1. Chapter 6: Behaviorist and Learning Aspects

2. The Classical Conditioning of Personality
Ivan Pavlov
Studying dogs

3. The Classical Conditioning of Personality

4. The Classical Conditioning of Personality

5. Classical Conditioning
Generalization
Conditioned responses can occur in response to stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus
Discrimination
Learning to tell the difference between different stimuli, responding only to the conditioned stimulus and not to similar stimuli

6. Classical Conditioning
Extinction
When the pairing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus stops
Gradual decrease in the response to the conditioned stimulus

7. Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning can be used to explain emotional aspects of personality
neurotic behavior
phobias
superstitious behavior
etc.

8. Origins of a Behaviorist Approach
John B. Watson
Founded behaviorism
Applied conditioning principles to humans
Rejection of introspection
Tabula rasa approach
John Locke

9. The Example of Baby Albert

10. The Example of Baby Albert

11. The Example of Baby Albert

12. The Radical Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner**
The term personality is meaningless!
Rejection of any mental internal component like personality as known up to that date
Personality IS a group of responses to the environment
Talks about superstitious behavior in order to dispute against the need to assign ‘personalities’ to people
Radical determinism
All behavior is caused
Operant Conditioning
Behavior is changed by its consequences
“Skinner box” (operant chamber)

13. Operant Conditioning**
The status of a consequence as reinforcement or punishment is empirically determined
If the preceding response increases after the consequence occurs, it is a reinforcement
If the preceding response decreases after the consequence occurs, it is a punishment
Reinforcement or punishment can occur through adding or removing a stimulus
For rats: food, noise, electric shock
For humans: money, praise, hugs, candy, chores, spanking, prison

14. Operant Conditioning What happens after the response occurs? What
Stimulus
is Added
Stimulus is
Removed
What
happens
to the
response?
Positive
Reinforcement
Negative
Punishment
Response
Increases
Response
Decreases

15. Skinner’s Walden Two
Applied the principles of operant conditioning to design a society
Sets up a controlling environment by using positive reinforcement
Several communities were founded on behaviorist principles

16. Applying Behaviorism: An Example
Modifying Type A personality
By using operant conditioning people are able to learn to reduce their negative behaviors

17. Other Learning Approaches to Personality
Clark Hull ‘PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOR’ 1943
Role of drive alleviation
Habits
Associations between a stimulus and a response
Emphasized both internal states and the environment
The role of internal drives: Innate or Primary (hunger, thirst, sex, avoidance of pain)
Describes how distant goals can be learned

18. Dollard and Miller – Social Learning Theory
Combined psychoanalytic theory with behaviorism
Habit hierarchy
Personality is the probability that particular responses will occur
Secondary drives

19. Dollard and Miller Secondary drives Frustration-aggression hypothesis
The drives that are learned by association with the satisfaction of primary drives
HARLOW’S STUDIES** – shows the difficulty of understanding primary needs associated with social needs
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Occurs as a result of blocking efforts to attain a goal

20. Dollard and Miller Mental illness explanations – DRIVE CONFLICT
Internal conflicts
Approach-avoidance conflict
Approach-approach conflict
Avoidance-avoidance conflict

21. Modern Behaviorist Approaches to Personality
Behaviorism’s limitation to observable behavior is inconsistent with the focus of most personality approaches
Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory connects individual differences in the nervous system to the response to reward versus punishment
Reward works through Behavioral Activation System (Behavioral Approach System)
Punishment works through Behavioral Inhibition System
Act Frequency Approach as a way to connect observable actions to traits

22. Timeline: The Behaviorist and Learning Approach

23. Timeline: The Behaviorist and Learning Approach

24. Timeline: The Behaviorist and Learning Approach

25. Timeline: The Behaviorist and Learning Approach

26. Timeline: The Behaviorist and Learning Approach

27. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
Analogy
Humans as intelligent rats learning life mazes

28. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
Advantages
Requires rigorous empirical study
Looks for general laws that apply to all organisms
Forces attention to the environmental influences on behavior

29. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
Limits
Ignores insights and advances from cognitive and social psychology
May tend to dehumanize unique human potentials
Explains all differences between individuals as a consequence of their reinforcement histories
Views humans as objects to be trained

30. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
View of free will
Behavior is determined by environmental contingencies
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

31. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
Common assessment technique
Experimental analysis of learning (often in non-human animals)
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

32. The Behaviorist and Learning Approach
Implications for therapy
Since personality is conditioned and learned, therapy is based on teaching desirable habits and behaviors, and on extinguishing undesirable ones
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.