Payment by salary or wage most closely approximates which schedule of reinforcement?

Skinner: Behavioral Analysis

During the early years of the 20th century while Freud, Jung, and Adler were relying on clinical practice and before Eysenck and Costa and McCrae were using psychometrics to build theories of human personality, an approach called behaviorism emerged from laboratory studies of animals and humans. Two of the early pioneers of behaviorism were E. L. Thorndike and John Watson, but the person most often associated with the behaviorist position is B. F. Skinner, whose behavioral analysis is a clear departure from the highly speculative psychodynamic theories. Skinner’s strict adherence to observable behavior earned his approach the label radical behaviorism, a doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs, such as ego, traits, drives, needs, hunger, and so forth.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, the first child of William Skinner and Grace Mange Burrhus Skinner. His father was a lawyer and an aspiring politician while his mother stayed home to care for their two children. Skinner grew up in a comfortable, happy, upper-middle-class home where his parents practiced the values of temperance, service, honesty, and hard work. The Skinners were Presbyterian, but Fred (he was almost never called Burrhus or B. F.) began to lose his faith during high school and thereafter never practiced any religion.

When Skinner was 21/2 years old, a second son, Edward, was born. Fred felt that Ebbie (as he was known) was loved more by both parents, yet he did not feel unloved. He was simply more independent and less emotionally attached to his mother and father. But after Ebbie died suddenly during Skinner’s first year at college, the parents became progressively less willing to let their older son go. They wanted him to become “the family boy” and indeed succeeded in keeping him financially obligated even after B. F. Skinner became a well-known name in American psychology (Skinner, 1979; Wiener, 1996).

Although Skinner believed that internal states are outside the domain of science, he did not deny their existence. Such conditions as hunger, emotions, values, self-confidence, aggressive needs, religious beliefs, and spitefulness exist; but they are not explanations for behavior. To use them as explanations not only is fruitless but also limits the advancement of scientific behaviorism. Other sciences have made greater advances because they have long since abandoned the practice of attributing motives, needs, or willpower to the motion (behavior) of living organisms and inanimate objects. Skinner’s scientific behaviorism follows their lead.

• Human behavior is shaped by three forces: (1) the individual’s personal history of reinforcement, (2) natural selection, and (3) the evolution of cultural practices.

Classical Conditioning
In classical conditioning, a neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with—that is, immediately precedes—an unconditioned stimulus a number of times until it is capable of bringing about a previously unconditioned response, now called the conditioned response.

Operant Conditioning
Although classical conditioning is responsible for some human learning, Skinner believed that most human behaviors are learned through operant conditioning.

Shaping is a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself. Through this process of reinforcing successive approximations, the experimenter or the environment gradually shapes the final complex set of behaviors (Skinner, 1953).

According to Skinner (1987a), reinforcement has two effects: It strengthens the behavior and it rewards the person. Reinforcement and reward, therefore, are not synonymous.Not every behavior that is reinforced is rewarding or pleasing to the person. Any behavior that increases the probability that the species or the individualwill survive tends to be strengthened. Reinforcement,therefore, can be divided into that which produces a beneficial environmentalcondition and that which reduces or avoids a detrimental one. The first iscalled positive reinforcement; the second is negative reinforcement.

Positive Reinforcement Any stimulus that, when added to a situation, increases the probability that a given behavior will occur is termed a positive reinforcer (Skinner, 1953).

Negative Reinforcement The removal of an aversive stimulus from a situation also increases the probability that the preceding behavior will occur. This removal results in negative reinforcement (Skinner, 1953).

Punishment
Negative reinforcement should not be confused with punishment. Negative reinforcers remove, reduce, or avoid aversive stimuli, whereas punishment is the presentation of an aversive stimulus, such as an electric shock, or the removal of a positive one, such as disconnecting an adolescent’s telephone.

Effects of Punishment The control of human and animal behavior is better served by positive and negative reinforcement than by punishment. The effects of punishment are not opposite those of reinforcement. When the contingencies of reinforcement are strictly controlled, behavior can be precisely shaped and accurately predicted.

With punishment, however, no such accuracy is possible. Consequently, one effect of punishment is to suppress behavior. Another effect of punishment is the conditioning of a negative feeling by associating a strong aversive stimulus with the behavior being punished. A third outcome of punishment is the spread of its effects. Any stimulus associated with the punishment may be suppressed or avoided.

• Skinner’s theory of personality is based largely on his behavioral analysis of rats and pigeons.

• Although internal states such as thinking and feeling exist, they cannot be used as explanations of behavior; only overt behavior can be studied by the scientist.

Inner States
Although he rejected explanations of behavior founded on non-observable hypothetical constructs, Skinner (1989b) did not deny the existence of internal states, such as feelings of love, anxiety, or fear.

Self-Awareness
Skinner (1974) believed that humans not only have consciousness but are also aware of their consciousness; they are not only aware of their environment but are also aware of themselves as part of their environment; they not only observe external stimuli but are also aware of themselves observing that stimuli.

Drives
From the viewpoint of radical behaviorism, drives are not causes of behavior, but merely explanatory fictions. To Skinner (1953), drives simply refer to the effects of deprivation and satiation and to the corresponding probability that the organism will respond. To deprive a person of food increases the likelihood of eating; to satiate a person decreases that likelihood. However, deprivation and satiation are not the only correlates of eating. Other factors that increase or decrease the probability of eating are internally observed hunger pangs, availability of food, and previous experiences with food reinforcers.

Emotions
Skinner (1974) recognized the subjective existence of emotions, of course, but he insisted that behavior must not be attributed to them. He accounted for emotions by the contingencies of survival and the contingencies of reinforcement. Throughout the millennia, individuals who were most strongly disposed toward fear or anger were those who escaped from or triumphed over danger and thus were able to pass on those characteristics to their offspring. On an individual level, behaviors followed by delight, joy, pleasure, and other pleasant emotions tend to be reinforced, thereby increasing the probability that these behaviors would recur in the life of that individual.

Purpose and Intention
Skinner (1974) also recognized the concepts of purpose and intention, but again, he cautioned against attributing behavior to them. Purpose and intention exist within the skin, but they are not subject to direct outside scrutiny. A felt, ongoing purpose may itself be reinforcing. For example, if you believe that your purpose for jogging is to feel better and live longer, then this thought per se acts as a reinforcing stimulus, especially while undergoing the drudgery of jogging or when trying to explain your motivation to a nonrunner.

• Reinforcement can be either continuous or intermittent, but intermittent schedules are more efficient.

• The four principal intermittent schedules of reinforcement are the fixedratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, and variable-interval.

Schedules of Reinforcement
Any behavior followed immediately by the presentation of a positive reinforcer or the removal of an aversive stimulus tends thereafter to occur more frequently. Reinforcement can follow behavior on either a continuous schedule or an intermittent one. With a continuous schedule, the organism is reinforced for every response. This type of schedule increases the frequency of a response but is an inefficient use of the reinforcer. Skinner preferred intermittent schedules not only because they make more efficient use of the reinforcer but because they produce responses that are more resistant to extinction.

Fixed-Ratio With a fixed-ratio schedule, the organism is reinforced intermittently according to the number of responses it makes. Ratio refers to the ratio of responses to reinforcers. An experimenter may decide to reward a pigeon with a grain pellet for every fifth peck it makes at a disc. The pigeon is then conditioned at a fixed-ratio schedule of 5 to 1, that is, FR 5.

Variable-Ratio With a fixed-ratio schedule, the organism is reinforced after every nth response. With the variable-ratio schedule, it is reinforced after the nth response on the average. Again, training must start with continuous reinforcement, proceed to a low response number, and then increase to a higher rate of response. A pigeon rewarded every third response on the average can build to a VR 6 schedule, then VR 10, and so on; but the mean number of responses must be increased gradually to prevent extinction. After a high mean is reached, say, VR 500, responses become extremely resistant to extinction. (More on rate of extinction in the next section.)

Fixed-Interval With the fixed-interval schedule, the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated period of time. For example, FI 5 indicates that the organism is rewarded for its first response after every 5-minute interval. Employees working for salary or wages approximate a fixed-interval schedule. They are paid every week, every 2 weeks, or every month; but this pay schedule is not strictly a fixed-interval schedule.

Variable-Interval A variable-interval schedule is one in which the organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of time. For example, VI 5 means that the organism is reinforced following random-length intervals that average 5 minutes. Such schedules result in more responses per interval than do fixed-interval schedules.

Extinction
Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons. First, they can simply be forgotten during the passage of time. Second, and more likely, they can be lost due to the interference of preceding or subsequent learning. Third, they can disappear due to punishment. A fourth cause of lost learning is extinction, defined as the tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively weakened upon non-reinforcement.

Operant extinction takes place when an experimenter systematically withholds reinforcement of a previously learned response until the probability of that response diminishes to zero. Rate of operant extinction depends largely on the schedule of reinforcement under which learning occurred.

• Social control is achieved through (1) operant conditioning, (2) describing the contingencies of reinforcement, (3) depriving or satiating a person, or (4) physically restraining an individual.

• People can also control their own behavior through self-control, but all control ultimately rests with the environment and not free will.

Complex Behavior
Human behavior can be exceedingly complex, yet Skinner believed that even the most abstract and complex behavior is shaped by natural selection, cultural evolution, or the individual’s history of reinforcement. Once again, Skinner did not deny the existence of higher mental processes such as cognition, reason, and recall; nor did he ignore complex human endeavors like creativity, unconscious behavior, dreams, and social behavior.

Higher Mental Processes
Skinner (1974) admitted that human thought is the most difficult of all behaviors to analyze; but potentially, at least, it can be understood as long as one does not resort to a hypothetical fiction such as “mind.” Thinking, problem solving, and reminiscing are covert behaviors that take place within the skin but not inside the mind. As behaviors, they are amenable to the same contingencies of reinforcement as overt behaviors.

Creativity
How does the radical behaviorist account for creativity? Logically, if behavior were nothing other than a predictable response to a stimulus, creative behavior could not exist because only previously reinforced behavior would be emitted. Skinner (1974) answered this problem by comparing creative behavior with natural selection in evolutionary theory. “As accidental traits, arising from mutations, are selected by their contribution to survival, so accidental variations in behavior are selected by their reinforcing consequences” (p. 114). Just as natural selection explains differentiation among the species without resorting to an omnipotent creative mind, so behaviorism accounts for novel behavior without recourse to a personal creative mind.

Unconscious Behavior
As a radical behaviorist, Skinner could not accept the notion of a storehouse of unconscious ideas or emotions. He did, however, accept the idea of unconscious behavior. In fact, because people rarely observe the relationship between genetic and environmental variables and their own behavior, nearly all our behavior is unconsciously motivated (Skinner, 1987a). In a more limited sense, behavior is labeled unconscious when people no longer think about it because it has been suppressed through punishment. Behavior that has aversive consequences has a tendency to be ignored or not thought about. A child repeatedly and severely punished for sexual play may both suppress the sexual behavior and repress any thoughts or memories of such activity. Eventually, the child may deny that the sexual activity took place. Such denial avoids the aversive aspects connected with thoughts of punishment and is thus a negative reinforcer. In other words, the child is rewarded for not thinking about certain sexual behaviors.

Dreams
Skinner (1953) saw dreams as covert and symbolic forms of behavior that are subject to the same contingencies of reinforcement as other behaviors are. He agreed with Freud that dreams may serve a wish-fulfillment purpose. Dream behavior is reinforcing when repressed sexual or aggressive stimuli are allowed expression. To act out sexual fantasies and to actually inflict damage on an enemy are two behaviors likely to be associated with punishment. Even to covertly think about these behaviors may have punitive effects, but in dreams these behaviors may be expressed symbolically and without any accompanying punishment.

Social Behavior
Groups do not behave; only individuals do. Individuals establish groups because they have been rewarded for doing so. For example, individuals form clans so that they might be protected against animals, natural disasters, or enemy tribes. Individuals also form governments, establish churches, or become part of an unruly crowd because they are reinforced for that behavior.

Membership in a social group is not always reinforcing; yet, for at least three reasons, some people remain a member of a group. First, people may remain in a group that abuses them because some group members are reinforcing them; second, some people, especially children, may not possess the means to leave the group; and third, reinforcement may occur on an intermittent schedule so that the abuse suffered by an individual is intermingled with occasional reward. If the positive reinforcement is strong enough, its effects will be more powerful than those of punishment.

Like Erich Fromm, each of us is controlled by a variety of social forces and techniques, but all these can be grouped under the following headings: (1) operant conditioning, (2) describing contingencies, (3) deprivation and satiation, and (4) physical restraint.

• Unhealthy behaviors are learned in the same way as all other behaviors, that is, mostly through operant conditioning.

The Unhealthy Personality
Unfortunately, the techniques of social control and self-control sometimes produce detrimental effects, which result in inappropriate behavior and unhealthy personality development.

Counteracting Strategies

With the defensive strategy of escape, people withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or psychologically. People who counteract by escape find it difficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to be mistrustful of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of noninvolvement.

People who revolt against society’s controls behave more actively, counterattacking the controlling agent. People can rebel through vandalizing public property, tormenting teachers, verbally abusing other people, pilfering equipment from employers, provoking the police, or overthrowing established organizations such as religions or governments.

People who counteract control through passive resistance are more subtle than those who rebel and more irritating to the controllers than those who rely on escape. Skinner (1953) believed that passive resistance is most likely to be used where escape and revolt have failed.

Inappropriate Behaviors
Inappropriate behaviors include excessively vigorous behavior, which makes no sense in terms of the contemporary situation, but might be reasonable in terms of past history; and excessively restrained behavior, which people use as a means of avoiding the aversive stimuli associated with punishment. Another type of inappropriate behavior is blocking out reality by simply paying no attention to aversive stimuli.

A fourth form of undesirable behavior results from defective self-knowledge and is manifested in such self-deluding responses as boasting, rationalizing, or claiming to be the Messiah. This pattern of behavior is negatively reinforcing because the person avoids the aversive stimulation associated with thoughts of inadequacy.

Another inappropriate behavior pattern is self-punishment, exemplified either by people directly punishing themselves or by arranging environmental variables so that they are punished by others.

• To change unhealthy behaviors, behavior therapists use a variety of behavior modification techniques, all of which are based on the principles of operant conditioning.

Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925, in Mundare, a small town on the plains of northern Alberta. He grew up the only boy in a family of five older sisters. Both parents had emigrated from eastern European countries while still an adolescent— his father from Poland and his mother from the Ukraine. Bandura was encouraged by his sisters to be independent and self-reliant. He also learned self-directiveness in the town’s tiny school that had few teachers and little resources. His high school had only two instructors to teach the entire curriculum. In such an environment, learning was left to the initiative of the students, a situation that well suited a brilliant scholar like Bandura. Other students also seemed to flourish in this atmosphere; virtually all of Bandura’s classmates went on to attend college, a very unusual accomplishment during the early 1940s.

Most of Bandura’s early publications were in clinical psychology, dealing primarily with psychotherapy and the Rorschach test. Then, in 1958, he collaborated with the late Richard H. Walters, his first doctoral student, to publish a paper on aggressive delinquents. The following year, their book, Adolescent Aggression (1959), appeared. Since then, Bandura has continued to publish on a wide variety of subjects, often in collaboration with his graduate students. His most influential books are Social Learning Theory (1977), Social Foundations of Thought and Action (1986), and Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997). Bandura has held more than a dozen offices in prestigious scientific societies, including president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1974, president of the Western Psychological Association in 1980, and honorary president of the Canadian Psychological Association in 1999. In addition, he has received more than a dozen honorary degrees from prestigious universities throughout the world.

Other honors and awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from Division 12 (Clinical) of APA in the same year, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution from the APA in 1980, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Behavior Medicine.

He was elected fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1980. In addition, he has won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Society for Research on Aggression; the William James Award of the American Psychological Science for outstanding achievements in psychological science; the Robert Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contribution of Psychology to Education, American Psychological Association; and the 2003–2004 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Beginning in 2004, the American Psychology Society, in partnership with Psy Chi—The National Honor Society in Psychology—began awarding an outstanding psychology graduate student with the Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award. Bandura currently holds the David Starr Jordan Professorship of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University.

Social cognitive theory rests on several basic assumptions.

First, the outstanding characteristic of humans is plasticity; that is, humans have the flexibility to learn a variety of behaviors in diverse situations.

Second, through a triadic reciprocal causation model that includes behavioral, environment, and personal factors, people have the capacity to regulate their lives.

Third, social cognitive theory takes an agentic perspective, meaning that humans have the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of their lives.

Fourth, people regulate their conduct through both external and internal factors.

External factors include people’s physical and social environments, whereas internal factors include self-observation, judgmental process, and self-reaction.

Fifth, when people find themselves in morally ambiguous situations, they typically attempt to regulate their behavior through moral agency, which includes redefining the behavior, disregarding or distorting the consequences of their behavior, dehumanizing or blaming the victims of their behavior, and displacing or diffusing responsibility for their actions.

Bandura (1986) stated that “if knowledge could be acquired only through the effects of one’s own actions, the process of cognitive and social development would be greatly retarded, not to mention exceedingly tedious”.

Observational Learning
Bandura believes that observation allows people to learn without performing any behavior. Bandura (1986, 2003) believes that observational learning is much more efficient than learning through direct experience.

Modeling
The core of observational learning is modeling. Learning through modeling involves adding and subtracting from the observed behavior and generalizing from one observation to another.

First, the characteristics of the model are important.

Second, the characteristics of the observer affect the likelihood of modeling.

Third, the consequences of the behavior being modeled may have an effect on the observer.

Processes Governing Observational Learning
Bandura (1986) recognizes four processes that govern observational learning: attention, representation, behavioral production, and motivation.

Attention
First, because we have more opportunities to observe individuals with whom we frequently associate, we are most likely to attend to these people.

Second, attractive models are more likely to be observed than unattractive ones are—popular figures on television, in sports, or in movies are often closely attended. Also, the nature of the behavior being modeled affects our attention—we observe behavior that we think is important or valuable to us.

Representation
In order for observation to lead to new response patterns, those patterns must be symbolically represented in memory. Verbal coding, however, greatly speeds the process of observational learning.

Behavioral Production
After attending to a model and retaining what we have observed, we then produce the behavior. In converting cognitive representations into appropriate actions, we must ask ourselves several questions about the behavior to be modeled. First we ask, “How can I do this?” After symbolically rehearsing the relevant responses, we try out our new behavior. While performing, we monitor ourselves with the question “What am I doing?” Finally, we evaluate our performance by asking, “Am I doing this right?” This last question is not always easy to answer, especially if it pertains to a motor skill, such as ballet dancing or platform diving, in which we cannot actually see ourselves.

Motivation
Observational learning is most effective when learners are motivated to perform the modeled behavior. Attention and representation can lead to the acquisition of learning, but performance is facilitated by motivation to enact that particular behavior.

Enactive Learning
Bandura believes that complex human behavior can be learned when people think about and evaluate the consequences of their behaviors. The consequences of a response serve at least three functions.

First, response consequences inform us of the effects of our actions.

Second, the consequences of our responses motivate our anticipatory behavior; that is, we are capable of symbolically representing future outcomes and acting accordingly.

Third, the consequences of responses serve to reinforce behavior, a function that has been firmly documented by Skinner (Chapter 15) and other reinforcement theorists. Bandura (1986), however, contends that, although reinforcement may at times be unconscious and automatic, complex behavioral patterns are greatly facilitated by cognitive intervention.

Triadic Reciprocal Causation
His social cognitive theory explains psychological functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal causation. This system assumes that human action is a result of an interactionamong three variables—environment, behavior, and person.Because people possess and use these cognitivecapacities, they have some capacity to select or to restructure their environment: Thatis, cognition at least partially determines which environmental events people attendto, what value they place on these events, and how they organize these events for future use.

Where B signifies behavior; E is the external environment; and P represents the person, including that person’s gender, social position, size, and physical attractiveness, but especially cognitive factors such as thought, memory, judgment, foresight, and so on.

Bandura uses the term “reciprocal” to indicate a triadic interaction of forces, not a similar or opposite counteraction. The three reciprocal factors do not need to be of equal strength or to make equal contributions.

Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
Although people can and do exercise a significant amount of control over their lives, they cannot predict or anticipate all possible environmental changes. Bandura is the only personality theorist to seriously consider the possible importance of these chance encounters and fortuitous events.

Bandura (1998a) defined a chance encounter as “an unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each other” (p. 95). A fortuitous event is an environmental experience that is unexpected and unintended.

Human Agency
Social cognitive theory takes an agentic view of personality, meaning that humans have the capacity to exercise control over their own lives (2002b). Indeed, humanagency is the essence of humanness. Bandura (2001) believes that people are self-regulating, proactive, self-reflective, and self-organizing and that they have the power to influence their own actions to produce desired consequences.

Core Features of Human Agency
Intentionality refers to acts a person performs intentionally. An intention includes planning, but it also involves actions.

People also possess forethought to set goals, to anticipate likely outcomes of their actions, and to select behaviors that will produce desired outcomes and avoid undesirable ones.

People do more than plan and contemplate future behaviors. They are also capable of self-reactiveness in the process of motivating and regulating their own actions. People not only make choices but they monitor their progress toward fulfilling those choices.

Finally, people have self-reflectiveness. They are examiners of their own functioning; they can think about and evaluate their motivations, values, and the meanings of their life goals, and they can think about the adequacy of their own thinking.

What Is Self-Efficacy?
Bandura (2001) defined self-efficacy as “people’s beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control over their own functioning and over environmental events” (p. 10). Bandura contends that “efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency”.

Self-efficacy is not the expectation of our action’s outcomes. Bandura (1986, 1997) distinguished between efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy refers to people’s confidence that they have the ability to perform certain behaviors, whereas an outcome expectancy refers to one’s prediction of the likely consequences of that behavior.

What Contributes to Self-Efficacy?
Personal efficacy is acquired, enhanced, or decreased through any one or combination of four sources: (1) mastery experiences, (2) social modeling, (3) social persuasion, and (4) physical and emotional states

Proxy Agency

Proxy involves indirect control over those social conditions that affect everyday living. Bandura (2001) noted that “no one has the time, energy, and resources to master every realm of everyday life. Successful functioning necessarily involves a blend of reliance on proxy agency in some areas of functioning”. In modern American society, people would be nearly helpless if they relied solely on personal accomplishments to regulate their lives. Most people do not have the personal capability to repair an air conditioner, a camera, or an automobile. Through proxy agency, however, they can accomplish their goal by relying on other people to repair these objects.

Collective Efficacy
The third mode of human agency is collective efficacy. Bandura (2000) defined collective efficacy as “people’s shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desiredresults” (p. 75). In other words, collective efficacy is the confidence peoplehave that their combined efforts will bring about group accomplishments.

Self-Regulation
When people have high levels of self-efficacy, are confident in their reliance on proxies, and possess solid collective efficacy, they will have considerable capacity to regulate their own behavior. Bandura (1994) believes that people use both reactive and proactive strategies for self-regulation. That is, they reactively attempt to reduce the discrepancies between their accomplishments and their goal; but after they close those discrepancies, they proactively set newer and higher goals for themselves.

External Factors in Self-Regulation
External factors affect self-regulation in at least two ways.  First, they provide us with a standard for evaluating our own behavior. Second, external factors influence self-regulation by providing the means for reinforcement.

Internal Factors in Self-Regulation
External factors interact with internal or personal factors in self-regulation. Bandura (1986, 1996) recognizes three internal requirements in the ongoing exercise of self-influence: (1) self-observation, (2) judgmental processes, and (3) self-reaction.

Self-Observation
The first internal factor in self-regulation is self-observation of performance. We must be able to monitor our own performance, even though the attention we give to it need not be complete or even accurate.

Judgmental Process
Self-observation alone does not provide a sufficient basis for regulating behavior. We must also evaluate our performance. This second process, judgmental process, helps us regulate our behavior through the process of cognitive mediation.

Self-Reaction
The third and final internal factor in self-regulation is self-reaction. People respond positively or negatively to their behaviors depending on how these behaviors measure up to their personal standards.

Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency
People also regulate their actions through moral standards of conduct. Bandura (1999a) sees moral agency as having two aspects: (1) doing no harm to people and (2) proactively helping people.

Redefine the Behavior
With redefinition of behavior, people justify otherwise reprehensible actions by a cognitive restructuring that allows them to minimize or escape responsibility.

The first is moral justification, in which otherwise culpable behavior is made to seem defensible or even noble.

A second method of reducing responsibility through redefining wrongful behavior is to make advantageous or palliative comparisons between that behavior and the even greater atrocities committed by others.

A third technique in redefining behavior is the use of euphemistic labels.

Disregard or Distort the Consequences of Behavior
A second method of avoiding responsibility involves distorting or obscuring the relationship between the behavior and its detrimental consequences.

First, people can minimize the consequences of their behavior.

Second, people can disregard or ignore the consequences of their actions, as when they do not see firsthand the harmful effects of their behavior.

Finally, people can distort or misconstrue the consequences of their actions, as when a parent beats a child badly enough to cause serious bruises but explains that the child needs discipline in order to mature properly.

Dehumanize or Blame the Victims
Third, people can obscure responsibility for their actions by either dehumanizing their victims or attributing blame to them.

Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
The fourth method of dissociating actions from their consequences is to displace or diffuse responsibility (see lower box in Figure 16.2). With displacement, people minimizethe consequences of their actions by placing responsibility on an outsidesource.

Dysfunctional Behavior
Bandura’s concept of triadic reciprocal causation assumes that behavior is learned as a result of a mutual interaction of (1) the person, including cognition and neurophysiological processes; (2) the environment, including interpersonal relations and socioeconomic conditions; and (3) behavioral factors, including previous experi ences with reinforcement.

Depression
High personal standards and goals can lead to achievement and self-satisfaction. However, when people set their goals too high, they are likely to fail. Failure frequently leads to depression, and depressed people often undervalue their own accomplishments. The result is chronic misery, feelings of worthlessness, lack of purposefulness, and pervasive depression. Bandura (1986, 1997) believes that dysfunctional depression can occur in any of the three self-regulatory subfunctions:

(1)    self-observation, (2) judgmental processes, and (3) self-reactions.

Phobias
Phobias are fears that are strong enough and pervasive enough to have severe debilitating effects on one’s daily life. Once established, phobias are maintained by consequent determinants: that is, the negative reinforcement the phobic person receives for avoiding the fear-producing situation.

Aggression
Aggressive behaviors, when carried to extremes, can also be dysfunctional. Bandura (1986) contended that aggressive behavior is acquired through observation of others, direct experiences with positive and negative reinforcements, training, or instruction, and bizarre beliefs.

Once established, people continue to aggress for at least five reasons: (1) They enjoy inflicting injury on the victim (positive reinforcement); (2) they avoid or counter the aversive consequences of aggression by others (negative reinforcement); (3) they receive injury or harm for not behaving aggressively (punishment); (4) they live up to their personal standards of conduct by their aggressive behavior (self-reinforcement); and (5) they observe others receiving rewards for aggressive acts or punishment for nonaggressive behavior.

Therapy
According to Bandura, deviant behaviors are initiated on the basis of social cognitive learning principles, and they are maintained because, in some ways, they continue to serve a purpose. The ultimate goal of social cognitive therapy is self-regulation (Bandura, 1986). To achieve this end, the therapist introduces strategies designed to induce specific behavioral changes, to generalize those changes to other situations, and to maintain those changes by preventing relapse.

Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory
Julian B. Rotter, the author of the locus of control scale, was born in Brooklyn on October 22, 1916, the third and oldest son of Jewish immigrant parents. Rotter (1993) recalled that he fit Adler’s description of a highly competitive, “fighting” youngest child. Although his parents observed the Jewish religion and customs, they were not very religious. Rotter (1993) described his family’s socioeconomic condition as “comfortably middle class until the Great Depression when my father lost his wholesale stationery business and we became part of the masses of unemployed for two years” (pp. 273–274). The depression sparked in Rotter a lifelong concern for social injustice and taught him the importance of situational conditions affecting human behavior.

When he entered Brooklyn College, he was already seriously interested in psychology, but he chose to major in chemistry because it seemed to be a more employable degree during the depression of the 1930s.

Rotter served as president of the Eastern Psychological Association and of the divisions of Social and Personality Psychology and Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA). He also served two terms on the APA Education and Training Board. In 1988, he received the prestigious APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. The following year, he earned the Distinguished Contribution to Clinical Training Award from the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology.

Social learning theory rests on five basic hypotheses. First, it assumes that humans interact with their meaningful environments (Rotter, 1982).A second assumption of Rotter’s theory is that human personality is learned. The third assumption of social learning theory is that personality has a basic unity, which means that people’s personalities possess relative stability.Rotter’s fourth basic hypothesis is that motivation is goal directed. Other things being equal, people are most strongly reinforced by behaviorsthat move them in the direction of anticipated goals. This statement refers to Rotter’sempirical law of effect, which “defines reinforcement as any action, condition, orevent which affects the individual’s movement toward a goal” (Rotter & Hochreich,1975, p. 95).Rotter’s fifth assumption is that people are capable of anticipating events.

Behavior Potential
Broadly considered, behavior potential (BP) is the possibility that a particular response will occur at a given time and place. Behavior potential refers to the likelihood that a given behavior will occur in a particular situation; expectancy is a person’s expectation of being reinforced; reinforcement value is the person’s preference for a particular reinforcement; and the psychological situation refers to a complex pattern of cues that a person perceives during a specific time period.

Expectancy
Expectancy (E) refers to a person’s expectation that some specific reinforcement or set of reinforcements will occur in a given situation. Expectancies can be general or specific. Generalized expectancies (GEs) are learned through previous experiences with a particular response or similar responses and are based on the belief that certain behaviors will be followed by positive reinforcement. Specific expectancies are designated as E_ (E prime). In any situation the expectancy for a particular reinforcement is determined by a combination of a specific expectancy (E_) and the generalized expectancy (GE). Total expectancy of success is a function of both one’s generalized expectancy and one’s specific expectancy.

Reinforcement Value
Another variable in the prediction formula is reinforcement value (RV), which is the preference a person attaches to any reinforcement when the probabilities for the occurrence of a number of different reinforcements are all equal. What determines the reinforcement value for any event, condition, or action? First, the individual’s perception contributes to the positive or negative value of an event. Rotter calls this perception internal reinforcement and distinguishes it from external reinforcement, which refers to events, conditions, or actions on which one’s society or culture places a value.

Psychological Situation
The fourth variable in the prediction formula is the psychological situation (s), defined as that part of the external and internal world to which a person is responding. It is not synonymous with external stimuli, although physical events are usually important to the psychological situation.

Behavior is the result of neither environmental events nor personal traits; rather, it stems from the interaction of a person with his or her meaningful environment.

Rotter’s (1982, p. 302) basic formula for the prediction of goal-directed behavior:

This formula is read: The potential for behavior x to occur in situation 1 in relation to reinforcement a is a function of the expectancy that behavior x will be followed by reinforcement a in situation 1 and the value of reinforcement a in situation 1.

Predicting General Behaviors

Needs
Rotter (1982) defined needs as any behavior or set of behaviors that people see as moving them in the direction of a goal. Needs are not states of deprivation or arousal but indicators of the direction of behavior. The difference between needs and goals is semantic only. When focus is on the environment, Rotter speaks of goals; when it is on the person, he talks of needs.

Categories of Needs
Recognition-Status The need to be recognized by others and to achieve status in their eyes is a powerful need for most people.

Dominance The need to control the behavior of others is called dominance.

Independence Independence is the need to be free of the domination of others.

Protection-Dependency A set of needs nearly opposite independence are those of protection and dependency.

Love and Affection Most people have strong needs for love and affection: that is, needs for acceptance by others that go beyond recognition and status to include some indications that other people have warm, positive feelings for them.

Physical Comfort Physical comfort is perhaps the most basic need because other needs are learned in relation to it.

Need Components
A need complex has three essential components—need potential, freedom of movement, and need value—and these components are analogous to the more specificconcepts of behavior potential, expectancy, and reinforcement value (Rotter, Chance,& Phares, 1972).

Need Potential Need potential (NP) refers to the possible occurrence of a set of functionally related behaviors directed toward satisfying the same or similar goals.

Freedom of Movement Behavior is partly determined by our expectancies: that is, our best guess that a particular reinforcement will follow a specific response. In the general prediction formula, freedom of movement (FM) is analogous to expectancy.

Need Value A person’s need value (NV) is the degree to which she or he prefers one set of reinforcements to another.

This equation means that need potential (NP) is a function of freedom of movement (FM) and need value (NV).

Interpersonal Trust Scale
Another example of a generalized expectancy (GE) that has provoked considerable interest and research is the concept of interpersonal trust. Rotter (1980) defined interpersonal trust as “a generalized expectancy held by an individual that the word, promise, oral or written statement of another individual or group can be relied on” (p. 1). Interpersonal trust does not refer to the belief that people are naturally good or that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Neither should it be equated with gullibility. Rotter saw interpersonal trust as a belief in the communications of others when there is no evidence for disbelieving, whereas gullibility is foolishly or naively believing the words of other people.

Maladaptive Behavior
Maladaptive behavior in Rotter’s social learning theory is any persistent behavior that fails to move a person closer to a desired goal. It frequently, but not inevitably, arises from the combination of high need value and low freedom of movement: that is, from goals that are unrealistically high in relation to one’s ability to achieve them (Rotter, 1964).

Psychotherapy
To Rotter (1964), “the problems of psychotherapy are problems of how to effect changes in behavior through the interaction of one person with another. That is, they are problems in human learning in a social situation” (p. 82). Although Rotter adopts a problem-solving approach to psychotherapy, he does not limit his concern to quick solutions to immediate problems. His interest is more long range, involving a change in the patient’s orientation toward life.

In general, the goal of Rotter’s therapy is to bring freedom of movement and need value into harmony, thus reducing defensive and avoidance behaviors. The therapist assumes an active role as a teacher and attempts to accomplish the therapeutic goal in two basic ways: (1) changing the importance of goals and (2) eliminating unrealistically low expectancies for success (Rotter, 1964, 1970, 1978; Rotter & Hochreich, 1975).

Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs
Of all the personality theorists discussed in this book, George Kelly had the most unusual variegated experiences—mostly involving education, as either a student or a teacher. When Kelly was 4 years old, the family moved to eastern Colorado, where his father staked a claim on some of the last free land in that part of the country. While in Colorado, Kelly attended school only irregularly, seldom for more than a few weeks at a time (Thompson, 1968).

Kelly was a man of many and diverse interests. His undergraduate degree was in physics and mathematics, but he was also a member of the college debate team and, as such, became intensely concerned with social problems. This interest led him to the University of Kansas, where he received a master’s degree with a major in educational sociology and a minor in labor relations and sociology.

From his days at Fort Hays State, Kelly began to formulate a theory of personality. Finally, in 1955, he published his most important work, The Psychology of Personal Constructs. This two-volume book, reprinted in 1991, contains the whole of Kelly’s personality theory and is one of only a few of his works published during his lifetime.

Kelly spent several summers as a visiting professor at such schools as the University of Chicago, the University of Nebraska, the University of Southern California, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University, Stanford University, University of New Hampshire, and City College of New York. During those postwar years, he became a major force in clinical psychology in the United States. He was president of both the Clinical and the Consulting Divisions of the American Psychological Association and was also a charter member and later president of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology.

Kelly died on March 6, 1967, before he could complete revisions of his theory of personal constructs. Kelly’s diverse life experiences, from the wheat fields of Kansas to some of the major universities of the world, from education to labor relations, from drama and debate to psychology, are consistent with his theory of personality, which emphasizes the possibility of interpreting events from many possible angles.

Kelly (1955, 1991) believed that the universe is real, but that different people construe it in different ways. Thus, people’s personal constructs, or ways of interpreting and explaining events, hold the key to predicting their behavior.

Personal construct theory does not try to explain nature. Rather, it is a theory of people’s construction of events: that is, their personal inquiry into their world. It is “a psychology of the human quest. It does not say what has or will be found, but proposes rather how we might go about looking for it” (Kelly, 1970, p. 1).

Constructive Alternativism
Kelly began with the assumption that the universe really exists and that it functions as an integral unit, with all its parts interacting precisely with each other. Moreover, the universe is constantly changing, so something is happening all the time. Added to these basic assumptions is the notion that people’s thoughts also really exist and that people strive to make sense out of their continuously changing world. Different people construe reality in different ways, and the same person is capable of changing his or her view of the world.

In other words, people always have alternative ways of looking at things. Kelly (1963) assumed “that all of our present interpretations of the universe are subject to revision or replacement” (p. 15). He referred to this assumption as constructive alternativism and summed up the notion with these words: “The events we face today are subject to as great a variety of constructions as our wits will enable us to contrive” (Kelly, 1970, p. 1).

Kelly believed that the person, not the facts, holds the key to an individual’s future. Facts and events do not dictate conclusions; rather, they carry meanings for us to discover. We are all constantly faced with alternatives, which we can explore if we choose, but in any case, we must assume responsibility for how we construe our worlds. We are victims of neither our history nor our present circumstances. That is not to say that we can make of our world whatever we wish. We are “limited by our feeble wits and our timid reliance upon what is familiar” (Kelly, 1970, p. 3). We do not always welcome new ideas. Like scientists in general and personality theorists in particular, we often find restructuring disturbing and thus hold on to ideas that are comfortable and theories that are well established.

Personal Constructs
A personal construct is one’s way of seeing how things (or people) are alike and yet different from other things (or people).

Basic Postulate
Personal construct theory is expressed in one fundamental postulate, or assumption, and elaborated by means of 11 supporting corollaries. The basic postulate assumes that “a person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which[that person] anticipates events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 46). Kelly (1955, 1970) clarified this fundamental assumption by defining its key terms. First, the phrase person’s processes refer to a living, changing, moving human being. Kelly was not concerned here with animals, with society, or with any part or function of the person. He did not recognize motives, needs, drives, or instincts as forces underlying motivation. Life itself accounts for one’s movement.

Kelly chose the term channelized to suggest that people move with a direction through a network of pathways or channels. The next key phrase is ways of anticipating events, which suggests that people guide their actions according to their predictions of the future. Neither the past nor the future per se determines our behavior. Rather, our present view of the future shapes our actions.

Supporting Corollaries
To elaborate his theory of personal constructs, Kelly proposed 11 supporting corollaries, all of which can be inferred from his basic postulate.

1. Similarities Among Events
   No two events are exactly alike, yet we construe similar events so that they are perceived as being the same. One sunrise is never identical to another, but our construct dawn conveys our recognition of some similarity or some replication of events. Although two dawns are never exactly alike, they may be similar enough for us to construe them as the same event. Kelly (1955, 1970) referred to this similarity among events as the construction corollary. The construction corollary states that “a person anticipates events by construingtheir replications” (Kelly, 1955, p. 50).

1. Differences Among People
   Kelly’s second corollary is equally obvious. “Persons differ from each other in their construction of events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 55). Kelly called this emphasis on individualdifferences the individuality corollary.

1. Relationships Among Constructs
   Kelly’s third corollary, the organization corollary, emphasizes relationships among constructs and states that people “characteristically evolve, for [their] conveniencein anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships betweenconstructs” (Kelly, 1955, p. 56).

1. Dichotomy of Constructs
   Now we come to a corollary that is not so obvious. The dichotomy corollary states that “a person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomousconstructs” (Kelly, 1955, p. 59).

1. Choice Between Dichotomies
   If people construe events in dichotomized fashion, then it follows that they have some choice in following alternative courses of action. This is Kelly’s choice corollary, paraphrased as follows: Peoplechoose for themselvesthat alternative in adichotomized constructthrough which they anticipatethe greater possibilityfor extensionand definition of futureconstructs.

1. Range of Convenience
   Kelly’s range corollary assumes that personal constructs are finite and not relevant to everything. “A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range ofevents only” (Kelly, 1955, p. 68). In other words, a construct is limited to a particular range of convenience.

1. Experience and Learning
   Basic to personal construct theory is the anticipation of events. We look to the future and make guesses about what will happen. Then, as events become revealed to us, we either validate our existing constructs or restructure these events to match our experience. The restructuring of events allows us to learn from our experiences. The experience corollary states: “A person’s construction system varies as he[or she] successively construes the replications of events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 72). Kelly used the word “successively” to point out that we pay attention to only one thing at a time. “The events of one’s construing march single file along the path of time” (p. 73).

1. Adaptation to Experience
   Arlene’s flexibility illustrates Kelly’s modulation corollary. “The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability of the constructs within whose range of convenience the variants lie” (Kelly, 1955, p. 77). This corollary followsfrom and expands the experience corollary. It assumes that the extent to whichpeople revise their constructs is related to the degree of permeability of their existingconstructs. A construct is permeable if new elements can be added to it.

1. Incompatible Constructs
   Although Kelly assumed an overall stability or consistency of a person’s construction system, his fragmentation corollary allows for the incompatibility of specific elements. “A person may successively employ a variety of constructive subsystemswhich are inferentially incompatible with each other” (Kelly, 1955, p. 83).

1. Similarities Among People
   Although Kelly’s second supporting corollary assumes that people are different from each other, his commonality corollary assumes similarities among people. His slightly revised commonality corollary reads: “To the extent that one person employsa construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another, [that person’s]processes are psychologically similar to those of the other person” (Kelly, 1970, p. 20).

1. Social Processes
   “People belong to the same cultural group, not merely because they behave alike, nor because they expect the same things of others, but especially because they construe their experience in the same way” (Kelly, 1955, p. 94). The final supporting corollary, the sociality corollary can be paraphrased to read as follows: To the extent that people accurately construe the belief system ofothers, they may play a role in a social process involving those other people.

Abnormal Development
In Kelly’s view, psychologically healthy people validate their personal constructs against their experiences with the real world. They are like competent scientists who test reasonable hypotheses, accept the results without denial or distortion, and then willingly alter their theories to match available data. Healthy individuals not only anticipate events but are also able to make satisfactory adjustments when things do not turn out as they expected.

Threat
People experience threat when they perceive that the stability of their basic constructs is likely to be shaken. Kelly (1955) defined threat as “the awareness of imminentcomprehensive change in one’s core structures” (p. 489). One can be threatened by either people or events, and sometimes the two cannot be separated.

Fear
By Kelly’s definition, threat involves a comprehensive change in a person’s core structures. Fear, on the other hand, is more specific and incidental. Kelly (1955) illustrated the difference between threat and fear with the following example. A man may drive his car dangerously as the result of anger or exuberance. These impulses become threatening when the man realizes that he may run over a child or be arrested for reckless driving and end up as a criminal. In this case, a comprehensive portion of his personal constructs is threatened. However, if he is suddenly confronted with the probability of crashing his car, he will experience fear. Threat demands a comprehensive restructuring—fear, an incidental one. Psychological disturbance results when either threat or fear persistently prevents a person from feeling secure.

Anxiety
Kelly (1955) defined anxiety as “the recognition that the events with which one is confronted lie outside the range of convenience of one’s construct system” (p. 495).People are likely to feel anxious when they are experiencing a new event. For example,when Arlene, the engineering student, was bargaining with the used-car dealer,she was not sure what to do or say. She had never before negotiated over such a largeamount of money, and therefore this experience was outside the range of her convenience.As a consequence, she felt anxiety, but it was a normal level of anxiety anddid not result in incapacitation. Pathological anxiety exists when a person’s incompatible constructs can nolonger be tolerated and the person’s construction system breaks down.

Guilt
Kelly’s sociality corollary assumes that people construe a core role that gives them a sense of identity within a social environment. However, if that core role is weakened or dissolved, a person will develop a feeling of guilt. Kelly (1970) defined guilt as “the sense of having lost one’s core role structure” (p. 27). That is, people feel guilty when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their sense of who they are.

Psychotherapy
In Kelly’s view, people should be free to choose those courses of action most consistent with their prediction of events. In therapy, this approach means that clients, not the therapist, select the goal. As a technique for altering the clients’ constructs, Kelly used a procedure called fixed-role therapy. The purpose of fixed-role therapy is to help clients change their outlook on life (personal constructs) by acting out a predetermined role, first within the relative security of the therapeutic setting and then in the environment beyond therapy where they enact the role continuously over a period of several weeks.

The Rep Test
Another procedure used by Kelly, both inside and outside therapy, was the Role Construct Repertory (Rep) test. The purpose of the Rep test is to discover ways in whichpeople construe significant people in their lives.

In what way if any are positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement similar?

How does punishment differ from negative reinforcement?

Which of the following is an example of operant conditioning?

Which method is based on Operent conditioning?