Chapter 14: Behaviorism and the Social Learning Theories

if . . . then contingencies

. The personality variables summarized in the previous section combine in each individual to yield a repertoire of actions triggered by particular stimulus situations. For example, one person, when insulted, might simply walk away. Another, with a different if . . . then pattern, might respond with a punch in the nose (Shoda, 1999). Every individual's pattern of contingen- cies is unique, and comprises his behavioral signature (Mischel, 1999, p. 44). In one application of this idea, psychologist Susan Andersen proposed that the psy- choanalytic idea of transference, discussed in Chapter 10, can be conceived of in if . . . then terms. If a person encounters someone who reminds her of her father, for example, then she might feel and behave similarly to the way she used to relate to her father (Andersen & Chen, 2002; Andersen & Thorpe, 2009). Another study found that youth baseball coaches had stable patterns of if . . . then responses to situations such as winning games, losing games, and having tied or close scores (Smith, Shoda, Cumming, & Smoll, 2009).

four person variables that characterize properties and activ- ities of the cognitive system:

1. Cognitive and Behavioral Construction Competencies: These competencies comprise an individual's mental abilities and behavioral skills and so might include such properties as IQ, creativity, social skills, and occupational abilities. 2. Encoding Strategies and Personal Constructs: These aspects of per- sonality include a person's ideas about how the world can be categorized (one's Kellyan personal construct system) and efficacy expectations, or be- liefs about one's own capabilities (of the sort described by Bandura). They also might include other beliefs about oneself, such as "I am a shy person." 3. Subjective Stimulus Values: This idea resembles the notion of expec- tancies in Rotter's social learning theory—an individual's beliefs about the probabilities of attaining a goal if it is pursued. It also includes how much people value different rewarding outcomes; for one person, money is more important than prestige, for example, whereas another person's priorities might be just the reverse. 4. Self-RegulatorySystemsandPlans:ThesearecloselyrelatedtoBandura's theory of the self system, a set of procedures that control behavior, includ- ing self-reinforcement, selection of situations, and purposeful alteration of the situations selected. This is more or less what Mischel had in mind, but Mischel was also interested in how people directly control their own thoughts.

Punishment will backfire unless all of the guidelines just listed are followed. Usually, they are not. A punisher has to be ex- tremely careful, for several reasons.

1. Punishment Arouses Emotion: The first and perhaps most important danger of punishment is that it creates emotion. In the punisher, it can arouse excitement, satisfaction, and even further aggressive impulses; the punisher may get carried away. Some years ago, the Los Angeles police pulled over an errant driver named Rodney King. They yanked him out of the car and made him lie on the ground. Then they began to beat him, an act that was videotaped by a nearby resident. The videotape, which was broad- cast many times, provides a vivid illustration of how the emotions aroused by chasing, catching, and beginning to beat King caused the officers to lose all semblance of self-control. Emotions are aroused in the "punishee" too. By definition, a punish- ment is aversive, which means that the punishee feels pain, discomfort, or humiliation, or some combination of these. Punishment also usually arouses fear of and hate for the punisher, a desire to escape, and possibly self-contempt. These powerful emotions are not conducive to clear thinking. As a re- sult, the punishee is unlikely to "learn a lesson," which is supposedly the whole point. How well do you learn a lesson when you are fearful, in pain, confused, and humiliated? Often, punishers think they are teaching what behavior not to repeat. But the punishee is too unhappy and confused to think much beyond "let me out of here!" 2. It Is Difficult to Be Consistent: Imagine that, in one day at work, you lose a big account, get yelled at by your boss, spill ketchup on your pants, and find a new dent in your car. When you arrive home, your child has thrown a baseball through your living-room window. What do you do? Now imagine another day, when you land a big account, get promoted by your boss, and take delivery of a beautiful new car that cost $5,000 less than you expected. You arrive home to find a baseball thrown through the window. Now, what do you do? Very few people would react to the child's behavior the same way under both circumstances. (Those who would are saints.) Yet, the child's behavior was the same. Punishment tends to vary with the punisher's mood, which is one reason it is rarely applied consistently. 3. It Is Difficult to Gauge the Severity of Punishment: Many cases of child abuse have occurred when what a parent thought was a mild but pain- ful slap caused a broken bone or worse. Parents are bigger than children; this is not always easy to take into account, especially when the parent is angry. Words can hurt too. A rebuke from a parent, teacher, or boss can be a severe humiliation. It may cause more psychological distress than the punisher imagines and can provoke desires for escape or revenge that make the situation worse. . Punishment Teaches Misuse of Power: Specifically, it teaches that big, powerful people get to hurt smaller, less-powerful people. As a result, the punishee may think, I can't wait to be big and powerful so I can punish too! Thus, parents who were abused as children may become child abusers themselves. How children are punished may have long-lasting effects on their personalities (Hemenway, Solnick, & Carter, 1994; Raymund, Garcia, Restubog, & Denson, 2010; Widom, 1989). 5. Punishment Motivates Concealment: The prospective punishee has good reasons to conceal behavior that might be punished. Have you ever been in an office where the boss rules through punishment? Nobody talks to anybody, least of all the boss, if they can avoid it, and the boss soon becomes detached from what is really going on. Rewards have the reverse effect. When workers anticipate rewards for good work instead of punishment for bad work, they are naturally motivated to bring to the boss's attention ev- erything they are doing, in case it merits reward. They have no reason to conceal anything, and the boss will be in close contact with the operation she is running. (This was the case in the lumber mill described earlier.) This works in the home as well. A child who expects punishment from his parents cuts off as much communication as possible. A child who ex- pects the reverse naturally does the reverse.

the causes of behavior

A deeper moral is that people may do things for very simple reasons of which they may be unaware. They even make up elaborate rationales for their actions that have little or nothing to do with the real causes. it is a good bet that we know why we do certain things. In part, this is because rewards are not usually so hid- den. The paycheck that causes many people to go to work is an effective and obvious reinforcement.

Increasing efficacy expectations seems to be useful how?

A psychothera- pist in Bandura's mold will use all sorts of tactics to accomplish this goal, including verbal persuasion ("You can do it!") and modeling, which means allowing the client to watch somebody else (the model) accomplish the desired behavior. Therapy for snake phobics may begin with watching somebody else cheerfully handle a snake. The most powerful technique is to actually have the client perform the behavior. The goal of therapy, therefore, is to build to the point where the client can handle a snake. This is the most effective way to convince the client that such a thing is possible. Bandura's prescription for self-change fol- lows the same pattern. If you are reluctant to do something you know you should do, force your- self to do it. It will be less difficult next time. A small example: Suppose you know you should exercise more but do not think you are really the type. Take control of your life and go exercise any- way. This experience, if you can keep it up, will change your view of yourself, allowing exercise to become a natural part of your day rather than something strange that you must force yourself to do. In its brilliant way, Madison Avenue cre- ated a commercial for an athletic shoe that boiled this principle down to three words: "

generalized expectancies

At the other extreme, people have generalized expectancies. These are beliefs about whether anything you do is likely to make a difference. Some people, accord- ing to Rotter, believe that they have very little control over what happens to them; they have low generalized expectancies. Others believe that the reinforcements they enjoy (and the punishments they avoid) are directly a function of what they do; these people have high generalized expectancies. Not surprisingly, the latter tend to be energetic and highly motivated, while the former are more likely to be lethar- gic and depressed. Generalized expectancy is a broad personality variable and can be considered a trait exactly like those discussed in Chapters 4 through 7. Rotter sometimes referred to generalized expectancy as locus of control. People with internal locus of control are those with high generalized expectancies and thus tend to think that what they do affects what happens to them. Those with external locus of control have low generalized expectancies and tend to think that what they do will not make much difference. Later investigators have emphasized how locus of control (and generalized expectancy) can vary across the domains of one's life. For example, some people have internal academic locus of control (they believe they have control over their academic outcomes), but external locus of control oth- erwise. Other psychologists have studied health locus of control, which involves the difference between people who believe that their daily actions importantly affect their health, as opposed to those who think they have very little control over whether they get sick or stay well (Lau, 1988; Rosolack & Hampson, 1991). Even dating locus of control can vary. Maybe not everybody is willing to go out with you, but hopefully you realize that somebody somewhere is eager to do so.

One way to see how punishment works, or fails to work, is to examine the rules for applying it correctly. The classic behaviorist analysis says that five principles are most important

Availability of Alternatives: An alternative response to the behavior that is being punished must be available. This alternative response must not be punished and should be rewarded. If you want to threaten kids with punishment for Halloween pranks, be certain some alternative activity is available that will not be punished, or will even be rewarding, such as a Halloween party. 2. Behavioral and Situational Specificity: Be clear about exactly what behavior you are punishing and the circumstances under which it will and will not be punished. This rule is the basis of the common parent- ing advice never to punish a child for being a "bad boy" or "bad girl." (It is also consistent with the religiously based guidance to "hate the sin but love the sinner.") Instead, punish "staying out after curfew" or "cursing at Grandma." A child who is unsure why he is punished may, just to be safe, become generally inhibited and fearful, not quite sure what is right and what is wrong. 3. Timing and Consistency: To be effective, a punishment needs to be ap- plied immediately after the behavior you wish to prevent, every time that behavior occurs. Otherwise, the person (or animal) being punished may not understand which behavior is forbidden. And again, if a person (or an- imal) is punished but does not understand why, the result will be general inhibition instead of specific behavioral change. Have you ever made this mistake? You come home from a hard day at work and discover your dog has dug out the kitchen trash and spread it across the living room. The dog bounds to greet you, and you swat it. This is, one supposes, punishment for scattering trash, but consider the situa- tion from the dog's point of view. The trash scattering occurred hours ago. What the dog did just before being punished was greet you. What behavioral change will result? This kind of error is common and shows the danger of applying punishment when you are angry. The punishment might vent your emotions but is likely to be counterproductive. 4. Conditioning Secondary Punishing Stimuli: One can lessen the ac- tual use of punishment by conditioning secondary stimuli to it. I once had a cat who liked to scratch the furniture. I went out and bought a plastic squirt bottle and filled it with water, and then kept it nearby. Whenever the cat started to claw the sofa, I made a hissing noise and then immediately squirted the cat. Soon, I did not need the squirt bottle; my "hissss" was suf- ficient to make the cat immediately stop what she was doing. The result was a better behaved and drier cat. With people, verbal warnings can serve the same purpose. Many a parent has discovered this technique: "If you don't stop, when I get to 3, you'll be sorry. One, two . . ." 5. Avoiding Mixed Messages: This is a particular warning to parents. Sometimes, after punishing a child, the parent feels so guilty that she picks the child up for a cuddle. This is a mistake. The child might start to misbe- have just to get the cuddle that follows the punishment. Punish if you must punish, but do not mix your message. A variant on this problem occurs when the child learns to play one parent against the other. For example, after the father punishes the child, the child goes to the mother for sympathy, or vice versa. This can produce the same counterproductive result.

self-efficacy

Bandura takes a step further away than Rotter does from the classic behavior- ism with which both theories began. Rotter's expectancy is a belief about reinforce- ment, which was classically seen as the key agent of behavioral change. Bandura's efficacy expectation, or self-efficacy, is a belief about the self, about what the per- son is capable of doing. For example, you might have the efficacy expectation that you will someday be able to finish reading this book. As I am typing these words, I am trying to maintain the efficacy expectation that I can finish writing this book. In either case, our beliefs about our own capabilities are likely to affect whether we persist. Since you are holding this book in your hands, we can presume that my efficacy expectations held up. How are yours doing?

Expectancy and Locus of Control

Because an expectancy is a belief, it might be right or wrong. Rotter's theory says that it does not matter whether a behavior is actually likely to bring success or not; if you think it will, you will try. The same goes for behavior that actually would bring success, if you were to make the effort; if you think it won't work, you won't even try. Herein lies the key difference between Rotter's theory and classic behavior- ism: The classic view focuses on actual rewards and punishments, while Rotter's social learning variant focuses on beliefs about reward and punishment. These be- liefs shape behavior, Rotter claimed, even when they are inaccurate. Notice that, at this point in Rotter's social learning theory, a little wisp of phenomenology—that a person's impressions of reality are more important than reality itself—has drifted in (recall Chapter 13).

shaping

Begin by rewarding a pigeon for hitting a bar; this behavior becomes more frequent. Then raise the criterion for reward: Now the pigeon must step forward and back and then hit the bar. behavior, too, gradually becomes more frequent. Then raise the reward criterion again. Before too long, the pigeon may be doing a complete tango, and ready to appear on Danc- ing with the Stars.3

efficacy expectations

Both terms not only refer to the belief that one can accomplish something successfully, but also carry the phenomenological implication that one's interpretation of reality matters more than reality itself. The two concepts are not exactly the same, however. Rotter's notion of expectancy is the perceived conditional probability that if you do something, you will attain your goal. Bandura's efficacy is the perceived probability that you can do something in the first place. A more typical case for Bandura's analysis is someone with a snake phobia. (You may recall the anecdote from Bandura's snake phobia clinic in Chapter 7.) He wishes not to fear snakes yet does not believe he could ever get near one. If this be- lief changes, he will be able to approach snakes and conquer his phobia. The issue for Bandura is not what happens after he handles a snake, but whether he can get close to a snake in the first place.

Classical Conditioning and Physiology

Classical conditioning affects emotional responses and low-level behavioral responses such as salivating, as we have seen. Some research also has suggested that the workings of many organs of the body not usually considered to be under psychological control can be classically conditioned.

Problems with Behaviorism

Despite its early success, some researchers eventually grew dissatisfied with behaviorism's rigidity and with the number of psychological phenomena it ignores. Influential figures such as John Dollard, Julian Rotter, and Albert Bandura, whose ideas are considered later in this chapter, expanded behaviorism into the broader social learning theories. Over time, these theories expanded their reach even fur- ther and were relabeled "cognitive social learning theory" by theorists such as Walter Mischel. But while learning theory evolved and expanded, it still held true to some basic tenets of behaviorism, as we shall see.

The learning approaches to personality can boast three major achievements. #1

First, learning theorists—from Watson and Skinner to Bandura and Mischel, and everyone in between—conducted admirable research that approached the goal of establishing psychology as an objective science that can take its place among the other sciences. Most of their work, especially of the early behaviorists, is charac- terized by tight theoretical reasoning, careful experimental design, and a style of argument that backs up every statement with data. In this way, learning theorists serve as role models for other research psychologists.

social learning theorists contentions with behaviorists

In general, according to social learning the- orists, behaviorists have concentrated too much on elements of learning that are important for animals, such as reinforcement, and not enough on aspects that are more important for humans, such as solving a problem by thinking about it.

Skinner box

In principle, this invention is much like Thorndike's puzzle box, but it is simpler and usually used with animals who aren't as smart as cats, such as rats and pigeons. The Skinner box contains only a bar and a chute for delivering food pellets. Put a pigeon in there, and it begins its pigeon activities. It does a little dance, preens its feathers, and eventually pushes the bar. A food pellet immediately rolls down the chute. The pigeon eats it and then—pigeons not being terribly bright—goes back to what it was doing before. It dances around some more, preens some more, and eventually hits the bar again. Another food pellet. The pigeon dimly begins to catch on. The pigeon hits the bar at a steadily increasing rate, sometimes (depending on the frequency of reinforcement) to the point where it does little else.

functional analysis

In this context, environment refers not to the trees and rivers of nature, but to the rewards and punishments in the physical and social world. The goal of behaviorism is a functional analysis that maps out exactly how behavior is a function of the environmental situation.

Walter Mischel

Nevertheless, Kelly's theory inspired one of his students to develop the most explicitly cognitive version of social learning theory. This student was Walter Mischel—yes, the very same person who triggered the person-situation contro- versy by claiming that personality traits are not important and that situations are much more powerful determinants of behavior (see Chapter 4). Mischel's approach combines two important ideas. The first is the phenomenological— specifically the Kellyan—idea that the individual's interpretation, or construal, of the world is all-important. From a phenomenological perspective, to under- stand a person's thoughts is to understand the person completely. The second idea is a view of the cognitive system that describes thought as proceeding simultaneously on multiple tracks that occasionally intersect. The combination of these two ideas is Mischel's theory of the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) (Mischel, 1999).

The Bottom Line on Punishment

Punishment, used correctly, can be an effective technique for behavioral control. But to use it correctly is nearly impossible. Correct punish- ment requires that the punisher understand and consistently apply all of the rules just listed. It also requires that the punisher's own emotions and personal needs not affect his or her actions, which is even more difficult. So the bottom line is this: Punishment works great if you apply it correctly—but to apply it correctly, it helps to be a genius and a saint.

personal construct theory of George Kelly

Recall that these constructs are the idiosyncratic ideas about the world that guide each individual's perceptions and thoughts. Kelly's career came before the explosion of cognitive research in the late 1960s, however, and he never tied his ideas about

expectancy value theory

Rotter claimed that the woman's choice can be worked out mathematically. Suppose she thinks her chances of getting the $35,000 job are 50/50, whereas she thinks she is certain to get the $20,000 job. The expected value of the $35,000 job then becomes .50 x $35,000, or $17,500. The expected value of the other job is 1 x $20,000, or $20,000. Because the second job has a higher expected value, Rotter's theory predicts this is the interview she would choose. This theory assumes that behavioral decisions are deter- mined not just by the presence or size of reinforcements, but also by beliefs about the likely results of behavior. Even if a reinforcement is very attractive, according to this theory, you are not likely to pursue it if your chances of success seem slim. Conversely, even something not particularly desirable might motivate behavior if the chances of getting it are good enough.

The learning approaches to personality can boast three major achievements. #2

Second, learning theorists recognize—better than the adherents of any other approach—how behavior depends on the environment and even the specific, imme- diate situation. Trait theorists emphasize the average of many behaviors performed over time and across situations; biologists examine physiological and genetic pro- cesses within the body; psychoanalysts and humanists study ways people are influ- enced by what goes on in the hidden recesses of their minds. Learning theorists, even latter-day ones such as Bandura and Mischel, instead emphasize situations, showing how what we do depends on the rewards and punishments present at the moment or—just a little different—the rewards and punishments that we think are present. Each basic approach to personality serves to remind us of important influences on behavior that the other approaches underemphasize or ignore. Thus, the trait approach reminds us of the importance of individual differences; the biological approach reminds us of the influences of anatomy, physiology, and genetics; the psychoanalytic approach reminds us of the power of the unconscious; the human- istic approach reminds us of the importance of consciousness. In this list of job descriptions, the task of the learning theorists is clear: to remind us about how physical and social environments and specific situations cause what we do and shape who we are.

Techniques of Operant Conditioning: Skinner

Skinner (1938) pointed out that in the case of Pavlov's dogs, their salivating did not affect their situation. It was a response that, after training, happened to be followed by meat. Even if a dog did not salivate, the meat would still arrive. But when Thorndike's cats pushed the lever that opened their cage, something did happen. A closed door sprang open, allowing them to escape.

operant conditioning

The animal learns to operate on its world in such a way as to change it to that animal's advantage.

consequences of habituation

The effect of seeing images of suffering and violence, the researchers speculate, is to become habituated to the pain of others, with the result that one becomes less likely to help them when they are in need can make an individual's personality more aggressive and less empathic

Empiricism

The idea that all knowledge comes from experience Experience is the direct product of reality itself. The contents of our minds are created by the contents of the world and how it has impinged on us, produc- ing everything we have seen, heard, and felt. In this way, the structure of reality determines personality, the structure of the mind, and, by extension, our behavior.

Walter Mischel is not a true Watsonian. Why?

The list of cognitive social learning variables that he formulated over decades of theorizing is enough to disqualify him from membership in the League of Hard-Core Behaviorists. Yet, his reconceptu- alization of personality, which views it as an idiosyncratic repertoire of learned if . . . then responses that have no necessary connection to each other, resembles in an uncanny way the S-R conceptualization Watson propounded almost a cen- tury ago. If . . . then and stimulus-response: Walter Mischel, meet John Watson. The fundamental tenets of behaviorism continue to influence modern-day personality psychology.

rationalism

The structure of the mind determines our experience of reality. We saw this belief held by the phenomenologists discussed in Chapter 12, as well as the deconstruc- tionists and some of the cultural psychologists considered in Chapter 13. Empir- icism and therefore behaviorism are emphatically neither phenomenological nor deconstructionist.

S-R conception of personality

They assumed that the essential activity of life was to learn a vast array of responses to specific environmental stimuli, and that an individual's personality consists of a repertoire of learned stimulus-response (S-R) associations It will depend simply on what he has happened to learn. For example, if one has learned to be dominant at home but meek at work, a business meeting might trig- ger a subservient response and a home situation might trigger dominance.

The learning approaches to personality can boast three major achievements. #3

Third, the learning approaches have contributed a technology of behavior change. Because the process of learning is all about changing behavior, it was a short step to apply learning concepts to the treatment of phobias, addictions, and other emotional and behavioral disorders. The evidence clearly shows that such techniques work well—in the short run, at least. But what about the long run? Here, the record is less clear and brings us to the first of two important limitations of the learning approaches to personality. It remains controversial whether the effects of behavioral therapies on phobias, addictions, and other problems are generalizable and long-lasting (H. J. Eysenck & Beech, 1971; Kazdin & Bootzin, 1972). Consider one example. An acquaintance of mine was once the director of drug treatment services for a county in California. He worked with alcoholics, treating them with a drug called Antabuse (the brand name for disulfiram). Antabuse causes nausea when a person drinks alcohol. In the clinic, the therapist could be sure that the patient took Antabuse regularly. This removed all temptation to drink, and you would think, based on classical conditioning, that after a while the alcoholics would find the very idea of drinking repulsive. So what happened? Time after time, as soon as a patient was released from the rehab clinic, he threw out the pills and drove to the nearest liquor store. It turns out that people are more complicated than simple theories such as classical con- ditioning sometimes acknowledge. These alcoholics had understanding, not just learning. Even though the Antabuse made drinking unpleasant, they knew that as soon as they stopped taking it, they could resume drinking (until they landed back in jail or the clinic).

learned helplessness

This feeling of anxiety due to unpredictability can also lead to a behavioral pat- tern called learned helplessness . Experiments with animals such as rats and dogs, and later with humans, suggest that receiving random rewards and punishments can lead to the belief that nothing one does really matters.

what does behaviorism imply

This idea implies that your personality is simplythe sum of everything you do. Nothing else. Person-ality does not include traits, unconscious conflicts,psychodynamic processes, conscious experiences, or anything else that cannot be directly observed. If such unobservable structures and processes even exist, which traditional behaviorists tend to doubt, they are not important. A behaviorist ap- proach to personality, then, is generally based on B data

the law of effect:

This kind of learning from experience is not limited to cooks, or even to humans. A classic early example involved cats. Early in the 20th century, even before Pavlov began his work with dogs, American psychol- ogist Edward Thorndike was putting hungry cats in a device he called the "puzzle box" (Figure 14.1). The cats could escape only by doing some specific, simple act, such as pulling on a wire or pressing a bar. Doing so would cause the box sud- denly to spring open, and the cat would jump out to find a bit of food nearby. Thorndike found that the cats began to es- cape more and more quickly. At first it took them 3 minutes to get out; after 25 trials or so, the cats were out and happily eating within 15 seconds.

opponent processes

Through classical conditioning, these opponent processes might be triggered simply by the sight of the needle, or even by entering the room in which the addict usually shoots up. What happens, then, if a heroin addict shoots up in a location where he has not used drugs in the past—such as his parents' house, for example? Because this location is not classically condi- tioned, the opponent processes may fail to kick in before the injection, and a dose the addict could have otherwise tolerated may become fatal (Siegel, 1984; Siegel & Ellsworth, 1986). Finally, we may eventually be able to teach people, through classi- cal conditioning, how to control their own immune systems

This hedonist philosophy leads to a surprisingly powerful principle for morality and ethics:

Whatever produces the most pleasure for the most people in the long run is good. Whatever does the reverse is bad.

classical conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events Associationism held that two things become combined in the mind by being experienced together. Pavlov's find- ing showed that conditioning is more than a simple pairing of stimuli; it involves teaching the animal that one stimulus (the bell) is a warning or signal of the other (the food). The difference is subtle but fundamental, because it means that the principle of associationism is slightly wrong. Events become associated not merely because they occurred together, but because the meaning of one event has changed the meaning of another. The bell used to be just a sound. Now it means "food is coming." Classical conditioning can work in a negative direction as well. If you encoun- ter a particular food under unpleasant circumstances—for example, when you are sick, or if the food itself is dirty or smelly—you may avoid it forever after (Rozin & Zellner, 1985). Or if you become convinced that smoking cigarettes or eating meat is immoral, you may come to find cigarettes or meat physically disgusting (Rozin, 1999; Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997). This progression is even more likely if you start calling meat "flesh" and cigarettes "cancer sticks."

punishment

an aversive consequence that follows an act in order to stop it and prevent its repetition. Punishment frequently is used by three kinds of people: parents, teachers, and bosses. This may be because people in all three roles have the same goals: 1. Startsomebehaviors2. Maintain some behaviors 3. Prevent some behaviors ll you have to do is find a response that is incompatible with the one you are trying to get rid of, and reward that incompatible response instead. Reward a child for reading instead of punish- ing him for watching television. Or, if you want to stop and prevent drug abuse, provide rewarding activities that are not drug related. Offer would-be drug users recreation, entertainment, education, and useful work instead. Make these other activities as rewarding as possible, and drug use will become less attractive.

habituation

an organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it Experimental research on habituation has shown that a response nearly as strong as the original can be maintained, but only if the stimulus changes or in- creases with every repetition.

behaviorism

behaviorism was invented, in part, out of frustration with the focus on unobservable events inside the mind advocated by introspectionists such as Wilhelm Wundt. The desire to bypass introspection and obtain more objective data led behav- iorists to concentrate on aspects of psychology that can be observed directly. The resulting approach focuses on the causes of behavior that lie outside the mind and are not particular to the individual. Behavioral psychologists study how a person's behavior is a direct result of her environment, particularly the rewards and pun- ishments that environment contains. The implication is that anybody else in the same situation would do exactly the same thing

hedonism

claims that people (and all other animals) learn for two reasons: to seek pleasure and avoid pain. These fundamental motivations explain why rewards and punishments shape behavior. They also form the basis of a value system that guides the technology of behavioral change, which is behaviorism's proudest achievement.

Learning-based approaches

come in two varieties: behaviorism and the social learning theories. By carefully applying one simple idea, learning, to more and more complex situations, psychologists in these two related traditions built theories of the basis of personality and behavior and an effective technology for behavioral change. They also built an approach to psychology that holds high the sci- entific values of objectivity, publicly observable data, and tight theoretical reasoning.

behaviorists

early behaviorists such as John Watson and B. F. Skinner believed that the best vantage point for understanding a person is from the outside, because that is where the visible causes of behavior are to be found the be- haviorist believes that all knowledge worth having comes from direct, public ob- servation. Private introspection is invalid because nobody can verify it. Attempting to tap other people's thoughts, via psychoanalysisfor example, is similarly suspect. The whole idea oftheorizing about something we can't see—any entitywithin the mind—is a dubious business at best. Theonly valid way to know about somebody is to watchwhat he does—the person's behavior. That is why theapproach is called behaviorism.. "We can only know what we can see, and we can see everything we need to know.

expectancy

for a behavior is an individual's belief, or subjective probability, about how likely it seems that the be- havior will attain its goal. If you ask that person out, what is the probability the person will say yes? If you apply for that job (and forgo others), will you get it? If you go to class, what are the chances that will make a difference on the final exam? An expectancy is a belief about whether an action will pay off.

main advantage of the if . . . then idea

is its specificity. A trait such as dominance, for example, provides only general guid- ance for predicting what a dominant person might do. Reconceptualizing the trait in if . . . then terms might allow the specific prediction that if a person joins a busi- ness meeting, then she will quickly take charge. The if . . . then idea is also more sensitive to the way people change their behavior across situations. Perhaps the same person who dominates a meeting relates very differently to her family. A trait notion of dominance, in contrast, assumes that a person who is dominant in one situation is likely to display the trait in other situations as well. Research shows this to be generally true (see Chapter 4), but the if . . . then theory describes the excep- tions, and focuses more specifically on discerning which situations would probably elicit dominant behavior. Mischel's if . . . then contingencies have the potential to integrate trait concep- tions of personality with social learning conceptions and cognitive conceptions, by redescribing traits as specific behavior patterns. For example, if a friendly person meets a stranger, then he will probably engage in conversation. If a shy person is at a social gathering, then he will probably be sensitive to any sign of rejection. And so on. For all their demonstrated usefulness, personality traits are sometimes too broad and vague to provide the most useful way to think about behavior. Integrating traits with the if . . . then idea could make both concepts richer and more useful.

fourth short coming of behaviorism

is that it treats the organism as essentially passive. How does a rat or pigeon get into a Skinner box in the first place? Easy—it is put there. Once there, the contingencies of the box—its rules for what will and will not be rewarded—are ironclad and may even be automated. The pigeon did not seek out the box, but there it is, and unless it pushes the bar, there will be no food pellets. For humans, the situation is different. To an important (if not unlimited) degree, we not only choose our environments, but also change these environments as a result of what we do in them.

second aspect of reciprocal determinism

is that the social situations in your life change, at least a little and perhaps importantly, because you are there. The party livens up or calms down when you arrive. The class discussion switches to a new topic because of your contri- bution. Your home environment is, to a large extent, a function of what you do there. In this sense, you control many of the environ- mental contingencies that, in turn, influence your behavior. In Chapter 7, this process was labelled an "evocative person-environment transaction."

Associationism

is the claim that any two things, including ideas, become mentally associated as one if they are repeatedly experienced close together in time. Often, but not always, this closeness occurs as the result of a cause-and-effect re- lationship. Lightning flashes, then thunder booms, so thunder and lightning be- come associated in the minds of all who experience this combination. Other com- binations are more psychological: A smile of a certain kind is followed by a kiss. Still other combinations are arbitrary or even artificial. A bell rings, and then you are fed (try to imagine yourself as a dog for this example). In each of these cases, the two things mentally become one. The thought of one conjures up the other, and a person's reaction to one tends to become his reaction to the other.

The third aspect of reciprocal determinism

is the most innovative. Bandura's deepest departure from behaviorism is his claim that a "self system" develops that has its own effects on behavior, independent of the environment (see Chapter 17). Watson and Skinner emphasized how the environment shapes behavior. Bandura described how behav- ior shapes the environment. Very little influences you that you do not also influ- ence in turn. Therefore, the causes of what you do cannot lie solely in the world (as behaviorists would have it) or in your mind (as humanists would have it); they originate in the interaction between the two.

Respondent Conditioning

meaning that the conditioned response is essentially passive with no impact of its own.

Increases in self-efficacy can increase both....

motivation and performance. An experiment compared leg strength and endurance in men and women (Weinberg, Gould, & Jackson, 1979). In one condition, participants who lifted weights will follow. with their legs were told they were competing against someone with a knee injury, a belief that presumably increased their own self-efficacy. In the other condition, participants were told they were competing against a member of the varsity track team, a belief that presumably decreased their self-efficacy. Participants in the high-efficacy condition outperformed those in the low-efficacy condition, even though their actual strength (before the study) was about the same. This effect was quite impressive. In general, men have stronger legs than women. But in this study, the women in the high-efficacy condition demonstrated slightly more leg strength than the men in the low-efficacy condition.

The most obvious shortcoming is that behaviorism ignores

motivation, thought, and cognition. Behaviorists have sometimes tried to make a virtue of this omission. The writings of Skinner and his followers typically deny that thinking is important and sometimes have tried to deny it exists. Behaviorists would certainly never conduct research on it. Social learning theorists, by contrast, claim that the ways people think, plan, perceive, and believe are important parts of learning, and that research must address these processes.

classic behaviorism, to a surprisingly large extent, is based on

on research using animals. Thorndike favored cats, Pavlov used dogs, and much of Skinner's own work was done with rats and pigeons

affective forecasting

people tend to overestimate the emotional impact of future events, both good and bad. Winning that big promotion won't make you as happy as you expect, over time, but flunking that test won't make you as miserable as you anticipate either (T. D. Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). It seems, to a degree, you can get used to almost anything.

third short coming of behaviorism

s that it ignores the social dimen- sion of learning. The typical rat or pigeon in the Skinner box is in there alone. It cannot interact with, learn from, or influence any other animal. In real life, how- ever, learning tends to be social. We learn by watching others—something a pigeon isolated in a box is in no position to do even if it was capable. Social learning theorists, as their label implies, are highly sensitive to this issue.

Efficacy expectations can interact with, or be determined by, other kinds of

self-judgments (see Chapter 16). For example, if you think you are extremely at- tractive, you are more likely to attempt to date someone who interests you than you would be if you saw yourself as unattractive. In other words, your self-concept affects your efficacy expectation in this domain. Of course, both of these—your self-concept and your efficacy expectation—can be independent of how attractive you really are. A person's actual physical attractiveness might matter less than peo- ple sometimes believe; individuals who merely think they are attractive often do surprisingly well, it seems.

Rotter claimed that people actually have two kinds of expectancies:

specific and general. A specific expectancy is the belief that a certain behavior, at a certain time and place, will lead to a specific outcome. For example, if just after lunch on Tuesday you ask Maria for a date on Friday night, will she say yes? The expected answer may depend on all of the following factors: when you ask the question, whom you ask, and when the date is scheduled. Another example: If you attend class this Monday, what are the chances you will pick up something helpful for the exam? From reading the syllabus, you might have reason to think that Monday's material is going to be essential, but that you can safely sleep in on Wednesday.

observational learning

that is, learning a behavior vicariously, by seeing someone else do it. It is very different from what happens inside a Skinner box. At one time, psychologists believed that only humans could learn from ob- servation, but recent research has indicated otherwise. Learning by songbirds is a frequently cited example. Some bird species seem to learn their songs simply by listening to adult birds, without any rewards or punishments. Apparently, some animals do learn by observation, and not always the animals we would expect. Pigeons can learn from watching other pigeons (Zentall, Sutton, & Sherburne, 1996), but apes (orangutans) sometimes cannot learn from watching other apes (Call & Tomasello, 1995). A distinctive aspect of humans is that we learn nearly everything by observation. BOBO doll= child models behavior they saw

cognitive social learning theorist

that people do not just behave, observe, or even expect—they think.

utilitarianism,

the Epicurean ideal leads to a social philosophy called utilitarianism, which claims that the best society is one that creates the most happiness for the largest number of people.

Reinforcement

the behavior becomes more likely. If the behavior is followed by a punishment, it becomes less likely.

Learning

the change of behavior as a function of experience

tabula rasa

the mind is essentially empty. The 19th-century philosopher John Locke called the mind of a newborn baby a tabula rasa Only as a person encounters reality does she begin to accumulate experiences and thereby build a characteristic way of reacting to the world, that is, a personality.

Exstistentialist

the ultimate purpose of life for an existentialist is to understand and face truth; "happiness" in the absence of truth, freedom, and meaning would be worthless. The modern-day positive psychologists surveyed in Chapter 12 would agree. To reuse two terms introduced in that chapter, positive psy- chologists generally emphasize eudaimonic well-being, which comes from seek- ing a truthful and meaningful life, over the simple pursuit of hedonic well-being through the experience of pleasure.

Bandura emphasized that efficacy expectations should be the key target for

therapeutic interventions. If you achieve a better match between what you think you can accomplish and what you really can accomplish, your life will be more rational and productive. Moreover, efficacies can create capacities. A snake phobic who is persuaded, by whatever means, that he can handle a snake subsequently will be able to do so. The real target of therapy, therefore, is not behavior, but beliefs. Change the belief, and long-term behavioral change will follow

reciprocal determinism

which is an analysis of how people shape their environments Classic versions of behaviorism, and even Rotter's refinement, tend to view reinforcements and the environments that con- tain them as influences inflicted on people; the people themselves remain basi- cally passive. Bandura's analysis points out that this view is an oversimplification