THEORIES OF PERSONALITIES

Presented By: Muhammad Owais Khan

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• INTRODUCTION
• CONTRIBUTION IN PSYCHOLOGY
• THEORY CONCEPTS
• HUMAN NATURE
• OPERANT CONDITIONING
• CLASS CONDITIONING
• COMPARISON BETWEEN OPERANT CONDITIONING &
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
INTRODUCTION:

• Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August

18, 1990) was an American psychologist,
behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher.
He completed his B.A. in English Literature in 1926.
He received his PhD from Harvard University. He
was a professor of psychology at Harvard University
from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.
Pennsylvania, U.S. Cambridge.
THEORY CONCEPTS

• “Instead of a cause of behavior, personality was behavior” (Skinner 1953, p.285);

• “A self or personality is at best a repertoire.
• Operant behavior: Skinner’s whole system is based on operant conditioning. The likelihood
of the operant behavior will be increased by the positive reinforcement and negative
reinforcement.
• Secondary reinforcement: accounts for the maintenance of many responses.
• Successive approximation or shaping: the process of getting to more complex sorts of
behaviors by reinforcement.
• Superstitious behavior: no causal relationship between the response and the reinforce. e.g.:
rainmaking dance.
• Schedule of reinforcement: intermittent reinforcement schedule (fixed ratio schedule, fixed
interval schedule, varied ratio schedule, varied interval schedule).
• Aversive stimuli: punishment. Skinner disapproves punishment
because he thinks it covers up the reinforce of the response.

• Abnormal behavior: Skinner’s goal is to replace it with desirable

behavior by manipulating environment and reinforcement.

• Self-control: take action to alter the impact of external environments.

e.g.: stimulus avoidance, self-administered satiation, aversive
stimulation and self-reinforcement.

• Chaining: in secondary reinforcement, a response many produce or

alter some of the variables which control other response.
HUMAN NATURE

• Skinner sees human beings as “behaving organisms”, therefore sin

is not a topic for him.
 OPERANT CONDITIONING:

• Operant conditioning was first described by behaviorist

B.F. Skinner. His theory was based on two assumptions. First, the
cause of human behavior is something in a person's environment.
Second, the consequences of a behavior determine the possibility of
it being repeated.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING:

• Classical conditioning turns neutral stimuli into conditioned

stimuli, which elicit conditioned responses. Operant
conditioning, a term coined by B. F. Skinner, is sometimes called
instrumental learning and involves the modification of behaviors
through consequences.
COMPARISON BETWEEN OPERANT
CONDITIONING & CLASSICAL CONDITIONING1: