Dollard & Miller Behaviorist/Learning Theory of Reinforcement

Four Fundamentals

Coming from a behavioral and psychodynamic school of thought, John Dollard and Neal
Miller attempted to combine the two. Originally working with rats, Dollard & Miller found
that they could apply many aspects of animal research to human beings. They proposed a new
theory in behaviorism called reinforcement theory. There are four fundamentals to their
theory: drive, cue, response, and reward. Drive, or the want, is the internal stimuli or change
within someone that compels them to act. There are two kinds of drive: primary/innate drives
such as hunger, and secondary/learned drives such as fear. Cue, or the notice, is the external
stimuli or change within the environment that someone detects. Cue can also be internal, but
is related to drive. Response is how someone chooses to act in response to the cue. In other
words, it’s what someone does. If the response is successful in satisfying the drive, then it is
rewarded and the behavior is reinforced. However, if the response fails to satisfy the drive,
then the behavior is not reinforced and will eventually become extinct or less likely to occur
in the future (Phares & Chaplin, 1997, 311).

Stimulus Generalization

Dollard and Miller believed in the idea of stimulus generalization, or the grouping of similar
stimuli together. As a result, behaviors that occur in one situation will be the same in similar
situations. Humans categorize and generalize and this is what helps them get through their
day. Another type of generalization is mediated-stimulus generalization, or when learning a
response in one setting is generalized to another because of their similarity. When someone
learns to label someone or something as having a certain characteristic, such as a bear being
scary then all bears become scary to that person. Lastly, Dollard and Miller emphasized the
importance of language in cue-producing response. Using certain words when labeling
something or someone influences behavior, such as calling something fun versus calling it
procrastination. Thus, learning is crucial in the lives of human beings according to Dollard
and Miller (Phares & Chaplin, 1997, 313).

Structure of Personality

Dollard and Miller proposed the idea that infant has innate characteristics: specific reflexes,
innate response hierarchies, and primary drives. As the name implies, specific reflexes allow
the infant to respond to very specific stimuli. Innate response hierarchies is the preference of
certain responses to stimuli over the others in a specific situation. Primary drives are the
innate internal stimuli such as hunger, thirst, etc. These three shape the infant’s personality
through drive reduction and reinforcement from parents. In other words, through these basic
characteristics and learning, the infant can become a fully functioning adult over time (Phares
& Chaplin, 1997, 314).

The Social Learning Theory of Julian B. Rotter

In developing social learning theory, Rotter departed from instinct-based psychoanalysis and
drive-based behaviorism. He believed that a psychological theory should have a
psychological motivational principle. Rotter chose the empirical law of effect as his
motivating factor. The law of effect states that people are motivated to seek out positive
stimulation, or reinforcement, and to avoid unpleasant stimulation. Rotter combined
behaviorism and the study of personality, without relying on physiological instincts or drives
as a motive force.
The main idea in Julian Rotter's social learning theory is that personality represents an
interaction of the individual with his or her environment. One cannot speak of a personality,
internal to the individual, that is independent of the environment. Neither can one focus on
behavior as being an automatic response to an objective set of environmental stimuli. Rather,
to understand behavior, one must take both the individual (i.e., his or her life history of
learning and experiences) and the environment (i.e., those stimuli that the person is aware of
and responding to) into account. Rotter describes personality as a relatively stable set of
potentials for responding to situations in a particular way.

Rotter sees personality, and therefore behavior, as always changeable. Change the way the
person thinks, or change the environment the person is responding to, and behavior will
change. He does not believe there is a critical period after which personality is set. But, the
more life experience one has building up certain sets of beliefs, the more effort and
intervention required for change to occur. Rotter conceives of people in an optimistic way.
He sees them as being drawn forward by their goals, seeking to maximize their
reinforcement, rather than just avoiding punishment.