BEHAVIORAL AND SO-

CIAL LEARNING THE-

ORIES
 Behaviorism
• A third group of scientists working in the late 1890s.
• They contributed to the founding of psychology in different ways.
• This group also was influenced by Charles Darwin to study psychological processes
that are useful in survival.
• They were not interested in the adaptive functions of consciousness.

Their approach is known as behaviorism because they believed that it was not
possible to study conscious experience scientifically.
Instead, the behaviorist studied the adaptive value of learning from
experience.
Behaviorism
1) Ivan Pavlov
• Ivan Pavlov and his coworkers conducted a research on digestion in
dogs.
• They had surgically implanted tubes in the cheeks of the dogs  to study the
reflexive secretion of saliva during eating.
• Pavlov noticed that (the reflexive secretion of saliva) when the dogs saw food
being brought to them, not just when the food was placed in their mouths.
• He recognized that the dogs had learned to associate the sight of food
by salivating.
• He demonstrated that this interpretation was correct by conducting experi-
ments using a clicking metronome instead of the sight of food and a small
quantities of powdered meat.
• When the metronome and the meat powder were presented together, the
dogs quickly learned to salivate to the metronome alone.
 Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning

Before Conditioning

Unconditioned Stimulus Unconditioned Response

Neutral Stimulus No Response

 Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning
During Conditioning

Unconditioned
Unconditioned Neutral
Stimulus Response
Stimulus
Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning
After Conditioning

Conditioned Conditioned
Stimulus Response
Behaviorism
1) Ivan Pavlov

• His accidental discovery from the dog’s experiment was of tremendous impor-
tance to the new field of psychology.
• He had identified a simple form of learning or conditioning 

an inherited reflex (salivating) comes to be triggered by a stimulus that

has nothing to do with that reflex (the metronome)

• Pavlov had shown that even inherited reflexes could be influenced dramati-
cally by learning experiences.
• Pavlov thought that conditioning was so important to the survival of species.
Behaviorism
2) John B. Watson & Margaret Floy Washburn
• Pavlov’s research and theories were not immediately accepted in the United
States.
• But, in the 1910s and 1920s the concepts were taken up in the writing of be-
haviorists John B. Watson and Margaret Floy Washburn.
• They agreed with Pavlov that the importance of conditioning went far beyond
salivating dogs.
• Most human behavior was learned through classical conditioning.
• Until his death in 1990s, B. F. Skinner was the leading exponent of behavior-
ism.
Behaviorism
3) Social Learning Theory
• Albert Bandura is the leading spokesperson for the most contemporary be-
havioral psychologists endorse a broader version of behaviorism that inte-
grates the study of behavior with the study of cognition.
• This broader viewpoint is referred as social learning theory:

“ the most important aspects of our behavior are learned from other per-
sons in society. We learn to be who we are from our family, friends and cul-
ture”.
Social Learning Theory: Personality (Albert Bandura)

• The social learning view of personality is vastly different from that of the psychoanalysts.
• Social learning theorists focus on a psychological processes that is learning.
• This theory has its origins in the behavioral writings of Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson and B. F.
Skinner.
• Each of these theorists argued that personality is no more than learned behavior and that the
way to understand personality is simply to understand the process of learning.
• Social learning theorists  the key concepts in the study of personality are not id, ego and
superego but classical conditioning, operant conditioning and modeling.

Social learning theorist:

“ Personality is simply something that is learned; it’s the sum total of all the
ways we have learned to act, think and feel. Because personality is learned
from other people in society”.
 Social Learning Theory

1) Role of Learning in Personality

• In the social learning view: a person develops an adequate personality if

he or she is exposed to good models and is reinforced for appropriate
behavior.
• An inadequate learning environment  inadequate personality development.
• The leading figure in social learning theory today is Albert Bandura.
• He agrees with the view from other behaviorists (Watson & Skinner)  per-
sonality is the sum of total of learned behavior.
• Bandura broke with traditional behaviorism in two main ways:
1) He sees people as playing an
active role in determining their own
actions, rather than being passively
acted on by the learning
environment.

2) He emphasizes the importance of

cognition in personality.
 Social Learning Theory

1) Role of Learning in Personality

• Bandura (1977) portrays us as playing an active role in our own lives by stating that
social learning is an example of reciprocal determination.

Reciprocal determination: not only is a person’s behavior learned but the social
learning environment is altered by the person’s behavior.

• The environment that we learn from, after all, is made up of people.

• If we behave toward them in a timid way, or a friendly way, or a hostile way, those
people will react in very different ways to us  will hence be teaching us very different
things about social relationships.
• The aggressive, overconfident person will learn that the world is a cold, rejecting place.
• The friendly person will learn that the world is warm and loving.

Personality is learned behavior, but it is also behavior that influences future learning
experiences.
 Social Learning Theory

2) Role of Cognition in Personality

• Our learned cognitions are the prime determinant of our behavior.
• People who believe that helping others only makes them less self-reliant will
be stingy toward people in need.
• People who think that other people find them boring will act quiet and shy.
• Bandura places particular emphasis on the role of our cognitions play about
our ability to handle the demands of life.

Self-efficacy: the perception that one is capable of doing what is necessary

to reach one’s goals- both in the sense of knowing what to do and being
emotionally able to do it.
 Social Learning Theory

2) Role of Cognition in Personality

Self-efficacy:
• People who perceive themselves as self-efficacious accept greater
challenges, expend more effort, and may be more successful in reaching
their goals.
• A person with a poor sense of self-efficacy about social poise may not accept
a promotion at work because it would involve giving many speeches and
having to negotiate with dignitaries.
• Although our perceptions of self-efficacy are learned from
- what others say about us
- our direct experiences of success and failure
- other sources
these cognitions continue to influence our behavior from the inside out.
 Social Learning Theory

2) Role of Cognition in Personality

• Bandura also emphasizes the importance of values and personality
standards in personality.
• We learn personal standards for our behavior from:
- observing the personal standards that other people model.
- the standards that others use when rewarding or punishing us.
• When we adopt those standards for ourselves and use them to evaluate our
own behavior – we have developed self regulation.

• Self regulation:

“ When we behave in ways that meet our personal standards, we

cognitively pat ourselves on the back – we reinforce ourselves”.
 Social Learning Theory

2) Role of Cognition in Personality

• We generally do not actually say to ourselves, “ Good going, you did okay!

• Rather we feel a self-reinforcing sense of pride or happiness when we have

met our standards.

• We punish ourselves (feel guilty, disappointed)  fail to meet our personal

standards.
 Social Learning Theory

3) Situationism and Interactionism

• Some situations tend to make us cheerful and some make us gloomy.
• B. F. Skinner (1953) argued that behavior is determined by the situations in
which people find themselves, not traits inside the person.
• This is known as situationism.
“ it suggests that our behavior is consistent only as long as our
situations remain consistent.

• A woman might be friendly most of the time when she is with her family, but
cold and distant when she is with her gossipy coworkers, and stiff and formal
with her boss.
• People behave in ways that suit their situations – because situations are apt
to change – behavior cannot be consistent enough to be adequately
described in terms of personality traits.
 Social Learning Theory

3) Situationism and Interactionism

• Social learning theorists suggested a constructive compromise
between the trait and situationism positions.
• The solution known as person x situation interactionism.
• It suggests that our behavior is influenced by a combination of characteristics
of the person and the situation.
• Example  one person might be relatively calm and relaxed when not
frustrated or threatened. If this person encounters a stressful situation
(interviewing for a new job)  he/she might react with intense anxiety and
irritability.
- Another person in contrast might be calm and relaxed in both stressful and
nonstressful situations.
• The concept means: - different people react to the same situation
differently.
- the same person often behaves quite differently in
different situations.
 Social Learning Theory

3) Situationism and Interactionism

• The essential point of interactionism:
- The only way to fully describe a person’s personality is in terms of “if…then”
statements.
- “If he feels liked by others, then he is cheerful and kind. If he thinks other
people don’t like him, then he is gloomy and sarcastic.”
- Such if…then statements provide a description of our personalities that
allows a prediction of future behavior in a variety of situations.
 Social Learning Theory

3) Situationism and Interactionism

• To social learning theorists: the “person variables” in the person X situation
interaction are:
- the cognitive (beliefs)
- motivational (goals)
- emotional tendencies that we have acquired through social learning and
that determine how we respond to different situations.
• People play an active role in choosing and even creating the situations that they
experience.
• Example: A very shy person may avoid social situations, whereas an aggressive
person would tend to seek out challenging situations and might even provoke
hostile encounters with others.

The situations that interact with our personal characteristics do not just
happen to us at random: we play an important role in selecting and creating
many of the situations in which we live.