INTRODUCTION
TO PERSONALITY :
Just as the term
intelligence the term personality is also freely used by layman with
difference, like height, weight, well built, powerful voice. As strong or weak
Personality some refer to handsome or beautiful appearance of an individual.
Some other refer to dress manner of talking or behaving some others refer to
intellectual qualities. Moral qualities and spiritual strength of an
individual. Some use personality to imply personal attractiveness or the
ability to withstand hardships. Though each individual refers personality to
different aspects of the individual we cannot say who is right and who is
wrong. It is something which emerges as a result of various qualities like
learning, memory, thinking, reasoning, drives, emotions, intelligence, perception
etc., combined together. In short it is a combine product of cognitive.
Conative and affective qualities of an individual. As a result of the synthesis
of the above three qualities certain new qualities emerge, which describe one’s
personality more adequately.
MEANING
AND DEFINITION:
The
term personality is derived from the latin term persona. The meaning of the
term persona is the actors mask. The mask was chosen and worn to indicate
character that was to be played by the individual. In olden days the actors
used to put on the mask while coming on to the stage so that their identity
will not be made known to the audience and at the same time the role they play
will be nearer to the reality so in a broad sense everyone is an actor in this
world and he must play his role. Whether he is successful or not. It is in this sense. A great devotee
and a saint – purandharadasa has stated that the world by the Lord is a stage
and all are actors and we have to play our roles as guided by him. In the same
way Shakespeare has stated that all the world is a stage and all the men and
women are actors wherein we play in. From this point of view the term the
personality refers to the role one plays in the life’s drama. Every individual
in this world has to control his emotions and tries to fit into the pattern of
the society. so that his actions are approved and appreciated. TC achieve this
objective he puts on a mask an plays his role. The role may be of a bachelor a
married man or an old man or an old Man a parent a teacher, a student, an
officer or a subordinate to play the role chosen he has to put on a mask suited
to it thus every individual in the society retaining his individuality and at
the same time without affecting the interest of the role assigned by the society
or chosen by the individual is the personality which is good to the individual
as well as to society. This is what we call it as personality.
As
the term personality is very much complex, intricate and integrated. It is
difficult to define it in a precise way. So different Psychologists have defined personality in
their own ways, of which only a few definitions are quoted here under. May’s
(1929) definition is that the personality is the individual’s social stimulus
value. According to this how an individual impress upon others by his behavior
and psychology appearance, and how others judge his behavior refers to his
personality. The judgement of others may be wrong but it is based on the
outward appearance of the individual as the behavior of an individual towards
others vary from person to person and from time to time it is wrong to judge
the personality of an individual in terms of social stimulus value.
Gordon
Alport defines that personality is the dynamic organization, within the
individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment
to his environment. According to this definitions. The various psychological
traits which determine the peculiar or personal adjustment of the individual
are organized into dynamic unit. So there is always a flexible adjustment to
the environment. Munn states that personality may be defined as the most
characteristic integration of an individual’s structures. Modes of behavior,
interests, attitudes, abilities and attitudes especially from the stand point of
adjustment in social situations. Eysenck defines that personality is the more
or less stable and enduring organization of a person’s character. temperament,
intellect and physique which determines unique adjustment to the environment.
According
to this author personality is the dynamic organization and integration of the
various innate and acquired Psychological traits into a harmonious unit which
facilitates the individual to protect or to restore the physiological and
psychological homeostasis by interaction with the physical and socio-cultural
environment. Man in order to protect or to restore the homeostasis, employs the
innate ability and emotions and in the course of interaction acquires certain
values. Morals and other qualities, which give him satisfaction and thereby
become part and parcel of the self due to frequent use. The self armed with
these qualities, values, morals, and various behavior constitute the
personality. Which inturn determines his unique adjustment to his internal and
external environment.
“Personality
is the dynamic “organization” of the individual’s “Characteristic” ways of “responding” to himself and to his
experiences”.
ALBERT
BANDURA
BORN:
December 4, 1925 (age 86) Mundare, Alberta.
NATIONALITY : Canadian / American
FIELDS : Psychology, Philosophy of
Action
INSTITUTIONS : Stanford University
ALMA MATER : University of British
Columbia, University of Lowa.
KNOWN FOR : Social cognitive theory,
self –efficacy, social learning theory, Bobo doll experiment human agency,
Reciprocal determinism.
INFLUENCES : Robert Sears, Clark Hull,
Kenneth Spence, Arthur Benton, Neal Miller.
INFLUENCED : Cognitive Psychology,
Social Psychology
ALBERT
BANDURA BIOGRAPHY:
(Born
December 4, 1925, in Mundare, Alberta, Canada) is a Psychologist who is the
Devid starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of social science in Psychology at
Stanford university. Over almost six decades, he has been responsible for
contributions to many fields of Psychology, including social cognitive theory,
therapy and personality Psychology, and was also influential in the transition
between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of
social learning theory and the theory of self-efficacy, and if also responsible
for the influential 1961 Bobo doll experiment.
A
2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth
most-frequently cite Psychologist of all time, behind B.F. Skinner, Sigmund
Freud and Jean Piaget, and as the most cited living one. Bandura is widely
described as the greatest living psychologist, and as one of the most
influential psychologists of all time. In 2008 Bandura won the Grawemeyer Award
in Psychology.
Albert
Bandura shares the view that learning principles are sufficient to explain and
predict behavior and behavior change. However, he takes issue with learning
approaches to personality that draw their principles exclusively from studies
of single organisms in an impersonal environment or that picture human behavior
as being passively controlled by environmental influences. He reminds us that
humans are capable of thought and self regulation that permit them to control
their environment as well as to be shaped by it. Furthermore, many aspects of
personality functioning involve the interaction of the individual with others
so that an adequate theory of personality must take into account the social
context in which behavior is originally acquired and continues to be
maintained. Bandura’s intenct has therefore been to extend and modify
traditional learning theory by developing principles of social learning. As
Bandura describes it.
Social
learning theory approaches the exploration of human behavior in terms of a
continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive. Behavioral and
environmental determinants. Within the process of reciprocal determinism lies
the opportunity for people to influence
their destiny as well as the limits of self direction this conception of
human functioning then neither casts people into the role of powerless objects
controlled by environmental forces nor
free agents who can become whatever they choose. Both people and their
environments are reciprocal determinants of each other. (Bandura, 1977b,
p.vii).
Bandura
received his graduate training in clinical psychology at the university of lowo
which awarded him the Ph.D. in 1952. At lowa the Mullian tradition was strong.
Its faculty consisted of such individuals as Kenneth Spence. Judson brown and
Robert sears all of whom had received their doctoral training at yale and made
notable contributions of their own in extending Hull’s theory. After a year of
postdoctoral clinical training Bandura accepted in 1953, a position at Stanford
university. Where he is now David Starr Jordan
Professor of social science. He has served as Chairman of the Stanford
Department of Psychology and in 1974 was eiected to the presidency of the
American Psychological Association. Bandura has been the recipient of the
Distinguished scientist Award of the American Psychological Association’s
Division of Clinical Psychology the distinguished scientific contribution award
of the international society for research on Aggression.
Bandura
has presented his theory in a series of books with the late Richard walters as
Junior author. Bandura (1959) wrote Adolescent aggression a detalled report of
a field study in which social learning principles were used to analyze the
personality development of a group of middle class delinquent boys, followed by
social learning principles they had developed and the evidence on which the
theory was based. In 1969 Bandura published principles of behavior modification
in which he outline the application of behavioural techniques based on learning
principles to the modification of behavior and in 1973 he published Affression
: A social learning analysis social learning theory (1977b), in which Bandura
has “attempted to provide a unified theoretical framework for analyzing human thought and behavior
remains his clearest theoretical statement to date although his social
foundations of thought and action (1986) provides a more detailed treatment of
the theory. In addition to these theoretical statements Bandura and his
students have contributed an extensive series of empirical articles.
In
common with most learning theory
approaches to personality. Social learning theory is based on the
premise that human behavior is largely acquired and that the principles of
learning are sufficient to account for the development and maintenance of that
behavior. However, previous learning theories have paid insufficient attention
not only to the social context in which this behavior arises but also to the
fact that much important learning takes place vicariously. That is in the
course of observing other’s behavior. Individuals learn to imitate that behavior
or in some way model themselves after others. In their 1941 book social
learning and imitation, Miller and Dollard had recognized the significant role
ployed by imitative processes in personality development and had sought to
develop explanations of certain kinds of imitative behavior. But few others
interested in personality had attempted to incorporate the phenomenon of
observational learning into their learning theories, and even Miller and
Dollard seddom referred to imitation in their later publications Bandura has
sought not only to redress this neglect but also to extend the analysis of
observational learning beyond the limited types of situations considered by
Miller and Dollard.
Bandura’s
1974 article behavior theories and the models of man. Provides a relatively
succinct summary of his point of view.
Contrary
to popular bellef, the tabled reflexive conditioning in humans is largely a
Myth conditioning is simply a descriptive term for learning through paired
experiences. Not an explanation of how the changes come about originally,
conditioning was assumed to occur automatically on abser examination it turned
out to be cognitively mediated people do not learn despite repetitive paired
experience unless they recognize that events are correlated so called
conditioned reactions are largely self activated on the basis of learned expectations rather
than automatically evoked the critical
factor, therefore, is not that events occur together in time. But that people
learn to predict them and to summon up appropriate anticipatory reactions.
Our
theories have been incredibly slow in acknowledging that man can learn by
observation as well as by direct experience. The rudiment – tary form of
learning based on direct experience has been exhaustively studied, whereas the more pervasive and
powerful mode of learning by observation is largely ignored. A shift of
emphasis is needed. Bandura’s career has been devoted to encouraging that
shift.
LEARNING
AND BEHAVIORAL APPROACHE
Few
Psychologists would deny that may of the behavior patterns we know as
“Personality” come about through learning and conditioning. However there is
real controversy about whether the various learning and behavioral accounts
tell us all we need to know about personality development. Some argue that a
strict learning theory approach leads only to an understanding of behavior in
specific situations and that such “situationism” ignores the consistencies that
many people how from one situation to the next others argue that focusing on behavior
one can observe outwardly and emphasizing concepts such as “reinforcement” seem
to diminish the person in personality.
Learning theorists
counter such arguments in several ways. First, they note that conditioned
responses can be quite complex. Human
learning is not just a matter of acquiring specific muscle twitches in
response to certain stimuli. Instead, because of the great adaptability of
human being. A rich, interwoven tapestry of behaviors is learned. This
tapestory is intricate enough to account for many of the subtleties of human personality.
Second, such social
learning theorists as Bandura and walters do use concepts about internal
cognitive process to explain imitation and delayed performance. In fact, with
the exception of skinner and other radical behaviorists. Learning theories today acknowledge the influence of
at least some powerful variables within the learner and learners as far more
than passive recipients of environmental
influence. One way that human learners demonstrate their nonpassivity is by making judgments about the causes of their
reinforcement, as our earlier discussion of locus of control.
RECONCEPTUALIZATION
OF REINFORCEMENT
Bandura greately
broadens the definition of reinforcement. Rather than functioning in a
Mechanistic Manner behavioral consequences alter subsequent behavior by
providing information, when people observe the outcomes of t heir own behavior
and the behavior of others. They develop hypotheses about the likely
consequences of producing that behavior in the future. This information then
serves as a guide for subsequent behavior. Accurate hypotheses produce
successful performance and inaccurate hypotheses lead to in ineffective
behavior. In other words, reinforces provide information about what a person
must do in order to secure desired outcomes and to avoid punishing outcomes. As
a consequence, reinforcement can only occur when a person is aware of the
contingencies and anticipates that they will apply to future behavior human’s
ability to anticipate outcomes also accounts for the incentive value of
reinforces. “By representing foreseeable outcomes symbolically, people can
convert future consequences into current motivators of behavior. Most actions
are thus largely under anticipatory control” for Bandura, then a reinforce
functions primarily as “an informative and motivational operation rather than
as a Mechanical response strengthener” As a conseuqnce, Bandura considers
“regulation” to be a more appropriate term than “reinforcement”.
Bondura also rejects
the Skinnerian understanding of how reinforcement functions. In observational
learning reinforcement serves as “an antecedent” rather than a “consequent”
influence. That is, anticipated reinforcement is one of several factors that
can influence a person to pay attention to a Model. And it can also encourage a person to
rehearse the behavior that has been observed. As illustrated in Skinnerian
learning theory suggests that reinforcement acts backward to strengthen an
imitative response and its connection to surrounding an imitative response and
its connection to surrounding stimuli. From Bandura’s point of view, however, a
reinforcement facilitates learning in an anticipatory manner by encouraging the
observer to pay attention and to rehearse the observed behavior. Bandura even
proposes that direct reinforcement
is not necessary in order for learning
to occur.
In addition to these
modifications in the Mechanics of motivation Bandura adds two others types of
reinforcement to the classical concept of “direct reinforcement” as a stimulus
whose presence increases the frequency of occurrence for a behavior with which
it is paired. First “sets reinforcement” occurs. Schematic representation of
how reinforcement influence observational learning according to instrumental
conditioning theory and social learning theory.
Reinforcement theories
SModeling stimuli R Sreint
Social learning theory
Symbollic coding
Anticipated Srient Attention SModeling stimuli Cognitive
Organization R
Rehearsal
When an individual
compares his or her own behavior to internal standards. If the behavior meets
those standards. The person may experience satisfaction or pride, but if the
behavior violates or falls short of those standards the person responds with
guilt, shame, or dissatisfaction. As we shall see during our discussion of the self system individuals serves as
powerful reinforcers for their own behavior. This self reinforcing function
gives people “a capacity for self directions. They do things that give rise to
self satisfaction and self worth and they refrain from behaving in ways that
evoke self punishment” Bandura is suggesting that any behavior producer two
sets of consequences; self evaluations and external outcomes. External
consequences have the greatest effect on behavior when they are compatible with
sets generated consequences Behavior is maintained by its consequences, but
those consequences are not only externally applied the reader will notice
similarities between Bandura’s self reinforcement and Gordon Allport’s concept
of a generic conscience functioning on the basis of a personal sense of what we
ought to do rather than an external sense of what we ought to do self
reinforcement also is analogous to the Freudian concepts of superego but
Bandura argues that such “incorporated entities” are not able to account for
the variable operation and occasional disregard
of internal Moral controls. We will return to self reinforcement when we
discuss Bandura’s self system.
As a second new type of reinforcement, Bandura
suggests that vicarious reinforcement”
occurs when an individual witnesses someone else experience reinforcing or
punishing consequences for a behavior and that individual anticipates similar
consequences if she are he produces the same behavior. Thus, an individual may
be reinforced without producing a behavior or experiencing a consequence
observed consequences can change behavior in much the same manner as directly
experienced consequences much as skinner had suggested that Thorndike’s trial
and error learning was an inefficient and unlikely way do acquire complex
behaviors. So Bandura suggests that Skinner’s operant conditioning is an
impractical and dangerous means for humans to acquire many behaviors. In contrast,
most human behavior is learned observationally by modeling we observe the
behavior of others and use the information as a guide for our own subsequent
behavior we turn now to Bandura’s description of Modeling.
PRINCIPLES
OF OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING:
Bandura
Proposes that a fundamental way humans acquire skills and behaviors is by
observing the behavior of others. Such observational learning or modelings is
governed by four constituent processes attention, retention production and
motivation.
Sub
processes governing observational learning
|
Attentional
processes
|
Retention
process
|
Production
process
|
Motivational
process
|
|
Modeled
events salience affective valence complexity prevalence functional value.
|
Symbolic
coding cognitive organization, cognitive rehearsal, Enactive rehearsal.
|
Cognitive
representation observation of enactments Feedback information conception
matching
|
External
incentivies, sensory, Tangible, social, control vicarious incentives self
incentives tangible self evaluative.
|
|
Observer
attributes perceptual capabilities perceptual set cognitive capabilities.
Arausal level acquired preferences
|
Observer
attributes cognitive skills cognitive structures
|
Observer
attributes physical capabilities component sub skills.
|
Observe
attributes incentive preferences social comparative biases internal
standards.
|
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
:
If
you’ve taken an introductory course in
economics. You’re already familiar with the policy planner’s dilemma of
deciding whether to allocate limited resources for guns or for butter. The
problem is usually posed to illustrate the impersonal market forces of supply
and demand. Profit and closs. Yet planners are people and most individuals come
to the war-or-peace decision points of life having already developed preferred
responses. North western psychologist Donald Campbell calls these tendencies
“acquired behavioural disponsitions” and he suggests six ways that we learn to
choose one option over another.
1. Trial-and
–error experience is a hands-on exploration that might lead to tasting the and
squeezing the trigger, or perhaps the other way around.
2. Perception
of the object is a firsthand chance to jook admire, but don’t touch Pistl and a
pound of butter at close range.
3. Observation
of another’s response to the object is hearing a contented sigh when someone
points the gun or spreads the butter on to aset. It is also seeing critical
frowns on faces of people who bypass the items in a store.
4. Modeling
is watching someone fire the gun or melt the butter to put it on popcorn.
5. Exhortation
is the national Rifle Association’s plea to protect the right to b ear arms or
Willard Scott’s commercial message urging us to use real butter.
6. Instruction
about the object is a verbal description of the gun’s effective range or of the
number of calories in a pot of butter.
Campbell claims that
direct trial and error experience creates a deep and long lasting acquired
behavioural dispotion. While perception has somewhat less set ill. Exhortation
is one of the most used but seaset effective means to influence attitudes or
actions.
Stanford Psychologist
Albert Bandura agrees that conversation
is not an effective way of altering human behavior. But he thinks that
classical clearing theory’s preoccupation with trial and error clearing is
short sighted “coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly
trying it one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing
possible options and suffering the consequences”. His social learning theory
concentrates on the power of example.
The combine four hours
that TV spends in front of the screen represent of typical day for boys in his
class at school. Bandura considers “gentle” TV a likely candidate to someday
clobber his sister. Shoot a prowder or use criminal force to get his own way. Social learning
theory postulates three necessary stages
in the causal link between television violence and actual physical harm to
another : attention, definition and motivation.
ATTENTIONAL
PROCESSES:
People
cannot learn anything unless they pay attention to and accurately perceive
significant features of the to-be-modeled behavior. We are most likely to pay
attention to behaviors that are salient simple and promise to have some
functional value. As a consequence a model that is vivid attractive, competent
and seen repeatedly is more likely to catch our attention. In addition what a
person notices is influenced by his or her knowledge base and correct
orientation. The characteristics of the observers also determine how much
imitative behavior takes place in a given situation. Highly dependent children
for example have been found to be more influenced by the behavior of a model
than the class dependent.
The
characteristics of both model and observer often. Jointly determine what will
occur. A particularly informative study showing the interplay of model and
observer was performed by Hetherington and Frankie with young children and
their parents. The investigators first determined by observing the parents the
degree of warmth and nurturance each expressed toward the child and which
parent war dominant in matters of child care. Subsequently the child watched
each play with toys and games supplied by the investigator. Following which the
child was allowed to play with the same materials and the amount of his or her
imitative behavior recorded, children of both sexes were much more likely to
imitate a warm, hustu or and parent than a cool or punitive one, but the
largest effect was found with girls whose mothers were warm. By and large the
dominant parent also commanded more imitative behavior although when the father
was dominant imitated the mother somewhat
more than father.
RETENTION
PROCESSES:
A
behavior cannot be reproduced unless we have remembered it by coding it in
symbolic form. Retention of observed behavior depends mainly upon mental images
and verbal representations. Memory can be enhanced by organization of the
material and by rehearsal. The material that is retained often is transformed
to correspond to some existing knowledge
or expectation on the part of the learner.
Bandura
is convinced, however that major gains in vicarious learning come when the
observer develops a conscious awareness at the technique involved. These
insights are stored verbally. TV will take a giand step toward becoming a dead
shot when he can sort out the visual image.
Bandura
says that learning through modeling is more a matter of abstracting rules than
mimicry . It’s not simply “Monkey see, monkey do”.
The
entire acquisition process described by Bandura is a spectator sport that’s why
television teaches violence so well TY doesn’t have to actually do the
aggressive behavior. Fantasy rehearsal in his mind will keep the act a live
option for the future. If he ever does point a gun in anger. The act of force,
after years of mental role playing will set his acquired behavioral disposition
into granite. “The highest level of observational learning is achieved by first
organizing and rehearsing the modeled behavior symbolically and thenenacting it
overtly”.
PRODUCTION
PROCESSES:
The
learner must be able to reproduce the behavior that has been observe. An
observed behavior no matter how well it has been retained cannot be enacted
without the necessary skills and
abilities sometimes the production problem stems form a lack of the
requisite cognitive or motor skills, but often it reflects the performer’s lack
of feedback about what she or he actually is doing. This is true in learning
many athletic skills, but it also is a frequent problem with social behaviors.
It can be extremely informative and unnerving to see or has tapes of our own
behavior trial and error. Practice and feedback all contribute to what is often
a gradual process of translating knowledge into action.
MOTIVATIONAL
PROCESSES:
Bandura’s
social learning theory emphasizes the distinction between acquisition and
performance because people do not enact everything they learn performance of
observed behavior is influenced by three kinds of incentives direct. Vicarious
and self administered. A learned behavior will be enacted it leads directly to
a desired outcome. If it has been
observed to be effective for the model or if it is self satisfying. In other
words, we are likely to produce a behavior if we believe that it is in our
interest to do so.
The
critical role Bandura assigns to imitation in personality development is best
seen in his analysis of its contribution to the acquisition of novel responses.
In a series of experiments done with children. Bandura and his colleagues have
demonstrated that subjects allowed to observe an unusual self of responses
performed by another individual tend to exhibit these same responses when
placed in a similar setting. In one representative study nursery school
children tested one at a time watched n adult model perform a series of
particular offers give acts. Physical and verbal toward a large toy doll. Other
children saw a nonaggressive adult who
sat quietly in the experiential room and paid no attention to the later. the
children were middle frusetated and then placed alone in the room with the doll
the behavior of the groups tended to be conformant with the adult model’s the
children who had seen an affressive adult themselves performed more aggressive acts than a control group given no
prior experience with model and made more responses than the control children
that were quite exact imitations of the model’s behaviors. Further the children
ho had observed.
REFERENCES:
1. Theories
of Personality Calvins, Hall Gardner Lindzey John B. Campbell, Wiley India
Edition John B. Campbell, New Delhi.
2. Introduction
to psychology Clifford T. Morgan, Richard A King, John R. Weisz, John Schopler,
Seventh Edition, Tata Mcgraw – Hill Publishing Company Limited, New Delhi.
3. Psychology,
Prof. P. Nataraj, First Edition, PART – II, Srinivasa Publciati, Mysore.
4. Internet
Materials.
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