Existence, Experiences and Free Will

1
Existence, Experiences and Free Will

• Do people have free will? Or are they driven by
  their reinforcement history, unconscious
  motivations and trait structures? If free will
  exists, what exactly does this mean, and how is
  it possible?

2
Phenomenological Approach

• Concentrates on the experience (phenomenon) of
  being alive and aware
• Approach is humanistic
• Individuals have free will
• The only way to understand another person is to
  understand his/her experience.

3
Humanistic Psychology

• Holism, as the humanist perspective considers the
  whole person rather than simply one or two parts.
  
• believe people are more than the sum of the parts
• The humanistic perspective is phenomenological,
• humanists emphasize everyone's individual frame
  of reference or point of view.

4
Existential Optimism Rogers

• People are essentially good.
• Suggests that people's behaviour is consistent
  with their self concept, which is their awareness
  of their self.
• Measured the self-concept with the Q sort.

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Differs from Freud

• Rogers sees people as basically good or healthy
• he sees mental health as the normal progression
  of life
• he sees mental illness, criminality, and other
  human problems, as distortions of the natural
  tendency. 
• Rogers theory is a relatively simple one.

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Actualizing Tendency

• Defined as the inherent motivation that is
  present in every life-form
• We are all motivated to develop our potential to
  the fullest extent possible. 
• Rogers believes that all creatures strive to make
  the very best of their existence.  If they fail
  to do so, it is not for a lack of desire.

7
Maslow The Hierarchy of Needs

• Your ultimate motive is to self-actualize.
• BUT this motive will only become active if your
  other basic needs are met
• Food
• Water
• Safety
• Other basic elements of survival
• Sex, meaningful relationships, prestige and money
•  

8
Culture as the probelm

• People, in the course of actualizing their
  potentials, created society and culture. 
• But when we created culture, it developed a life
  of its own. 
• This is a problem because our elaborate
  societies, complex cultures and technologies help
  and harm us at the same time

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Details of Theory

• Organismic valuing All organisms know what is
  good for us (thanks to evolution)
• Positive Regard Something we all inherently
  value
• Positive Self-Regard Self-worth that is
  achieved during maturation experiences
• Conditions of Worth Society tends to provide
  positive regard only when we show we have earned
  it.
• This leads to Conditional Positive Self-Regard

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Incongruity and Defenses

• Characterized by Incongruity
• The difference between your real self and your
  ideal self
• Incongruity neurosis
• Leads to defenses
• Denial You block out the threatening situation
• Perceptual Distortion You reinterpret the
  situation to make it less threatening

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The Fully Functioning Person

• More accepting of themselves, others, and
  everything around them
• They perceive reality efficiently
• Oriented on the problem, not the people involved
  in the problem (including themselves)
• Act autonomously, as they do not rely on others
  for their happiness or to fulfill their needs
• Greater than average set of values and ethics
• Self-actualization is related to peak experience
  potential,

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Therapy

• Non-directive and client-centered
• Supportive, not reconstructive
• Reflection the mirroring of emotional
  communication
• A therapist must have three qualities
• Congruence -- genuineness, honesty with the
  client.
• Empathy -- the ability to feel what the client
  feels.
• Respect -- acceptance, unconditional positive
  regard towards the client.

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Kelly Personal Constructs

• Viewed constructs as bipolar dimensions along
  which people could be arranged (e.g., good vs.
  bad)
• Role Construct Repertory Test (Rep test)
• Constructs come from past experiences

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Constructive alternativism

• While there is only one true reality, reality is
  always experienced from each persons unique
  perspective (alternative construction).  
• An individuals construction is never complete as
  the world is to complicated to have a perfect
  perspective.
• No-one's perspective is ever to be completely
  ignored.

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Theory

• Fruitful metaphor Ordinary people are involved
  in trying to understand others
• Use a process similar to scientific theory
• They have anticipations (hypotheses), engage in
  behaviour to test beliefs, and adjust their
  theories to accommodate new and contradictory
  information

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• Write down the first 20 adjectives that occur to
  you about yourself.

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Construals and Reality

• Kelly organized his theory into a fundamental
  postulate and various corollaries.
• Fundamental postulate "A person's processes are
  psychologically channelized by the ways in which
  he anticipates events."
• A persons process of trying to understand is
  just like the scientific process from hypothesis
  to experiment or observation, i.e. from
  anticipation to experience and behaviour.

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Corollaries

• The construction corollary
• The experience corollary
• The dichotomy corollary
• The range corollary
• The modulation corollary
• The individuality corollary
• The communality corollary
• The fragmentation corollary
• Constructs of transitions (feelings)

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Psychopathology

• "Any personal construction which is used
  repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation."
• In other words, our constructions of ourselves
  and world no longer work well they do not
  anticipate well
• Person can not seem to learn new ways of relating
• Thus, he or she has a great deal of anxiety and
  hostility is unhappy

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Flow Csikszentmihalyi

• The optimal experience what it is and how you
  achieve it.
• Flow is characterized by tremendous
  concentration, with no distractibility and not
  thoughts of anything else but the activity
• To enhance the quality of your life you should
  spend as much time in flow as possible.

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Creativity

• Creativity is what makes life worth living. The
  charge we feel when we're in the flow of creating
  is unlike anything else. How do we realize our
  optimal creativity?
• Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi spent five years
  interviewing a selected group of one hundred
  exceptional individuals in an effort to make more
  understandable the process by which men and women
  are creative.

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Definition of creativity

• Creativity is a new idea or product which is
  socially acceptable and valued, and which is
  brought to fruition. That's creativity with a big
  "C," creativity that changes the culture.
• Personal creativity affects the way one
  experiences life, with originality, openness, and
  freshness.

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Factors attributed to creativity

• Luck
• Perseverance
• Idle Time
• Complexity of personality
• Personality characterized by extremes

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• How can a person decide between right and wrong?
  Is there some authority we can turn to? How do
  you decide what God wants you to do? How do you
  decide whether or not to obey God?
•  

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Primary Themes of Behaviourism

• Hedonism (Motivation). That is what initiates,
  maintains and terminates behaviour.
• we are driven to gain pleasure and avoid pain.
  This leads to the social philosophy of
  Utilitarianism
• In this type of society, freedom is not an issue
  any more than dignity and truth are.

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• Empiricism Strong emphasis on the impact of the
  environment on the person, including social
  practices and culture ?
• So reality does not exits separately from your
  experiences and experience cannot produce
  reality. Empiricism is the idea that everything
  we know comes from our experience(s) -- Thus, at
  birth our minds are blank.

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• Associationism two things can become mentally
  associated into one if they are repeatedly
  experienced close together.
• Personality as expressed through behaviour is
  simply a case of adding up the sensory inputs to
  the individuals perceptual system.
• Conscious/unconscious thought processes?
• Is it a Mechanistic or Humanistic model of the
  person?

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History

• Aristotle
• Believed, the associations (for example, between
  a haystack and a cow) are made because the
  objects being associated are similar, or
  opposite, or near to each other.
• Pavlov
• Pavlov discovered that the dog's saliva began to
  flow before the food was actually presented -
  this is called a conditioned reflex (response)
  and the stimulus, in this case, the food dish, is
  called a conditioned stimulus .

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• Watson
• Watson believed that learning was a process of
  conditioning reflexes (responses) through the
  substitution of one stimulus for another. His
  most famous experiment was Albert
• Thorndike
• Claimed that "A good simple definition or
  description of a man's mind is that it is his
  connection system, adapting the responses of
  thought, feeling, and action that he makes to the
  situation that he meets. (1943). "

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Hull

• Hull developed a version of behaviourism in which
  the stimulus (S) affects the organism (O) and the
  resulting response (R) depends upon
  characteristics of both O and S. In other words,
  Hull was interested in studying intervening
  variables that affected behaviour such as initial
  drive, incentives, inhibitors, and prior training
  (habit strength)

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Respondent Conditioning

• A form of learning in which an old response is
  evoked by a new stimulus UCS (dinner) and the
  UCR (salivation) pair a bell with dinner (ring
  it just before hand) and you get the bell
  becoming the CS and the salivation the CR.
• If we dont get supper a few times after weve
  heard the bell extinction occurs
• If you wait a while, and ring the bell again you
  might have spontaneous recovery
• You can also have stimulus generalization
  occurring In this case, things similar to the
  conditioned stimulus (the bell) will begin to
  lead to the conditioned response.
• Or you could pair something will the bell and
  have Second order conditioning

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Skinner

• believed that the study of behaviour must rest on
  what organisms do and do not do, and that is all
  one need pay attention to.
• He illustrated how human behaviour can be shaped
  rapidly and without aversive threat though the
  use of positive reinforcement.
• He argued that the concepts of "freedom" and
  "dignity" are no longer useful in modern society.
  
• Man is not truly free to choose, he says, because
  what a person will do in a given situation
  depends almost entirely on what has happened to
  him in the past.

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Operant (Instrumental) Conditioning

• A form of learning in which a new response is
  acquired as a result of satisfying a need
• Technique provide repeated reward for behaviour
  that comes closer to what we want. Skinner
  refined this process and called this "Behaviour
  Shaping"
• Two types of reinforcement were used- positive
  and negative - to increase the probability of the
  addition or removal of a certain response

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Behaviour Modification

• Reinforcer A behaviour (operant response) is
  sometimes more likely to occur in the future as a
  result of the consequences that follow that
  behaviour.
• Positive Reinforcer is an appealing event whose
  presentation follows an operant response.
• Negative Reinforcer A negative reinforcer is an
  aversive event whose removal follows an operant
  response.
• Primary Reinforcer Food, water, and sex are all
  primary reinforcers because they satisfy
  biological desires.
• Conditioned Reinforcer A conditioned reinforcer
  is a previously neutral stimulus. Money is a
  conditioned reinforcer.

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Schedules of Reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement
• Fixed Ratio Schedule
• Fixed Interval Schedule
• Variable Ratio
• Variable Interval Schedule

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Shaping Behaviour

• Technique provide repeated reward for behaviour
  that comes closer to what we want. Skinner
  refined this process and called this "Behaviour
  Shaping"
• Two types of reinforcement were used- positive
  and negative - to increase the probability of the
  addition or removal of a certain response

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Implement Behavioural Change

• Set behaviour goals
• Determine appropriate reinforcers
• Select procedures for changing implement
  procedures and record results
• Evaluate progress and revise as needed
• Token Economy

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Emotions, Preferences and Physiology

• Stimulus Generalization and Second order
  conditioning can help explain many human
  reactions
• Used to explain the disorders of anxiety and
  phobia
• Treatment Systematic Desensitization

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Aversive Stimuli (a.k.a. punishment)

• Opposite of reinforcing stimuli
• Stimuli should decrease the likelihood of the
  behaviour occurring again in the future)
• Skinner did not approve of aversive stimuli
  because they do not tend to work well

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How to Punish

• Availability of alternative responses to
  behaviour that would be punished
• Behavioural and situational specificity
• Timing and consistency
• Condition secondary punishing stimuli
• Avoid displays of sympathy and affection

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What Behaviourism Left Out

• Ignores motivation, thought and cognition
• Research primarily on animals
• Ignores social dimensions of learning
• See organism as a passive learner (mechanistic
  view of development)

42
Motivation, Thought and Behaviour Social
Learning Theories

• Dollar Millers Social Learning theory
• --Wanted to deal with motivation and cognition
• Key Idea Habit Hierarchy An individuals
  habit hierarchy consists of all the behaviours an
  individual might do, for least to most likely
• -       

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Dollar Miller

• For learning to occur, the individual has to have
  motivation (want), attention and perception
  (notice), behaviour (doing), and reinforcement
  (getting).
• Motivation result of primary (food, water
  etc.) and secondary drives (love, prestige, power
  etc).
• Reinforcement There cant be reinforcement
  without some sort of drive reduction occurring  

44
Aggression

• Dollar and Miller Tried to explain phenomena that
  only psychoanalysts had addressed.
• Aggression Result of frustration
• Displacement redirecting aggressive impulses
• Psychological conflict result of interplay of
  motivations to approach and avoid a goal.
• Defense mechanisms provide reinforcement they
  remove anxiety

45
Rotters Social Learning Theory

• 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.

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Rotters theory of Personality

• Personality represents an interaction of the
  individual with his or her environment.
• To understand behaviour, one must take into
  account both the individual and the environment
• Rotter describes personality as a relatively
  stable set of potentials for responding to
  situations in a particular way.

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Rotter Prediction of Behaviour

• Behavior Potential what is the likelihood of
  engaging in a particular behavior in a specific
  situation.?
• Expectancy. the subjective probability that a
  given behavior will lead to a particular outcome,
• Reinforcement Value. refers to the desirability
  of reinforcement outcomes.
• Predictive Formula BP f(E RV)
• Psychological Situation it is important to
  remember that different people interpret the same
  situation differently

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Rotter Locus of Control

• Locus of control refers to people's very general,
  cross-situational beliefs about what determines
  whether or not they get reinforced.
• People can be classified along a continuum from
  very internal to very external.
• Internal locus of control you believe that the
  responsibility for whether or not you get
  reinforced ultimately lies with yourself.
• External locus of control you believe that the
  reinforcers in life are controlled by luck,
  chance, or powerful others.

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Rotter Maladjustment

• Pathology can develop due to difficulties at any
  point in his predictive formula.
• Behavior can be maladaptive, because the
  individual never learned more adaptive behaviors.
• Expectancies can lead to pathology when they are
  irrationally low.
• Reinforcement value problems can lead to
  pathology if our goals are too unrealistic
• WE can also experience Psychological Confict

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Banduras Social Learning Theory

• Bandura goes beyond Rotter in 2 ways
• 1.      Describes process of observational
  learning
• 2.      Explains Reciprocal determinism
• Bandura offers a social cognitive theory that
  emphasizes the social origins of behaviour in
  addition to the cognitive thought processes that
  influence human behaviour and functioning.

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Observational learning Models and modelling

• The traditional principles of learning (e.g.,
  laws of reinforcement and punishment) are more
  relevant to performance than to acquisition.
• Learning can occur outside the boundaries of
  pleasure and pain (e.g., by observing)
• Learning may or may not be demonstrated in the
  form of behaviour.

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Observational Learning Model

• Four step conceptual scheme of the process
  involved in observational learning
• Attentional processes Certain model
  characteristics, which may increase the
  likelihood of the behaviour being attended to
  and, observer characteristics --sensory
  capacities, motivation and arousal levels,
  perceptual set and past reinforcement.
• Retention processes Observer's ability to
  encode, to remember and to make sense of what has
  been observed.

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• Motor reproduction processes Capabilities that
  the observer has to perform the behaviours being
  observed.
• Motivational processes If behaviour is to be
  imitated, an observer must be motivated to
  perform that behaviour.
• Influenced by past, promised and vicarious
  rewards and punishments

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Reciprocal Determinism

• Reciprocal determinism?that personal-cognitive
  factors combine with the environment to influence
  behaviour.
• 1.The person-behaviour interaction involves the
  bi-directional influences of one's thoughts,
  emotions, and biological properties and one's
  actions
• 2. A bi-directional interaction also occurs
  between the environment and personal
  characteristics
• 3. The final interaction occurs between behaviour
  and the environment.

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Self-Regulation

• Self-regulation -- controlling our own behavior
• 1.  Self-observation.  We look at ourselves, our
  behavior, and keep tabs on it.
• 2.  Judgment.  We compare what we see with a
  standard. 
• 3.  Self-response.  If you did well in comparison
  with your standard, you rewar yourself? If you
  did poorly, you punish yourself.

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Self-efficacy

• Self-efficacy is a person's belief that they have
  behavioural competence in a particular situation.
  
• How is self-efficacy is acquired?
• Performance accomplishments Past experiences of
  success and failure
• Vicarious experience When individuals witness
  others' successes and failures
• Verbal persuasion Being told by others that one
  can or cannot competently perform a particular
  behaviour
• Emotional arousal degree and quality of the
  emotional arousal an individual experiences when
  engaging in a particular behaviour

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Self- Punishment

• Three probable results
• Compensation e.g., superiority complex
• Inactivity e.g., inaction inertia
• Escape e.g., from T.V. to pulling a Thelma and
  Louise.

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How to improve your self-concept

• Self-observation Have an accurate perception of
  who you are
• Standards Dont set your standards (or ideals)
  to high
• Use rewards and not punishments Dont dwell on
  a failure

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Self-control therapy

• Behavioral charts.  Self-observation requires
  that you keep close tabs on your behavior, both
  before you begin changes and after. 
• Environmental planning.  Taking your lead from
  your behavioral charts and diaries, you can begin
  to alter your environment. 
• Self-contracts.  Finally, you arrange to reward
  yourself when you adhere to your plan, and
  possibly punish yourself when you do not. 

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Modeling therapy

• Bandura most recognized therapy
• Believed that if you can get someone with a
  psychological disorder to observe someone dealing
  with the same issues in a more productive
  fashion, the first person will learn by modeling
  the second.

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Contributions and Limitations

• The theory has been demonstrated to make powerful
  predictions and has generated useful
  applications e.g., Aggressions

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Limiations

• Behaviour has been found to be more consistent
  than is argued by Bandura's theory, which focuses
  a great deal on the situation.
• Some researchers have argued that the theory
  lacks attention to biological processes.
• Probably of most significance is the criticism
  that the theory is not unified.