Cognitive Social Learning Theory According to Feist (2009), Rotter and Hochreich
ID: 3443687 • Letter: C
Question
Cognitive Social Learning Theory
According to Feist (2009), Rotter and Hochreich (1975) recorded six comprehensive categories of needs and each category represents a classification of operative related behaviors. In essence, those behaviors can result in similar or exactly the same reinforcement, as one can be lead to his or her recognition needs by means of different people and various situations/circumstances Recognition-Status: The need to recognized by other people and gain status; (excel, socioeconomic status, personal prestige). Dominance: The need to control behaviors of other people; (gain power, coerce). Independence: The need to free from dominating people; (increase freedom to make decision, depend on oneself; achieve goals without the help of other people). Protection-Dependency: A group of needs that are based on dependency and protection; (protect from harm/frustration). Love and Affection: Need for acceptance by others; (secure friendly consideration, interest and loyalty). Physical Comfort: Aim to secure; (physical security, food, good health, well-being, physical contact, happiness). What are your thoughts on this? In about 80 words or more
Explanation / Answer
In the agentic sociocognitive view, people are self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting, and self-regulating, not just reactive organisms shaped and shepherded by external events. People have the power to influence their own actions to produce certain results. The capacity to exercise control over one’s thought processes, motivation, affect, and action operates through mechanisms of personal agency. Human agency has been conceptualized in at least three different ways–as either autonomous agency, mechanically reactive agency or emergent interactive agency. The notion that humans operate as entirely independent agents has few serious advocates, although it is sometimes invoked in caricatures of cognitive theories of human behavior (Skinner, 1971). 3 The tools for the exercise of agency are derived, in large part, from experiences but what is created by their generative use is not reducible to those experiences. Human action, being socially situated, is the product of a dynamic interplay of personal and situational influences. A second approach to the self system is to construe it as mechanically reactive agency. It is an internal system through which external influences operate mechanistically on action, but individuals exert no motivative, self-reflective, self-reactive, creative or directive influence on the process. The self system is merely a repository for implanted structures and a conduit for external influences. The more dynamic models operating holistically include multilevel neural networks. However, a diverse mix of parallel distributed neural activity cannot remain fragmented. It requires an integrative system. Given the proactive nature of human functioning, such a system must have agentic capabilities as well as integrative reactive ones. Agentic functions get lodged in a hidden network operating without any consciousness. Consciousness is the very substance of phenomenal and functional mental life. It provides the information base for thinking about events, planning, constructing courses of action and reflecting on the adequacy of one’s thinking and actions. There is an important difference between being conscious of the experiences one is undergoing, and consciously producing given experiences. For example, consciousness of one’s heart rate and consciously and intentionally doing things known to elevate one’s heart rate illustrate the difference between passive undergoing and agentic doing. The purposive accessing and deliberative processing of information to fashion efficacious courses of action represent the functional consciousness. Consciousness cannot be reduced to an epiphenomenon of the output of a mental process realized mechanically at nonconscious lower levels. In the connectionist line of theorizing, sensory organs deliver up information through their diverse pathways to the hidden network acting as the cognitive agent that does the construing, planning, motivating and regulating. However, stripped of consciousness and agentic capability of decision and action, people are mere automatons undergoing actions devoid of any subjectivity, conscious regulation, phenomenological life, or personal identity. As Green and Vervaeke (1996) note, originally connectionists regarded their conceptual models as approximations of cognitive activities. But more recently, many connectionists have become eliminative materialists, likening cognitive factors to the phlogiston of yesteryear. In their view, people do not act on beliefs, goals, aspirations and expectations. Rather, activation of their network structure makes them do things. The phlogiston argument is sophistry