Personality - Behaviorism

Personality - Behaviorism
Behaviorism got its start in the beginning of the twentieth century with the work of John Watson. Watson argued that the only way to conduct scientific psychology was by focusing on observable behavior, not by making introspective self-reports. Watson also emphasized the importance of the environment in shaping behavior. He argued that animals, including humans, will work toward things that aid their survival and reproduction (e.g. food, water, sex) and avoid things that harm them. One of the people who followed in Watson's footsteps was B. F. Skinner, who extended Watson and other behaviorists' work into domains such as education and personality.

Basics of Behaviorism

The basic behaviorist experiment works as follows: a rat or human is given several response options, each of which is associated with a reward or a punishment. Typically, a rat is given the option of pressing one of two levers. Pressing one of the levers results in the delivery of sugar water or a food pellet; pressing the other lever has no result. The number of times a rat presses each lever is recorded. Over time, the number of lever- presses on the lever associated with the reward increases. Any result that causes an increase in lever pressing is called a reinforcer; the process by which the lever presses increases is called reinforcement. If the lever is associated with a punisher (e.g. an electric shock or a startling noise), the number of lever- presses decreases over time; this is called punishment.
B. F. Skinner called this process "operant conditioning"; an earlier behaviorist, Edward Lee Thorndike, had called it the "law of effect." The rate at which a rat (or a human) learns to start pressing one lever instead of another can be affected by different schedules of reinforcement or punishment. There are four main types of schedules:

1)A fixed-ratio schedule is one in which a certain, fixed number of lever-presses must be performed before the reinforcer is delivered. This schedule tends to result in bursts of behavior: the animal works until it receives a reward, then it pauses for a while, then it begins to press the lever again.

2)A variable-ratio schedule is one in which the reward appears on average after a certain number of presses, but the actual level of the award varies. This tends to result in continuous responses at a higher rate than a fixed-ratio schedule, since occasionally several rewards come in immediate succession.

3)In fixed-interval schedules, during which the award appears after a fixed period of time as long as there has been at least one response in that time, subjects tend to respond in bursts.

4)A variable-interval schedule is one in which the award appears at different times as long as there has been one response, subjects respond steadily, but at slower rates than in fixed- and variable-ratio schedules.

Applying Behaviorism to Personality

How can these rules of behavior, derived from experiments with rats, be applied to understanding human personality? Human behavior is rarely directly driven by primary reinforcers like food and sweet liquids. Behaviorists such as Skinner argued that most of human behavior is driven by secondary reinforcers, such as money and social praise, which derive their value from primary reinforcers. For example, we work for money because we know that it will result in food and other direct comforts. Over the course of a lifetime, we accumulate innumerable associations between stimuli we encounter, our behavioral responses to them, and the reinforcement or punishment that results. Since each person's history of exposure to such environmental contingencies varies, each person's behavior will also differ. Thus a person who had a frightening experience with a spider as a child will avoid spiders in the future; if the experience was particularly punishing, they may develop a phobia that has an overly strong influence on their behavior. A person who had never had such an experience would behave very differently if exposed to a spider.