14.3: Behavioral and Social Learning Theories

14.3: Behavioral and Social Learning Theories

  • We've seen behavioral models before in the text.
  • Behaviorism is both.
    • B. F. Skinner believes that differences in our learning histories cause dif ferences in our personality.
    • The first few years of life are not important for personality development according to radical behaviorists.
    • Our learning histories continue to mold our personality throughout the life span.
  • Our personality is a collection of habits acquired through classical and operant conditioning.
  • These behaviors are covert and overt.
    • A radical behaviorist wouldn't have a problem with the idea that some people are extraverted or that they tend to have a lot of friends.
  • Our personality differences are explained by these influences.
  • If we could bring Freud and Skinner back to life for a debate and agree on a cause of personality, most psychologists would pay a lot of money to watch.
    • Although this person may see her behaviorists, free will is an illusion.
    • We're fooling ourselves if we think we're free to eat or not eat a piece of candy or stop to grab a bowl of ice cream.
    • We're convinced that we're free to choose our behaviors because we're usu.
  • Both Freudians and Skinnerians agree that we often don't understand the reasons for our behavior, but their views of why this is the case differ sharply.
    • We're unconscious because we're unaware of immediate situational influences on our behavior.
    • We might have had the experience of humming a song to ourselves and wondering why we were doing it, until we realized that the song was playing softly on the radio.
    • Skinner said that we were unaware of the external cause of this behavior, in this case the song in the background.
  • Freudian unconscious is a vast store house of inaccessible thoughts, memories, and impulses.
  • Edward Chase Tolman and others who believed that learning depends on our plans and goals emphasized thinking as a cause of personality.
    • If we perceive others as threatening, we will be hostile and suspicious in return.
    • Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are not automatic or reflexive processes according to social learning theorists.
    • As we acquire information in classical and operant conditioning, we're thinking about and interpreting what it means.
    • The relation between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli is gradually building up expectancies in classical conditioning.
  • The view of determinism held by most social learning theorists is more complex than that held by radical behaviorists.
    • Our high levels of extraversion may motivate us to befriend our introductory psychology classmates.
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  • Parents teach that observational learning occurs by watching others.
    • Learning greatly from watching and emulating adults.
  • It also means that the child will learn early that giving is a worthwhile endeavor and that charitable and teachers can play a significant role in shaping their personality.
  • Through observational learning, we can learn to act altruistically when our parents donate money to charities.
  • Life events are extent to which people believe that due to their own efforts and personal characteristics.
    • People with an exter reinforcers and punishers believe that life events are largely a product of chance and outside their control fate.
  • Rotter believes that internals are less prone to emotional upset than externals because they're more likely to believe they can fix their own problems.
    • Almost all forms of psychological distress, including anxiety and depression, are associated with an external control.
    • It's not clear if the correlational findings reflect a relationship between the external and the internal locus of control.
    • People who develop depression or anxiety may begin to feel like their lives are out of control.
  • Give an example of a time in your life when you relied on either an external or internal locus of control.