Exam 3: Eysenck, Buss, Skinner

Hierarchy of behavioral organizations

Specific acts or cognitions

Habitual acts

Trait

Types/Superfactor

Specific acts or cognitions

individual behaviors or thoughts that may or may not be characteristic of a person

EX: a student finishing a reading assignment

Habitual Acts

Responses that reoccur under similar conditions; must be consistent

EX: if a student frequently keeps at an assignment until its finished 

Trait

important semi-permanent personality dispositions'; significant inercorrelations between different habitual behaviors 

EX: students would have the trait of persistence if they habitually complete class assignments until they are finished 

Types/Superfactor

a cluster of primary traits. §  . Eysenck recognized three general types—extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), and psychoticism (P).

Extraversion

consisting of 2 opposite poles—extraversion and introversion. -    Extraverts are characterized behaviorally by sociability and impulsiveness and physiologically by a low level of cortical arousal. Introverts, by contrast, are characterized by unsociability and caution and by a high level of cortical arousal

Neuroticism

a bipolar factor consisting of neuroticism at one pole and stability at the other. High scores on N may indicate anxiety, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or criminality. Low scores indicate emotional stability.

Psychoticism

a bipolar factor consisting of psychoticism at one pole and superego function at the other. High P scores indicate hostility, self-centeredness, suspicion, and nonconformity.

Diathesis-stress model

which suggests that some people are vulnerable to illness because they have both genetic and an acquired weakness that predisposes them to an illness

three outcomes of the evolutionary process

Adaptations

By-products

Noise

Adaptations

 These are evolved strategies or mechanisms that were selected for because they solved recurrent survival or reproductive problems faced by our ancestors.

Examples include the human capacity for language or the emotion of jealousy, which served specific functions in an ancestral environment.

By-products

These are traits that happen as a result of adaptations but were not directly part of the functional design and did not solve survival or reproductive problems themselves. They are essentially side effects.

An example in humans might be the ability to read or write, which is a by-product of our large, complex brains (an adaptation) but wasn't a selected-for ability in an ancestral context.

Noise

This occurs when evolution produces random changes in design that do not affect function. These variations are produced by chance, such as through random mutations, and are not selected for or against by natural or sexual selection.

An example is whether one has an "innie" or an "outie" bellybutton

Psychological mechanism

Internal and specific cognitive, motivational, and personality systems that solve specific survival and reproductive problems.

Surgency/Dominance

Involves the disposition to experience positive emotional states and to engage in one’s environment, and to be sociable and self-confident. Synonymous with extraversion

agreeableness/hostility

A person’s willingness and capacity to cooperate and help the group on the one hand or to be hostile and aggressive on the other

Emotional Stability/neuroticism

involves one’s ability to handle stress or not and the disposition to experience anxiety, depression, or guilt

Conscientiousness:

one’s capacity and commitment to work and to be focused and detial-oriented

Openness

Involves one’s propensity for innovation and ability to solve problems

Fundamental assumptiions of behaviorism

Behavior is a result of environmental and historical factors (determinisim) and that behavior is learned thorough the consequences of actions

Law of effect

Thorndike’s principle that responses to stimuli followed immediately by a satisfier tend to strengthen the connection between those responses and stimuli; that is, they tend to be learned.

John B Watson

o   Human behavior cam ne studied objectively

o   Consciousness and introspections must play no role in scientific study of behavior

o   Goal of psychology if the prediction and control of behavior and can be best reached through study of stimulus response connections.

Classical conditioning

o   A response is drawn out of an organism by a specific identifiable stimulus

o   A neutral or conditioned stimulus is paired with an unconditional stimulus a number of times until it is capable of bringing about a previously unconditioned response

Operant conditioning 

A type of learning in which reinforcement, which is contingent upon the occurrence of a particular response, increases the probability that the same response will occur again.

shaping

is a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approcimations, and finally the desired behavior itself

What are conditions are present during shaping?

o   Through this process of reinforcing successive approximations, the experimenter or the environment gradually shapes the final complex set of behaviors

§  3 conditions are present:

·       The antecendent (A): refers to the environment or setting in which the behavior takes place

·       The behavior (B): A boy dressing himself.

·       The consequences (C): the reward, candy.

Reinforcement:

Strengths the behaviors

Rewards the person 

Positive reinforcement

Strengthened response following the presentation of a rewarding stimulus

Negatitve reinforcement

Strengthened response following the removal of a unwanting stimulus

Positive punishment

weakened response following the presentation of an unpleasant stimulus

EX: spanking

Negatitve punishment

Weakened response following the removal of a reward

EX: grounding

Generalized reinforcer

Associated with more than one primary reinforcer:

Attention

Approval

Affection

Submission of others

Money

Continuous schedule

the organism is reinforced for every response

Intermittent schedule

the organism is reinforced on only certain selected occurrences of a response

Fixed-ratio

the organism if reinforced intermittently according to the number of responses it makes 

Variable-ratio

reinforced after the nth response on the average

Fixed-interval

the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated period of time

Variable-interval

the organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of time

Operant extinction

Tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively weakened upon reinforcement

What are Skinner’s inner states?

Self-awareness

Drives

Emotions

Purpose and intention

What are skinner’s complex behaviors?

higher mental processes

creativity

unconscious behavior 

dreams

social behavior 

Self-awareness

believed that humans not only have consciousness but are also aware of their consciousness; not only aware of their environment but are also aware of themselves as part of their environment 

Drives

explanatory fictions; refers to the effects of deprivation and satiation and to the corresponding probability that the organism will respond

Emotions

the contingencies of survival and reinforcement

Purpose and intention

exist within the skin, but they are not subject to direct outside scrutiny

Higher mental processes

thinking, problem solving, and reminiscing are covert behaviors that take place within the skin but not inside the mind

Unconscious behavior

behavior is labeled unconscious when people no longer think about it because it has been suppressed through punishment

Dreams

covert and symbolic forms of behavior that are subject to the same contingencies of reinforcement as other behaviors are

Social behavior

individuals establish groups because they have been rewarded for doing so

What are the counteracting strategies?

Escape

Revolt 

Passive resistance

Escape

people withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or psychologically. Find it difficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to be mistrustful of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of noninvolvement 

Revolt

against society’s control behave more actively, counterattacking the controlling agent

Passive resistance

Are more subtle than those who rebel and more irritating to the controllers than those who rely on escape believed that passive resistance is most likely to used where escape and revolt have failed.

What is inappropriate behavior according to skinner?

Excessively vigorous behavior

Excessively restrained behavior

Blocking out reality

Self-deluding response

Self-punishment