PSY 3520 Module 5 Learning Theories Paper: Skinner, Bandura and Rotter on How Personality Is Learned Example

Learning to Be Who We Are: Reinforcement, Modeling and Expectancy in Personality

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Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Thomas Edison State University

PSY-3520: Psychology of Personality

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Month Day, Year

Learning to Be Who We Are: Reinforcement, Modeling and Expectancy in Personality

Introduction

A new aide on one of our units, whom I will call Marisol, a composite of several new employees, was so anxious in her first weeks that she avoided tasks she had been trained to do. After shadowing an experienced aide for two weeks, practicing with her and receiving specific praise from her supervisor, she became noticeably more confident. Her change made me think about learning theories of personality, which propose that much of who we are is learned. This paper explains three learning theorists and examines key studies.

Skinner's Radical Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner argued that personality is simply the collection of a person's behavior patterns, shaped by their consequences. Reinforced actions grow more frequent; behavior followed by punishment or no reinforcement becomes less likely. Skinner rejected explanations based on inner traits or mental states, which he saw as unnecessary. Through operant conditioning, a child who receives attention for tantrums learns to have more tantrums, and an employee praised for initiative shows more initiative.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura agreed that consequences matter but argued that people also learn by observing others and that thinking plays a central role. He proposed reciprocal determinism: personal factors, such as beliefs, behavior and the environment all influence one another. People can learn a behavior by watching a model and then perform it later if they expect it to be rewarded.

The Bobo Doll Study

Bandura et al. (1961) tested observational learning with preschool children. Some children watched an adult behave aggressively toward an inflatable Bobo doll, hitting it with a mallet and saying hostile things; others watched an adult play quietly; a control group saw no model. Later, after being mildly frustrated, children who had seen the aggressive model reproduced many of the specific aggressive acts and words, while those who saw the quiet model or no model showed much less aggression. Boys showed more physical aggression than girls, and children imitated same-sex models somewhat more. The study showed that watching was enough to learn new behavior, with no reward given to the learner.

Self-Efficacy

Bandura (1977) proposed that people's beliefs about their own capability to perform a behavior, which he called self-efficacy, govern whether they attempt the task, how hard they work at it and how long they keep going when it gets difficult. Self-efficacy, he argued, draws on four sources. The strongest is mastery, actually succeeding at the task; next come vicarious experience, watching people like oneself succeed, and verbal persuasion, when others express confidence; and emotional arousal, since calm states support efficacy while anxiety undermines it. He argued that psychological treatments work largely by strengthening self-efficacy.

Rotter's Expectancy Theory and Locus of Control

Julian Rotter proposed that behavior depends on the expectancy that it will lead to a reinforcement and on the value of that reinforcement. Rotter (1966) described a generalized expectancy he called locus of control. People with an internal locus of control believe that outcomes depend on their own behavior; people with an external locus believe outcomes depend on luck, chance or powerful others. He developed a scale to measure it and reviewed evidence that people with an internal locus were more likely to seek information, take action to improve their situation and resist social pressure.

Understanding Marisol's Change

Bandura's sources of self-efficacy fit Marisol's experience. Shadowing provided vicarious experience of a similar person succeeding. Practicing tasks with support provided mastery experiences. Her supervisor's specific praise provided verbal persuasion, and as her anxiety eased, her emotional state supported confidence. Skinner would add that the praise reinforced her efforts, increasing them. Rotter would note that as she saw her actions produce good results, her expectancy that effort pays off grew.

Self-Efficacy and Health Behavior

Self-efficacy has become one of the most widely applied ideas in psychology. Programs to help people quit smoking, manage diabetes or exercise regularly often build self-efficacy deliberately through small successes, models and coaching, because people who believe they can succeed persist longer when change gets hard.

Skinner's Legacy

Skinner's principles remain central in applied behavior analysis, used in education, developmental disabilities and workplace safety programs, where specific behaviors are defined, measured and reinforced. These applications show that his ideas are powerful for changing behavior even if they leave out much of inner life.

Implications for Training

The hospital's onboarding can apply these ideas: pair new employees with skilled, approachable models; break skills into steps that allow early success; give specific, prompt feedback; and help new staff see how their actions affect patient outcomes. The Bobo doll study is also a warning: new employees learn bad habits from poor models as readily as good habits from good ones.

Modeling in Media

Bandura's work also informed debates about media violence, since children and adults can learn behaviors from characters on screens as well as from people in the room. Research on this topic remains debated, but the principle that people imitate models who are rewarded is well established.

Criticisms

Skinner's approach has been criticized for ignoring thought and emotion. Learning theories can underplay biological influences on personality, such as temperament. Locus of control and self-efficacy are often measured by self-report.

Limits

The Bobo doll study measured aggression toward a toy shortly after viewing, which may not reflect real-world aggression. Marisol is a composite.

Conclusion

Bandura, Ross and Ross showed that people learn by observing models, Bandura showed that self-efficacy beliefs, built through mastery, modeling, persuasion and calm, drive behavior change and Rotter showed that expectations about whether effort pays off shape action. Learning theories remind us that personality is not only inherited or formed in early childhood but continues to be shaped by what we see, do and expect.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575-582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976