Three principles of the behaviourist view
- Personality is determined entirely by environmental factors
- Personality is the sum of observable behaviour (rather than incentives, drives, unconscious/conscious experiences, and cognitions)
- Observation of overt behaviour is the only method to assess personality
Behaviouralists suggest that there are 2 learning processes that determine behaviour/personality:
1. Classical conditioning: learning that occurs by repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that produces a response, involving:
•Unconditioned stimulus (US): the stimulus that produces a reflexive response
•Unconditioned response (UR): the reflex that occurs automatically in response to US
•Conditioned stimulus (CS): the neutral stimulus that gradually is able to produce the reflexive response after being repeatedly paired with the US
•Conditioned response (CR): the reflex response that gradually occurs in response to the CS
- Oppersant conditioning: learning that occurs through reinforcement and punishment
•Positive reinforcement (PR): the introduction of a desired stimulus following a behaviour, increasing the probability that behaviour will be repeated
*ex: praise, social recognition, food in skinners box
•Negative reinforcement (NR): the reduction/removal of an undesired stimulus following a behaviour, increasing the probability that behaviour will be repeated
*ex: parents stop nagging after you clean your room
•Positive punishment (PP): the introduction of an undesired stimulus following a behaviour, decreasing the probability that behaviour will be repeated
*ex: spanking, getting yelled at
•Negative punishment (NP): the removal of a desired stimulus following a behaviour, decreasing the probability that behaviour will be repeated
*ex: time outs, phone taken away
Successive approximation (written)
•occurs when reinforcements are offered after closer and closer approximations to the desired behaviour to shape behaviour
*ex1: toilet training
*ex2: video games (rewards are unlocking as you achieve more and more)
Compare the early behaviourist view with contemporary social-cognitive learning theories of personality
Can personality development be explained by the process of classical/operant conditioning
Early behaviouralists
•personality is the constellation of learned behaviours acquired through classical/operant conditioning
•Skinner: personality is irrelevant because overt behaviour can be completely understood in terms of response to environment (no point in studying personality)
Contemporary learning theorists/social-cognitive learning theorists
•past behaviouralists were flawed because they discount the internal state of the individual (instincts, drives, unconscious/conscious experiences, cognitions, and motives)
•while classical/operant conditioning is important, there are also important social and cognitive factors
Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality
- Drive: an internal motivational state that creates a readiness to respond, propelling behaviour
•can be genetically or socially based - Cue: a stimulus that has the ability to elicit behaviour if accompanied by a drive that requires expression (what action should be taken at a given time)
•ex: hunger (the drive) is cued by smells, the time of day, hearing the lunch bell - Response: a behaviour expressed in response to a cue and is aimed at eliminating a drive
•ex: going to the caf to eat after hearing the lunch bell - Reinforcement: the positive consequences that follow a response (drive reduction)
•ex: being full after eating - Habit hierarchy: a hierarchy of possible responses that someone may exhibit when exposed to a cue in the presence of a drive
Drive + cue =
•R1: dominant response: most likely response given past contexts because it’s most likely to receive positive reinforcement
*ex: baby crying when hungry to be fed
•R2: not as consistent positive reinforcement, but does work
*ex: pointing to mouth instead of crying (can become the dominant response)
•R3:
•R4:
The learning occurs when there is a change in the order of responses in habit hierarchy
•each person has a unique habit hierarchy, accounting for individual differences in personality
Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality
Most influential learning theory today, emphasizing two concepts not recognized by early learning theorists:
1. Observational learning: learning through the observation of models (social influence)
•a perceptual process: people learn what they attend to
•is more efficient than learning through direct exposure and most of our learning historically has been done through this because it enhances our probability of survival
•accounts for our ability to learn both simple and complex behaviours (tying your shoes)
Does not require reinforcement, but when it occurs, it facilitates 4 learning types:
1. Extrinsic reinforcement: reinforcement that’s arbitrary or socially determined, particularly important in early development
•ex: letter grades, metals for athletics
2. Intrinsic reinforcement: reinforcement that is the natural outcome of a behaviour
•ex: biochemical feedback - dopamine is highly reinforcing
3. Vicarious reinforcement: reinforcement that is given to a model following a behaviour ASK HILLARY
•ex: if one child throws tantrum and is coddled, another child might see it as a way to get attention and throw tantrum too (but who’s the model here)
4. Self reinforcement: reinforcement that one gives to oneself for behaving within their own standards, primarily used by adults
•ex: satisfied by full day of studying, gets ice cream/internal reward
- Self efficacy: persons subjective belief about their ability to successfully perform a behaviour, emphasizing cognitive influences
•high self efficacy entails expectations for success while low entails failure
•not a trait-like characteristic (varies across domains): good at psych bad at math
People with high self efficacy in a domain:
•set more challenging goals, persist longer in pursuit of those goals, recover faster from setbacks, experience less fear/stress in that domain
Self efficacy is influenced by
1. Social modelling
•ex: vicarious experiences - seeing model that is similar to u succeed in the domain (seeing hilary do well)
2. Social persuasion
•ex: verbal - being told you can do it (TA saying you can do it)
3. Emotional arousal
•ex: levels of fear/anxiety
4. mastery experiences
•ex: performance accomplishments - past success is important
Therapeutic methods from learning perspective are designed to increase self efficacy
•systematic desensitization, exposure treatment, modelling (mastery, coping, participant modelling)
•do this in the readings
Cognitive perspective’s schematic view on personality
Cognitive perspective highlights people’s capacity to overcome impulses and environmental influences through reason
Schematic view of cognitive processing
•cognitive processing relies on schemas: organized knowledge structure about a concept, its attributes, and its network of associations (relationships to other concepts)
•Exemplars: terms that refer to your own experience on a schema
*mother: working mom, warm, pregnancy
•Prototype: single best exemplar or an average of all exemplars
*mother: my mom
•Fuzzy set: criteria thats tied to the schema but not necessary
*mother: pregnancy - but there’s adoption/surrogates
•Nodes: units of information - activation of one node increases the likelihood that associated nodes will be consciously activated
*the stronger the association between nodes, the higher likelihood that the other node will be activated
*partial activation is thought to account for priming differences (male oriented words then asking the gender of the model)
•Prisons of interference: schemas are very resistant to change (the brainteaser of surgeons - gender)
•Schema scripts: schema for temporary organized event sequences (duration, time, and flow)
Function
•facilitate recognition, direct attention, enhance encoding of information into memory, and provide default information to fill in gaps
*schemas act as cognitive filters to perceive, process, and recall information
We have schemas for
•occupations (accountants are boring) sexes, social groups (politics), personality types (introverts vs extraverts)
Dual process models of cognitive processing
Some theorists have suggested that cognitive processing is characterized by two models instead of one
Dual process models of cognitive processing
1. Intuitive processor (system 1):
•intuitive problem solving using automatic/reflective behaviours that is outside of our awareness
•”experimental system”
•”reacting”: quick and imprecise, impacted by emotions
•”hot” processing
•reflects implicit knowledge
2. Conscious processor (system 2): •effortful reasoning using deliberate/controlled behaviours that are inside our awareness •"rational system" •"thinking": uses rules and logic •"cool" processing •reflects explicit knowledge
Cognitive styles showing differences in personality Ask hillary about 5
- Field dependence vs field independence
•dependence: correlated with extraversion
•independence: correlated with introversion - Attributional style: individual differences in the attributions that are made to explain events with three dimensions
- Locus of control: external vs internal
- Stability: is it stable vs ongoing
- Globally: single situation vs multiple
•Highest for future (academic) achievement: internal, stable, and specific for failure
•Pessimistic attribution styles: more prone to depression, attribute success to external unstable and specific factors and failure to internal stable and global factors
•CBT: learned optimism - we can teach children to question negative attribution tendencies to foster optimism/success - Self-complexity: our self schema depending on the
•number of self aspects used to represent the self in the schema, and
•the degree of redundancy among self aspects
High complexity (many aspects of self aren’t redundant)
Low complexity (few self aspects that are redundant)
•Self complexity buffers against harmful stress by preventing events that occur in one self aspect from spilling to other self aspects - Need for cognition: people engage in and enjoy thinking
•measured using need for cognition scale (out of 90) - thought to be a personality trait
•high need for cognition: use playful self regulated study strategies, get higher grades, less ambivalence about holding conflicting attitudes, greater curiosity, higher IQ and self esteem, lower social anxiety, greater life satisfaction
*personality: high on OtE, C, and low N - Cognitive social learning variables: Mischel suggested 5 cognitive variables used to describe personality
- Competences
•social skills, synthesizing information, time management, problem solving, and study strategies - Encoding strategies and personal constructs
•schemas and beliefs, vision of self is professional, classroom adequate, achievement - Expectancies
•associations between events, actions/outcomes (amount of study time and grade on exam/cheating and consequence) - Subjective values
•values we hold in our value systems, built in value in learning - Self regulatory systems and plans
•plans we divide cognitively so we obtain our subjective values
Needs and motives perspective *
Need: a physiological force in the brain that organizes perception, intellect, and action in such a way to transform an unsatisfying situation into a more satisfying one
Categories of needs (Murray)
1. Viscerogenic (primary) needs: basic biological needs related to survival (food, harm avoidance, heat avoidance, water)
2. Psychogenic (secondary) needs: arise from primary needs involving the emotional or physiological satisfaction
3. Adience needs: involve movement towards objects people or goals (food)
4. Abience needs: involve movement away from objects people or goals (heat avoidance, autonomy)
5. Reactive needs: occur in response to an object person or event in the environment (harm avoidance, aggression)
6. Proactive needs: needs that occur spontaneously in the absence of environmental triggers (food, water)
- we have a different hierarchy needs ranking from strong to weak that characterizes personality
- viscerogenic and psychogenic can be all into one
Motives (Murray)
•are elicited by needs and influencing thought by directing behaviour toward or away from specific objects, people, or goals
*ex: need for food results in hunger motive, leading to a thought (thinking about last meal, fantasizing about next meal), resulting in a behaviour (prepare meal, go get food)
Difference between needs and motives
1. Consciousness: needs are unconscious while motives are conscious
2. Level: needs are a physiological level, motives are a cognitive level
•ex: need for food, motive is hunger
Environmental press:
•any situational or environmental factor that influences people’s motives, potentially altering thought and behaviour/change our motive
*motivated to study but raes here so I’m not motivated anymore
How are needs measured
- Thematic apperception test (TAT)/picture story exercise (PSE)
•most widely used measure of needs, involving presenting ambiguous images
•apperception: projecting needs onto external stimuli (often unconscious)
•assesses implicit needs (unconscious) by counting how many times self specific needs were mentioned
•dominant needs mentioned account for personality
•assumption: that participants project their needs onto the ambiguous stimulus
Criticisms:
•all the images seem dark/sad
•scoring is time consuming and highly subjective
•reliability is poor: internal consistency low because low internal/test re test in the way images are designed - Personality research form (PRF)
•second most widely used measure to overcome subjective problems in TAT/PSE
•objective because it is a self report measure including T/F items, designed to capture 22 of Murray’s needs to determine personality
•Benefit: allows us to access self attributed needs (vs implicit needs)
•Criticism: doesn’t capture implicit needs
*implicit needs guide emotional reactions, and implicit vs explicit needs have different outcomes - Multi-motive grid
•combines features of both tests, assessing three super ordinate needs - Need for achievement: desire to do things well to feel pleasure in overcoming obstacles
- Need for affiliation: need to spend time with others and form social ties
- Need for power: the need to have impact on others/feel strong in comparison to others
The “Big Three” is measured using approach and avoidance assessments by
•presenting participants with images that depict situations linked to achievement, affiliation, and power to create personality profile related to these needs
•assesses implicit and self attributed needs
•criticism: limited to the assessment of these three needs
Primary assumptions underlying self actualization/determination perspective
- Humans have freedom of will and can determine the course of their life events
•conflicts with: biological theory, freud’s psychosexual stage, psychosocial, you can’t choose parents, and social learning theories (we can be shaped by environment) - Conscious experience is the primary determinant of behaviour/personality
- Humans are inherently good and strive fro growth and improvement
Is self actualization universally achieved
•Ways to measure: personal orientation inventory, short index of self actualization (out of 60, mean 45uni)
•people with high SA: are time competent, higher in E and OtE, have internal locus of control, greater satisfaction with school, higher self esteem, fewer neurotic problems
Maslow’s theory of self actualization
Maslow views needs as motivational forces that determine behaviour (pyramid) and that humans have 5 conative needs
1. Physiological needs: biological maintenance (food, water, oxygen, sleep)
2. Safety needs: physical security (shelter, law, stability)
•if not satisfied, anxiety starts
3. Belonging needs: affiliation with others (supportive family, relationships, friends)
•if belonging needs were never met - incapability of love (similar to avoidance attachment style)
•if belonging needs were inconsistently met - excessive need for acceptance/approval (similar to ambivalent attachment style)
4. Esteem needs: public recognition and self esteem (status, self respect)
•if not satisfied - sense of inferiority emerges
5. Self actualization needs: self fulfillment (fulfill potential, pursuit intrinsic motivation)
•if not satisfied - metaoathology: feelings of restlessness, frustration, loss of meaning of life
Humans also have neurotic needs: perpetuate a dysfunctional lifestyle, foster stagnation, and contribute to pathology
•are reactive, developing effort to compensate for unsatisfied conative needs
Note the following
•needs that are lower in the hierarchy appear earlier in life and go up with development
•the first 4 needs are deficiency needs because they arise from a deficient in the person
•self actualization needs are growth needs because they result in growth of the person
•lower needs have greater strength and priority than those higher (should attend to lower before we go higher)
•needs at lower level do not need to be fully satisfied before next level emerges
•people: 85% physiological met, 70% safety met, 50% belonging met, 40% esteem met, and 10% self actualization met
*strongest in uni: esteem and belonging
•mother theresa: self actualized with lower needs not met
•only 1-2% of north americans achieve self actualized state due to
1. sociocultural constraints limiting our abilities/distracting us
2. self constraints due to fear of our own greatness
Rogers person centered theory
What is a fully functioning person
•Actualizing tendency: humans are driven by one master motive that subsumes all other motives
•occurs in all living organisms (even plants), but humans are unique because we self actualize/have a self concept
•Fully functioning person: individual who is engaged in the process of self actualization (doesn’t need to be fully self actualized which is very rare)
*FF state is a direction not destination (different from Maslow who thought most people were self actualized)
Fully functioning person is characterized by six attributes
- OtE: extends beyond FFM - full awareness of their reality
- Existential living: live in present, time competent, not preoccupied by past or future concerns
- Organismic trust: self reliance on values and principles, not easily swayed by others
- Experiential freedom: willingness to use autonomy to make decisions/is responsible for their own choices
- Creativity: capability to adapt oneself to diverse situations
- Harmonious relationships with others: not judgmental
Rogers person centered theory: how does a person become fully functioning
Humans have an innate need for positive regard (to be accepted and receive love/affection from others)
•in order to become fully functioning, individual must receive unconditional positive regard: acceptance, love and affection that is given without conditions
•individual who receives unconditional positive regard in formative years develops unconditional positive self regard: an ability to view self favourably under all conditions
*leads to accepting diverse experiences, trusts their own judgments, and acts in accordance with their own desires leading to self actualization/fully functioning
•if you receive conditional positive regard (condition of worth) you cannot become fully functioning
•if you experience multitude of conditions of worth in formative years you develop conditional positive self regard: inability to view selves favourable under all conditions
*leads to distortions in personal experiences, disregards own judgements, acts in accordance with desires of others leading to not being able to become fully functioning
Therapy to become fully functioning (Rogers)
Rogers suggested that most people encounter discreptences between their self concept and their experience, producing anxiety
•in effort to minimize anxiety, people try to reduce discrepancies they experience
•the FFP reduces discrepancies by incorporating new experiences into the self concept, while those who aren’t fully functioning empty defence mechanisms denial and distortion
Client-Cantered therapy (non directive therapy): Helps people who aren’t fully functioning by therapist not directing the course of therapy because of the belief that someone independently knows themselves better so should guide their own therapy
•Therapist: creates an environment where the patient can solve their problems by fulfilling three conditions
1. Therapist congruence: the capacity for the therapist to be authentic and genuine
2. Unconditional positive regard: what was absent in childhood is fulfilled by the therapist by being warm and accepting
3. Empathetic understanding: therapist experiences the world as the client does - no judgments as they experience feelings through reflection/mirroring
Goal: patient transitions from then and there to here and now, and becomes fully functioning
Limitations:
•CCT is relatively ineffective for individuals who are: collectivistic, authoritarian, unable to verbalize their emotions (alexinthymia) lower tolerance for ambiguity (find it anxiety provoking)
What is happiness
Positive psychology: focuses on positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life’s meaningless
Two types
1. Hedonic happiness: high satisfaction with life, high positive affect, low negative affect
2. Eudemonic happiness: self actualization (fulfillment of potential, pursuit of intrinsic motivations, experiencing the meaning in life)
Satisfaction with life scale: 5 items with a 1-7 scale
- In most ways my life is close to my ideal
- The conditions of my life are excepted
- I am satisfied with life
- So far I have gotten the important things I want out of life
- If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing
Meaning in life questionnaire
- I understand my life’s meaning.
- I am looking for something that makes my life feel meaningful
- I am always looking to find my life’s purpose
- My life has a clear sense of purpose.
- I have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful
- I have discovered a satisfying life purpose.
- I am always searching for something that makes my life feel significant
- I am seeking a purpose or mission for my life
- My life has no clear purpose
- I am searching for meaning in my life.b
What are the sources of happiness (pie chart)
- Circumstances (income): 10%
- Intentional activity: 40%
- Set point (heritability): 50%
