Person: Single mom, who lost custody over her children, has sex with multiple male partners, asks for money afterwards, and denies that she is prostitute because she doesn't charge money up front. The mother is hypercritical and unloving and her father has been an absent figure in her life. Her stepfather abused her.
Cognitive self-regulation
Cognitive self-regulation theory, fashioned by Bandura, believes that human behavior is motivated and regulated by the influence that one has over the self. This self-influence works through three key mechanisms: monitoring one's behavior, causes of one's behavior, and the effects of that behavior; judging one's behavior in contrast to personal standards; and regulating the feelings / moods (affect) of one's conduct / behavior. Higher goals lead to enhanced behavior and this results in a certain mindset. Self-regulation is continuous and never-ending. And is also effectuated by self-reinforcement that result in self-efficacy. It is intentional and becomes habitual (Chap. 17).
Self-regulation also involves the model of self-efficacy where, through the person believing that he can regulate his behavior through past incidences of having done so; the person will be more successful. Self-efficacy affects thought, motivation, action, and affect.
The person, in question, may have difficulty dominating her sexual tendencies. She may also be in need of money. Yet, not wishing to consider herself a prostitute, she requests money as sex favor only afterwards and likely employs cognitive mechanisms that enable her to request the money that enable her to see it as part of the normal sexual interaction. Having had success and doing so in the past and still retaining the favors of her partners allows her to repeat her actions in the future with less remorse...
The effect of self-reinforcement, similar to self-efficacy, also comes into focus.
The woman, in question, may have others in her environment who engage in similar behavior to hers rationalizing their habits of requesting money as favor from their sex partners once sexual activity has been perpetrated. In this way, she sees her behavior as 'normal'. For all we know, members of her family (for instance, her mother) may have engaged in similar behavior). The woman modeled it from them.
The woman, too, may be reinforced in perpetrating her behavior due to the fact that others may see her as poor and/or needing this recompense due to the fact that she ahs 'lost' her children. Commiseration and understanding of others may negate any possible self-conflict that she ever experienced, and the fact that her requests are acceded with partners perhaps returning reinforces her self-efficacy to repeat this act in the future.
Similarly, vicarious reinforcement may play a part where the woman sees similar acts perpetrated on movies where mistresses, for instance, have historically asked favors from partners during the act. The emotional aspect reinforces the intensity of expectation and defuses the wrongness of the act. (chap. 13)
Classical and / operant conditioning
The woman succeeds in gaining money from others. This gives her the positive reinforcement in…
