The Developing Personality

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The Developing Personality
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Shortcomings of Behaviorism

• Ignored peoples ability to think, plan,
  perceive, and believe.
• Focused too strongly on animalsthus
  reinforcement. Forgot people could problem solve
  and use reason.
• Forgot that people are inherently social. We
  learn from those around us. We dont live in
  Skinner boxes.
• Did not explain how we are put into our
  environmentswe choose where we live, work, and
  socialize.
• Social Learning Theory addresses the issues
  behaviorism wanted to ignore.

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Dollard and Millers Social Learning Theory

• Habit hierarchy (unobservable)
• The behavior you are most likely to perform at a
  given moment resides at the top of your habit
  hierarchy your least likely behavior is at the
  bottom.
• The effect of rewards and punishments is to
  rearrange the habit hierarchy.
• Motivation and drives
• Needs produce Drives
• Primary drive (food, water, comfort)
• Secondary drive (prestige, power, love)
• Rewards MUST reduce a drive
• Frustration and aggression, the
  frustration-aggression hypothesis
  (displacement)
• Psychological conflict (approach-avoidance
  conflict)

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Dollard and Millers Social Learning Theory

• Psychological conflict (approach-avoidance
  conflict)

By Stephen Hansen
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Rotters Social Learning Theory

• Expectancy value theory (belief)
• The basic assumption is that behavioral decisions
  are determined by
• the presence or size of reinforcements.
• beliefs about what the results of behavior are
  likely to be.
• Even if a reinforcement is very attractive you
  are not likely to pursue it if your chances of
  success seem slim. Conversely, even something
  that is not particularly desirable might motivate
  behavior, if the chances of getting it are good
  enough.
• Locus of control (generalized expectancies and
  your experience)
• Internal
• External

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Banduras Social Learning Theory

• Efficacy expectations (probability that you can
  do something in the first placebelief in
  yourself)
• Observational learning (learning withOUT rewards
  or punishment!)
• Reciprocal determinism

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The Cognitive-Affective Personality System (CAPS)

• Walter Mischels CAPS theory combines two
  important ideas about personality.
• In the tradition of Kelly, the phenomenological
  idea that the individuals interpretation or
  construal of the world is all-important from
  this perspective to understand a persons
  thoughts is to understand the person completely.
• A view of the cognitive system that describes
  thought as proceeding simultaneously on multiple
  tracks that occasionally intersect.

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CAPS Interactions Among Systems

• Mischel theorizes that the most important aspect
  of the many systems of personality and cognition
  is their interaction.
• There is not a single output from a single,
  linear, serial process.
• How the person feels, what he or she thinks, and
  what he or she ultimately does, involve
  compromises among many different processes.

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CAPS Cognitive Person Variables

• Individual differences in personality stem from
  four person variables that characterize
  properties and activities of the cognitive
  system.
• Cognitive and behavioral construction
  competenciesan individuals mental abilities and
  behavioral skills (e.g., IQ, creativity, social
  skills)
• Encoding strategies and personal
  constructsincludes a persons ideas about how
  the world can be categorized and efficacy
  expectations, or beliefs about his or her own
  capabilities
• Subjective stimulus valuesan individuals
  beliefs about the probabilities of attaining a
  goal if it is pursued it also includes how much
  he or she values different rewarding outcomes
• Self-regulatory systems and plansa set of
  procedures that control behavior, including
  self-reinforcement, selection of situations, and
  purposeful alteration of the situations selected
  also includes how people directly control their
  own thoughts
• Affect and Emotions

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CAPS If . . . Then . . . contingencies

• If . . . Then . . . contingencies The four
  personality variables combine in each individual
  to yield a repertoire of actions triggered by
  particular stimulus situations.
• Every individuals pattern of contingencies is
  unique, and it comprises his or her behavioral
  signature

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CAPS If . . . Then . . . contingencies

• Mischels goal is for if . . . then contingencies
  to replace personality traits.
• Advantages of the if . . . then idea
• Its specificity
• It is more sensitive to the way people change
  their behavior across situations
• If . . . then contingencies potentially integrate
  trait conceptions of personality with social
  learning and cognitive conceptions by
  redescribing traits as specific behavior
  patterns.
• Personality traits are sometimes too broad and
  vague to provide the most useful way to think
  about behavior.
• Integrating traits with the if . . . then idea
  could perhaps make both concepts richer and more
  useful.

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Learning, Thinking, and the Person
The learning approaches to personality have made
three major, lasting contributions

• They approached the goal of establishing
  psychology as an objective science their work is
  characterized by tight theoretical reasoning,
  careful experimental design, and a style of
  argument that backs up every statement with data.
• They recognize better than any other basic
  approach the degree to which peoples behavior
  may depend on the environment and even the
  specific, immediate situation.
• The learning approaches have contributed a
  technology of behavior change its principles can
  be applied to virtually anything for example
• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) seeks to
  understand and manipulate functional
  relationships between behavior and the
  environment it involves a systematic process of
  studying and modifying observable behavior
  through careful manipulations of the environment,
  and tracking of behavioral outcomes it is most
  frequently used in educational settings,
  particularly when working with individuals with
  autism and other developmental disorders it is
  also used in organizations and in the area of
  sports psychology.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy applies concepts of
  learning to the treatment of depression, phobias,
  addictions, and other emotional and behavioral
  disorders.
• The evidence clearly shows that techniques based
  in learning theory work well in the short run,
  but in the long run the evidence is less clear.

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Learning, Thinking, and the Person

• Several limitations to learning theories can be
  noted
• It turns out that people are more complicated
  than simple theories like classical conditioning
  sometimes acknowledge.
• While the recent versions of social learning
  theory acknowledge that people think, they still
  tend to underappreciate the degree to which the
  characteristic ways in which people think can
  cause them to respond differently to the same
  situation.
• People and their behavior are much harder to
  change than the learning theories suggest people
  tend to remain who they are, inevitably and even
  stubbornly, in the face of the strongest
  pressures from the situation.

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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Introduction
• Trait theorists (e.g., McCrae Costa, 1996)
  posit genetic determination of genes, thus
  personality should ____________ after adulthood.
• Contextualist (e.g., Kwan, 2002) argue that
  traits are multiply determined, specifically
  _________ is very important, thus personality
  should _________ after adulthood.
• These views are both opposing and intriguing.
  Like any good article that helps perpetuate
  science, the authors sought to __________ this
  argument.

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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Introduction (cont)
• What has past research said? (e.g., Roberts et
  al.,)
• The hard plaster hypothesis states Age effects
  on personality traits after age ___ should not be
  significantly different from _____.
• The soft plaster hypothesis states Age effects
  on personality traits after age ____ should _____
  the rate of change.
• In the transactional view, ________ select their
  ________, and these ________ affect their
  personality.
• According to Eriksons (1950) theory of
  adulthood, _______, _______, and ______ are
  social roles that undergo great change from early
  to mid adulthood.

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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Method
• 132,515 participants were recruited from
  _________.
• Participants answered questions on the ___ ____
  ___.
• Was the study longitudinal?

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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Results
• The hard plaster hypothesis was tested by
  comparing age _____ after age 30 to _____. If
  the hard plaster hypothesis is confirmed, they
  should find that this result is _________?

• The soft plaster hypothesis was tested by
  comparing age slopes _____ age 30 to age slopes
  _____ age 30.

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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Results

Trait Rate of Change
--Change is of similar strength, but
opposite direction for women. --Increases for men.
Openness
Conscientiousness
--Change slows for both men and women.
--Change is of similar strength, but
opposite direction for women. --Slows for men.
Extraversion
Agreeableness
--Increases
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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Results

Trait Rate of Change
--women show strong change and this remains
before and after 30. --men have show weak change
and this remains before and after 30.
Neuroticism
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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Results

Trait Linear modeling
Openness Linear (gender x age) Conscientiousnes
s Quadratic Extraversion Linear
Agreeableness Cubic fit Neuroticism Linear
(gender x age)
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Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, (2003)

• Discussion

--Cross-sectional design cannot differentiate
between cohort and developmental
effects. --Rejection of plaster
hypothesis. --Acknowledgement of interactionist
hypothesis. --Data does not deny biological
effects, but does present evidence of plasticity
in certain personality domains. --This presents
the idea that culture, society, and life course
can affect peoples personality as they
agehelping them adapt to circumstances.