Psychoanalytic vs. Social Cognitive

780 Words2 Pages

What makes us who we are, what drives our personality? Is it driven by deep seeded sexual desires or is it something a bit more mundane, something that while we still have no control over, is easily studied?

Every single individual has a personality; it is the very quintessence of human existence. Personality drives our interactions with others, our desires – conscious and unconscious, our perceived needs, and to a certain extent, even our actions. Psychodynamic approaches to personality are focused on the belief that we have virtually no control over our own personality, that it is primarily controlled by unconscious powers. Social cognitive approaches to personality centers around the belief that we still have little to no control over our own personality, and that the cognitive influence, that is to say thoughts, feelings, expectations and values – along with the observation of others behavior is the primary influence on personality. These two approaches to personality are so radically different, and yet both have their own merits – they are two of many, and nobody is quite sure what the truth is.

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, was the principle proponent of the psychoanalytic personality theory. Psychoanalytic personality theory is tells us that the majority of human behavior is motivated by the unconscious, a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings urges, drives, and instincts that the individual is unaware, and that only a small part of our psychological makeup is actually derived from the conscious experience. The problem is our unconscious mind disguises the meaning of the material it contains. As such, the psychoanalytic personality theory is ver...

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...and observing the consequences. The role of self-efficacy is also emphasized by Bandura; self-efficacy underlies people’s faith in their own abilities. Self-efficacy can be developed by paying close attention to past success and failures, positive reinforcement and encouragement from others also plays a role in developing self-efficacy. The social cognitive theory is unique among other learned personality theories in that the emphasis places on the reciprocity between individuals and the environments they find themselves in. Learning theorists have been accuses of oversimplifying personality to such an extent that is has become meaningless, this is because they ignore many of the internal processes that are inherently human. These criticisms are blunted somewhat by social cognitive approaches because it explicitly considers the role of the cognitive process.

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