THEORIES OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY

Explore the Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura and Classical Operant Theory by Skinner. Understand how individuals learn, behave, and adapt based on environmental factors and reinforcement mechanisms.

THEORIES OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY
Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................1
THEORIES OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY................................................................................................1
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY................................................................................................................1
CLASSICAL OPERANT THEORY...........................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................7
1

INTRODUCTION
Human personality is usually described as the cumulative pattern of an individual’s feelings,
thoughts, and behaviours that identifies the person. It is an organized display of one’s
characteristic emotions, motivations, and cognition that are influenced by the external
environment. This would influence the person’s expectations, values, attitude, and beliefs. The
psychologists study human psychology to understand the behaviour of human mind during
stress, anger, difficult situations, or at the time of being happy and content (Alfes, et al. 2013).
The following assignment discusses the reason behind the different psychological theories and
compares and contrasts the two theories that have been proposed on the basis of personal life
incidents, social and cultural behaviour of their authors.
THEORIES OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY
There are several theories which study human psychology and the major ones can be classified
on the basis of behavioural, social, psychodynamic, traits and humanist approaches. The
following assignment compares the two psychological theories, the proposal of which has been
greatly influenced by their environmental factors, emotions, and the social characteristics. These
two theories are the Social Cognitive theory, given by Albert Bandura in 1960’s and the
Classical Operant theory by Skinner.
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
The Social Learning Theory dictates that an individual learns to display aggressive behaviour
after observing this from their environment or surrounding. They observe how these behaviours
are reinforced with time and situations (Allik, 2013). The theory also emphasizes that the
individuals learn by seeing the actions of others and after acknowledging whether those people
have been positively or negatively reinforced after exhibiting such behaviour. This suggests that
the young children behave in an aggressive manner because they witness such actions in forced
social settings.
Bandura suggested the following schema to reflect the reproduction of someone’s observed
behaviour which has the mentioned three determinants involved:
2

Personal: this identifies the individual’s self-efficacy towards the observed behaviour and also
understands the personal abilities of the learner to correctly execute a behaviour
Behavioural: this identifies the response which the individual receives after they perform a
certain behaviour. It also gives them an opportunity to learn new experiences and make some
learning out of their behaviour
Environmental: these identify the environmental aspects which influence the individual’s
capability to properly execute their behaviour.
The major learning that comes out of this theory is that the individuals who find the outcome of
some behaviour valuable will accept and absorb such abilities for their future reference (Boot, et
al. 2013).
The theory suggests that the human beings with time acquire the needed knowledge and skills by
direct as well as symbolic means. There are two primary capabilities that have been recognized
as important foundations for the social cognitive theory:
Symbolizing capability: this states that the individuals are affected not only by the direct
experiences of observing one’s response but the personal abilities also influence their learning
through the trial process where they construct the possible solutions and evaluate the possible
outcome.
Self-regulation ability: This identifies the individual’s ability to modify those behaviours which
they have observed and have been reinforced in their usual routine with time. The individual
observes the outcome of the reinforced action which has been observed in their environment and
modifies and guides themselves to exhibit the best behaviour which comes out of their thinking
(Donaldson, et al. 2015).
The Social Cognitive theory revolves around the following theoretical components:
Modeling:
This explains how the behaviours are acquired by direct learning or through the observation of
models using media. Therefore, effective modeling would teach the general observations and
strategies for dealing with different situations.
3

Albert Bandura with his colleagues constructed and performed a series of experiments using the
Bobo doll to study how individuals learn from watching others. The first experiment exposed the
children to an aggressive group, non-aggressive group and a control group of either the same sex
or opposite sex. The children who were observing the group of aggressive individuals observed
aggressive actions and absorbed the same into their regular practice. Therefore, these children,
when allowed to play with the doll, were violent in their behaviour while the ones with the non-
aggressive group and the control group were silent and thoughtful while playing alone
(Greenfield, 2013). The aggressive behaviour was more commonly found in boys as compared to
girls of the same age.
Following this, Albert Bandura also tested the same experiment with the use of media by an
experiment that he called as Bobo Doll Behaviour: A study of Aggression. Bandura exposed the
children to a series of video where the children have seen some aggressive reactions and violent
actions with the doll. After the video finished, Bandura placed the children in a room where they
had the same doll. The reason this was done was to observe the manner in which the children
behaved with the doll. Those children who have seen the video behaved with the doll in an
aggressive manner and those who did not watch the video did not behave in that way (Kehoe, et
al. 2013).
This experiment explains the theory of Social Cognitive behaviour where the reason for one’s
actions is driven by the past experiences that have been observed in their social environment and
cultural groups. In order to learn any positive behaviour, an individual tries to understand the
potential outcome if they would repeat the same behaviour. In such cases, the observer expects a
similar outcome and imitates the behaviour that impacts their cognition and learning. For
example, a teacher teaches the students what outcome is expected out of certain positive
behaviours and after understanding this, the students start following the same behaviour in their
regular practice (Krumhuber, et al. 2013).
CLASSICAL OPERANT THEORY
The other theory that discusses the human psychology is the Behaviorist theories which
identifies the importance of external stimuli and its effect on the person’s behaviour. The
4

approaches that have been generalized to analyze the psychological aspect through one’s external
stimuli are called as behavioural theories or learning-conditioning theories (Levine, 2014).
B. F. Skinner developed and forwarded a strong model to analyze the interaction between the
person with their environment for understanding the effect on behaviour. He postulated that
children do certain things because their behaviour obtains attention that reinforces them to repeat
the same behaviour in the future for gaining attention. For example, a child who cries usually
gets attention from the parents immediately and this behaviour is reinforced by the child out of
which he understands that crying will help him to get attention in the future and therefore repeats
the same activity. The crying of the child is the response and the attention obtained by the
parents acts as reinforcing mechanism (Mueller and Piper, 2014). With the help of Operant
conditioning, Skinner has differentiated the two learning methods (rewards and punishment) that
define the association between an individual’s behaviour and consequence.
Skinner is called as the Father of Operant Conditioning according to which any behaviour that is
accompanied with pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated while the behaviour that usually
is followed by unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated. He also introduced a new
term: Reinforcement into the Law of Effect. The behaviour that is reinforced gets usually
strengthened while the behaviour that is not reinforced usually dies out or extinguishes
(Onnasch, et al. 2014).
There are three types of response identified by Skinner that can be followed:
Neutral: this includes the type of response obtained from the environment that can neither
augment nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being reinforced.
Reinforcers: these are the response obtained from the environment that can increase the chances
of a behaviour being repeated. These reinforcers may be either positive or negative.
Punishers: these are the kind of response (usually punishment) obtained from the environment
that decreases the probability of behaviour repetition (Petersen, et al. 2013).
Such kind of behaviour can easily be explained by taking an example of a child who tries to
smoke in the school-going age is positively reinforced if he is successfully able to hang out with
5

the group of friends he wanted to. On the other hand, the same behaviour gets negatively
reinforced if the child would have been caught or would have been suspended from the school.
Positive reinforcement: this means that the individual would do something regularly if the
outcome of the action is found to be rewarding. For example, if a child gets a reward after
completion of the regular homework then this would inculcate a habit of doing the same work
regularly.
Negative reinforcement: This would remove the factors which are negatively reinforcing the
behaviour and would, therefore, strengthen the behaviour by removing the unpleasant factors.
For example, Skinner tested this by placing the rat in a box with electric current for which the rat
has to go and move to the lever, thereby knocking it. The electric current would turn off
immediately after the lever was down and this reinforced the behaviour to run around the box
near to the electric lever for preventing electric current.
Punishment: this is applicable in those cases where actions are being taken to weaken the
response obtained from the individual. However, there are certain problems with punishment hat
is it suppresses the behaviour and does not eradicate it. This also causes aggression towards the
set punishment and forces the individual to take urgent response (Waytz, et al. 2014).
There are several applications of the Classical Operant conditioning model in the daily lives
where the behaviour of the individual is determined by positive reinforcement or negative
reinforcement. One such example is drug dependence where the drug dose seems rewarding and
acts as a positive reinforcement of drug use. The effect that is created due to drug use is taken by
the brain in the form of reward that is pleasing and therefore this acts as a positive reinforcer. On
the other hand, abstinence from the drug leads to craving and dependence that acts a negative
reinforce of the drug for the individual and stimulates for the same response (Levine, 2014).
Along with this, the other examples where the Classical mode of Operant conditioning is used
includes animal training, parent management, trading, gambling, Nudge theory, psychological
manipulation, etc.
6

CONCLUSION
Human psychology is the study of human mind and their mental behaviour. It also attempts to
understand how we learn and what we do. There are several theories of psychology which
differentiate between the different approaches the theorists follow to reach the conclusion and
while approaching the core question of the theory. The theories of psychology have different
guiding principles which guide the individuals to reinforce a particular behaviour in their daily
life (Allik, 2013). The above assignment helps to understand and differentiate the driving factor
between two major theories of human psychology which are the Social Cognitive theory by
Bandura and the Operant Conditioning by Skinner. These theories have been compared on the
basis of the environmental factors which encourage an individual to reinforce a particular
behaviour.
7

REFERENCES
Alfes, K., Shantz, A.D., Truss, C. and Soane, E.C., 2013. The link between perceived human
resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation
model. The international journal of human resource management, 24(2), pp.330-351.
Allik, J., 2013. Bibliometric analysis of the journal of cross-cultural psychology during the first
ten years of the new millennium. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(4), pp.657-667.
Boot, W.R., Simons, D.J., Stothart, C. and Stutts, C., 2013. The pervasive problem with placebos
in psychology: why active control groups are not sufficient to rule out placebo
effects. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(4), pp.445-454.
Donaldson, S.I., Dollwet, M. and Rao, M.A., 2015. Happiness, excellence, and optimal human
functioning revisited: Examining the peer-reviewed literature linked to positive psychology. The
Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(3), pp.185-195.
Greenfield, P.M., 2013. The changing psychology of culture from 1800 through
2000. Psychological science, 24(9), pp.1722-1731.
Kehoe, R.R. and Wright, P.M., 2013. The impact of high-performance human resource practices
on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Journal of management, 39(2), pp.366-391.
Krumhuber, E.G., Kappas, A. and Manstead, A.S., 2013. Effects of dynamic aspects of facial
expressions: A review. Emotion Review, 5(1), pp.41-46.
Levine, T.R., 2014. Truth-Default Theory (TDT) A Theory of Human Deception and Deception
Detection. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(4), pp.378-392.
Mueller, S.T. and Piper, B.J., 2014. The psychology experiment building language (PEBL) and
PEBL test battery. Journal of neuroscience methods, 222, pp.250-259.
Onnasch, L., Wickens, C.D., Li, H. and Manzey, D., 2014. Human performance consequences of
stages and levels of automation: An integrated meta-analysis. Human factors, 56(3), pp.476-488.
8

Petersen, M.B., Sznycer, D., Sell, A., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J., 2013. The ancestral logic of
politics: Upper-body strength regulates men’s assertion of self-interest over economic
redistribution. Psychological Science, 24(7), pp.1098-1103.
Waytz, A., Heafner, J. and Epley, N., 2014. The mind in the machine: Anthropomorphism
increases trust in an autonomous vehicle. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52,
pp.113-117.
9