COURSE NOTES: Personality

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Chapter 11: 

Dollard and Miller: Psychoanalytic Learning Theory

Psychoanalytic Learning Theory: Dollard and Miller

• culture
• social class
• individualism/collectivism (modern ideas)

Four Fundamental Concepts about Learning

• Drive: Wanting Something
• Cue: Noticing Something
• Response: Doing Something
• Reward: Getting Something

“In order to learn, one must want something, notice something, do something, and get something.”

drive: what a person wants, which motivates learning

• hunger
• thirst
• sexual drive
• approval-seeking

cue: what a person notices, which provides a discriminative stimulus for learning

• mother calling
• sight of someone you love

response: what a person does, which is learned

• crying
• asking for help
• criticizing someone

response hierarchy

dominant response

resultant hierarchy

Example of a response hierarchy: child

• R1: cry (dominant response)
• R2: grab teddy bear
• R3: hide
• R4: demand Daddy
• R5: go quietly to bed

reward: what a person gets as a result of a response in the learning sequence, which strengthens responses because of its drive-reducing effect

• food
• approval

kinds of rewards

• primary
• secondary

The Learning Process

How would these concepts play a part in teaching the 2-year-old to go quietly to bed?

• punishment
• extinction
• spontaneous recovery

extinction: When reinforcement is withheld, the rate of behavior decreases. In this example [graphic in lecture], if parents ignore a child who cries at bedtime, the child will cry less and less as time goes on.

When cues signal the appropriate response, we must also consider

• stimulus generalization
• discrimination

gradient of reward

• The more closely the response is followed by reward, the more it is strengthened.
• Language can influence this by making a response "close" by talking about it.

anticipatory response

Learning by Imitation

• Same Behavior
• Copying
• Matched Dependent Behavior

Learning theory permits careful analysis of 3 kinds of "imitation" or "identification." Examples [of younger brother and older sister; illustrated in lecture]:

• same behavior
  • same responses (EATING BANANA)
  • same cues (SEEING BOWL OF FRUIT ON TABLE)
  • same everything
• copying
  • aim: reducing discrepancy from model (WANT TO BE LIKE OLDER SISTER)
  • different cues, from the model (SEEING OLDER SISTER EAT BANANA)
  • past reward for similarity (PRAISE FOR BEING LIKE SISTER)
• matched dependent behavior
  • response is like model (EATING BANANA)
  • cue is from the model (not same as model) (SEEING SISTER EAT BANANA)
• QUIZ:
  • Brother runs to door to be with Dad, when he sees his older brother do so, and is rewarded by Dad's smiles.
  • What is this?
• ANSWER:
  • matched dependent behavior
  • (The cues come from the brother, but the reward comes from Dad--not from being like Bro.)

The Four Critical Training Periods of Childhood

• Feeding on a schedule may lead to traits of apathy and apprehensiveness. Why?
• (What was happening when the "reward" of food was given?)

Cleanliness Training

Early Sex Training

Anger-Anxiety Conflicts

Conflict

Four Types of Conflict

• approach-avoidance
• avoidance-avoidance
• approach-approach
• double approach-avoidance

Reducing Conflict

• compare drugs (alcohol) with psychotherapy...
• [graphic examples in lecture]

Frustration and Aggression

The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• frustration: interference with goal attainment
• frustration leads to aggression

People learn responses to frustration, which may be aggressive or nonaggressive responses.

displacement

• cultural scapegoats (women, minorities, children)

hostile aggression

• fits the frustration-aggression hypothesis
• hostility: high drive

instrumental aggression

• doesn't fit the frustration-aggression hypothesis
• "cool, calculating" aggression, for a purpose

Aggressive Cues

• "weapons effect": stimuli (guns, knives) increase aggressive responses in experiments
• other situational cues can reduce aggression

catharsis?

• displaced aggression
• evidence: doesn't support it

The Role of Emotion

• Anger, or other emotions, mediate between frustration and aggression, according to Berkowitz.

Alcohol

• Often intensifies the frustration-aggression link,
• but not always.

Individual Differences in Aggressive Responses

• Impact of early experience (child abuse) and failure of ego development.
• Impact of learning.
• Impact of brain development.

Language

• allows discrimination
• facilitates learning and problem-solving
• comparison with Freud's "secondary process" (ego)

Neurosis

[schematic diagram presented in lecture]

Psychotherapy

teaching discrimination of cues

teaching relaxation (drive reduction)

language as mediator of learning

Suppression

And, although people can learn to repress unwanted thoughts, they often "rebound" later, occurring with increased frequency.

Imagine being a subject in an experiment, watching a film of an arm amputation. Subjects watching emotional films, instructed to suppress their disgust (or amusement or sadness), showed increased sympathetic nervous system activity.

• Similar suppression in real life can increase risk of hypertension.
• Suppression of emotions also contributes to risk of cancer.

suppression

• Can be adaptive.
• Can sensitize to (mis)interpretation of other events (projection, for example).
• Can produce adverse health effects.
• Suppression of thoughts is more helpful than suppression of emotions.

Psychoanalytic Learning Theory Reconsidered

• http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/FrustAgg/
• Self-Help page on Anger and Aggression by Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd
  http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap7/

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