PERSONALITY BEHAVIOR

Alie, Alexa, Jerica, Carmen, Karla, Andrew, and Kyle

(THE COOLEST GROUP EVER!)

LEARNING THEORIES Behavioral personality theories

emphasize that personality is no more (or less) than a collection of learned behavior patterns

Personality is acquired through classical and operant conditioning, observational learning, reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and discrimination

Strict learning theorists reject the idea that personality is made up of traits. They are interested in the situational determinants (external causes) of our actions.

PERSONALITY= BEHAVIOR Early theory proposed by John Dollard

and Neal Miller (1950) Habits- learned behavior patterns

make up the structure of personality

FOUR ELEMENTS OF LEARNING Drive- stimulus strong enough to guide

a person to action. (hunger, pain, lust, frustration)

Cues- signals from the environment Responses- actions that bring about the

rewards Reward- positive reinforcement

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY Julian Rotter The “cognitive behaviorism” of social

learning theory was illustrated by three concepts:

Psychological Situation- how the person interprets or defines the situation

Expectancy- the anticipation that making a response will lead to reinforcement

Reinforcement Value- states that humans attach different subjective values to various activities or rewards

Self- Efficacy= a capacity for producing a desired result (Albert Bandura)

Self- Reinforcement= praising or rewarding oneself for having made a particular response. Self-reinforcement is closely tied to high self esteem. The reverse is also true.

BEHAVIORISTIC VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT Social reinforcement- based on praise,

attention, or approval from others Miller and Dollard believe in four critical

in childhood situations that later affect personality: feeding, toilet training or cleanliness training, sex training, and learning to express anger or aggression

If children are tended to while crying, they learn to be manipulative. If children are not tended to while crying, they become passive

BECOMING MALE OR FEMALE According to the social learning theory,

identification and imitation contribute greatly to personality development and sex training.

Identification- child’s emotional attachment to admired adults. It encourages imitation- a desire to act like the admired person.

A study showed that preschool teachers are three times more likely to pay attention to aggressive or disputive boys than to girls acting the same way

By age ten, boys expect to get less disapproval from parents for aggression

Social learning and personality are linked

Affectionate parents= sociable, positive, high esteemed children

Neglectful parents= hostile, unstable, and dependent children