Download TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION

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A theoretical perspective that attempt to
understand behavior by focusing on:
 the external contingencies of reinforcement (any
consequence of an action that increases the
probability of that action being executed again)
 punishment (any consequence of an action that
decreases the probability of its repetition)
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As one of the dominant psychological approaches of the
mid-twentieth century, behaviorism was used to interpret
and explain behavior of all kinds, including the
idiosyncratic behaviors of humans that in other contexts
would be seen as external signs of internal "personalities."
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Field of psychology that flourished in the middle part of
the 20th century in US.
Behaviorism attempted to explain all behavior through
effect of the environmental contingencies of reward and
punishment.
Early researcher - John Watson  argued that the only
way to conduct scientific psychology was by focusing on
observable behavior, not by making introspective selfreports.
Watson also emphasized the importance of environment
in shaping behavior  He argued that animals, including
humans, will work toward things that aid their survival &
reproduction (e.g. food, water, sex), & avoid things that
harm them.
B. F. Skinner - extended Watson and other behaviorists'
work into domains such as education and personality.
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Initially, the basic behaviorist experiment works as follows:
◦ a rat/human is given several response options, each of
which is associated with a reward/punishment.
◦ a rat is given the option of pressing 1of 2 levers Pressing
one of the levers results in the delivery of sugar water or a
food pellet; pressing the other lever has no result  The
number of times a rat presses each lever is recorded.
◦ Over time, the number of lever- presses on the lever
associated with the reward increases.
◦ Any result that causes an increase in lever pressing is
called a reinforce, and the process by which the lever
presses increases is called reinforcement.
◦ If the lever is associated with a punisher (e.g. an electric
shock or a startling noise), the number of lever- presses
decreases over time; this is called punishment.
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According to B. F. Skinner, this process is known
as the "operant conditioning“
Earlier behaviorist,i.e. Edward Lee Thorndike, had
called it the "law of effect."
Thus, the rate at which a rat (or a human) learns to
start pressing one lever instead of another can be
affected by different schedules of reinforcement or
punishment.
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How can these rules of behavior, derived from the
experiments with rats, be applied to understanding
human personality?
Behaviorists argued that the behavior could be
completely predicted if one knew the organism's
(person’s) history of stimuli, actions, and their
corresponding rewards and punishments.
Behaviorists were radically opposed to the humanistic
approach, which emphasized the importance of selfdetermination and subjective experience, and to the
psychodynamic approach, which emphasized
deterministic and unconscious--but nonetheless
internal--mechanisms of behavior.
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Skinner argued that most of human behavior is driven by
secondary reinforcers, such as money & social praise,
which derive their value from primary reinforcers. For e.g:
 We work for money because we know that it will result in food and
other direct comforts.
 Over the course of a lifetime, we accumulate many associations
between stimuli we encounter our behavioral responses to them
 and the reinforcement or punishment that results.
 Everyone history of exposure to environmental contingencies
varies  so each person's behavior will also differ  For e.g:
 A person who had a frightening experience with a spider as a
child will avoid spiders in the future  may develop a phobia
that can strongly influence their behavior.
 A person who had never had such an experience would behave
very differently if exposed to a spider.
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Behaviorism was not, however, very successful in
helping researchers understand personality, despite its
dominance over academic psychology.
As part of the "cognitive revolution" in the late 1950's
and 1960's  some researchers began to expand
behaviorism to include internal representations of
reinforcement and punishment ("expectations" and
"motivation") and the social influences on behavior.
One of these researchers was Albert Bandura 
whose work on self- representations and self-efficacy,
has had a strong influence on current understandings
of personality.
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Bandura argued that behaviorism failed to capture
some of the most important aspects of human behavior
- especially the social cognitive approach focused on
the role of expectations, goals, and idiosyncratic
interpretations in shaping the effect of rewards and
punishments on behavior.
Bandura also argued that people learned how to
behave not only from their personal experience with
reinforcement and punishment,  but also from talking
to other people and from watching the consequences
of others' behaviors.
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Approach to personality that focused on the
role of modeling on behavior as well as the role
of social influences, expectations, and
interpretations on behavior.
It is an offshoot of, and related to behaviorism,
but it differs with behaviorism in that it
conceives different people as reacting
differently (subjectively) to the exact same
rewards or punishments
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The social cognitive approach to personality focuses on
the several ways in which concrete behaviors can be
changed.
Through the process of social modeling - a person
watches another person give a particular response in a
situation and learns about the consequences of that
response  the observer identifies with the modeler
and will decide to give the same response if he finds
himself in a similar situation in the future (if the
consequence was positive) or will avoid that response
(if the consequence was negative).
 Observe  learn  model
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Social cognitive theory also assume that each person's
idiosyncratic way of interpreting the world, and his/her
particular goals & expectations, will modulate the way a
particular reinforcer/ punisher will affect his/her behavior.
 For example, a person who feels that making money
is not an important goal will not work for it, despite
the fact that it is associated with many primary
reinforcers.
 A single person will differ from situation to situation
depending on the extent to which any given reinforcer
or punisher is important to him or her.
Thus, the effects of rewards and punishments are both
situation-and person-specific.
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Self-efficacy refers to one's belief in one's ability to
succeed at a particular task.
According to Bandura  simply asking someone how
confident they are that they can succeed at a particular
task helps enormously in predicting how well the person
will perform at that task - even if the person has never
done the task in the past and has no basis on which to
be confident.
Bandura showed that altering a person's self- efficacy
can sometimes be the best way to improve his or her
performance.
 For example snake phobics who had difficulty even remaining in
the same room with a snake were able to pick up and hold the
snake after a two-hour session of exposure therapy.
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Can a person’s self-efficacy be changed?
Yes! Through:-
 personal experience,
 social modeling, and
 changes in the person's goals and expectations.