PSYCH Theories EXAM 4

Watson and his parents

Watson and his parents

-his mom named him after a well-known minster at the time

  -she actually planned a career for him-> she wanted him to be a minster

 -she shaped him in this direction for many years and even applied to Princeton Theological Seminary

-His dad was a local gentry, but the family lost their money (nowadays his father would be considered an alcoholic with explosive anger issues)

  -his dad spent most of his time drinking and as the years went on, he spent less and less time with his family to the point of eventually abandoning them

Both of his parents’ families on both sides ostracized Watson’s parents. Why was this the reason

the dad’s side because he thought he married beneath him & the mom’s side because of Watson’s dad drinking

Watson grew up poor and in poverty, but his mom’s faith sustained the family

-they got a lot of charity from their church

-unfortunately, Watson’s dad left a mark on his son

  -Watson fought his way all through school and was given the nickname SWATS

In 1984, Watson entered Fermen University through charity through his mom’s church and failed to graduate on time( dang that’s craaazzzyyyy)

-it took him five years to graduate because one of his professors told the class that he wouldn’t grade the final exam if they didn’t turn the pages to him in the correct order

   -Watson decided to turn his exam in with the reverse pages, failed the course, & had to repeat his senior year

    ^this type of behavior marked his entire life-> he worked hard to achieve fame & success but would later sabotage it due to his impulsiveness and stubbornness

Watson’s plan to go to the seminary died when his mother passed away

-however, he managed to get a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago

  -there he studied animal model experimental psychology (dealt with animals like rats)

    -he was a star student but was also working several jobs & in addition had a very busy romantic life(emphasis on the VERY)

While working on his doctorate degree, he secretly married one of his graduate students(yeahhhhh)

-that girl was 19-year-old Mary Ickes( HOW OLD WAS THIS MAN SOMEONE GOOGLE???!!!!)

  -she was a society girl from a rich prominent family

-the year before their marriage went public, Watson had an affair with someone else( DAMN)

  -Mary forgave him, but her brother Harold Ickes(who was a prominent attorney advisor)  didn’t, thus he had an intense hatred for Watson(real)

Watson eventually graduated and taught in Chicago for a brief period of time. Then he negotiated a deal with John Hopkins

-this deal made him the highest paid psychologist in the US at the time

-him and Mary moved to Baltimore where Watson taught and set up his lab

  -he also returned to cheating on his wife (DANG; 20 bucks it was with a graduate kid)

It was at John Hopkins in 1919-1920 where he produced one of the most famous research projects in psychology: The Little Albert Experiment

-you can find several websites that deal with this experiment

  -Wikipedia is a good site to see how this study went

-Watson made several different versions of this study over the years & his original lab books were destroyed in a fire, so different websites have different versions of this story

Little Albert Study basis

Watson AND Reynor did the Little Albert study( give my girl some credit smh)

-was based on emotional learning in humans

  -Pavlov did the same things as Watson but with animals(in his case dogs)

Watson found Three Things when Humans are Learning in the Little Albert Study. What were they?

1.     Generalization: producing the same response to similar stimuli

a.     EX. in the little Albert experiment, the boy was presented with a white rabbit; the boy learned to generalize that fear with similar stimuli like a white Santa Claus beard

2.     Discrimination: producing a different response to similar yet different stimulation

3.     Extinction: the fact that conditioning fades if you produce a conditioning stimulus alone without the conditioned stimulus

a.     If Watson kept presenting the white rabbit without the loud noise, the fear that Albert learned & developed would have faded

What the Little Albert Study did( besides traumatize a chiLD)

1.     Started the science school of behaviorism

2.     Made Watson famous( like HELLA FAMOUS)

a.     Was a spokesman, ambassador, and a literal embodiment of the Behavioral Movement

b.     His fame led to radio show appearances & tours that got sold out for his speeches

c.     Multiple magazine articles about him & books including the bestseller How to Raise your Child

HOW WATSON SAID TO RAISE YOUR CHILDREN (How to Raise your Child book)

-reading this makes me question how TF he got a degree because what 🧍🏻‍♀️

-Treat them as though they were young adults

-dress them, bathe with care and circumstances

-let your behavior always be objective & kindly firm

-Never let them hug or kiss them or sit on your lap & shake hands with them in the morning(TF shake hands??)

-Give them a pat on the head if they’ve done an extraordinarily good job( TF I DONT EVEN TREAT MY DOG LIKE THIS)

what were the basic ideas of Watson’s behavioral theory

-evolutionary continuity

-reductionism

-determinism

evolutionary continuity

Behavior is behavior; the only thing that separate man’s behavior from animals is the complexity of man’s behavior

  -therefore, if we study animals we can study humans

we can break behavior down all the way to neurons and neurotransmitter activity

reductionism

reductionism

 -break behavior down into its component parts

 -trying to understand what’s reinforcing the behavior, the antecedents, what’s happening before it & what the consequences are

  -EX. When someone tells you ‘My kid is bad’, you try to understand what they’re talking about, which might lead them to say, ‘he throws a fit’. Little by little we start to get more specifics.

behavior is never accidental we never do things on accident

determinism

determinism

  -we’re controlled by the antecedents and consequences surrounding our behavior

  -antecedent might be due to prior experiences

-we are controlled without realizing it

  -EX. Did you accidentally sit in the chair where you usually sit in class?

You need empirical evidence; observable events one can measure

empiricism

empiricism

-because you need events you can measure and you can be observable, they have to be scientifically verified

  -has to be something directly observable

  -EX. Watson would say you cannot study thoughts

      -He would say we can study a child hitting a head against a wall or we can study ‘evil/bad’ because we can see what this ideal/term might mean

Even though Watson was the founder of a new school called Behaviorism it should be stated that he did see some value in Freudian school of thought( it all connects back to Freud mygoAWD)

-Freudian school of thought was currently taking over the US at the time

-despite this, it didn’t stop Watson from picking at the Freudians every chance he got

  -Watson was pretty confident in his theory( the twitter disputes would’ve gone craaazzyyyy)

you are born with a blank slate

tabula rasa

tabula rasa

-Watson advocated for this

-if we’re born with a blank slate, it means that everything, we do is due to our environment

  -your environment makes you who you are today based on radical behaviorism

Watson was sleeping with his graduate student Rosalie Raynor( ANOTHER GRAD KID THANK YOU)

-he’s the reason the ethics code was founded actually

- his brother-in-law (Mary’s brother) hired a private detective that found out about the affair

  -not only this but also love letters that Watson wrote to Rosalie

When Mary filed for divorce, Watson decided to go with it so they had a public court trial

-this led to an intense public court trial between the daughter of a high society figure & world-famous psychologists( not even the Kardashians show is this intense)

-the peak of the battle was when the brother-in-law released Watson’s love letters to the press( DDDAAAAANNNGGGGGG)

-Mary did get a divorce(SLAY)

  -because of this John Hopkins fired Watson(dang)

  -trying to avoid being fired Watson quickly married Raynor but JH fired him anyways(LMAO THEY SAID NO HOE)

Watson assumed he would be snapped up by some other prestigious school, but soon learned that the scandal ruined his academic career

-there were no more academic doors open to him

-therefore, he took his skills to Madison Avenue & the J. Walter Thompson Ad Agency

  -using his charms, abilities, & ideas about behaviorism he made a fortune and became the first millionaire psychologist( the only thing I aspire to become from this man’s life)

    -he continued to write articles for popular magazines, did lecture tours, & continued to push for the cause of behaviorism

    -his looks, charms, and notoriety were prominent in his career until he retied

In 1935, Rosalie passed. Thus, after her death Watson increased his use of alcohol

-he retired to a farm in Western Connecticut and isolated himself from everything and everybody he’d ever known, except for scotch

  -had very little contact with his kids expect for one son who represented him in public

Two things worth noting about Watson’s son

1.     He became a Freudian Psychologist

2.     Committed suicide 4 years after his father’s death

Watson spent his time in the farmhouse working on memoirs, putting his papers together & doing physical farm labor he did in his youth.

One afternoon his secretary came out to the farm & Watson was standing with a bottle of scotch in front of his fireplace & inside were all of his memoirs and paperwork

He told his secretary “when you are dead you are all dead”

-he died in 1958 alone

-despite all of his affairs he was alienated

-he moved throughout his life touching many people but not many touched him

  -possible exception was with Rosalie

  -he didn’t really make human contact with anyone else

research on Watson’s theory

Watson’s behavioral psychology was originally called Pavlovian Conditioning

-we now call it classical conditioning

-his ideas spurred a lot of research in the US

  -some of this research was done by Freudians

  -reason was because they were trying to discredit his theory( LOL THEY REALLY HATED EACH OTHER)

One of the scientists that researched Watson’s theory was named Joseph Wolpe

-Wolpe was known for systematic desensitization

-reasoned that Watson had used conditioning to produce a phobia in Little Albert

  -said that “if a phobia can be conditioned, then can’t we uncondition a phobia”

  -he discovered we can through a technique called Systematic Desensitization aka Counterconditioning of Phobias

systematic desensitization

involved getting the client as relaxed as possible and then gradually introducing the phobic object

   -over the course of 10 sessions the anxiety over the phobic object would be replaced with feelings of relaxation

Peter Experiment

Peter was scared of white rabbits, so they gradually exposed Peter to the rabbit until he could hold the rabbit with no fear

^with this technique Wolpe validated Watson’s work and provided a basis for applied behavioral psychology

   -we can use this to extinguish phobias

Who came after Watson that changed the way we looked at the world and was a big influence in the Behaviorist movement

B.F. Skinner( girlboss)

Skinner and his parents

-was brought up under strict parenting

-his dad was an up-and-coming lawyer(attorney) but was forced to defend a local popular murderer

   -his dad got the murderer off, but it ruined his career-> the only job he could get was a coal company lawyer

   -this devastated his mom more than his dad-> she was a socially ambitious mom

     -throughout their marriage she never let Skinner’s dad that he lost his OG job and had to go into coal labor

To escape his unhappiness, Skinner spent his time in a work shed behind his house. What did he particularly do

he spent hours constructing mechanical devices like:

-wagons, seesaws, carousels, slingshots, model airplanes, & a steam canyon

     -the canyon shot carrots and potatoes over houses

-he trained pigeons to play ping pong and was very interested in animal behavior

Famous story that demonstrates skinner and his personality( this religion conundrum crisis)

-Skinner grew up in a household that was very religious in Episcopalian beliefs

-his mom was very critical of other religious, but extremely critical of Catholics

  -he grew up believing that his higher power hated Catholics & only loved Episcopalians

When Skinner was 12, he got into classical music & decided to write a term paper for school about all the great Episcopalian composers

-when he started to research the composers he discovered a shocking fact → all of his beloved composers(Brot, Bronze, Beethoven) were all Catholic

   -this confused him very deeply because if his higher power hated Catholics why would he give them such talent

   -he began to wonder if everything with his higher power was wrong & even wondered if it existed

SO HE DECIDED TO TEST IT( oh lawd)

-he would stand on his bed and say out loud “I am going to jump. If you want me to believe in you catch me and keep me from falling”( thats not how it works bestie but pop off i guess)

   -he came up with a series of these experiments & proved to his satisfaction that indeed his higher power didn’t exist

   -he became an atheist at the age of 12(wait pauSE hoW OLD) after forming a hypothesis & carrying out a series of experiments to test it

When Skinner attended college he majored in English & after graduation his parents agreed to support from for a year on the try for him to become a successful writer

-unfortunately he wasn’t very good at it(RIP)

-as a widely famous psychologists he wrote several books but they aren’t easy to read

   -he didn’t have the writing talent

How did Skinner find out about Behaviorism

Towards the end of the year, Skinner was working in a bookstore & read a magazine article about Watson

-it was then that Skinner discovered that Behaviorism clicked for him

-therefore, he talked his parents into sending him to graduate school to become a behaviorist psychologists 

   -his parents agreed, and he studied in Harvard & taught there and also taught at the University of Minnesota & University of Indiana

Skinner returned to writing & wrote several books. Skinner’s best two known books are the following:

1.Beyond Freedom and Dignity: call for getting over the idea of free will

   -he didn’t believe free will existed 

2. Walden Two: a novel that was about a utopian communal village based on behavioral principles

   -everyone in the community acting/operating like machines based on reinforcement

 -the book became a bestseller selling over 2 million copies

Skinner’s theory is based on operant conditioning, in which we have two types of behavior; what are they

respondent and operant behavior

Skinner’s fundamental idea for behavior was

behavior can be controlled by its consequences or what follows the behavior ^→ Operant conditioning has a stimulus, a response & a reinforcement

     -Antecedents, behaviors, and consequences is the same thing as saying stimulus, response & reinforcement

-said the basis for behavior is reinforcement

      EX. You see your significant other(stimulus) & tell them they look nice (behavior or behavior), which is followed by a hug and kiss(reinforcement). If they give you a hug, you’re more likely to compliment in the future, whereas if they slap you then you’re less likely to compliment them

Skinner said that responses that get reinforced will __ and those that don’t get reinforced will __

get strengthened/more likely to occur in the future

be weakened/ less likely to occur in the future

Watson looked at __ behavior while Skinner looked at __ behavior

respondent; operant

what precedes your behavior or response

the stimulus

was used on a number of different animals

the skinner box

The Rat and the Skinner Box in general

the rat explores the environment that it is in(in this case the box)

  -as they’re exploring the environment, they learn to press the lever to press food either by accident or by trial/error

  -the more they pressed the lever the more they got food

Skinner designed a large number of experiments using that Skinner Box

-it started off simple but continued to reinforce

-he tried out his box without using food as reinforcement & developed some schedules of reinforcement that could be used to reinforce behavior

patterns or rates providing or withholding reinforcement

schedules of reinforcement

schedules of reinforcement

  -helps one to be more engrained & learn more deeply

  -with continuous reinforcement we get tired of things & this keeps one from getting tired of it

     -this even helps for the behavior to more likely occur

  -EX. if you gave a child candy every time they raised their hand in class, by about the 15^th time they will probably become tired of it -> at one point they are going to get satiated

what are the four types of schedules of reinforcement

fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable interval, variable ratio

based on the amount of time you provide the reinforcement or the number of responses you expect before you give a reinforcement

the four schedules of reinforcement

you set a time before you provide the reinforcement

fixed interval reinforcement schedule

fixed interval reinforcement schedule

   -reinforcement following a fixed amount of time after a response

   -you set it an interval

   -EX. a child gets angry every five minutes, so what you might determine that every 5 min that they don’t have an outburst, he gets a candy

  -EXAMPLE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: weekly paycheck-> you know that after 7 days you get paid; it’s the same time every week/ consistent period of time. If you don’t get it, you might get angry because you’ve been reinforced to expect your paycheck every week

reinforcement following a fixed number of responses

fixed ratio reinforcement schedule

fixed ratio reinforcement schedule

 -reinforcement is followed by a certain number of responses( measuring frequency )

-EX. after every three times Bob raises his hand in class, he gets a piece of candy

  -EXAMPLE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: You have a 10-year-old working for Nike. For every soccer balls they sow they get a quarter. They don’t get anything for sowing 9 because you’ve already set it

reinforcement after an unpredictable amount of time

variable interval reinforcement schedule

Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedule

   -you set it up but its unpredictable to the other person

   -you pick random numbers

   -EX. after five minutes of not showing anger, you’d give the child candy but then instead of giving them candy after five minutes you might change it to 8 minutes and so forth

   -EXAMPLE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: You want to help your roommate study for their test. If you pop your head into their room & they’re studying, you give them a dollar but if they’re not then you don’t give them anything. You might pop in their room in 3 min or 10 min->you don’t know when they’re going to pop into your room, but it will be after a certain period of time

reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses

Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule

Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule

-worst or best

  -strongest contributor to addictions→ this is why gambling is so addictive

  -you get reinforcement after a certain number of responses but those responses varies

  -hardest to teach someone to unlearn-> behavior that’s reinforced on this schedule is almost resistance to change

  -EX. With gambling you don’t know when you’re going to get money, thus you continue on playing

  - EXAMPLE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: gambling-> you could win after 4, 8, or 200 spins; you don’t know when but eventually you’ll win

explanation of acquisition of complex behavior

successive approximation

shaping of behavior(skinner)

-Skinner believed we can shape behavior through rewarding successive approximations

-Back to the rat with the lever: if you think the rat is not going to press the lever, then you’re going to reward successful approximations

   -let’s say they’ve never pressed the lever before, so you might design an experiment saying ‘I’m going to reward the rat next time they’re near the lever’

  -once they’ve learned that behavior you might go to the next level-> actually pressing the lever

-if someone has never learned something, you start off at the basics & gradually shape the behavior you want to see

   -EX. teaching a kid how to ride a bike(might reward them for putting their feet on the pedals if they can’t)

superstitious behavior( skinner)

Skinner believed that we are sometimes reinforced by accidents after we reinforce a behavior

  -EX. a baseball player who believes he must wear a certain way when he plays a game

-this is what we call superstitious behavior, but Skinner didn’t believe it was so superstitious

 -A single reinforcer of this kind may be powerful enough for a person or animal to repeat that accidental reinforced behavior more frequently for a while

accidental reinforcement

superstitious behavior

ability to exert power over the variables that determine our behavior

self control

self control of behavior( skinner)

 -in stimulus avoidance, we control ourselves by removing ourselves from something that’s unpleasant

 -EX. an alcoholic may engage in self-control by removing liquor from their home to avoid engaging in drinking

Self Administration Satiation

we exert control to cure ourselves of bad habits by overdoing the behavior

 -EX. you’re trying to quit smoking, so you sit in a closet and keep smoking until you puke

 -idea is that after you do this you won’t want a cigarette for a while, therefore you start to practice other techniques that’ll help you forget the bad habit

aversive stimulation

another technique we use to engage in self control

-EX. you wear a rubber band around a wrist & every time you say a curse word you snap your wrist with the rubber band; the key is you need to snap the band yourself

self reinforcement

when you reward yourself with good or desirable behaviors

  -EX. after a long day of studying, you go buy yourself a smoothie

therapy that applies principles of reinforcement for changing behavior

behavior modification

behavior modification

 -very successful in children and adults

 -commonly used with individuals with disabilities but it can also be used for people who don’t have one

 -working to try to increase behavior

individuals in an institution/hospital earn tokens that they can exchange for reinforcers

token economy

token economy

   -application of behavior modification

   -EX. similar when you go to an arcade and win tokens for a prize

   -unfortunately, when we go back into the real world these tokens aren’t given to us, thus we revert back to old behaviors

  -EX. a person goes into rehab for a month but sometimes when they leave, they relapse because they don’t have those reinforcers anymore

  -however, this works surprisingly well to change behaviors in institutions-> hence this is why you can train prisoners to do well & have good behavior

  -have been found to be effective only in which the settings they’ve been implemented in

application of aversive stimulus to decrease certain behavior

punishment

punishment

  -reducing the like hood for that behavior to occur again

  -as a reinforcer, it’s not effective in changing behavior from undesirable to desirable

 -does not teach people what to do rather it teaches us what not to do

aversive stimulus of which when you take it away it’s rewarded

negative reinforcement

negative reinforcement

 -the aversive stimulus continues until the desired response occurs & then the aversive stimulus stops

 -doesn’t always work-> positive is consistently effective

 -this is NOT PUNISHMENT; it’s a type of reward

 -EX. There’s a loud noise & when it’s gone it’s disregarded

effective form of behavior modification

overcorrection

overcorrection

-if used correctly, overcorrection helps restore the environment & helps promote positive practices in a child

-EX. a child sticks their chewing gum under their desk; the child is then required to clean off not only their own desk but everyone else’s as well

questions about human nature based on Skinner

-deterministic: environment determines what we do & how we act

-Emphasized the influence of nurture

-Focused on past and present: focus on the past to understand how overtime the behavior has been reinforced or punished to make it what it is today

-Uniqueness

-Equilibrium & growth

-Optimistic theory

aspect of applied behavior analysis; involves the importance of assessing the environment, the behavior, & the consequences

Functional Analysis

Functional Analysis

  -in order to understand a behavior, you have to know its consequences

  - we don’t know if something is positively reinforcing or punishing a person unless we understand their behavior & what happens to their behavior after the administration of the reward or punishment

being able to actually see or hear the behavior

direct observation

direct observation

 -EX. He wasn’t really interested in the question “What are your thoughts?” because you cant see a person’s thoughts-> he wasn’t an advocate of cognitive approaches

^Despite this, he didn’t deny the importance of self-report

people telling others what they are doing, what a situation is & what the consequences were afterwards

self report

approaches to skinner

direct observation, self report, physiological measurements

Skinner preferred the intensive study of Single Subject Design

  -he didn’t believe in collecting data from groups of individuals

    EX. at baseline, you’d count how many times a child bangs their head against the wall

Skinner believed that valuable and replicable results can be obtained without necessarily having to do statistical analyses

you can look at single subjects as long as you have a baseline and a pre/post intervention, of an individual to understand if something is reinforcing or not

Skinner’s single subject experiments follow a reversal experimental design

First Stage: baseline

  Experimental Stage: independent variables are introduced

  Reverse Stage: you take away that independent variable/intervention & determines whether some factor other than the variable is responsible for the leaning behavior

 

Skinner & his followers conducted thousands of operational conditioning experiments with very supportive results

-this is the most research & supported among any personality theory out there

-it’s also the most researched & supported of any of the psychological theories out there

-Primarily because of this research support behavior therapy drove psychology from the 1940s-1980s

In the 1960s, a number of schools popped up, but the only one that really lasted as a challenge to behavioral psychology was Cognitive Psychology

-by the 1980s it had become a real challenge to the behavioral school

  -mostly because of the rise of the computer industry & the need to understand how the human mind processed information

  -it is important to know that many cognitive approaches also include in their theories behavioral approaches

Right until his death, Skinner railed against the cognitive school, but today most Americans describe themselves not as cognitive psychologists but as

cognitive behaviorists

one of the most best known cognitive behaviorist was

Albert Bandura

what does S-R-R stand for

stimulus, response, reinforcement

what two animals did skinner mainly use in his research

rats and pigeons

name three approaches to assessing behavior

direct observation, self reports and physiological measurements

what concepts live on as part of skinner’s legacy

operant conditioning, skinner box, schedules of reinforcement, superstitious behaviors