chapter 12:learning/cognitive theories

Behavioral Analysis/Radical Behaviorism/Scientifie Behaviorism

• Focused entirely on observable behavior but is not limited to external events.

• Such private behaviors as thinking, remembering, and anticipating are all observable by the person experiencing these.

• Human behaviors should be studied scientifically and that behavior can best be studied without reference to needs, instincts, or motives.

• This disagrees that people are motivated by internal drives and that an understanding of the drives is essential.

• It allows an interpretation of behavior but not an explanation of its causes.

Radical behaviorism

doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs, such as ego, traits, drives, needs, hunget, among others.

respondent behavior

• Skinner refers to behavior elicited or emitted by a known stimulus as _______, and all conditioned and unconditioned responses are examples.

• He believes that behavior can be explained and controlled purely by the manipulation of the environment that contains the behaving organism and that there is no need to take the organism apart or make any inferences about the events that are going on inside the organism.

Skinner

• has shown the greatest indifference to structural variables and de-emphasized the biological or hereditary determinants of personality traits.

• He believes that personality is but a collection of behavior patterns and that when we ask about the development of personality, we ask only of the development of these behavioral patterns.

Differential reinforcement and successive approximation

Two components of the shaping process of personality

Shaping

• part of the structure of personality.

• It is where reinforcement is used to create new responses out of the old.

Operant conditioning

• occurs when an organism's spontaneous activities are either reinforced or punished.

• Personality traits are the result of learned behaviors, which are reinforced over time.

• Reinforcement (positive or negative) increases the likelihood of a behavior, while punishment (positive or negative) decreases it.

Reinforcement

Any consequence that increases the likelihood of a response

Extinction of a response

occurs when it is no longer rewarded or reinforced.

Ratio schedule

• Reinforcement depends on the number of responses

• the organism will tend to respond faster.

Fixed schedules

• If reinforcement is dependent on time

• the organism will tend to pause after a reward.

Variable schedules

• If reinforcement appears irregularly

• the organism will keep going at a steady rate.

Behavioral Repertoire

• The collection of behaviors that an individual has learned over time, which constitutes their personality.

• Behaviors are shaped by the history of reinforcement and punishment.

Determinism

Skinner believed that behavior is determined by environmental factors and reinforcement histories, not by free will or internal traits.

Personality

viewed as a set of learned behaviors rather than innate traits.

Behavioral analysis

can be used to modify personality by changing reinforcement patterns, leading to behavior modification techniques.

Observational learning

• Bandura's theory suggests that humans are flexible and capable of learning a multitude of attitudes, skills, and behavior and that most parts of those are a product of vicarious or indirect experiences (plasticity).

• He believes that ________ is much more efficient than learning through direct experiences

Modeling

• Core of observational learning.

• Involves cognitive processes (adding and subtracting from the observed behavior) and is not simply a matter of imitation.

• It is symbolically representing and transmitting information and retaining it for necessary use.

processes governing observational leaming:

• Attention

• Representation

• Behavioral reproduction

• Motivation

Triadic reciprocal causation

• A system which assumes that human action is a result of an interaction among three variables- environment, behavior, and person (cognitive factors: memory, anticipation, planning, and judging).

• The relative influence of these depends on which factor is strongest at the moment

Cognition

• partially determines which environmental events people attend to, what value they place on these events, and how they organize these events for future use.

• Molded by both behavior and external influences

Bandura

hypothesized that "people evoke different reactions from their social environment by their physical characteristics-their age, size, race, sex, and physical attractiveness, before they say or do anything."

Human Agency

• The essence of humanness.

• Bandura believes that people are self-regulating, proactive, self-reflective, and self-organizing and that they have the power to influence their own actions to produce desired consequences.

• Core factors:

  • Intentionality

  • Forethought

  • Self-reactiveness

  • Self-reflectiveness

Intentionality

a proactive commitment to turn intentions into actions.

Forethought

• to set goals and anticipate likely outcomes of actions and select behaviors that will produce such outcomes.

• This enables people to break free from environmental constraints.

Self-reactiveness

• process of motivating and regulating own actions.

• This involves monitoring the progress toward fulfilling those choices.

Self-reflectiveness

examiners of own functionality having the ability to think about and evaluate own motivations, values, and life goals.

Self-efficacy

• defined as people's beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control over their own functions and environment.

• Bandura believed that this is the foundation of human agency.

• He distinguished between efficacy expectations and expectations.

Efficacy

refers to people's confidence that they have the ability to perform certain behaviors

Outcome expectancy

One’s prediction of the likely consequences of that behavior

Proxy agency

• involves indirect control over those social conditions that affect everyday living.

• People are able to manage their struggles/difficulties by relying on other people's competence and power.

Collective Efficacy

• People's shared beliefs in their ______ power to produce desired results

• This is the confidence people bring about group accomplishments.

Moral agency

Nonmaleficence and Beneficence

• External factors:

  1. a standard for evaluating our own behavior

  2. providing the means for reinforcement

• Internal factors:

  1. self-observation

  2. judgmental process

  3. self-reaction

Redefining the nature of behavior

justifying reprehensible actions by cognitive restructuring that permits the minimization or escaping of responsibility.

Distorting the consequences of behavior

being denial of one's own actions to avoid and ignore the consequences.

Dehumanizing the victims

attributing blame to the person on the other end.

Displacing responsibility

minimizing consequences by placing responsibility on an outside source.

Depression

Failure frequently leads to this, to which individuals undervalue their own accomplishments, resulting to chronic misery, feeling of worthlessness, and lack of purposefulness.

Phobias

• Fears that are strong enough and pervasive to have severe debilitating effects on one's daily life.

• Fears are learned by direct contact, inappropriate generalization, and observational experiences.

• are sustained by consequent determinants, being negative reinforcements.

Agression

acquired through observation of others, direct experiences with positive and negative reinforcements, training or instruction, and bizarre beliefs.

Cognitive Social learning theory

• Cognitive factors help shape how people will react to environmental forces.

• Julian Rotter and Walter Mischel

• Objects skinner’s explanation that behavior is shaped by immediate reinforcement and instead suggest that one’s expectations of future events are prime determinants of performance

Julian Rotter

• Human behavior is best predicted from an understanding of the interaction of people with their meaningful environments

• People’s cognitions, past histories, and expectations of the future are keys to predicting behavior

Locus of control

concept referring to individuals' beliefs about the extent to which their actions influence outcomes.

Internal locus of control

belief that one's actions significantly impact outcomes.

External locus of control

belief that external factors or fate controls outcomes.

Expectancy-value theory

• Behavior is determined by its expected outcome and the value of that outcome to the individual.

• This theory emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in decision-making and behavior.

Walter Mischel

• similar with Bandura and Rotter.

• He believes that cognitive factors, such as expectancies, subjective perceptions, values, goals, and personal standards, play important roles in shaping personality.

Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS)

• Proposes that behavior is influenced by the interaction of 5 cognitive-affective units encoding strategies, expectancies and beliefs, goals and values, affective responses, and competencies/self-regulatory plans.

• Emphasizes the situational variability of behavior and the consistency of behavior patterns within similar situations.

Delay of gratification

• ability to delay immediate rewards for larger, future rewards.

• Mischels famous Marshmallow Test demonstrated the importance of self-control in predicting future success.