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Chapter 13
The Behavioral/Social Learning
Approach: Theory and Application
Behaviorism
John B. Watson (1878-1958)
 Watson was a fighter and a builder.
 In college, he was unsociable and uninterested
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in his studies.
He switched from philosophy to psychology at
the University of Chicago, but preferred to
study animals rather than humans.
After joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins
University in 1908, he developed and
promoted his ideas about behaviorism.
Behaviorism swept the field following the
publication of his paper “Psychology as the
Behaviorist Views It” in 1913.
Watson’s flourishing academic career ended in
disgrace in 1920, in the wake of his affair with
his research associate, Rosalie Rayner.
Watson’s view of behaviorism
 Watson argued that if psychology were to be a science, psychologists
must stop examining mental states and study overt, observable
behavior instead.
 Emotions, thoughts, experiences, values, reasoning, insight, and the
unconscious would therefore be off-limits to behaviorists unless they
could be defined in terms of observable behaviors. For example,
Watson regarded thinking as a variant of verbal behavior that he called
“subvocal speech.”
 According to Watson, personality could be described as “the end
product of our habit systems.”
 Watson argued that he could take “a dozen healthy infants, wellformed” and condition them “to become any type of specialist” that he
chose.
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
 Skinner passed on joining his father’s law firm
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and studied English at Hamilton College with the
intent of becoming a writer.
After producing nothing of consequence in the
two years following his graduation, he went to
Harvard to study psychology.
He became the new standard bearer for a view of
behaviorism that he called radical behaviorism.
In the 1940s, he published Walden Two, a novel
about a utopian community based on
conditioning principles.
To the end, he remaining an adamant believer in
the power of the environment, and conceded little
to those who emphasized genetic determinants of
behavior.
Skinner’s “radical behaviorism”
 Skinner did not deny the existence of thoughts and inner experiences,
but he argued that we often misattribute our actions to mental states
when they should be attributed to our conditioning instead.
 His position maintained that we often don’t know the reason for many
of our behaviors, although we may think we do.
 He therefore argued that our perception that we are free to act as we
choose is, to a large extent, an illusion. Instead, we act in response to
environmental contingencies.
 Among Skinner’s many contributions to the study of conditioning are
the so-called “Skinner box” and the discovery of partial reinforcement
schedules.
Basic Principles of Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
 Ivan Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia. He began his
higher education as a seminary student, but dropped out
and enrolled at the University of Petersburg to study the
natural sciences. He received his doctorate in 1879.
 In the 1890s, Pavlov was investigating the digestive
process in dogs by externalizing a salivary gland so he
could collect, measure, and analyze the saliva produced in
response to food under different conditions.
 He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was
actually delivered to their mouths. He realized that this was
more interesting than the chemistry of saliva, and changed
the focus of his research, carrying out a long series of
experiments in which he manipulated the stimuli occurring
before the presentation of food.
 He thereby established the basic laws for the establishment
and extinction of what he called "conditional reflexes" —
i.e., reflex responses, like salivation, that only occurred
conditional upon specific previous experiences of the
animal.
Pavlov’s experimental setup
Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning (aka
“signal learning”)
 Classical conditioning begins with an existing stimulus-
response (S-R) association.
 Understanding that there was an existing S-R association
between the food (S) and the dog’s salivation, Pavlov
quickly perceived that there might also be a learned or
“conditioned” association between cues associated with
feeding (S) and the dog’s salivation (R).
 Using the sound of either a bell or a tuning fork as his
conditioned stimuli, Pavlov found that he could indeed
“condition” the response of salivation to the sound of a bell
or a tuning fork.
Pavlov’s experimental setup
Pavlov’s famous demonstration of classically
conditioned salivation in a dog
Classical conditioning paradigm
food
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
tuning fork
saliva
Unconditioned response (UCR)
Conditioned response (CR)
saliva
Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning (aka
“signal learning”)
 Once the new S-R association is established, it can be used to
condition yet another S-R association in a process called second-order
conditioning.
 For example, once the dog is reliably salivating to the sound of the
tuning fork, the tuning fork can be paired with a green light and soon
the dog will salivate whenever the green light comes on.
 Both first-order and second-order classical conditioning are subject to
extinction.
 Another limitation of classical conditioning involves the length of the
delay between the presentation of the CS and the presentation of the
UCS (in general, one second is optimal).
Operant (instrumental) conditioning (aka
“consequence learning”)
 Operant conditioning concerns the effect certain kinds of consequences
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have on the frequency of behavior.
A consequence that increases the frequency of a behavior is called a
reinforcement.
A consequence that decreases the frequency of a behavior is called a
punishment.
Whether a consequence is reinforcing or punishing varies according to
the person and the situation.
There are two basic strategies for increasing the frequency of a
behavior: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
There are two basic strategies for decreasing the frequency of a
behavior: extinction and punishment.
Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949)
 Edward L. Thorndike graduated from Wesleyan
University in 1895, and received his Ph.D. from
Columbia University in 1898
 He was appointed as an instructor in genetic
psychology at Teachers College, Columbia
University, in 1899, and served there until 1940.
 He devised methods to measure children’s
intelligence and their ability to learn. He also
conducted studies in animal psychology and the
psychology of learning. His law of effect
addressed the phenomenon we now call
reinforcement.
 Thorndike’s books include Educational
Psychology (1903), Mental and Social
Measurements (1904), Animal Intelligence
(1911), A Teacher’s Word Book (1921), Your
City (1939), and Human Nature and the Social
Order (1940).
The Skinner box
Operant (instrumental) conditioning (aka
“consequence learning”)
 Operant conditioning concerns the effect certain kinds of consequences
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have on the frequency of behavior.
A consequence that increases the frequency of a behavior is called a
reinforcement.
A consequence that decreases the frequency of a behavior is called a
punishment.
Whether a consequence is reinforcing or punishing varies according to
the person and the situation.
There are two basic strategies for increasing the frequency of a
behavior: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
There are two basic strategies for decreasing the frequency of a
behavior: extinction and punishment.
Operant conditioning procedures
Procedure
Purpose
Application
Positive reinforcement
Increase behavior
Give reward following
behavior
Negative reinforcement
Increase behavior
Remove aversive stimulus
following behavior
Extinction
Decrease behavior Do not reward behavior
Punishment
Decrease behavior Give aversive stimulus
following behavior or take
away positive stimulus
Problems with the use of punishment
 Punishment does not teach what behavior is appropriate. It only teaches what
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behavior is inappropriate.
To be effective, punishment must be delivered immediately and consistently.
Punishment can have the negative side effect of inhibiting not only the
undesirable behavior but also desirable behavior that is associated with it.
Punishment can result in the person who is punished coming to fear the person
who administers the punishment.
Punishment may also serve as a behavior that is later modeled by the person
being punished.
Punishment can create strong negative emotions that can interfere with
learning the desired response.
For all of these reasons, punishment should be used sparingly and only when
other operant conditioning procedures either cannot be used or will not work.
Other important operant conditioning
concepts
 Shaping: reinforcing successive approximations of the
desired behavior until the complete response is well
established
 Generalization: displaying the response to stimulus
situations that resemble the one in which the original
response was acquired
 Discrimination: selectively reinforcing the response to help
ensure that it will only occur in the presence of the original
stimulus and not ones that might resemble it
Social Learning Theory
Julian B. Rotter (1916-
)
 Julian Rotter first learned about psychology in the
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Avenue J Library in Brooklyn, where he spent much of
his childhood and adolescence.
Believing that he couldn’t earn a living as a psychologist,
he majored in chemistry at Brooklyn College.
While still in college, he discovered that Alfred Adler
was teaching at the Long Island School of Medicine and
began associating with Adler and his colleagues.
He then became a psychology major at the University of
Iowa and received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the
University of Indiana.
After serving as a psychologist in the Army during World
War II, he later taught at the Ohio State University and at
the University of Connecticut.
Key concepts in Rotter’s Social Learning
Theory: perceptions, expectancies, and values
 Behavior potential (BP): the likelihood of a given behavior
occurring in a particular situation
 Expectancy: the perceived likelihood that a given behavior will
result in a particular outcome
– Generalized expectancies: beliefs about how often our actions
typically lead to reinforcements and punishments
– Locus of control: generalized perceptions about the degree to
which one’s outcomes are determined by internal versus external
factors
 Reinforcement value: the degree to which we prefer one
reinforcer over another
Rotter’s basic formula for predicting behavior
Behavior potential (BP) = Expectancy (E) X Reinforcement Value (RV)
If either the expectancy or the reinforcement value is zero, then the
behavior potential will be zero.
Examples of calculating the behavior
potentials in an insult situation
Option
Possible
outcome
Expectancy
Value
Behavior
potential
Ask for
apology
Apology
High
High
High
Insult back
Laughter
Low
High
Average
Yell at
insulter
Ugly scene
High
Low
Average
Leave the
party
Feel foolish
Average
Low
Low
Social-Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura (1925 Albert Bandura was raised in Alberta,
Canada and received his bachelor’s degree
at the University of British Columbia.
 He completed his Ph.D. at the University of
Iowa, where he was influenced by the
prominent learning theorist Kenneth
Spence.
 After a year of clinical internship in
Wichita, he accepted a position at Stanford
University.
 His career has been spent building bridges
between traditional learning theory,
cognitive personality theory, and clinical
psychology.
)
Bandura’s reciprocal determinism model
Behavior
External factors
(Rewards, punishments)
Internal factors
(Beliefs, thoughts, expectations)
Features of learning and cognition that are
(relatively) unique to humans
 The use of symbols and other cognitive representational
structures to “re-create” the outside world within our own
minds
 The resulting abilities to imagine alternative courses of
action and conduct mental stimulations to “project” what
their outcomes are likely to be
 The capacity for self-regulation through the application of
self-reward and self-punishment, even in the face of strong
external rewards and punishment
 The capacity for vicarious or observational learning
Observational learning
 The distinction between learning and performance is important: not
every behavior that is learned gets performed
 Much of our learning occurs vicariously, through our observation of
other people’s actions, and the consequences of those actions.
 We are more likely to imitate a behavior we have seen other people
display if the outcome of their behavior was a reward, rather than a
punishment.
 In a study by Bandura (1965), nursery school children were more
likely to model the aggressive behaviors of an adult who they observed
in a film segment if they saw the model get rewarded, rather than
punished, for his aggressive behavior.
Mean number of aggressive responses
performed (Bandura, 1965)
4
3.5
3
2.5
Boys
2
Girls
1.5
1
0.5
0
Model rewarded
Model punished
No consequences
Diagram of Little Albert’s classical
conditioning: A conditioned phobia
Loud noise
Fear responses
(Unconditioned stimulus)
(Unconditioned response)
White rat
(Conditioned stimulus)
Fear response
(Conditioned response)
Application: behavior modification
 Classical conditioning applications
– Systematic desensitization (for example, snake phobia)
– Aversion therapy (for example, alcoholism)
 Operant conditioning applications
– Changing behavior by changing contingencies
• Reward
• Punishment
• Extinction through nonreinforcement
– Token economy
– Biofeedback
Application: self-efficacy therapy
 The difference between an outcome expectancy and an efficacy
expectancy.
 Four sources of efficacy expectancies:
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Enactive mastery experiences
Vicarious experiences
Verbal persuasion (“coaching”)
Physiological and affective states
 Guided mastery as a step-by-step approach to achieve enactive mastery
experiences
 Problems that have been addressed through the application of selfefficacy beliefs include traumatic stress disorder, test anxiety, phobias,
and bereavement.
Behavioral observation methods
 Direct observation
– Direct observation in the field, in the laboratory, or in the clinic
– Analogue behavioral observation (for example, staging a dance for
clients who are being treated for shyness)
– Role-play
– The importance of reliable observations
 Self-monitoring
– The importance of consistent and objective self-observation
– The therapeutic value of self-observation
 Observation by others (parents, teachers, nurses, etc.)
Strengths and criticisms of the behavioral /
social learning approach
 Strengths
– The approach has a solid foundation in empirical research with humans
and with infrahuman species.
– It led to the development of useful therapeutic procedures involving
behavior modification. These intervention procedures, which are
relatively quick, inexpensive, and easily administered, assess baseline
levels of behavior and establish objective criteria for behavior change.
– The social-cognitive extensions of the behavioral approach have greatly
expanded the range of phenomena that can be addressed.
 Criticisms
– The approach gives inadequate attention to the role of heredity.
– Not all responses can be successfully conditioned (e.g., fear of food).
– Rewarding intrinsically-motivated behaviors can sometimes reduce their
frequency of occurrence.
– Reducing the problems of therapy patients to observable behaviors may
fail to address the underlying problem in certain kinds of disorders.