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State and explain the five ‘person variables’ that are important in understanding how people interact with the environment.

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1. Competencies – Each person has different capacities and abilities. These may be mental abilities, such as intelligence, memory, physical capacities etc. People’s competencies affect what they can do and often what they attempt to do.

2. Encoding strategies and personal constructs. These terms refer to the ways people take in or encode information about objects and events in the environment and to the concepts or constructs individuals use to perceive and categorize other people. None of us pays attention to everything or perceives everyone else entirely accurately. However, our perceptions, accurate or not, strongly influence our behavior.

3. Expectancies – Because of our experience and behavior and what we see, hear and read about others, we have expectancies about the consequences of our actions. Most important, of course, are expectations about whether certain actions will lead to reinforcement. If one expects that they will, one is more likely to perform them.

4. Values – What people value, or what they find reinforcing is critical in determining their behavior. Behaviors that produce the most valued outcomes for us are the behaviors we will pursue.

5. Self regulatory systems and plans – Self regulatory systems include self imposed goals and aspirations, which affect behavior. They also include the standards by which we assess our behaviors. Many people regulate their own behavior by rewarding or not rewarding themselves for certain actions. Some students decide that they will treat themselves to a movie or chocolate ice-cream soda after they finish each term paper. If they stick to these plans, they have good incentive to get their work done. Giving themselves a reward for doing the work is likely to establish a behavior pattern that matches personal standards and leads to many valued outcomes in the long run. To what extent does this theory shed light on how some criminal behavior could be learned? How does this knowledge help us in the performance of our work?

Kavungya answered the question on May 8, 2019 at 08:47

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State and explain the five ‘person variables’ that are important in understanding how people interact with the environment.

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