Learning Theory

Key assumptions

• All behaviour is learnt

• Individual differences in behaviour are caused by different learning environments

• Personality is therefore governed by experiences - it is not innate

Classical conditioning

• Repeated pairing of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus results in stimulating properties extending to the neutral stimulus

• Neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus

Stimulus generalisation

• Conditioned responses generalise to other seemingly similar stimuli

• If you played a similar noise, but it wasn’t a bell, the dogs would still salivate

Discrimination

• Differentiating one stimulus from a seemingly similar other

• Dogs learn which sounds are associated with food, and which are not

• A dog learns which sounds are not paired with food, and will not salivate for those

Second-order conditioning

• Learning to associate another neutral stimulus with a conditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response

Stimulus extinction

• Conditioning can now be reversed

• If the bell is repeatedly presented without food, then the salivation response will get weaker until it disappears entirely

Conditioning personality

• Physiological responses are innate and unconditioned

• However, emotional responses can be conditioned and learned

• Pavlov conditioned one of his dogs to be confused, distressed and neurotic by making the unconditioned stimuli too similar to one another

Little Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920)

• 9mth old infant with no fear of rats, but scared of loud noise

• When Albert reached for the rat, the researchers hit a metal bar, with repeated interactions conditioning a fear of the rat

• Generalised to white rabbits, cotton wool and Father Christmas

• Classically conditioned an emotional fear response

• Negative emotional responses persisted after one month, no oppurtunity to test methods to unlearn fear responses

• Unclear if he remained scared throughout life or if extinction took place

Unlearning fears

• fear is a conditioned response

• Desensitisation - learning to associate a relaxed response with a feared stimulus

Unlearning unwantd behaviours

• Electric chock therapy used to unlearn unwanted behaviours

• Pair unwanted behaviour with an unpleasant stimulus

Operant conditioning

• Humans and animals motivated to experience pleasant events and avoid unpleasant events

• Shapes behaviour as we learn which actions lead to pleasant or unpleasant consequences

Reinforcement

• Positive = A reward

• Negative = Avoid something unpleasant

• Strengthens behaviour

Punishment

• Positive = Something unpleasant

• Negative = Remove something unpleasant

• Weakens behaviour

Skinner’s rats

• One rat placed in a box with a lever, randomly exploring the box and eventually pressing the lever

• Positive reinforcement = pressing lever dispensed food = more lever pressing

• Negative reinforcement = Pressing lever turned off electric shock

• Positive punishment = pressing lever caused electric shock = less lever pressing

Random reinforcement

• Reinforcing behaviour every time it is performed means it can disappear when reinforcement stops = extinction

• Reinforcing behaviour sometimes makes behaviour more consistent and resistant to change

• Rats learned if they kept pressing over and over, eventually they would get a trrat even if most of the time they got nothing

Shaping

• Rewarding behaviour that leads to the desired behaviour

• Pigeons in a box rewarded for facing lever, approaching lever etc

Learning fears

• fear comes from a bad consequence from interacting with that stimulus e.g. attacked by a dog = fear of dogs

• Avoiding a feared stimulus negatively reinforces phobia

Misattribution

• Misinterpret the cause of a consequence

• Reinforces behaviour despite that behaviour not actually causing the consequence

• Superstitions

Observational Learning

• Learn by watching other people and copying them

• Novel contexts

• Bobo doll

• When children watched adults beat up an inflatable doll, they also attacked the doll

Bandura - Obs learning

• Adult model played for 5 mins, aggressively or non-aggressively

• Control: no adult

• Children given ‘mild aggressive arousal’, then left to play for 20 mins

• Aggressive group showed more physical and verbal aggression than the non-aggresssive and control groups

• Partial imitation in aggressive group

Self-efficacy

• belief in ability to perform behaviour

• Learnt through past experiences

• Cognitive & self-fulfilling

Vicarious reinforcement

• Indirect learning as a result of consequences

• Reinforcement or punishment, leads to more or less imitation

Evaluation

• Accounts for environment

• Empirical validity

• Influential

• Simplistic

• Deterministic

• May just explain behaviours, rather than personality entirely