BEHAVIOURISM AND PERSONALITY
personality refers to those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving
Personality is a complex hypothetical construct used to understand feelings and behaviours
Can not be observed directly
BEHAVIOURISM
The behaviourist approach emerged out a growing dissatisfaction with the unreliable methods of introspection
If psychology was to be truly scientific, it would need to focus on something that could be measured reliably and objectively studied
observable behaviour
psychology as the behaviourist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science
ASSUMPTIONS
Psychologists should only study the behaviour
All unobservable, inner causes of behaviour are irrelevant and should be ignored
All behaviour is learnt through experience
3 MAIN THEORIES TO EXPLAIN LEARNING BEHAVIOUR
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
OPERANT CONDITIONING
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
Pavlov 1846-1936
Pavlov noticed that the dogs began to salivate when they saw or heard anything closely associated with food
Discovered classical conditioning
A dog will salivate when it sees or smells food - unlearned inherited salivary response
Pavlov took measures of the amount of saliva produced
Systematically varied the stimuli presented to the dogs and measuring the reaction
Pavlov later found that dogs would salivate in response to previous neutral stimuli
NOISE - a sound was made - a ringing bell - when food was given to the dogs salivation was measured
At first, the dogs showed a startle response to the unexpected response but soon were conditioned to salivate when the bell rang
Food UCS - Salivation UCR
Bell UCS - no response
Bell CS + food UCS = salivation UCR
Bell CS - salivation CS
Pavlov also found evidence to suggest that a newly conditioned response
limits to the effects of generalisation and animals are able to discriminate between different stimuli
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It was also discovered that if the unconditioned stimulus is presented repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response will gradually grow weaker and disappear
After extinction, it was found that a ‘conditioned response’ may also suddenly reappear when the conditioned stimulus is again presented with the unconditioned stimulus
Classical conditoning is a passive process concerned with the associations made between an involuntary response and stimuli in the environment
SKINNERS RATS
operant conditioning is a form of learning, where people learn through the consequences of voluntary behaviour
behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences
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The skinner box allowed researchers to see how different reinforcements can affect behaviour
In a skinner box, a pigeon or rat might be expected to behave in any number of different ways
Exploring, press the lever, scratching, grooming, defecating, urinating
If a behaviour is rewarded, it is more likely to be repeated
If a behaviour leads to an unpleasant outcome it is less likely to be repealed in future
If a desirable consequence is a present = positive reinforcement
If a desirable consequence is an absent = negative punishment
If the undesirable consequence is present = positive punishment
If the undesirable consequence is absent = negative reinforcement
The principles of operant conditioning also include - extinction, generalisation and discrimination
When first placed in a Skinner box, it would take the rats/pigeon sometime before they found the lever and pressed it
By reinforcing successive approximations, Skinner was able to quickly teach rats to press a lever
Bandura
our behaviour doesn't always have to be directly reinforced w
we can learn simply by observing others and seeing the consequences of their actions
BEHAVIOURISM AND PERSONALITY
all personality theories seek to explain individual differences in behaviour
many personality theorists suggest that individual differences may be unobservable, internal mental states or processes
Behaviourists entirely reject the possibility that our behaviour may be the result of internal, psychological structures or processes
the only real way to understand behaviour is to watch
individual differences in our behaviour are likely to have arisen from our different learning experiences