Psychoanalytic Learning Theory - John Dollard & Neal Miller

Dollard & Miller

• In 1950, wrote Personality and Psychotherapy

  • Translation of psychotherapy into learning

• Both worked with (behaviorist) Clark Hull at Yale, who emphasized “unobservables” (drives) rather than observable environment

  • Drives originate

    • In the environment (hot sand to water), OR

    • In the person (hunger)

2 Types of Drives

• Primary

  • Physiological drives

    • Pain, hunger

• Secondary

  • Acquired on the basis of associating event with satisfaction/frustration of the primary drives

    • Fear from a painful stimulus

• Behaviors are reinforced to the degree that drives are reduced

Cues

• Discriminative stimuli that help inform how, when, and how quickly a response is made

  • Sights, smells, even internal dialogue!

Responses

• We have a multitude of possible responses to a given situation

  • The most likely response is called the dominant response

Rewards

• Primary and secondary rewards

The Gradient of (Effects of) Reward

• Essentially, the quicker a reward is given following a desirable behavior . . . The more likely the behavior will be strengthened!

  • Immediate versus delayed gratification

Anticipatory Response

• We learn to behave more quickly in response to reward or punishment

  • We are actually relatively poor at removing our hand from an electrical cord! Gets better with time . . .

  • Anticipation

• Relationships too!

The Learning Process

• The Learning Dilemma

  • If the dominant response reduces our drives, no additional learning will occur

  • If it does not, or if we do not like the dominant response, we have a dilemma!

• To create new learning, a situation to promote a desired response must be arranged

  • May need to “coax” the desired response verbally or via modeling

  • Undesired responses can be punished or, at the least, not rewarded

Extinction & Spontaneous Recovery

• Undesired responses that are not met with reward will eventually be extinguished

• However, the response can occasionally reoccur after time (spontaneous recovery)

  • They re-extinguish more quickly this time, when they are met without reward or with punishment

Critical Training Periods in Childhood

• Feeding

• Cleanliness Training

• Early Sex Training

• Anger-Anxiety Conflicts

Feeding

• What is the primary reinforcer?

• What is the secondary reinforcer?

• What behavior, when hungry, gets reinforced?

• Children who are not fed when crying learn to be apathetic and apprehensive

Cleanliness Training

• Initially, child learns that full bladder and bowels require urination/defacation

• But then needs to learn a more complex behavior (seeing bathroom, feeling toilet on legs, etc.)

• If this process is rushed, the child may learn to avoid bathroom for fear of punishment

Early Sex Training

• Masturbation is often met with punishment

  • Leads to approach-avoid anxiety . . .

• Child may become anxious when experiencing sexual feelings

Anger-Anxiety Conflicts

• Children are often frustrated by lack of skill, sibling rivalry, etc. —> anger

• Anger is often met with punishment

• Anger becomes very anxiety-provoking

  • Anger should be motivating, not simply labeled as “bad” and “repressed”

Approach-Avoidance Conflicts

• If one “end-state” is clearly positive with little negative, it is easy to make the decision!

  • GO FOR IT!

• Similarly, if one “end-state” is clearly negative with little positive . . .

  • GET THE HECK OUT OF THERE!

• Often, it’s not so easy . . . Four conflicts

Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict (often difficult)

• Choosing between two undesirable end-states (going to the dentist to get a root canal)

• Movement in either direction increases anxiety

• To get a change, one could increase (or decrease) the punishment of one of them . . .

Approach-Approach Conflict (not too bad)

• Choosing between two positive end-states

• Any movement in one direction will make it easier to attain, and thus they will move in that direction

Approach-Avoidance Conflict

• Choosing whether to approach or avoid an end-state with both positive and negative attributes

  • E.g., going to the work party

• At the point of “cross-over,” there is much anxiety

  • Relaxation training may be helpful to persons who have difficulty with such situations (which abound in our society)

Double Approach-Avoidance Conflict

• Choosing between two end-states, each with positive and negative aspects

• After the choice has been made, sometimes people “waffle” at the cross-over point and no longer approach the goal . . .

  • Again, relaxation training may be helpful

Application to Personality

The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• Frustration is a necessary and sufficient condition for aggression

• Frustration: “any interruption of a goal-directed behavior.”

• Too strong, but has survived in a weaker form:

  • Frustration that is intense or arbitrarily imposed increases aggression

Agression

• Is often rewarded

  • You may get what you want! (at least initially!)

• Is often elicited by cues in one’s environment

  • Observe others in the environment and sense what they expect you to do

• May be learned

  • From television and the like

Similar application to therapy

• Personality may be viewed in terms of habits

  • Links between stimuli and responses established by learning

• ALL behavior – normal or pathological – is established via drive-reduction learning

  • Learn to fear dog because previously bitten

  • Learning response is initially adaptive: dog —> fear —> run —> less fear

• Therapy involves replacing problematic habits

  • Place in room with puppies to reduce fear (extinguish)

Similar emphasis in psychotherapy

• Repression

• Regression

Repression

• Freud

  • Repression is motivated

  • Ideas are banished to unconscious

• Dollard and Miller

  • Repression is not thinking about a topic and being reinforced for not thinking about it (decreased anxiety)

Regression

• Freud

  • A more primitive defense mechanism to reduce anxiety

• Dollard and Miller

  • Animal and human research shows that enhanced drive (motivation) disrupts poorly learned responses and facilitates well-learned responses

  • Habits acquired in early life are better learned

Similar emphasis in Freud’s psychosocial development

• Freud

  • Conflict during psychosocial stages leads to neurotic personalities

• Dollard and Miller

  • Parents can produce conflict in the areas of hunger, elimination, sex, and aggression by punishing child’s attempt at drive reduction

Applications of Instrumental Conditioning: Parent Training

• Catch them being good!

  • Avoid accidentally “rewarding” bad behavior

• Use mild punishment for bad behaviors

  • Actively ignore bad behavior

  • Use “time outs” to minimize positive reinforcement

• Social skills training

  • Helps to increase rewards from social world

• Token economy

  • Earn and lose for good and bad behavior, respectively

Applications of Classical Conditioning: Therapy

• Flooding

  • Repeated pairing of aversive stimuli with reinforcement

    • Relaxation training (deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation)

      • You cannot be relaxed and tense at the same time!!

• Systematic Desensitization

  • Make hierarchy

  • Relaxation training

• Aversion Therapy

  • Repeated pairing of undesirable pleasurable stimuli with punishment

• Sensate Focus

  • Touch with goal of pleasure; relax with touch

Modeling (continued)

• Processes in Observational Learning

  • Attention

  • Retention

  • Motor Processes

  • Motivation

Attentional Processes

• Model

  • Age & Sex

  • Prestige & Status

    • The higher the better!

  • Kind of Behavior Performed

    • Complex are less imitated

• Observer

  • Self-Confidence & Esteem

  • Past Reinforcement

    • If previously reinforced (be like Daddy!), then more likely to imitate

Motor Reproduction & Motivation

• Can you do it?

• Do you want to do it?

  • Can be external or vicarious reinforcement (much self-reinforcement: set standards and give rewards to self)

    • Latter is related to self-efficacy and standards. If standards are too high —> depression

Self-Efficacy

• Definition: Belief that one can organize and execute given courses of action required to deal with prospective situations

• Four (4) sources:

  • Performance Attainment

    • Previous successes and failures

  • Vicarious Experiences

    • Seeing others succeed or fail

  • Verbal Persuasion

    • Other people telling you that you can/can’t do it

  • Physiological Arousal

    • Level of fear/calm

Measured of Perceived Control (associated with “Self-efficacy”)

• STEP 1: Reverse score items 3, 6, 7, 8, & 10

  • i.e., 1 —> 7, 2 —> 6, etc. . . .

• Step 2: Add responses from all 10 items

• MEAN: 52.0

• SD: 9.8

Internals

• DO have more influence on their environments

• Study harder and receive higher grades/evaluations

• Greater self-control, too:

  • Show fewer relapses when quitting smoking

  • More likely to engage in exercise to lose weight

  • More likely to wear seatbelts

  • Preventive dental care, too!