Research On Rotter's Social Behavioral Learning Theory

The Behavioral Learning Theory has been experienced three phases, that is, from the classical behavioral learning theory to the new behavioral learning theory to the social learning theory which appeared in the last 1950s.The social learning theory and its practice is a new trend of the behavioral psychology, which brings the behavioral learning theory to develop a school of it's own in the modern psychological world whose main treads are the cognitive psychology and the humanistic psychology. Rotter' s social behavioral learning theory played the role of a bridge during the transition from the new behavioral theory to the social learning theory. He has founded the first comprehensive social behavioral theory which showed great implication to the development of both Mischel's and Bandura's thoughts. In western countries Rotter's thoughts have received high praise and produced wide influence. But in China few psychologists has introduced him and the scholars know little about his ideas. So the author would introduce and analyze his theory to provide more helpful experiences and instructions for the study of the psychological history, personality psychology, clinical psychology, social psychology and educational psychology as well as the reform of the modem education in China etc.Rotter was the first behavioral psychologist who carried out study based on the materials of the human being as the subject. He objected to the traditional behavioral psychologists' practice that drew conclusions about the human being from the animal research, however, he attached more importance to the behavioral reaction of the human individual to the social stimulus in the social situations. Rotter combined tlie reinforcement approach with the cognitive approach, the two main trends of the American psychology at that time, and emphasized the role not only the external reinforcement but also the internal expectance in the personality. Therefore, his theory freed itself from the limit and narrow of the traditional behavioral learning theory. Rotter adopted a constructive point of view and paid more attention to a series bfconstructs with expectation validity. Especially he advocated the precision and the defmitude of the constructs by describing an operational definition for each one in order to expect and test effectively. Rotter integrated the behavioral variable, cognitive variable, motivational variable and situational variable into his theory with whose relations to analyze the structure of personality and describe the formulas of behaviors. Particularly the two constructs of generalized expectation, one is the Internal-External Locus of Control and the other is Interpersonal Trust, were the most contributions to the psychology.Rotter, a famous clinical psychologist, took into account the values of application of theory. Social behavioral learning theory involved both "process theory" and "content theory". The former is a theory of acquisition and change of learned, relatively stable, personal characteristics and the latter is a descriptive schema of individual differences. The process theory is necessary in order to study the effects of new experience and to apply general laws to individuals. The content, or descriptive, theory is necessary of achieve some efficiency in relating experience with one individual to the case of another who is similar in some important respect, and to describe in broader terms the effects of experience. Consequently, Rotter's social behavioral learning gave more values to the methods and theory of measurement. He criticized many assessment techniques of personality. He held that not only the test and its scoring could not take into account the need and expectancy of the subjects. Rotter also believed that the expectation based on the reaction would be improved if the subjects' behaviors in the test be explained according to the variables of his social behavioral theory.At the same time Rotter devoted most of his life to the clinical psychological studies and presented many unique viewpoints that en...