Alie, Alexa, Jerica, Carmen, Karla, Andrew, and Kyle (THE COOLEST GROUP EVER!)

 Behavioral personality theories emphasize that personality is no more (or less) than a collection of learned behavior patterns  Personality is acquired through classical and operant conditioning, observational learning, reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and discrimination  Strict learning theorists reject the idea that personality is made up of traits. They are interested in the situational determinants (external causes) of our actions.

 Early theory proposed by John Dollard and Neal Miller (1950)  Habits- learned behavior patterns  make up the structure of personality

 Drive- stimulus strong enough to guide a person to action. (hunger, pain, lust, frustration)  Cues- signals from the environment  Responses- actions that bring about the rewards  Reward- positive reinforcement

 Julian Rotter  The “cognitive behaviorism” of social learning theory was illustrated by three concepts:  Psychological Situation- how the person interprets or defines the situation  Expectancy- the anticipation that making a response will lead to reinforcement  Reinforcement Value- states that humans attach different subjective values to various activities or rewards

 Self- Efficacy= a capacity for producing a desired result (Albert Bandura)  Self- Reinforcement= praising or rewarding oneself for having made a particular response. Self-reinforcement is closely tied to high self esteem. The reverse is also true.

 Social reinforcement- based on praise, attention, or approval from others  Miller and Dollard believe in four critical in childhood situations that later affect personality: feeding, toilet training or cleanliness training, sex training, and learning to express anger or aggression  If children are tended to while crying, they learn to be manipulative. If children are not tended to while crying, they become passive

 According to the social learning theory, identification and imitation contribute greatly to personality development and sex training.  Identification- child’s emotional attachment to admired adults. It encourages imitation- a desire to act like the admired person.

 A study showed that preschool teachers are three times more likely to pay attention to aggressive or disputive boys than to girls acting the same way  By age ten, boys expect to get less disapproval from parents for aggression

 Social learning and personality are linked  Affectionate parents= sociable, positive, high esteemed children  Neglectful parents= hostile, unstable, and dependent children