PSYB30H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: German Idealism, Afrocentrism, Psychological Review
Document Summary
A dominant movement in american psychology in the first half of the. 20th century, behaviorism focused on how environments shape the observable behavior of organisms. According to the behaviorist view, behavior is learned in the. Two fundamental forms of learning are classical and instrumental (operant) conditioning. In classical conditioning, an organism forms associations between different stimuli that are contiguous in time. In instrumental conditioning, learning occurs through rewards and punishments, as behavior is shaped by its consequences. From an operant standpoint, personality characteristics are shaped primarily by reward-and-punishment learning that occurs in particular social situations over time. The determinants of any particular behavior, therefore, can be found both in the current situation and in similar situations in the past in which the person has learned similar responses. Behaviorism spawned a number of different social learning theories that have been and continue to be influential in the field of personality psychology.
