Behavioral Perspectives PDF

**Behavioural Perspectives** - **Behaviourism** holds that scientific psychology should study observable behaviour. Behaviourism has been a major school of thought in psychology since 1913, when B. Watson published an influential article. - Watson argued that psychology should aban...

**Behavioural Perspectives** - **Behaviourism** holds that scientific psychology should study observable behaviour. Behaviourism has been a major school of thought in psychology since 1913, when B. Watson published an influential article. - Watson argued that psychology should abandon its earlier focus on the mind and mental processes and focus exclusively on overt (obvious/unconcealed) behaviour. - Behaviourists show little interest in internal personality structures similar to Freud's id, ego, and superego, because such structures cannot be observed. - They prefer to think in terms of **response tendencies** which can be **observed**. Behaviourists view an individual's personality as a **collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations**. A specific situation may be associated with a number of response tendencies that vary in strength, depending on an individual's past experience. - Although behaviourists have shown relatively little interest in personality structure, they have focused extensively on personality **development**. **Pavlov's Classical Conditioning** - **Classical Conditioning** is a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus. The process was first described back in 1903 by Ivan Pavlov. - Pavlov was studying digestive processes in dogs when he discovered that the dogs could be trained to salivate in response to the sound of a tone. - What was so significant about a dog salivating when a tone was rung? - The key was that the tone started out as a **neutral stimulus**; that is, originally it did not produce the response of salivation. However, Pavlov managed to change that by pairing the tone with a stimulus (meat powder) that did produce the salivation response. Through this process, the tone acquired the capacity to trigger the response of salivation. - What Pavlov had demonstrated was **how learned reflexes are acquired**. **Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life** - What is the role of classical conditioning in shaping personality in everyday live? - It contributes to the acquisition of emotional responses, such as anxieties, fears, and phobias. This is a relatively small but important class of responses, as maladaptive emotional reactions underlie many adjustment problems. - Although a number of processes can cause phobias, it is clear that classical conditioning is responsible for many of our irrational fears. Ex a woman horrified by bridges because her father used to make jokes while crossing an old bridge when she was young. - Classical conditioning also appears to account for more realistic and moderate anxiety responses. Not every frightening experience leaves a conditioned fear in its wake. A variety of factors influence whether a conditioned response is acquired in a particular situation. Furthermore, a newly formed stimulus-response bond does not necessarily last indefinitely. The right circumstances can led to **extinction**: the gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response tendency. - What leads to extinction in classical conditioning? - The consistent presentation of the conditioned stimulus **alone**, without the unconditioned stimulus. Ex when Pavlov consistently presented only the tone to a previously conditioned dog, the tone gradually stopped eliciting the response of salivation. - How long it takes to extinguish a conditioned response depends on many factors, including the strength of the conditioned bond when extinction begins. Some conditioned responses extinguish very quickly, while others are very difficult to weaken. **Skinner's Operant Conditioning** - Classical Conditioning best explains reflexive responding controlled by stimuli that **precede** the response. However, both animals and humans make many responses that do not fit this description. - Ex studying is a response to a stimulus that is yet to come (an exam). Therefore, your studying response is mainly influenced by events that **follow** it -- its **consequences**. - This kind of learning is called **operant conditioning**: a form of learning in which voluntary responses come to be controlled by their consequences. - Operant conditioning governs a larger share of human behaviour than classical conditioning, since most human responses are voluntary rather than reflexive. - Because they are voluntary, operant responses are said to be **emitted** and not **elicited**. - In Skinner's theory, favourable, neutral and unfavourable consequences involve reinforcement, extinction, and punishment, respectively. **The power of reinforcement**  **Bandura and Social Learning theory** - Albert Bandura developed a behavioural model where cognition plays a role. - **Cognition** refers to the thought processes involved in acquiring knowledge. Cognition is another name for the mental processes that behaviourists have traditionally shown little interest in. - He and others point out that humans obviously are conscious, thinking, feeling beings. In neglecting the cognitive process, Skinner ignores the most distinctive and important feature of human behaviour. - Bandura calls his modified brand of behaviourism **social learning theory**. - Bandura agrees with the previous theories of behaviourism that personality is largely shaped through learning. - However, he argues that conditioning is not a mechanical process in which people are passive participants. Individuals actively seek out and process information about their environment in order to maximise their favourable outcomes. **Observational Learning** - Bandura argues that **observational learning** occurs when an organism's responding is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models. - He does not view observational learning as entirely separate from classical and operant conditioning. Instead he asserts that both classical and operant conditioning can take place indirectly when one person observes another's conditioning. **Observational Learning** - According to social learning theory, models have great impact on personality development. - Children learn to be assertive, conscientious, self-sufficient, dependable, easy going, etc by observing others behaving in these ways. - Parents, teachers, relatives, siblings, and peers serve as models for young children. - Bandura and his colleagues have done extensive research showing how models influence the development of aggressiveness, gender roles, and moral standards in children. Self- Efficacy - Bandura believes that **self-efficacy** is a crucial element of personality. - **Self-efficacy is one's belief about one's ability to perform behaviours that should lead to expected outcomes.** - When a person's self-efficacy is high, he or she feels confident in executing the responses necessary to earn rein-forcers. - When self-efficacy is low, the individual worries that the necessary responses may be beyond her or his abilities. - Perceptions of self-efficacy are subjective and specific to different kinds of tasks. Ex you might feel very confident about your ability to handle difficult social situations but not sure about your ability to handle academic challenges. - Although specific perceptions of self-efficacy predict behaviour best, these perceptions are influenced by general feelings of self-efficacy, which can be measured with a scale: a 23 item measure of general expectations of self-efficacy that are not tied to a specific situation. The more items you agree with, the stronger your self-efficacy. High scores on the complete scale are predictive of vocational and educational success. - Behavioural theories are firmly rooted in empirical research rather than clinical intuition. - Pavlov's model has shed light on how conditioning can account for people's sometimes troublesome emotional responses. - Skinner's work has demonstrated how personality is shaped by the consequences of behaviour. - Bandura's social learning theory has shown how people's observations mould their characteristic behaviour. - Behaviourists have also provided an account of why people are only moderately consistent in their behaviour. Ex a person who is shy in one context might be quite outgoing in another. Other models of personality largely ignore this inconsistency. - Behaviourists have shown that this inconsistency occurs because people behave in ways they think will lead to reinforcement in the situation at hand. Situation factors play a significant role in controlling behaviour. **Disadvantages of the Behavioural Approach** - **Dilution of the behavioural approach**: The behaviourists used to be criticised because they neglected cognitive processes, which clearly are important factors in human behaviour. The rise of social learning theory responds to this criticism. However, social learning theory undermines the foundation on which behaviours was built -- the idea that psychologists should study only observable behaviour. Thus, some critics complain that behavioural theories aren't very behavioural anymore. - **Overdependence on animal research**: many principles in behavioural theories were discovered through research on animals. Some critics, especially humanistic theorists, argue that behaviourists depend too much on animal research and that they indiscriminately generalise from the behaviour of animals to the behaviour of humans.