Do you every butt heads with your friends, family or coworkers? Are there times when frustration builds up and you think you’ll explode? Do you understand why you respond so strongly when someone cuts you off in traffic, and yet don’t feel that bad when. yo u half to cut someone else off?
In the 1960s, all the hippies wanted love and world peace. What’s less known is the social scientists of that era wanted the same things. So they set out to figure out to understand aggression, deprivation, prison dynamics and insensitivity to the pain of others. This birth of social psychology led to some of the best, and some of the worst, studies ever conducted.
Terms
- approach
- approach gradient
- approach-approach
- approach-avoidance
- avoidance
- avoidance gradient
- avoidance-avoidance
- conflict
- cue
- discrimination (tell them apart)
- Dollard, John (anthropologist)
- double approach-avoidance
- drive
- drive reduction
- external conflict
- Freud, Sigmund
- frustration
- Hull, Clark
- incompatible responses
- internal conflict
- interpersonal conflict
- labeling
- Miller, Neal (psychologist)
- misery
- neurotic
- primary drives
- primary reinforcers
- psychoanalytic learning theory
- punishment
- reinforcement
- resolved conflicts
- response
- Rumpelstiltskin
- secondary drives (acquired drive)
- secondary reinforcers
- shuttle box
- steepness (angle) of gradient
- straight-run maze
- stupid = unaware
- stupidity-misery syndrome
- unconscious behavior
- unlabled
- unresolved conflicts
Quiz
1. The closer you get to the cheese, the better it looks. This is the:
- a. reinforcement gradient
- b. eagerness gradient
- c. approach gradient
- d. way life works
2. You stay in the air as much as possible if you are in a:
- a. straight-run maze
- b. shuttle box
- c. conflict
- d. plane
3. Dollard & Miller combined the theories of Freud and:
- a. Aristotle
- b. Skinner
- c. Piaget
- d. Hull
4. When, where & how to respond are determined by the:
- a. reinforcer
- b. response
- c. punisher
- d. cue
5. When Dollard & Miller say “stupid” they mean:
- a. reinforced
- b. conflicted
- c. unlabeled
- d. labeled
1. The closer you get to the cheese, the better it looks. This is the:
- a. reinforcement gradient
- b. eagerness gradient
- c. approach gradient
- d. way life works
2. You stay in the air as much as possible if you are in a:
- a. straight-run maze
- b. shuttle box
- c. conflict
- d. plane
3. Dollard & Miller combined the theories of Freud and:
- a. Aristotle
- b. Skinner
- c. Piaget
- d. Hull
4. When, where & how to respond are determined by the:
- a. reinforcer
- b. response
- c. punisher
- d. cue
5. When Dollard & Miller say “stupid” they mean:
- a. reinforced
- b. conflicted
- c. unlabeled
- d. labeled
Dollard & Miller did a great job with their studies, even in you might not agree with all of their interpretations.
Here are 5 things we’ll cover:
- Conflict
- Conflict Types
- Dollard & Miller
- Four Processes
- Stupidity-Misery Syndrome
Conflict
- unresolved conflicts
- resolved conflicts
- internal conflict
- external conflict
- interpersonal conflict
2. Types of conflict
approach
- not a conflict, want something, approach it
- approach gradient
- closer get to the cheese, the better it looks
- closer you get, the more you want it
- start 3 weeks before vacation: not today but soon
avoidance
- not a conflict, you avoid it
- avoidance gradient
- closer you get, more you avoid it
- punishment at the end of the maze (small electric shock)
- paying taxes, put it off for as long as you can
approach-approach
- first type of conflict
- pretty mild, as conflicts go
- choice between two things you like
- pick whichever is closest or most convenient
avoidance-avoidance
- second type of conflict
- choice between two things you don’t like
- take out the garage or get yelled at
- straight-run maze with punishment at each end
- stay in the middle, don’t approach either end
- shuttle box = stay in the air as much as possible
approach-avoidance
- third type of conflict
- straight-run maze; both food and shock at the other end
- run toward the food (approach)
- closer it gets the slower it goes (avoidance)
- good looking but bad breath
- avoidance gradient is steeper than the approach gradient
- getting paid (approach) for working with people you don’t like (avoidance)
- getting closer to wedding; both gradients increase
double approach-avoidance
- fourth type of conflict
- straight-run maze, rat in put in the middle
- each end there is both food and shock
- rat runs to toward one end, slows down
- turns around & runs toward other end
- spends all of its time running back and forth
- choice between two alternatives, each with positive and negative factors
3. Dollard-Miller’s Psychoanalytic Learning Theory
- Dollard, John (anthropologist)
- Miller, Neal (psychologist)
- explain psychoanalytic principles in modern terms
- combined Sigmund Freud and Clark Hull
- Hull = behavior is reinforced by drive reduction
- drives are strong stimuli that produce discomfort (hunger, thirst, etc.)
- drive impels us to action
- drives
- strong stimuli that produce discomfort (hunger, thirst, etc.)
- impel us to action
- operationally define drive as length of deprivation
- increase in drive increases:
- height (starting point) of the approach gradient but not angle
- height (starting point) of the avoidance gradient but not angle
- running speed. Faster speed (hungrier) but same dynamics
- triggered by a cue
- hungry (drive) & hear your tummy growl (cue)
- cue triggers a behavior to reduce the drive (get up and go to the kitchen)
- primary reinforcers = events that reduce primary drives (physiological processes)
- secondary reinforcers = events that reduce learned drives (acquired drives)
- cookies reduce primary drive (hunger) but not secondary drive (feeling loved)
- Unconscious behavior
- unconscious behavior a central theme of their model
- behaviors are unconscious because we’re unaware of the cues or unaware of the drive itself
- unconscious means unlabeled
- labeling plays makes us less neurotic
4. Four processes
- drive = the engine
- cue = when, where & how to respond
- response = behavior
- reinforcement = drive reduction
- keep trying different responses until one of them satisfies the drive
- don’t explain where the drives come from
- frustration = blocked attempt to reduce drive
- conflict = severe frustration; incompatible responses
5. Stupidity-misery syndrome
- neurotic = experiencing a strong, unconscious (unlabeled) emotional conflict
- can’t discriminate effectively and make bad decisions
- unaware of our conflict (stupid)
- make bad decisions that make us miserable
- misery is a result of not labeling our conflicts
- Rumpelstiltskin
- avoiding the anxiety of a conflict prevents drive from being reduced
- neurotic conflicts are taught by parents
- defines Freud’s term identification as imitating the behavior of another
Hhh
Bonus
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