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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
KEY TERMS:
Behaviorism, Environmental Determinism, Situational Specificity
REFERENCES:
Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.
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