00:01
Now, let’s take a look at the
behaviorist perspective,
and here, we’re kind of taking
a completely different stance.
00:08
So we’re saying that
personality is a result of a
learned behavior patterns
based on one’s environment.
00:13
And so that you’re actually
shaping your personality based on
your day-to-day interactions with
your family, your friends, and over time,
that’s what shapes your personality.
00:24
So behaviorism is deterministic, so
it’s determined on those interactions,
environmentally reinforced and punished
determine subsequent behavior.
00:34
So we’ll break that down.
00:36
The interactions will help determine
new behavior and based on
what interactions you have in that environment,
that will determine your behavior.
00:43
So if you’re doing things in your
environment that are inappropriate,
that you’re getting
in trouble for,
that will push you one way,
so the punishment side.
00:50
And then if you do things appropriately
in a good way and you’re getting
this positive reinforcement, you’ll
then continue that behavior.
00:57
So, this model of personality is really
shaped around daily interactions
over a period of time in your
own specific environment that
shapes your behavior and as a
result shapes your personality.
01:13
This process happens over
a patient’s lifespan.
01:17
So this isn’t something that happens
over, you know, finite periods of time,
kind of like that
route line by Freud.
01:22
This is something
that is ongoing.
01:24
And learning and
development of personality
occur through classic and
operant conditioning.
01:28
Now let’s revisit what
those terms mean.
01:30
So we’ve mentioned them in some other
lectures, but just to refresh your memory.
01:33
So classical and operant
conditioning, it refers to
being presented with different stimulus
and getting an evoked response.
01:40
So we have an unconditioned stimulus
and we have a conditioned stimulus,
and I refer you to or point you to the
Pavlovian experiments or Pavlov’s dogs.
01:50
So the dog was presented with a plate
of food and would start to salivate.
01:55
And then it was presented
separately with a bell
and the bell would chime
and the dog would not
respond because there’s
no linkage there.
02:04
But then we started to present the dog with
food and ring the bell at the same time,
and the dog conditions and associates
the bell with food and it salivates.
02:14
And then you can show that you’ve
initiated a condition response by just
ringing the bell in the absence of food
and the dog will begin to salivate.
02:22
You also have operant conditioning
which is in the same family,
but you use punishments and rewards
to modulate somebody’s behavior.
02:30
So I refer you to be of
Skinner’s skinner box,
where you have the rat inside the box and
the rat was asked to do a different task,
if done appropriately
would pull a lever
and it would get food, which
is positive reinforcement,
or if it did the task correctly, we’ll
remove some negative punishment
which is being on an
electrically charged floor.
02:55
Either way, you condition the
animal to a certain behavior.
02:59
So this behaviorist model
is saying that learning and
development of personality occur
through this conditioning.
03:07
This model also says that
behavioral therapy uses
conditioning to modify
and influence behavior.
03:13
So if you’re going in with certain
personality traits or certain issues
or if you’re trying to
understand your behavior,
you can use behavioral therapy
to condition yourself.
03:21
So say you suffer from anxiety.
03:24
This model will say “Well, what
is triggering your anxiety,
what are the underlying drivers,
and how are you acting?”
And so you say, “Well, I get
really anxious when this happens
and I start working myself up and next
thing you know I’m having a panic attack.”
Well, the behavioral therapy
will say, “Why don’t we
work through different ways
where you can modulate
your behavior when you
know that you are starting
to experience that condition
or that phenomenon?”
So you start to feel
anxiety coming on,
I’m going to teach you some breathing
exercises or I’m going to make you
remove yourself from that situation
by modifying your behavior,
and this really is the premise behind
cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.
04:06
Okay. So next we have
person-situation controversy
or also known as trait
versus state controversy,
and this examines how much
of a reaction is due to
a personality trait or the
situation state itself.
04:18
So this is a very sort of complicated
and convoluted scenario because
it’s quite individual and it’s
quite situational, meaning that
it kind of depends on the individual and
it kind of depends on the situation.
04:32
So traits are considered to be internal and
consistent, and states are situational.
04:37
So your personality
traits are consistent.
04:41
They’re something that you have within
and they don’t necessarily change a lot,
but the states, the setting that you’re
in, those can be quite different and
they can vary and they can cause you to
modify the expression of your traits.
04:57
So personality traits may
be relatively consistent,
but the behavior in specific
situations can be variable.
05:02
So we have an example here.
05:05
Say you’re a really
extroverted person
and you love chatting and you love socializing,
especially when you’re around your
friends, you’re always a center of the
discussion, you’re always the life of the party.
05:17
All of a sudden, you’re
forced to go to a,
you know, a wine and cheese mixer
with people that you do not know,
you’ve never met them, this
isn’t really your forte,
this isn’t your normal environment,
you don’t know anybody there,
how are you going to act?
It’s probably rare that you would walk
in and say, “Hey, everybody, I’m here!
I know you’ve never met me,
but I’m Tarry the fun guy.”
That’s probably not
going to happen, right?
You’re probably going to go there
and kind of slink in a little bit,
check it out, see who’s here,
have your glass of wine.
05:45
And all of a sudden, you,
the normal extrovert,
have become quite introverted
because you’re now assessing
this new situation and
so you’ve modified your
behavior in order to
accommodate the new situation.
05:57
So you haven’t really
changed your personality,
but you’ve modified your personality
based on the situation that you’re in.
06:06
So, we’ve highlighted a whole bunch of
different theories and approaches to looking
at personality and I would say that there
isn’t one that’s clearly the winner.
06:14
I think there’s a combination of each of
these theories and each has its strengths
at addressing and explaining how
we actually shape our personality.