-Cognitive Perspective Learned Helplessness Learned Helplessness the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events Uncontrollable bad events Perceived lack of control Generalized helpless behavior

Locus of Control Do we control what happens to us (INTERNAL LOCUS) or do we have no control over life (EXTERNAL LOCUS)? Locus of Control Survey

Locus of Control Benefits of having Internal Locus of Control: Achieve more in school, act more independently, enjoy better health, feel less depressed, better able to delay gratification, better able to deal with stress

Optimism vs. Pessimism Measure of attitude and outlook: positive (optimistic) or negative (pessimistic)

Optimism vs. Pessimism Benefits of Optimism: more productive, better health Drawbacks of Optimism: can blind us to real risks (STD, college application examples)