Behaviorist and Learning Aspects Personality

 

Applying Behaviorism: Personality Changes in Individual Differences

 

 

Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov studied the concept of Classical Conditioning, and how it can explain a complex personality dimension like neuroticism.

 

Pavlov was able to condition a response similar to neurotic behavior in a dog. In the experiment, Pavlov associated food presentation with a circle but not with an ellipse.

He gradually increased the roundness of the ellipse so it approximated the circle. When the dog could no longer discriminate the circle from the ellipse, it began to exhibit neurotic behaviors. (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 204).

 

John B. Watson was concerned with the perceived limitations of introspectionism and he developed, Behaviorism, a key learning approach in psychology. Watson wanted to develop a rigorous science and thus completely rejected introspection. According to Watson, thoughts and feelings elicited through introspection are unobservable and unscientific. (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 205)

 

Burrhus Fredrick Skinner elaborated on the Behaviorist and Learning aspects of personality. Working off of his predecessors work including Jones (1924) Systematic Desensitization (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 207), Skinner used Operant Conditioning, to determine the behavior change in animals. Skinner manipulated the environment in such a way that he was able to train animals (rats, pigeons) to do things (such as play badminton) (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 210).

 

According to Skinner, the direct observation of behaviors has been an ongoing conflict between behaviorism and most other psychological theorizing. He believed that the thing that we know as personality is merely a group of responses to the environment (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 210).  

 

A prime example of how to implement the Behaviorist theory is Benjamin Franklins’ Habit Chart (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 216).  In an attempt to improve the moral quality of life, Franklin made a list of thirteen virtues that he thought desirable. He wanted more temperance, frugality, industry, and humility. He noticed that the virtues were composed of specific behaviors, which together composed habits.  To change his habits, Ben constructed a calendar book, with rows of the virtues and columns of the days of the week. At the end of each day, he would put a black mark on his chart if he had violated the virtue that day. Aiming to create a clean slate, he had the reinforcement of seeing the number of black marks decrease, in this way, Franklin gradually minimized his bad habits (Personality: Classical Theories and Modern Research. Friedman & Schustack, 216).

 

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