Building a Social-Cognitive Framework for Design: Personality and Design Self-efficacy Effects on Pro-design Behaviors

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to offer a framework that analogously considers factors significant for engineering design and industrial organization, borrowing from literature in domains of cognition and social theories. We conducted two studies: at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and University of Southern California, that allowed us to investigate personal, environmental, cognitive, and behavioral traits and processes, as affected by design self-efficacy, in engineering designers and non-technical designers in training. Through a social-cognitive framework for design, we explore the kind of influence that occurs among person, environment, and behavior reciprocally. We found that the rational mode of thinking was particularly highly associated with design self-efficacy, and intuitive mode particularly insufficiently associated with design self-efficacy. Design self-efficacy was further positively associated with big five personality conscientiousness, and highly negatively associated with neuroticism, where some significance is seen in specific correlations with design selfefficacy in personality domains. The comprehensive findings call for a repetition study and further theoretical considerations for findings in the framework’s domain.