PersonalityPsychology covers a vast field, and one interesting aspect of it is personality.
Personality by itself involves various issues. Some of which basic aspects arePsychoanalytic, Ego, Biological, Behaviorist, Cognitive, Trait, Humanistic andInteractionist. Though personality as a subject fascinates me a lot, whatinterests me the most in this subject is behaviorism. For me different types ofbehaviors are amazing to learn about, mainly the behavior therapy, collectivebehavior, crime and punishment, and Social behavior and peer acceptance inchildren. I chose Behaviorism over the other aspects because I believe Behaviordetermines human personality and is very interesting. You can tell what one isby his behavior, and one behaves according to what place he has in society.
Bydoing this paper on Behavior, I hope to get a better understanding of, ifbehavior develops a personality or if personality guides behavior. I also seebehaviorism helping me in the future with my personal and professional career byunderstanding human personality and behaviour better than I do. No matter whatyour major is, if you can determine one`s personality by his behavior you canreally get your work done from that person and understand the better than youwould otherwise. This person could be your employee or your employer. BehaviorTherapy Behavior therapy is the application of experimentally derived principlesof learning to the treatment of psychological disorders. The concept derivesprimarily from work of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov.
Behavior-therapytechniques differ from psychiatric methods, particularly psychoanalysis, in thatthey are predominately symptom (behaviour) oriented and show little or noconcern for unconscious processes, achieving new insight, or effectingfundamental personality change. Behavior therapy was popularized by the U. S. psychologist B. F.
Skinner, who worked with mental patients in a Massachusettsstate hospital. From his work in animal learning, Skinner found that theestablishment and extinction of responses can be determined by the wayreinforcers, or rewards, are given. The pattern of reward giving, both in timeand frequency, is known as a schedule of reinforcement. The gradual change inbehavior in approximation of the desired result is known as shaping.
More recentdevelopments in behavior therapy emphasize the adaptive nature of cognitiveprocesses. Behaviour-therapy techniques have been applied with some success tosuch disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stuttering,obsessive-compulsive behavior, drug addiction, neurotic behaviours of normalpersons, and some psychotic conditions. It has also been used in training thementally retarded. Collective Behavior Much of collective behaviour is dramatic,unpredictable and frightening, so the early theories and many contemporarypopular views are more evaluative than analytic. The French social psychologistGustave Le Bon identified the crowd and revolutionary movements with theexcesses of the French Revolution; the U. S.
psychologist Boris Sidis wasimpressed with the resemblance of crowd behavior to mental disorder. Many ofthese early theories depicted collective behaviour returned to an earlier stageof development. Freud retained this emphasis in viewing crowd behaviour and manyother forms of collective behaviour as regressions to an earlier stage ofchildhood development; he explained, for example, the slavish identificationthat followers have for leaders on the basis of such regression. Moresophisticated recent efforts to treat collective behavior as a pathologicalmanifestation employ social disorganization as an explanatory approach. Fromthis point of view collective behavior erupts as an unpleasant symptom offrustration and malaise stemming from cultural conflict, organizational failure,and other social malfunctions.
The distinctive feature of this approach is areluctance to take seriously the manifest contest of collective behaviour. Neither the search for enjoyment in recreational fad, the search for spiritualmeaning on a religious sect, nor the demand for equal opportunity in aninterest-group movement is accepted to face value. An opposite evaluation ofmany forms of collective behaviour has become part of the analytic perspectivein revolutionary approaches to society. From the revolutionist¦¦spoint of view a much collective behavior is a release of creative impulses fromthe repressive effects of establish social orders.
¦¦Revolutionarytheorists such as Frantz Fanon depict traditional social arrangements asdestructive of human spontaneity, and various forms of crowd and revolutionarymovements as man¦¦s creative self-assertion bursting its socialshackles. ¦¦ (MSN behaviorism Search/types of behaviors. ) Crime andPunishment Psychologists have approached the task of explaining delinquentbehavior by examining in particular the processes by which behaviour andrestraints on behaviour are learned. (MSN behaviorism Search/crime andpunishment) Criminality is seen to result from the failure of the superego, as aconsequence either of its incompletes development or of unusually stronginstinctual drives. ¦¦The empirical basis for such a theory isnecessarily thin.
Behaviour theory views all behaviour criminal and otherwise aslearned and thus manipulable by the use of reinforcement andpunishment. ¦¦ Social learning theory examines the manner in whichbehaviour is learned from contacts within the family and other intimate groups,from social contacts outside the family, particularly from peer groups, and fromexposure to models of behavior in the media, particularly television. Mentalillness is the cause of a relatively small proportion of crime, but itsimportance as a causative factor may be exaggerated by the seriousness of someof the crimes committed by persons with mental disorders. Severe depression orpsychopathy may lead to grave offenses of violence. Social Behavior and PeerAcceptance The peer relations literature is replete with studies showing thatchildren who demonstrate certain kinds of social behaviors while refraining fromother types of behaviors tend to be liked by their peers.
For example, childrenwho play cooperatively and show leadership abilities usually enjoy high peeracceptance (Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996; Lass, Price, & Hart, 1988). Onthe other hand, children who display high levels of aggressive behavior or whointeract with their peers in argumentative, disruptive, and sociallyinappropriate ways are often rejected by their peers (Coie & Dodge, 1988;Dodge, 1983; Dodge, Coie, Pettit, & Price 1990). Shy and withdrawn behavior,such as not playing interactively with peers, watching peers play rather thanjoining in, and wandering around a classroom or playground, also tends to beassociated with low peer acceptance (Lemerise, 1997). A study was designed toisolate the types of social behaviors that predict kindergartenchildren¦¦s peer acceptance when considering several types of socialbehavior simultaneously. The outcome of that question is important to helpparents, teachers, and others who work with young children understand whatsocial skills to specifically foster and promote in order to enhancechildren¦¦s perceptions of their peer acceptance.
Previous researchhas discovered developmental differences in the associations between socialbehaviors and peer acceptance. Aggression, for example, is linked withproblematic peer relations from early childhood through adolescence, whilesocially withdrawn behavior begins to be associated with low peer acceptance inmiddle and late childhood (Rubin, Bookwork, & Parker, 1998) Adultperceptions of children¦¦s confidence in their own peer acceptancealso may influence their social behaviors. Adults who believe children are notconfident about their peer acceptance might provide more opportunities to helpthese children develop play and friendship skills that could, in turn, lead tomore confidence in their peer acceptance. For example, a teacher who believes achild lacks confidence in his or her peer acceptance might pair the child withanother child who is confident about her peer acceptance, in order to provide amodel of behavior.
In summary, this study investigated the associations betweenaggression, shyness/ withdrawal, prosocial behavior, friendship skill, andsocial behavior problems and peer acceptance in kindergarten students. Children¦¦s own feelings of peer acceptance, sociometric ratingsfrom peers, and teacher and parent perceptions of children¦¦sconfidence in their peer acceptance were included in the regression analysis toisolate the social behaviors that predict kindergartners¦¦ peeracceptance across informants. The present study also investigated differences insocial behaviors and peer acceptance among children of different genders andvaried ethnic backgrounds in a diverse school and community. After doing thispaper I came to the conclusion that behavior shapes personality. The researchinvolving children to learn social acceptance, showed us clearly that how onebehaves makes him what he is.
I believe the same for adults. I believe if onebehaves in a certain way for a long time, not only society with believe you arewhat you are behaving as but he himself will start believing he is what he isbehaving as. Also I have learnt to be more patient with people because I take astep in the further and think why a person would behave in a particular way. Inow can see a clear difference between normal and abnormal behaviours to theknowledge I have gathered by reading about Skinner, Freud, Dollard and Miller.
