Download Personality Theories

By Justin Vail and Ken Huneycutt
BEHAVIORISM AND SKINNER’S VERBAL BEHAVIOR THEORY
Behaviorism
 Behaviorism—Branch of Psychology involving
the study of observable behavior
 Not dealing with the ‘mind’
 Conscious can’t be used practically and is not
measurable
 Two main theories
 Classical Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning
Classical Conditioning
 Developed by Ivan Pavlov, future inspirer of
Skinner
 Famous for Dog experiment
Classical Conditioning
 Classical Conditioning—Unconditioned
stimulus that results in a response and
associating another stimulus for that same
response
Meat= Unconditioned stimulus
Dog salivates=Response Bell= Conditioned stimulus
 Example of Classical conditioning is phobias
 Fear of dogs because don’t like loud noises and tie
dogs to loud noises so don’t like dogs
B.F. Skinner
 Born in Pennsylvania, 1904
 Started his career as a writer then became a
psychologist
 Believed in observable and actions, thoughts and
feelings
 The environment was the major factor of internal processes
 Married Yvonne Blue and had two daughters
 Known for his work on Behaviorism
 Operant Conditioning
 The Skinner Box
 Air crib
 Teaching Machine
 Died in 1990
Operant Conditioning
 Skinner Box
 Controlled environment with a lever that drops
food pellets into the box
 Skinner used to research on Operant Conditioning
 When mouse presses lever his action is positively
reinforced with food, so he continues to press
lever
 If the lever electrocuted the mouse instead, the
mouse would stop pushing it.
Operant Conditioning
• rewards, punishments
• Pizza, praise, scolding, money, beating
Verbal Behavior
Skinner created categories to describe different verbal forms
 Mands—like deMands. When a specific consequence is
desired
 Saying you want water, directions, freedom
 Tacts—Observations of physical environment
 I’m in ToK class, the sky is blue, I am holding a rock
 Echoic—Imitation, echo.
 Teacher: This is una mochila. Student: Mochila
 Contraverbal—conversation, verbal response to previous
verbal
 Teacher: What is your favorite color? Student: Blue
 Person #1: I have a cat. Person #2: I have a dog.
 Textual—Writing and reading
Verbal Behavior
 Skinner believed mastering each type is necessary to
speak a language
 Believed learning a language is not innate, but results
from positive and negative reinforcements
 When a person says something and get a negative
reaction (the reinforcement) from their audience, will
stop saying it
Hahaha
Groovy
 When a person says something correct, receive praise
and continue saying it
Cock-adoodle-doo
Perfect.
Bibliography
 Boeree, George. "B. F. SKINNER." Personality
Theories. N.p., 2006. Web. 10 Apr 2011.
<http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html>
 Graham, George, "Behaviorism", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entri
es/behaviorism/>
 "B. F. Skinner And Behaviorism." Essortment.
N.p., 2010. Web. 10 Apr 2011.
<http://www.essortment.com/b-f-skinnerbehaviorism-35995.html>