PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12.3: Social Cognitive Theory, Personality Development, Operant Conditioning

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Myriam Mongrain

Document Summary

Behaviourism - a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behaviour. Skinner had hoped to become a writer and he even sought out reviews of his work from famous authors. Skinner showed little interest in what goes on inside people. He argues this useless to speculate about private, unobservable cognitive processes. He focused on how the external environment moulds overt behaviour. He argued for a strong brand of determinism, asserting that behaviour is fully determined by environmental stimuli. He claimed that free will is but an illusion. People show some consistent patterns of behaviour because they have some stable response tendencies that they have acquired through experience. Viewed personality as a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations. Behaviourists devote little attention to the structure of personality because it is unobservable. Most human responses are shaped by the type of conditioning that he describe as operant conditioning.