Kelly - Personal Construct

Kelly is the last Learning Theorist that I learned. I kinda like his theory though, just because it's different from other learning theory.

George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs is like no other personality theory. It has been variously called a cognitive theory, a behavioral theory, an existential theory, and a phenomenological theory. Yet it is none of these. Perhaps the most appropriate term is “metatheory,” or a theory about theories. According to Kelly, all people (including those who build personality theories) anticipate events by the meanings or interpretations they place on those events. These meanings or interpretations are called constructs. People exist in a real world, but their behavior is shaped by their gradually expanding interpretation or construction of that world. They construe the world in their own way, and every construction is open to revision or replacement. People are not victims of circumstances, because alternative constructions are always available. Kelly called this philosophical position constructive alternatives.

Q: What is the basic postulate of Personal Construct?

A: Constructive alternativism is implied by Kelly’s theory of personal constructs, a theory he expressed in one basic postulate and 11 supporting corollaries. The basic postulate assumes that people are constantly active and that their activity is guided by the way they anticipate events.

The basic postulate assumes that “a person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which [that person] anticipates events”

Q: What are the 11 Supporting Corollaries?

A: To elaborate his theory of personal constructs, Kelly proposed 11 supporting corollaries, all of which can be inferred from his basic postulate.

1. Similarity Among Events (Construction): a person anticipates events by construing their replications
2. Differences Among People (Individuality): Persons differ from each other in their construction of events
3. Relationship Among Constructs (Organization): characteristically evolve, for [their] convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between construct
4. Dichotomy of Constructs (Dichotomy): a person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous constructs
5. Choice Between Dichotomies (Choice): People choose for themselves that alternative in a dichotomized construct through which they anticipate the greater possibility for extension and definition of future constructs.
6. Range of Convenience (Range): personal constructs are finite and not relevant to everything. “A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only”
7. Experience and Learning (Experience): A person’s construction system varies as he [or she] successively construes the replications of events
8. Adaptation to Experience (Modulation): The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability of the constructs within whose range of convenience the variants lie
9. Incompatible Constructs (Fragmentation): allows for the incompatibility of specific elements. “A person may successively employ a variety of constructive subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other”
10. Similarities Among People (Commonality): To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another, [that person’s] processes are psychologically similar to those of the other person
11. Social Processes (Corollary): To the extent that people accurately construe the belief system of others, they may play a role in a social process involving those other people.

Q: What are the applications of personal construct?

A: 

Q: What is the psychotherapy in personal construct?

A: Psychological distress exists whenever people have difficulty validating their personal

constructs, anticipating future events, and controlling their present environment. When distress becomes unmanageable, they may seek outside help in the form of psychotherapy.

In Kelly’s view, people should be free to choose those courses of action most consistent with their prediction of events. In therapy, this approach means that clients, not the therapist, select the goal. Clients are active participants in the therapeutic process, and the therapist’s role is to assist them to alter their construct systems in order to improve efficiency in making predictions. 

As a technique for altering the clients’ constructs, Kelly used a procedure called fixed-role therapy. The purpose of fixed-role therapy is to help clients change their outlook on life (personal constructs) by acting out a predetermined role, first within the relative security of the therapeutic setting and then in the environment beyond therapy where they enact the role continuously over a period of several weeks.

Together with the therapist, clients work out a role, one that includes attitudes and behaviors not currently part of their core role. In writing the fixed-role sketch, the client and therapist are careful to include the construction systems of other people. How will the client’s spouse or parents or boss or friends construe and react to this new role? Will their reactions help the client reconstrue events more productively?

This new role is then tried out in everyday life in much the same manner that a scientist tests a hypothesis—cautiously and objectively. In fact, the fixed-role sketch is typically written in the third person, with the actor assuming a new identity. The client is not trying to be another person but is merely playing the part of someone who is worth knowing. The role should not be taken too seriously; it is only an act, something that can be altered as evidence warrants.

Fixed-role therapy is not aimed at solving specific problems or repairing obsolete constructs. It is a creative process that allows clients to gradually discover previously hidden aspects of themselves. In the early stages, clients are introduced only to peripheral roles; but then, after they have had time to become comfortable with minor changes in personality structure, they try out new core roles that permit more profound personality change (Kelly, 1955).

Prior to developing the fixed-role approach, Kelly (1969a) stumbled on an unusual procedure that strongly resembles fixed-role therapy. After becoming uncomfortable with Freudian techniques, he decided to offer his clients “preposterous interpretations” for their complaints. Some were far-fetched Freudian interpretations, but nevertheless, most clients accepted these “explanations” and used them as guides to future action. For example, Kelly might tell a client that strict toilet training has caused him to construe his life in a dogmatically rigid fashion but that he need not continue to see things in this way. To Kelly’s surprise, many of his clients began to function better! The key to change was the same as with fixed-role therapy—clients must begin to interpret their lives from a different perspective and see themselves in a different role.

Q: What is the Rep Test?

A: Another procedure used by Kelly, both inside and outside therapy, was the Role Construct Repertory (Rep) test. The purpose of the Rep test is to discover ways in which people construe significant people in their lives. With the Rep test, a person is given a Role Title list and asked to designate people who fit the role titles by writing their names on a card.

Rotter & Mischel - Cognitive Social Learning Theory

I just want to throw up lookin' at the overview of this theory, it's just too many to take in. I can't do this :(

Okay. Chill. Relax. You can do this, tik!

Rotter = Skinner

Mischel = Bandura & Rotter

So, Rotter contends that human behavior is best predicted from an understanding the interaction of people with their meaningful environments. As an interaction, he believes that neither the environment itself nor the individual is completely responsible for behavior. Instead, he holds that people’s cognitions, past histories, and expectations of the future are keys to predicting behavior. In this respect, he differs

from Skinner, who believed that reinforcement ultimately stems from the environment.

Mischel’s cognitive social theory has much in common with Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Rotter’s social learning theory. Like Bandura and Rotter, Mischel believes that cognitive factors, such as expectancies, subjective perceptions, values, goals, and personal standards, play important roles in shaping personality. His contributions to personality theory have evolved from research on delay of gratification,

to research regarding the consistency or inconsistency of personality, and presently to work with Yuichi Shoda on the development of a cognitive-affective personality system.

Q: What are the 5 basic assumptions of Rotter's Social Learning Theory?

A:  Social learning theory rests on five basic hypotheses. 

1. First, it assumes that humans interact with their meaningful environments. People’s reaction to environmental stimuli depends on the meaning or importance that they attach to an event. Reinforcements are not dependent on external stimuli alone but are given meaning by the individual’s cognitive capacity. Likewise, personal characteristics such as needs or traits cannot, by themselves, cause behavior. Rather, Rotter believes that human behavior stems from the interaction of environmental and personal factors.
2. A second assumption of Rotter’s theory is that human personality is learned. Thus, it follows that personality is not set or determined at any particular age of development; instead, it can be changed or modified as long as people are capable of learning. Although our accumulation of earlier experiences gives our personality some stability, we are always responsive to change through new experiences. We learn from past experiences, but those experiences are not absolutely constant; they are colored by intervening experiences that then affect present perceptions.
3. The third assumption of social learning theory is that personality has a basic unity, which means that people’s personalities possess relative stability. People learn to evaluate new experiences on the basis of previous reinforcement. This relatively consistent evaluation leads to greater stability and unity of personality.
4. Rotter’s fourth basic hypothesis is that motivation is goal directed. He rejects the notion that people are primarily motivated to reduce tension or seek pleasure, insisting that the best explanation for human behavior lies in people’s expectations that their behaviors are advancing them toward goals. For example, most college students have a goal of graduation and are willing to endure stress, tension, and hard work in order to reach that goal. Rather than reducing tension, the prospect of several difficult years of college classes promises to increase it. Other things being equal, people are most strongly reinforced by behaviors that move them in the direction of anticipated goals. This statement refers to Rotter’s empirical law of effect, which “defines reinforcement as any action, condition, or event which affects the individual’s movement toward a goal” (Rotter & Hochreich, 1975, p. 95).
5. Rotter’s fifth assumption is that people are capable of anticipating events. Moreover, they use their perceived movement in the direction of the anticipated event as a criterion for evaluating reinforcers.

SPECIFIC BEHAVIOR

Q: What are the variables to predict specific behavior?

A: Because Rotter’s primary concern is the prediction of human behavior, he suggested four variables that must be analyzed in order to make accurate predictions in any specific situation.

1. BP (Behavior Potential): the possibility that a particular response will occur at a given time and place.
2. E (Expectancy): refers to a person’s expectation that some specific reinforcement or set of reinforcements will occur in a given situation. Expectancy can be general or specific. Generalized expectancies (GEs) are learned through previous experiences with a particular response or similar responses and are based on the belief that certain behaviors will be followed by positive reinforcement. For example, college students whose previous hard work has been reinforced by high grades will have a generalized expectancy of future reward and will work hard in a variety of academic situations. Specific expectancies are designated as E' (E prime). In any situation the expectancy for a particular reinforcement is determined by a combination of a specific expectancy (E') and the generalized expectancy (GE). For example, a student may have general expectancy that a given level of academic work will be rewarded by good grades but may believe that an equal amount of hard work in a French class will go unrewarded.
3. RV (Reinforcement Value): the preference a person attaches to any reinforcement when the probabilities for the occurrence of a number of different reinforcements are all equal. Reinforcement value can be illustrated by a woman’s interactions with a vending machine that contains several possible selections, each costing the same. The woman approaches the machine able and is willing to pay 75 cents in order to receive a snack. The vending machine is in perfect working condition, so there is a 100% probability that the woman’s response will be followed by some sort of reinforcement. Her expectancy of reinforcement, therefore, for the candy bar, corn chips, potato chips, popcorn, tortilla chips, and Danish pastry are all equal. Her response—presses—is determined by the reinforcement value of each snack. 
4. S (Psychological Situation): defined as that part of the external and internal world to which a person is responding. It is not synonymous with external stimuli, although physical events are usually important to the psychological situation.

Q: What determines the reinforcement value for any event, condition, or action?

A: Things that determine the reinforcement value are:

1. First, the individual’s perception contributes to the positive or negative value of an event. Rotter calls this perception internal reinforcement and distinguishes it from external reinforcement, which refers to events, conditions, or actions on which one’s society or culture places a value. Internal and external reinforcements may be either in harmony or at a variance with one another. For example, if you like popular movies—that is, the same ones that most other people like—then your internal and external reinforcements for attending these types of movies are in agreement. However, if your taste in movies runs contrary to that of your friends, then your internal and external reinforcements are discrepant.
2. Another contributor to reinforcement value is one’s needs. Generally, a specific reinforcement tends to increase in value as the need it satisfies becomes stronger. A starving child places a higher value on a bowl of soup than does a moderately hungry one.
3. Reinforcements are also valued according to their expected consequences for future reinforcements. Rotter believes that people are capable of using cognition to anticipate a sequence of events leading to some future goal and that the ultimate goal contributes to the reinforcement value of each event in the sequence. Reinforcements seldom occur independently of future related reinforcements but are likely to appear in reinforcement-reinforcement sequences, which Rotter refers to as clusters of reinforcement.

Q: What is the basic of Specific Behavior Prediction Formula?

A: 

GENERAL BEHAVIOR

Q: What are the variables to predict general behavior?

A: To predict general behaviors, we look at David, who has worked for 18 years in Hoffman’s

Hardware Store. David has been informed that, because of a business decline, Mr. Hoffman must cut his workforce and that David may lose his job. (poor David..) How can we predict David’s subsequent behavior? Will he beg Mr. Hoffman to let him remain with the company? Will he strike out in violence against the store or Mr. Hoffman? Will he displace his anger and act aggressively toward his wife or children? Will he begin drinking heavily and become apathetic toward searching for a new job? Will

he immediately and constructively begin looking for another position?

1. Generalized expectancies: Predicting David’s reaction to the probable loss of a job is a matter of knowing how he views the options available to him and also the status of his present needs.
2. Needs: any behavior or set of behaviors that people see as moving them in the direction of a goal.  When focus is on the environment, Rotter speaks of goals; when it is on the person, he talks of needs.

Q: What are the 6 categories of needs?

A: Rotter and Hochreich (1975) listed six broad categories of needs, with each category representing a group of functionally related behaviors: that is, behaviors that lead to the same or similar reinforcements.

1. Recognition-Status: The need to be recognized by others and to achieve status in their eyes is a powerful need for most people.
2. Dominance: The need to control the behavior of others
3. Independence: the need to be free of the domination of others
4. Protection-dependency: the needs to be cared for by others, to be protected from frustration and harm, and to satisfy the other need categories.
5. Love and affection: needs for acceptance by others that go beyond recognition and status to include some indications that other people have warm, positive feelings for them.
6. Physical comfort: the most basic need. This need includes those behaviors aimed at securing food, good health, and physical security.

Q: What are the three needs components?

A: A need complex has three essential components—need potential, freedom of movement, and need value—and these components are analogous to the more specific concepts of behavior potential, expectancy, and reinforcement value.

1. Need Potential (NP): refers to the possible occurrence of a set of functionally related behaviors directed toward satisfying the same or similar goals. Need potential is analogous to the more specific concept of behavior potential. The difference between the two is that need potential refers to a group of functionally related behaviors, whereas behavior potential is the likelihood that a particular behavior will occur in a given situation in relation to a specific reinforcement.
2. Freedom of Movement (FM): one’s overall expectation of being reinforced for performing those behaviors that are directed toward satisfying some general need. FM = E.
3. Need Value (NV):  the degree to which she or he prefers one set of reinforcements to another.

Q: What is the basic of General Behavior Prediction Formula?

A: NP = f (FM + NV )

Basically NP = BP, FM = E, and NV = RV

Q: What is Maladaptive Behavior?

A: Maladaptive behavior in Rotter’s social learning theory is any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal. It frequently, but not inevitably, arises from the combination of high need value and low freedom of movement: that is, from goals that are unrealistically high in relation to one’s ability to achieve them.

In summary, maladjusted individuals are characterized by unrealistic goals, inappropriate behaviors, inadequate skills, or unreasonably low expectancies of being able to execute the behaviors necessary for positive reinforcement.

Q: What is the background of Cognitive-Affective Personality System?

A: Some theorists, such as Hans Eysenck and Gordon Allport, believed that behavior was mostly a product of relatively stable personality traits. However, Walter Mischel objected to this assumption. His early research (Mischel, 1958, 1961a, 1961b) led him to believe that behavior was largely a function of

the situation.

Q: What is Consistency Paradox?

A: Mischel saw that both laypersons and professional psychologists seem to intuitively believe that people’s behavior is relatively consistent, yet empirical evidence suggests much variability in behavior, a situation Mischel called the consistency paradox.

Q: What is the Cognitive-Affective Personality System?

A: To solve the classical consistency paradox, Mischel and Shoda proposed a cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS; also called a cognitive-affective processing system) that accounts for variability across situations as well as stability of behavior within a person.

Q: What is the Cognitive-Affective Unit?

A: Cognitive-affective units include all those psychological, social, and physiological aspects of people that cause them to interact with their environment with a relatively stable pattern of variation. These units include people’s (1) encoding strategies, (2) competencies and self-regulatory strategies, (3) expectancies and beliefs, (4) goals and values, and (5) affective responses.

1. Encoding strategies: people’s ways of categorizing information received from external stimuli.
2. Competencies and self-regulatory strategies: How we behave depends in part on the potential behaviors available to us, our beliefs of what we can do, our plans and strategies for enacting behaviors, and our expectancies for success. Our beliefs in what we can do relate to our competencies. Mischel used the term “competencies” to refer to that vast array of information we acquire about the world and our relationship to it. Mischel believes that people use self-regulatory strategies to control their own behavior through self-imposed goals and self-produced consequences. People do not require external rewards and punishments to shape their behavior; they can set goals for themselves and then reward or criticize themselves contingent upon whether their behavior moves them in the direction of those goals.
3. Expectancy and Beliefs: How people behave depends on their specific expectancies and beliefs about the consequences of each of the different behavioral possibilities. Knowledge of people’s hypotheses or beliefs concerning the outcome of any situation is a better predictor of behavior than is knowledge of their ability to perform.
4. Goals and Values: People do not react passively to situations but are active and goal directed. They formulate goals, devise plans for attaining their goals, and in part create their own situations.
5. Affective Responses: Affective responses, then, do not exist in isolation. Not only are they inseparable from cognitive processes, but also they influence each of the other cognitive-affective units.

Bandura - Social Cognitive

If I hear Bandura, the thing that I remembered is The Bobo Doll experiment. Damn, I'm so sleepy I can't even think of an introduction, I'm just getting into the lesson right on.

Q: Who is Albert Bandura?

A: 

Q: What is Bobo Doll Experiment?

A: Bobo doll experiment, groundbreaking study on aggression led by psychologist Albert Bandura that demonstrated that children are able to learn through the observation of adult behavior. The experiment was executed via a team of researchers who physically and verbally abused an inflatable doll in front of preschool-age children, which led the children to later mimic the behavior of the adults by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

Q: What is Learning Theory?

A: One of the earliest and most basic assumptions of Bandura’s social cognitive theory is that humans are quite flexible and capable of learning a multitude of attitudes, skills, and behaviors and that a good bit of those learnings are a result of vicarious experiences. Although people can and do learn from direct experience, much of what they learn is acquired through observing others.

Q: What is Observational Learning?

A: Bandura believes that observation allows people to learn without performing any behavior. People observe natural phenomena, plants, animals, waterfalls, the motion of the moon and stars, and so forth; but especially important to social cognitive theory is the assumption that they learn through observing the behavior of other people. Bandura believes that observational learning is much more efficient than learning through direct experience.

Q: What is Modelling?

A: The core of observational learning is modeling. Learning through modeling involves adding and subtracting from the observed behavior and generalizing from one observation to another. In other words, modeling involves cognitive processes and is not simply mimicry or imitation. It is more than matching the actions of another; it involves symbolically representing information and storing it for use at a future time.

Several factors determine whether a person will learn from a model in any particular

situation. 

1. First, the characteristics of the model are important. People are more likely to model high-status people rather than those of low status, competent individuals rather than unskilled or incompetent ones, and powerful people rather than impotent ones.
2. Second, the characteristics of the observer affect the likelihood of modeling. People who lack status, skill, or power are most likely to model. Children model more than older people, and novices are more likely than experts to model.
3. Third, the consequences of the behavior being modeled may have an effect on the observer. The greater the value an observer places on a behavior, the more likely the observer will acquire that behavior. Also, learning may be facilitated when the observer views a model receiving severe punishment; for example, seeing another person receive a severe shock from touching an electric wire teaches the observer a valuable lesson.

Q: What are the processes governing observational learning?

A: Bandura (1986) recognizes four processes that govern observational learning: attention,

representation, behavioral production, and motivation.

1. Attention: Before we can model another person, we must attend to that person. What factors regulate attention? (1), because we have more opportunities to observe individuals with whom we frequently associate, we are most likely to attend to these people, (2) attractive models are more likely to be observed than unattractive ones are—popular figures on television, in sports, or in movies are often closely attended, (3) the nature of the behavior being modeled affects our attention—we observe behavior that we think is important or valuable to us.
2. Representation:  In order for observation to lead to new response patterns, those patterns must be symbolically represented in memory. It can use of imagery or verbal coding.
3. Behavioral production: After attending to a model and retaining what we have observed, we then produce the behavior. In converting cognitive representations into appropriate actions, we must ask ourselves several questions about the behavior to be modeled. First, we ask, “How can I do this?” After symbolically rehearsing the relevant responses, we try out our new behavior. While performing, we monitor ourselves with the question “What am I doing?” Finally, we evaluate our performance by asking, “Am I doing this right?”
4. Motivation: Observational learning is most effective when learners are motivated to perform the modeled behavior.

Q: What is Enactive Learning?

A: Every response a person makes is followed by some consequence. Some of these consequences are satisfying, some are dissatisfying, and others are simply not cognitively attended and hence have little effect. Bandura believes that complex human behavior can be learned when people think about and evaluate the consequences of their behaviors. 

The consequences of a response serve at least three functions. (1) response consequences inform us of the effects of our actions. We can retain this information and use it as a guide for future actions. (2) the consequences of our responses motivate our anticipatory behavior; that is, we are capable of symbolically representing future outcomes and acting accordingly. (3) the consequences of responses serve to reinforce behavior.

Q: What is Triadic Reciprocal Causation?

A: Bandura's social cognitive theory explains psychological functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal causation. This system assumes that human action is a result of an interaction among three variables—environment, behavior, and person.

Q: What is Human Agency?

A: Human agency is an active process of exploring, manipulating, and influencing the environment in order to attain desired outcomes.

 

Q: What are four core features of human agency?

A: Bandura discusses four core features of human agency: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness.

1. Intentionality: refers to acts a person performs intentionally. An intention includes planning, but it also involves actions.
2. Forethought: to set goals, to anticipate likely outcomes of their actions, and to select behaviors that will produce desired outcomes and avoid undesirable ones.
3. Self-reactiveness: people not only make choices but they monitor their progress toward fulfilling those choices.
4. Self-reflectiveness: they are examiners of their own functioning; they can think about and evaluate their motivations, values, and the meanings of their life goals, and they can think about the adequacy of their own thinking. People’s most crucial self-reflective mechanism is self-efficacy: that is, their beliefs that they are capable of performing actions that will produce a desired effect.

Q: What is Self-Efficacy?

A: Bandura defined self-efficacy as “people’s beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control over their own functioning and over environmental events”. Bandura contends that “efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency”. People who believe that they can do something that has the potential to alter environmental events are more likely to act and more likely to be successful

than those people with low self-efficacy.

Q: What is the difference between Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectations?

A: Self-efficacy is not the expectation of our action’s outcomes. Bandura distinguished between efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy refers to people’s confidence that they have the ability to perform certain behaviors, whereas an outcome expectancy refers to one’s prediction of the likely consequences of that behavior.

Q: What Contributes to Self-Efficacy?

A: Personal efficacy is acquired, enhanced, or decreased through any one or combination of four sources: (1) mastery experiences, (2) social modeling, (3) social persuasion, and (4) physical and emotional states.

Q: What is Proxy Agency?

A: Proxy involves indirect control over those social conditions that affect everyday living. So it basically accomplishing their goal by relying on other people.

Q: What is Collective Efficacy?

A: Bandura defined collective efficacy as “people’s shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desired results”. In other words, collective efficacy is the confidence people have that their combined efforts will bring about group accomplishments.

Q: What is Therapy according to Bandura?

A: According to Bandura, deviant behaviors are initiated on the basis of social cognitive learning principles, and they are maintained because, in some ways, they continue to serve a purpose. Therapeutic change, therefore, is difficult because it involves eliminating behaviors that are satisfying to the person. Smoking, overeating, and drinking alcoholic beverages, for example, generally have positive effects initially, and their long-range aversive consequences are usually not sufficient to produce avoidance behavior.

The ultimate goal of social cognitive therapy is self-regulation (Bandura, 1986). To achieve this end, the therapist introduces strategies designed to induce specific behavioral changes, to generalize those changes to other situations, and to maintain those changes by preventing relapse.

The first step in successful therapy is to instigate some change in behavior. A more important level of therapy is to generalize specific changes. The most effective therapy reaches the third level of accomplishment, which is maintenance of newly acquired functional behaviors.

Q: What are basic treatment approaches according to Bandura?

A: Bandura (1986) has suggested several basic treatment approaches. 

1. The first includes overt or vicarious modeling. People who observe live or filmed models performing threatening activities often feel less fear and anxiety and are then able to perform those same activities.
2. In a second treatment mode, covert or cognitive modeling, the therapist trains patients to visualize models performing fearsome behaviors. Overt and covert modeling strategies are most effective, however, when combined with performance oriented approaches.
3. A third procedure, called enactive mastery, requires patients to perform those behaviors that previously produced incapacitating fears.

B. F. Skinner - Behavioral Analysis

I'm not actually in the mood to learn or basically do anything at all today, but I had to, so yeah here am I. Skinner..his name is pretty straightforward so I could recognize him easily, but not so much about his theory. I mean "behavioral analysis" is such a dull name for a theory, but whatever, can't complain, because I can't even make a single theory. :")

Q: Who is Skinner?

A: Skinner was born on March 20, 1904, in Pennsylvania. Long story short, Skinner's life wasn't difficult financially, because he's still really dependent financially with his parents, even after he had his own family (which I guess consider a rare case for an American/western culture that is really independent). But even he was financially okay, he had two life crises throughout his life. The first crisis happened after he finished getting a bachelor's degree. He had a gap year (actually 18 months) to pursue his passion for writing, but he wasn't so fortunate in it. In this Dark Year, he developed his interest in psychology, especially behaviorism after reading some of the works of Watson and Pavlov. Then he took straight to graduate degree of Psychology at Harvard (life seems so easy for him dang it). Then he began his second life crisis because of his kinda-failed inventions, "the pigeon-guided missile" and "the baby-tender" (I'm too lazy to explain it plus it doesn't have any relation to psychology). 

So where actually his golden phase at? It's actually after he retired from teaching as a professor in psychology at Harvard. He wrote several important books on human behavior that helped him attain the status of America’s best-known living psychologist. In addition to Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he published About Behaviorism (1974), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978), and Upon Further Reflection (1987a). During this period, he also wrote a three-volume autobiography, Particulars of My Life (1976a), The Shaping of a Behaviorist (1979), and A Matter of Consequences (1983).

Q: What is the difference between Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning?

A: According to Skinner, classical conditioning (also called Pavlovian conditioning, which Skinner called respondent conditioning), a response is drawn out of the organism by a specific, identifiable stimulus. With operant conditioning

(also called Skinnerian conditioning), a behavior is made more likely to recur when it is immediately reinforced.

One distinction between classical and operant conditioning is that, in classical conditioning, behavior is elicited from the organism, whereas in operant conditioning, behavior is emitted. An elicited response is drawn from the organism, whereas an emitted response is one that simply appears. Because responses do not exist inside the organism and thus cannot be drawn out, Skinner preferred the term “emitted.” Emitted responses do not previously exist inside the organism; they simply appear because of the organism’s individual history of reinforcement or the species’

evolutionary history.

Q: What are the examples of Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning?

A: 

• The examples of Classical Conditioning: 
• Reflexive behavior (light shined in the eye stimulates the pupil to contract; food placed on the tongue brings about salivation and pepper in the nostrils results in the sneezing reflex) 
• "Little Albert" experiment
• Pavlov's dog experiment
• The examples of Operant Conditioning
• Most human behavior (get a good grade, do a pleasurable thing, etc)
• "Skinner Box" experiment

Q: What are the processes in Operant Conditioning?

A: According to Skinner, behavior in operant conditioning comes from processes

1. Shaping: a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself. The behavior doesn't have to appear yet.
2. Reinforcement: has two effects: It strengthens the behavior and it rewards the person.
3. Punishment: the presentation of an aversive stimulus

Q: What are 3 conditions in Shaping?

A: The conditions are:

• A (the antecedent): refers to the environment or setting in which the behavior takes place.
• B (the behavior): the behavior of the subject
• C (the consequence): the reward

Q: What's the difference between Positive and Negative Reinforcement?
A: It actually not that hard to understand. Because I'm too lazy so the point is: positive reinforcement gives a reward, meanwhile negative reinforcement takes the unpleasurable stimulus. That's it.

Q: What's the difference between Positive and Negative Punishment?

A: Shortly, positive punishment gives real punishment, meanwhile negative punishment takes the pleasurable stimulus.

Q: What is the schedule of reinforcement?

A: Any behavior followed immediately by the presentation of a positive reinforcer or the removal of an aversive stimulus tends thereafter to occur more frequently. The frequency of that behavior, however, is subject to the conditions under which training occurred, more specifically, to the various schedules of reinforcement.

Reinforcement can follow behavior on either a continuous schedule or an intermittent one. With a continuous schedule, the organism is reinforced for every response. This type of schedule increases the frequency of a response but is an inefficient use of the reinforcer. Skinner preferred intermittent schedules not only because they make more efficient use of the reinforcer but because they produce responses that are more resistant to extinction.

Q: What are the 4 basic intermittent schedules?

A: Ferster and Skinner (1957) recognized a large number of reinforcement schedules, but the four basic intermittent schedules are:

1. Fixed-ratio: the organism is reinforced intermittently according to the number of responses it makes. Example: Mom gives a kid a reward every time they get 100 in 3 exams. 3 exams are the ratio and the number is fixed, so every 3 exams, not 2, not 4, etc.
2. Variable-ratio: reinforced after the n-th response on the average. Example: Mom gives a kid a reward every time they get 100 in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 exams, so the ratio is varied but mostly increased because, for example, the kid got 100 in two exams, but in the next semester he must get better right? So the reward was given after three exams (increase), and so on, with the intention of he gets more 100 in exams throughout the semester. Another example is the slot machines. The machine is set to pay off at a certain rate, but the ratio must be flexible, that is, variable, to prevent players from predicting payoffs. (Variable-ratio is the greatest of all schedules)
3. Fixed-interval: the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated period of time. Example: A student got a reward every time they working hard for 5 minutes.
4. Variable-interval: the organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of time. example: A student got a reward every time they working hard in random minutes.

Q: How responses lost after learned?

A: Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons. First, they can simply be forgotten during the passage of time. Second, and more likely, they can be lost due to the interference of preceding or subsequent learning. Third, they can disappear due to punishment. The fourth cause of lost learning is extinction, defined as the tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively weakened upon nonreinforcement.

Q: How the principles of behavior in animals applied to the human organism?

A: Skinner’s view was that an understanding of the behavior of laboratory animals can generalize to human behavior, just as physics can be used to interpret what is observed in outer space and just as an understanding of basic genetics can help in interpreting complex evolutionary concepts.

According to Skinner, human behavior (and human personality) is shaped by three forces:

1. Natural Selection: Human personality is the product of a long evolutionary history. As individuals, our behavior is determined by the genetic composition and especially by our personal histories of reinforcement. As a species, however, we are shaped by the contingencies of survival. Natural selection plays an important part in human personality. Example: pupillary reflex and rooting reflex
2. Cultural Evolution: Selection is responsible for those cultural practices that have survived, just as selection plays a key role in humans’ evolutionary history and also with the contingencies of reinforcement. “People do not observe particular practices in order that the group will be more likely to survive; they observe them because groups that induced their members to do so survived and transmitted them”. In other words, humans do not make a cooperative decision to do what is best for society, but those societies whose members behaved cooperatively tended to survive. Example: toolmaking, verbal behavior, warfare
3. Individual’s history of reinforcement

Q: How does one assess personality in a behavioral approach?

A: The behavioral approach to assessment, then, emphasizes three things:

(1) identification of specific behaviors often called target behaviors or target responses ; (2) identification of specific environmental factors that elicit, cue, or reinforce the target behaviors; and

(3) identification of specific environmental factors that can be manipulated to alter the behavior.

KEY TERMS:

Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Shaping, Reinforcement, Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Punishment, Positive Punishment, Negative Punishment, Continous Schedule, Intermittent Schedule, Fixed-ratio, Variable-ratio, Fixed-interval, Variable-interval, Human Organism

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2008). Theories of personality. McGraw-Hill.

Pavlov - Classical Conditioning

Pavlov is one of those theorists that besides Freud, I think he's pretty famous. His experiment of a dog is unique too, so I could memorize him easily. It's okay to kinda forget almost all theorists, but if you forgot Freud or Pavlov, that would be a crime. 

His face is also pretty memorable (?). With that mustache and beard, who can resist him? #pavlove lol. Okay enough let's get into the lesson.

Q: Who is Pavlov?

A: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Ivan..such a creative Russian name), (26 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist who, in the course of his work on the digestive process, developed a procedure for studying behavior and a principle of learning that profoundly affected the field of psychology. So at first, he's a physiologist, not a psychologist.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, Pavlov was involved in the study of gastric secretions in dogs. As part of his research, he placed some food powder inside the mouth of a dog and measured the resulting amount of salivation. He noticed that after a number of such trials the dog began to salivate, even before the food was put in its mouth, to certain stimuli: the sight of the food dish, the approach of the person who brought the food, and so forth. Stimuli that previously did not elicit salivation (called neutral stimuli) could now elicit the salivation response because of their association with the food

powder that automatically caused the dog to salivate. To animal owners, this may not seem to be a startling observation. However, it led Pavlov to conduct significant research on the process known as classical conditioning.

Pavlov explored a broad range of scientific issues. In addition to his work on basic conditioning processes, he studied individual differences among his dogs, thereby stimulating a new field of temperament research (Strelau, 1997). He made important contributions to the understanding of abnormal behavior, using animal experiments to study disorganized behavior in dogs and human

patients to study neuroses and psychoses, providing the foundation for forms of therapy based on principles of classical conditioning. In 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on digestive processes. His methods and concepts remain important today; they are among the most important in the

history of psychology (Dewsbury, 1997).

Q: What is Classical Conditioning?

A: Classical conditioning is a process in which a stimulus that initially is neutral (i.e., that the organism initially does not respond to in any significant manner) eventually elicits a strong response. It elicits the response because the neutral stimulus becomes associated with some other stimulus that does produce a

response. The process in which the organism learns to respond to the stimulus that originally was neutral is known as conditioning.

Q: What are The Principles of Classical Conditioning?

A: In the classic case studied in Pavlov’s lab, a dog salivates the first time that food is presented. The response of salivation to food is not learned or conditioned; it is an automatic, built-in response of the organism. In the terminology of classical conditioning: food is an unconditioned stimulus (US), and salivation in response to food is an unconditioned response (UR),

“Unconditioned” here merely means that the connection between stimulus and response occurs

without any learning or conditioning. Pavlov then introduces a new stimulus, such as the sound of a bell. Initially, this sound is neutral (NS); it does not elicit any strong response on the part of the dog in 

Pavlov’s lab. Then the critical step in the research is taken. Over a series of trials, the bell is sounded just before the presentation of food. After these learning trials, the bell is sounded without any food

being presented. What happens? The dog now salivates merely upon hearing the ring of the bell. Conditioning has occurred. The previously neutral stimulus now elicits a strong response. At this point, the bell is called a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the salivation in response to the bell is a conditioned response (CR).

Through classical conditioning, one also can learn to avoid a stimulus that initially is neutral. This is called conditioned withdrawal. In early research on conditioned withdrawal, a dog was strapped in a harness, and electrodes were attached to its paw. The delivery of an electric shock (US) to the paw led to

the withdrawal of the paw (UR), which was a reflex response on the part of the animal. If a bell was repeatedly presented just before the shock, eventually the bell alone (CS) was able to elicit the withdrawal response (CR).

Conclusion:

1. Neutral Stimulus (NS) = a stimulus that does not yet produce a particular response [ring of a bell before conditioning]
2. Unconditioned Stimulus (US) = stimulus that elicits response without learning / automatic [food]
3. Unconditioned Response (UR) = a reflexive response elicited by a stimulus without learning / automatic [salivation in response to food]
4. Conditioned Stimulus (CS) = an initially neutral stimulus that elicits a conditioned response after being associated with an unconditioned stimulus [ring of a bell after conditioning]
5. Conditioned Response (CR) = response that is elicited by a conditioned stimulus [salivation in response to a ring of bell]

Q: What are the important phenomena in Classical Conditioning?

A: The experimental arrangement designed by Pavlov to study classical conditioning allowed him to investigate a number of important phenomena.

1. Generalization = the response that had become conditioned to a previously neutral stimulus would also become associated with similar stimuli [sounds that similar to a bell give similar response]
2. Discrimination = If repeated trials indicate that only some stimuli are followed by the unconditioned stimulus, the animal recognizes differences among stimuli [dog can differentiate between bell and alarm sound]
3. Extinction = if the originally neutral stimulus is presented repeatedly without being followed at least occasionally by the unconditioned stimulus, there is an undoing or progressive weakening of the conditioning or association [dog didn't produce any saliva again after hearing a bell to many times without receiving any food]

Q: What is the psychopathology and change in Classical Conditioning?

A: Pavlov extended his analysis of conditioning to the study of phenomena of clinical interest. He developed explanations for phenomena such as psychological conflict and the development of neuroses. A classic example explored what came to be known as experimental neuroses in animals. 

In this research, a dog was conditioned to salivate to the image of a circle. Differentiation between a circle and a similar figure, an ellipse, was then conditioned; this was done by not reinforcing the response to the ellipse, while the response to the circle continued to be reinforced. Then, gradually, the ellipse was changed in shape. Its shape was made to be closer and closer to a circle. At first, the dog could still discriminate between the circle and the ellipse. But then, as the figures became extremely similar, it no longer could tell them apart. What happened to the dog? 

Its behavior became disorganized, Pavlov said:

"After three weeks of work upon this discrimination not only did the discrimination fail to improve, but it became considerably worse, and finally disappeared altogether. The hitherto quiet dog began to squeal in its stand kept wriggling about, tore off with its teeth the apparatus for mechanical stimulation of the skin, and bit through the tubes connecting the animal’s room with the observer, a behavior which never happened before. On being taken into the experimental room the dog now barked violently, which was also contrary to its usual custom; in short, it presented all the symptoms of a condition of acute neurosis."

Q: What is Conditioned Emotional Reactions?

A: To understand conditioned emotional reactions you have to understand the story of Little Albert first. In this research, the experimenters, Watson and Rayner (1920), combined a stimulus that Little Albert was not afraid of—a small white laboratory rat— with an unconditioned stimulus that elicited fear—the noise produced by striking a hammer on a suspended steel bar. They then found that if the bar

was struck immediately behind Albert’s head just as he began to reach for a rat, he began to develop a fear of the rat. After a few experimental trials, the instant the rat alone (without the noise) was shown to Albert, he began to cry. He had developed what is called a conditioned emotional reaction. Furthermore, Albert’s fear generalized, just as dogs’ responses had generalized in Pavlov’s lab. Albert began to fear not only white rats but also other white and furry objects—including, Watson and Rayner's report, the white beard of a Santa Claus mask!

Q: What is The Unconditioning Fear of a Rabbit?

A: Unconditioning fear of a rabbit is basically Maru Jones Study of Peter. An experiment by Mary Cover Jones aka Jones, to a boy, Peter, who then was two years and ten months old, that has a fear toward rat and rabbit, that extended toward other furry things. The experiment is to do therapeutic for Jones that would make his fear of a rabbit extinct. (It's basically like conditioning but backward, so it's called unconditioning, conditioning by general makes you afraid of something, so unconditioning makes you not afraid of something).

Peter was seated in a chair and given food he liked as the experimenter gradually brought the rabbit in a wire cage closer to him: “Through the presence of a pleasant stimulus (food) whenever the rabbit was shown, the fear was eliminated gradually in favor of a positive response.

Jones noted that after the unconditioning of Peter’s fear of the rabbit, he completely lost his fear of the fur coat, feathers, and cotton wool as well.

Q: What is Systematic Desensitization?

A: A major advance in the application of classical conditioning principles to questions of psychopathology was the development of a therapeutic technique known as systematic desensitization. The technique was developed by Joseph Wolpe, a psychiatrist from South Africa, who became familiar with the writings of Pavlov. 

Wolpe viewed persistent reactions of anxiety as a learned response that could be un-learned. He developed a therapy that was designed to provide this “unlearning.” Phrased more technically, his therapy technique of systematic desensitization was designed to inhibit anxiety through counterconditioning. In counterconditioning, a person learns a new response that is physiologically

incompatible with an existing response. If the existing response to a stimulus is fear or anxiety, then the goal might be to have the person learn a new response such as relaxation. Once the person learns, through new classical conditioning experiences, to experience relaxation in response to the previously feared stimulus, his or her fear should be eliminated.

Anxiety hierarchies: The therapist encourages the patient to achieve a deep state of relaxation and then

to imagine the least anxiety-arousing stimulus in the anxiety hierarchy. If the patient can imagine the stimulus without anxiety, then he or she is encouraged to imagine the next stimulus in the hierarchy while remaining relaxed. Periods of pure relaxation are interspersed with periods of relaxation

and imagination of anxiety-arousing stimuli. If the patient feels anxious while imagining a stimulus, he or she is encouraged to relax and return to imagining a less anxiety-arousing stimulus.

Finally, I finished. God, I'm tired. Too many things to take in. But I did it :")

KEY TERMS:

Classical Conditioning, Neutral Stimulus (NS), Unconditioned, Unconditioned Stimulus (US), Unconditioned Response (UR), Conditioned Stimulus (CS), Conditioned Response (CR), Generalization, Discrimination, Extinction, Conditioned Emotional Reactions, Little Albert, Unconditioning, Study of Peter, Systematic Desensitization, Anxiety Hierarchies

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.

J. B. Watson - Behaviorism

Hey ho(e)! Welcome to another serial of me teaching myself! Yeay!!! In this episode will be starring JB. Yo JB! Who's JB? Justin Bieber? Im Jaebum?

Nahh it's better than that two JB. It's JB Watson aka John Broadus Watson *chu..chu..chu..chu..* *explosion noises*. Damn that glasses be like O-O. 

Q: Who is J.B. Watson?

A: According to Wikipedia, J.B Watson was an American Psychologist born in South Carolina on 9 January 1878 (ew Capricorn #jk). He was the founder of the approach to psychology known as "behaviorism". He began his graduate study at the University of Chicago in philosophy and then switched to psychology. He took courses in neurology and physiology and began to do biological research with animals. During the year before he received his doctorate, Watson had an emotional breakdown and had sleepless nights for many weeks (ahoy! we're in the same boat :D). He described this period as causing him to become interested in the work of Freud. He eventually completed his dissertation, which caused him to develop a particular attitude regarding the use of human subjects.

• 1908: left Chicago and became a professor at Johns Hopkins University until 1911.
• 1911: published his first journal in Psychological Review about the approach of behaviorism in psychology.
• 1914:  published public lectures and a book (Watson’s Behavior) called further attention to a view of psychology that emphasized the study of observable behavior and rejected the use of introspection (observing one’s own mental states) as a method of research.
• 1915: elected as president of the American Psychological Association because his argument were received enthusiastically by American psychologists.
• 1919: expanded the theoretical base of his work by drawing on the findings of the Russian physiologist Pavlov, incorporating them into his most significant book, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.
• 1920: published a revolutionary study of the learning of emotional reactions with his student Rosalie Rayner. At that time, he clearly was poised to be the dominant American psychologist of the 20th century. (damn..)
• 1924: write a book, Behaviorism. But his career as a theorist and experimenter had ended, due to his marriage problem.

Q: What is "The Little Albert" Study?

A: In 1920 Watson and an assistant, Rosalie Rayner, published one of the most famous research studies of the past century. Watson attempted to condition a severe emotional response in Little Albert, a nine-month-old child. Watson determined that white, furry objects, such as a rat, a rabbit, and cotton, did not produce any negative reaction in the baby. But by pairing together a neutral stimulus (white, furry animals and objects) with an unconditioned stimulus (a very loud noise) that elicited an unconditioned response (fear), Watson was able to create a new stimulus-response link: When Albert saw white, furry objects, this conditioned stimulus produced a conditioned response of fear. This study is generally presented as a seminal work that provided evidence that even complex behaviors, such as emotions, could be learned through manipulation of one's environment. As such, it became a standard-bearer for behaviorist approaches to learning and is still widely cited in the early twenty-first century.

The real video of Little Albert experiment:

And finally finished another lesson. I'm sleepy rn so bye~

KEY TERMS:

Behaviorism, Little Albert, Neutral Stimulus (NS), Classical Conditioning, Unconditional Stimulus (UCS), Unconditional Response (UCR), Conditional Stimulus (CS), Conditional Response (CR)

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson

https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2543/Watson-John-B-1878-1958.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI

Understanding Behaviorism

So here's me trying to learn personality psychology which besides developmental psychology, had many theories that sometimes at some point make me going insane. I'm teaching myself here, therefore this writing would be so informal because I use language that makes myself could understand, by means, I'm using easy language so my not-so-functional brain could take in.

Okay, so the first theorists that I learn in Personality Psychology Chapter 2 are J. B. Watson and Pavlov. J. B. Watson and Pavlov are really popular for their theory of "Behaviourism". 

Q: So what is Behaviorism?

A: The best way to learn basically all difficult things or new terms is by analogy. Based on this book that I read right now, behaviorism is understood by the analogy of "the human body" and "personality". Consider how we think about people’s anatomy and physiology. It is reasonable to conceive of the body as a kind of “machine.” Like any complex machine, the body is a collection of mechanisms (heart, lungs, sweat glands, and so forth) that perform various functions (respiration, regulation of temperature, etc.)

Now personality. Behaviorism considers that "how personality work" is the same as "how the human body work". By means, the behaviorist view persons are machinelike. Human is like a robot *boop..beep..robot noises*. 

To B. F. Skinner, behaviorism’s greatest spokesperson and most influential theorist (dayumm), the interesting thing about machines is that people have “created the machine in [their] own image ” (Skinner, 1953, p. 46, emphasis added). With advances in science during the past two centuries, Skinner writes, “we have discovered more about how the living organism works and are better able to see its machinelike properties” (1953, p. 47). 

Dear Skinner, I'm sorry but I don't understand what you're trying to say lol. But I think it means persons can be viewed as collections of machinelike mechanisms. So to see how personality work is like see how their mechanisms work like how gears in a motor turn and make the machine start. 

Viewing persons as machinelike has a major implication. This implication is a second important feature of behaviorism’s view of the person. The implication is a philosophical position known as determinism. Determinism is the belief that an event is caused by, or determined by, some prior event, with the cause being something that can be understood according to basic laws of science. When applied to questions of human behavior, determinism is the belief that people’s behavior is caused in a lawful scientific manner. Determinism stands in opposition to a different belief, namely, the belief in “free will.” Behaviorists do not believe that people have free will; that is, they do not think it is correct to say that a person freely chose to act in one way or another. Instead, they believe that people are part of a natural

world, and that in the natural world events—including the behavior of persons—are causally determined.

Q: What is the basic assumptions of behaviorism?

A: There are two basic assumptions. 

1. The first is that behavior must be explained in terms of the causal influence of the environment on the person. The behaviorism approach is really contrasting with other theories because they see that a person's behavior is an influence from their external, unlike other theories that believe a person's behavior influence by their internal.
2. The second assumption is that an understanding of people should be built entirely on controlled laboratory research, where that research could involve either people or animals. This is pretty odd compare to other theories because they study human behavior as the same as animal behavior.

Q: What is the implication of environmental determinism for the concept of personality?

A: Environmental determinism is actually a philosophical concept that believes that everything that happens is caused by the environment. For example: a rock is fell from a height because of gravitation, not because the rock decides to fall. Sounds stupid, but to the behaviorist, the behavior of people should be explained in exactly this same way. To the behaviorist, then, there is no more need to explain a person’s behavior in terms of his or her attitudes, feelings, or personality traits, personality is the product of the environment. Behaviorists recognize that people have thoughts and feelings. But they

view thoughts and feelings as behaviors that also are caused by the environment.

Q: So what determinism implication for behaviorism theory?

A: There are three things in behaviorism theory that implicates by environmental determinism:

• They eliminate all of the study called "personality theory" or "personality psychology". So they see all terms in psychology as "Oedipus complex" or "extraversion" as not a real entity. They use that term merely as descriptive labels—descriptions of patterns of psychological experience that are, in reality, caused by the environment. By means, Oedipus complex, extraversion, and other terms aren't caused by the person, but it is caused by the environment.
• Environmental determinism makes "situational specificity". Situational specificity is that people’s behavioral style is expected to vary significantly from one environment to another. For example, people would react A in environment A, and B in environment B, so it changes based on the environment, but it specific to one environment only.
• Psychopathology is not understood as an internal problem—an illness in the person’s mind. Instead, the behaviorist assumes that maladaptive, “abnormal” behavior is caused by maladaptive environments to which the person has been exposed. The implication of this assumption is profound. It is that the task of therapy is not to analyze underlying conflicts or to reorganize the individual’s personality. Instead, the goal is to provide a new environment, that is, new learning experiences for the client. The new environment should cause the client to learn new and more adaptive patterns of behavior.

Q: How research in behaviorism theory works?

A: There are two points to explain the difference between research/experiment in behaviorism theory compare to other theories:

• Because behaviorism theory implicates by environmental determinism, it means that the way to do research is to manipulate environmental variables to learn how they influence behavior. In designing research, behaviorists emphasize that one must study things that are observable. For example, you can't study the Oedipus complex, because it isn't an observable variable.
• The attempt to study personality through experimental methods poses a severe challenge. It often may be impractical, as well as unethical, to manipulate environmental variables that may substantially affect people’s everyday behaviors. Also, day-to-day human actions may be determined by such a large number of variables, and these variables may be so complexly related to one another, that it is difficult to sort out the potentially lawful relations between any one environmental factor and behavior. These difficulties lead the behaviorist to adopt the following research strategy. Rather than researching complex social actions, the behaviorist commonly studies simple responses. And rather than study complex human beings, the behaviorist studies simpler organisms, such as rats and pigeons. The original body of data on which behavioral principles are based consists almost entirely of laboratory research on laboratory animals.

And end scene. That's me trying to explain myself about the theory of behaviorism. Too much energy to think and now I'm so hungry lol. Okay bye. See you (myself) in the next lesson.

KEY TERMS:

Behaviorism, Environmental Determinism, Situational Specificity

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.