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Skinner is characterized as a radical behaviourist. His theory ignores internal psychic processes and focuses on the relationship of behaviour to external environment.
For Skinner, behaviour is a result of its consequences. This means that the perceived consequences of behaviour determine the degree to which that behaviour is likely to reoccur.
Skinner’s model engenders the simple but useful image or metaphor of a machine or organism that reinforces behaviour.
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This image is a powerful reminder to focus upon the messages of reinforcement. Skinner’s theory focuses upon the external conditions that elicit conflict. In conflict situations both parties view of the situation in win-lose terms, believing that inevitable result someone else’s gain is their loss. Skinner’s theory serves as a framework for identifying conditions in which all parties’ interests can be supported and reinforced.
Skinner defines growth in terms of changes in behaviour and treats “inner desires” as mental functions. Skinner rather encourages personal awareness establishing procedures for individuals to monitor their own behaviour.
A person who wants to get rid of his habit of smoking or extravagance or a diabetic patient’s greed for sugar are all examples of specific behaviours of these individuals. In order to get rid of these behaviours or in order to bring changes in habits, Skinner insists on the individual’s personal awareness procedure and asks them to monitor for a specified time.
The individual would keep accurate track, without judgment, of the number of times that he smoked a cigarette, ate candy, spent money— the specific behaviour he wished to change. This encourages personal awareness, according to Skinner, which is an important aspect of psychological growth.
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Skinner noticed the human tendency to repeat a behaviour the organism experiences as being reinforced by the environment. His unique contribution is to look at the influences and relationships between the environment, the psyche and behaviour. He starts from the premise that the organism “emits” behaviour—that a behaviour occurs.
This behaviour is observable and measurable and is the starting point for a scientific study of human activity. For him, a behaviour “operates” on the environment eliciting another behaviour under similar situation and acts as a reinforcement. Hence the term “operant behaviour”, or “operant conditioning”. What this behaviour does to the environment is what makes it more or less likely that the behaviour will occur again. It acts as instrumental to successive behaviour.
Skinner, the ardent behaviourist, derived his principles from precise experimentation following objective method. He was thoroughly convinced of the importance of objective method in laying down the principles which he established through experimental precision. He, thus, induced science to solve most complex behavioural problems and gradually acquired a steadily increasing influence on psychology and personality fields.
Skinner’s influence on the field of personality was no less important than J. B. Watson’s influence on establishing psychology as a science of behaviour as Skinner advocated some reforms as behaviourist. He showed more careful respect for well-controlled data and precisely highly regular relations between particular pattern of reinforcement and carefully specified response measures. In his studies of reinforcement schedules he was absolutely objective and specific in considering the resultant responses. His findings exhibited regularity and specificity—a law and order in the system.
He insisted, firstly, that behavioural law and equation must apply to each subject observed under appropriate condition. Secondly, he believed that responses and behaviours are emitted rather than elicited. His emphasis was on operands rather than respondents.
His basic assumption was that behaviour of any organism is lawful. Like Freud, Skinner emphasized on the orderliness of behaviour. By means of his writings and refined experiments Skinner has persuaded many that the principle of determinism applies to human being. He insisted that human behaviour results from identifiable variables that completely determine behaviour and, therefore, human personality is measurable.
This was the first contribution of learning theory in describing personality. Skinner believed that an individual’s behaviour is entirely a product of the objective world and can be understood in objective terms. The human behaviour has a cause-and-effect relationship with objective environment. This fact led later behaviouristic psychopathologists to account for an individual’s neurotic behaviour and introduce an important method of treatment—behaviour modification.
The assumption that all behaviour is lawful also clearly implies the possibility of behavioural control. He thought all that is required is to manipulate those conditions that influence or result in change in behaviour. This is known as behaviour modification. In order to establish his second assumption that behaviours are controllable, Skinner was not interested to consider those behaviours which are strongly resistant to change i.e. the behaviours governed primarily by hereditary endowment.
He was interested in more or less plastic type of behaviour for which change would be brought about by manipulating environmental variables (which are observable). For this purpose he proposes to adopt the method of functional analysis—a method where analysis of behaviour can be done in terms of casual relationship and where causes themselves are controllable.
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The control can be best achieved by lawfully relating independent variables or inputs into the organism, and then controlling subsequent behaviour by the manipulation of those inputs (environmental events) in such a way as to obtain a particular output (response or emitted behaviour). This is the principle which Skinner employed in explaining personality development which, according to him, consists essentially in behavioural change and learning.
Skinner shows less interest in the structure of personality because they are hereditary endowments. They are genetically determined and, therefore, rigid and fixed. Skinner considered these to occupy a distinct category because they relate groups of responses to groups of operations. They are not energy states or purposive, but according to Skinner they are considered to be causal antecedents of behaviour.
Most of Skinner’s position is concerned with modification of human behaviour which he equated with personality development. He thinks personality development can be understood from the consideration of behavioural development of human organism as he grows. The human organism faces continuing interaction with environment throughout the growth period.
In the process, more and more complicated interactions take place between increasingly complex environment and the human organism which induce the individual to emit more complex form of behaviour.
Consistently, this interaction has been the focus of a large number of carefully managed experimental studies. The key concept within Skinner’s system is the principle of reinforcement. Thus, his theory of operant reinforcement has evolved. Most aspects of personality are generally demonstrated in social context.
But Skinner ignored this aspect and assigns no special significance to social behaviour as distinct from other behaviours in general. Social behaviour takes place and is characterized by a dyad interaction between two persons. On the other hand, Skinner believes, principles that determine the development of behaviour in an objective environment is surrounded by animate objects.
When a developing organism interacts with this environment, a part of that interaction receives its feedback which positively or negatively reinforces or punishes that behaviour and the pertinent behaviour becomes a part of the personality. Reinforcers that a person receives usually depend entirely on the person’s behavioural output.
Skinner did not advance any theory of personality whatsoever or never did try to explain how the social behaviour of an individual develops. But, surprisingly, the clinical psychologists have adopted the basic attitude and approach characteristics of Skinner for the treatment of neurotic behaviour. They found that his framework can be used to understand a person’s normal behaviour as well as can be applied to the study and control of pathological behaviour.
According to the clinical psychologists, abnormal behaviour is assumed to be the same in its principles of development as normal behaviour. They argue that if the normal behaviour can follow the learning principles and are learned behaviours then the abnormal behaviour is also learned in the same way.
In putting forward a program for the treatment of abnormal behaviour, Skinner repeatedly asserts that the goal is simply to replace abnormal behaviour with normal ones and this can be achieved by direct manipulation of behaviour.
In dealing with abnormal behaviour, Skinner does not appeal to the actions of repressed wishes as done by Freud, or an identity crisis, or conflict between ego and superego or other constructs. Rather, he attempts to modify the undesirable behaviour by manipulation of the environment in a manner determined by the techniques of operant and respondent conditioning.
Thus, learning theory forwards a theory of development of personality but ignores the structural aspect of personality or personality dynamics.