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.