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Definition
Expectancy: an individual’s perception of the probability that a behavior will lead to an outcome, independent of its objective probability and how desirable or undesirable it is.
Introduction
At its core, personality can be defined as an individual’s behavioral tendencies. Put another way, American psychologist Julian Rotter describes personality as “the interaction of the individual and his or her meaningful environment” (Rotter 1990). This entry provides a brief overview of Rotter’s theoretical contributions to the development of the personality construct, particularly his concept of expectancy and its role in individual differences in behavior and personality more broadly. Despite sharing a title with Bandura’s (1977) hallmark model, Rotter’s social learning theory of personality and behavior serves as a unique framework for outlining the intrapersonal factors predictive of behavior across situations.
Rotter’s Social Learning...
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References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28.
Rotter, J. B. (1990). Internal versus external control of reinforcement: A case history of a variable. American Psychologist, 45(4), 489–493.
Rotter, J. B. (1975). Some problems and misconceptions related to the construct of internal versus external control of reinforcement. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(1), 56–67.
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Tran, B.Q., Sweeny, K. (2020). Expectancy (Rotter). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1794
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1794
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