History of Theories in Psychology (PSYC 493)

Albert Bandura constructed a study in the early 1960s that sought to understand the importance of learned behavior. He studied how children behaved after they had watched an adult act aggressively towards the Bobo doll. The experiment was one that supported his social learning theory and it showed that people can learn not only from being rewarded or punished themselves, but also by observing others who are either rewarded or punished. With this he went on to see that most of the children, after seeing the adults act aggressively towards the doll, would act similarly towards the doll. When they were not allowed to play with the toys they took out their anger on the doll. They would use physical force against it both through their own strength and through the objects they had access to while also verbally abusing it, like they had observed the adults doing. These results had setbacks, like many other studies, but are simply interesting and alarming. This shows how influenced we are by the observations we make. Unconsciously we are adapt to act in certain ways, or change certain things about ourselves because of the ways we see others act. Not only do we learn from our own personal experiences, we learn from observing the experiences of others. We are always observing and aware of our surroundings even if we do not do so intentionally, so the people we surround ourselves with actually does make a difference.

Relating this experiment to the four branches of theology, I can see how it fits into the category of the fall. The child has learned response, but anger came naturally. There are powerful and destructive emotions that were brought out in this experiment, simply because these children saw the appropriate aspect of their use. When they saw the adults acting in these violent ways, the children had no boundary to where their aggression stopped. As we saw from the results, the children that were subject to violence acted accordingly. I feel like this natural anger is related to the fall of man. We were made to live together in peace and love, and our passions are supposed to be used for the bettering of each other’s lives, and for bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Unfortunately, this passion and built up energy can easily be channeled through anger and violence, which is what we need restoration from. We are not supposed to live with these emotions, but in love. That is why this experiment shows our fall, because we can easily be led astray just by observing the actions of others. Thankfully, we can be positively influenced by observing others as well. That is why living in a community of people who are loving is crucial to personal growth. These positive actions become learned responses because not only do we try to do them on our own, we observe others setting an example for us and their actions naturally become our own responses.

Skinner is typically seen as an enemy of religion, and it’s true that he is not a particularly religious individual. Most of the reasoning for this comes from his views on free will and superstition. Skinner is not specifically an opponent of free will, like many past thinkers. He’s an opponent of will. Skinner believes, regardless of one’s belief in spirituality, God, or a soul, that any attempt to describe man as autonomous, aside from basic instincts, is incorrect at best and delusional at worst. As branches of Christianity are often reliant on free will to explain suffering, this causes problems among many believers.

Furthermore, behaviorism can explain prayer as superstition. Prayer, to Skinner, is always on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule; we see things happen that we prayed for, which makes us feel as if the prayer works. From a theological standpoint, there are all kinds of ways to nitpick this idea: First, we consider prayer to be asking God for help, not the direct source of help. Second, prayer is (for most people) two-way communication with God, not just a chance to ask for things. Third, most of us can tolerate an answer of “no” to our prayers without losing our faith.

But Skinner wasn’t looking to argue the merits of Christian theology. He’s just looking to explain behavior, as someone who is not a member of the Christian faith. Let’s suppose Skinner is correct, and that prayer, like all behavior, is the product of reinforcement or punishment. Obviously, few people are punished for praying, so we’ll leave that idea aside. Suppose, for a moment, that prayer is not supposed to be a variable ratio reinforcement schedule, but a fixed interval one. Consider how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in one is almost universally known as The Lord’s Prayer. Do you recall the one physical thing Jesus asks for?

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Yet Jesus also spoke of how he knew God would care for him, as he even cared for birds: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26, NIV)

Why would Jesus pray for something he knew he would receive? I would suggest that we aren’t only supposed pray for miracles, but for the things we know God already gives us. In this way, our prayers, in some way, are always answered. Our requests cease to be endless begging to God for things we may or may not need, and instead become a new means of appreciating what God gives us. All good things come from God.

I associate Skinner with redemption, not because of his anti-religious beliefs (obviously) but because of proven effectiveness of behavioral treatments and the way behaviorism forces Christians to consider the origins of their behavior and think critically about their beliefs.

Skinner is difficult for me to categorize, but I think he fits more into Fall and Redemption. Like several positivists before him, Skinner doesn’t focus on causation of behaviors. He’s more concerned about how to change or stop them. He also doesn’t focus on what he cannot see. This approach does make sense. What’s done is done, and when a behavior has happened it doesn’t necessarily change once you figure out why it occurred in the first place. Although I personal think there’s a lot to gain from the unknown aspects of human beings and the world we live in, Skinner does offer effective methods of understanding behavior. One such method is functional analysis, which highlights the relationship between environments and certain behaviors.

As modern Christians, we do tend to find it important to learn about the Old Testament and how we fell from grace. However, that knowledge is nowhere near as important to us as the salvation given to us by the death of Christ.  Furthermore, our main goals today are centered on moving forward. We try to attain these goals through attempting to live as Christ intended us to do so. We also attempt to approach the secular world as Christ intended us to do so. Both of these attempts in the past have crashed and burned quite horribly. That’s why we rely on redemption: to get up and try again. Skinner’s contributions lead us, not to just understand humans, but to learn how we can change.

Skinner believed in the idea that behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated and behavior that is not reinforced tends to not be repeated. In Skinners experiment of operant conditioning, he places rats in a box and trained them to pull the lever to get food. As the rats learned to press the lever to get food, we adapt our behavior to again approval and reinforcement from our environment as well.
We can all think of examples of why our own behavior has been reinforced or punished. Whether our environment may better ourselves, some environments can have a culture of reinforcing negative behaviors. Unfortunately, our society places a negative assumption towards people who follow the rules and talk about their feelings rather than playing it cool with “no worries.” Society places a big emphasis on “YOLO.” We all know it stands for You only live once, but it contains a more meanings than that. It insinuates “whatever. I don’t care. I do what I want.” type of attitude. And sadly, out society reinforces it. Take Miley Cyrus for example, she was an innocent country-pop style singer who’s last hit was “the climb”, a song about pushing through tough times. Ever since her c.d.s did not make it big until she gave society what she saw was getting more reinforcement. She strayed away from her country style and turned to this “yolo” sense of mind. Lyrics containing phrases like “doing whatever we want… we cant stop..forget the haters..” With her new look she has topped charts and broke youtube records. She was reinforced just as the rats and will continue because of her success. Reinforcement reminds me of the human fall. Although, reinforcement could also reinforce good behaviors (like the rats in the experiment), we place high priority on affirmation of others that we may do whatever it takes it gain it.

Anna Freud is a fascinating woman in history, heir to her father’s thoughts, life and work. With a high intelligence and high curiosity, Freud pursued psychoanalysis after her time as a teacher. She studied fantasies and dreams, listened to her father, and worked at applying her knowledge to analyzing children and developing new ways to educate them.

According to Michael Shapiro in one article, “Anna Freud is widely regarded as the cofounder of psychoanalytic child psychology,” drawing on “the experiences of her childhood to develop her psychoanalytic theories.” I want to look at how Anna Freud and her theories claim a renewing tone towards humanity. First of all, Anna’s life is spent working. Her superb work ethic lets her progress far in the field of psychoanalysis, lets her discover new theories and add to old ones. She creates a way for patients, especially children, to be healed, restored to functioning level, renewed. She sees that things can be done to help people, she sees that by continued research, progress can be made that will benefit society.

One incredible and intriguing thing about Anna Freud is her complete dedication towards her father. Their relationship is one I wish I could observe. Anna is a faithful constant. She stays by her father’s side, learns what he teaches, becomes one of his patients, collaborates with him, expands his theories, carries on his life’s work, and cares for him. She even becomes his primary caregiver when he contracts cancer, not his wife. Anna Freud seems to be the dedicated, persevering type. She sees potential in humanity and works tirelessly to draw that out of people, of children, of her father.

I feel like we could learn a bit from Anna Freud. We, as ACU students, take so much for granted, and yet we sit. We procrastinate. We apply ourselves, many times only because we have to. We should work a little more like Anna Freud. We should think a little more about how we can help others more.

After listening in class about Lovass, I decided to write my post about his theory. Behaviorism is something that seems to be easy to attach to because of the success that comes from these techniques. Putting aside the controversial idea that humans are more than the sum of their behaviors, I think behaviorism can explain a lot about humanity. Behaviorism does not care where the disorder or behavior came from, but they care about changing it. Lovass’ study of applied behavior analysis with autistic children changed the field of psychology. Autistic children have poor social skills and Lovass used simple behavior techniques to train them out of it. His success rate was surprising to most.

Behaviorism doesn’t care about the past, or necessarily the present, but knows that the future can be different. I think that Lovass could be put in the category of New Hope. I know this seems pretty far out there, but his thinking is very futuristically oriented. Lovass knows there are flaws within the human system, but he also knows that he can fix them. Redemption is about fixing the problems and creating a new world. Lovass believed he could do just that with behavioral techniques.

Edwin Ray Guthrie developed several theories, including that of breaking habits. In Guthrie’s theory, he believed that a habit is an act that has become associated with a large number of stimuli. Therefore when there are more stimuli available when the act is present, the habit is stronger. The example he gave was smoking. Guthrie stated that this habit could be strong because of the amount of stimuli present. The way in which he proposed this habit should be broken is through performing another act rather than eliciting the desirable act. For Guthrie, he replaced smoking with eating an apple, and therefore the new, desirable act is elicited by the stimuli rather than the old, undesirable act.

            I believe that concepts of this theory can be similar to that of the redemption process. As one becomes a believer in Jesus Christ, their old self is in the process of being transformed. Often times, old habits or old ways of doing things must be broken. I believe that one of the primary ways of doing this is through prayer. Rather than acting on the “old habit,” one replaces that with prayer for strength or courage or whatever the need may be to get through the situation. While I believe that prayer is more than a means by which to break habits, it seems to make sense viewing this theory through a purely scientific approach.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov is well known for his research on animal digestion and responses. His likely most famous work included the discovery of the conditioned reflex, or the “Pavlov’s dog” experiment. The way he performed the experiment was to measure amounts of gastric juices excreted by a dog, paired with the stimuli associated with food powder. This experiment in animal instincts is easily paralleled to explain human behavior studies.

I would classify Ivan Pavlov in the Fall category. He has attempted to explain “quirks” of animal behavior, and what temptations we might give in to. By understanding simple reflexes or responses that can be induced within us, we can then begin to interpret how we respond. This is pertinent to the Fall because these principles are currently used in many forms of advertising research today in order to tempt people effectively. The Fall deals with innate human instincts that we have trouble controlling, I think Pavlov does a good job of delving into this. Conditioned reflexes even today are considered a cornerstone in the field of psychology.

Arguably, Creationism could embody Pavlov as well. I could see how someone might think that he is grasping how we were created and attempting to learn about humanity from the perspective of what makes us tick, rather than what breaks us.

J.B. Watson and his study of Little Albert was not the most ethical way of psychological study in any way. However, he teaches us a lot about the creation. He believes that all humans inherit the emotions of fear, rage, and love. Further, he believes that those emotions change into more specific emotions such as pride, hate, and jealousy. When we experience certain stimuli in association with these, often negative, emotions, it changes our response to them. The way we experience situations influences how we will react to them in the future regardless of the situation. In the study with Little Albert, Watson placed a rat in front of the baby. At first Little Albert was friendly toward the rat and reached out to interact with it. However, through making loud frightening noises to the baby, when reaching out, Little Albert slowly became afraid of the harmless rat. This shows how negative experiences can influence our attitudes toward stimuli. When presented, in the future, with a rat and without the noise, he was still afraid of the rat and would avoid it at all costs. Also, when presented with other furry stimuli, he still showed a fearful response. This shows how even though we may experience some negatively a few times, it can influence how we react in the future regardless of the circumstances. Little Albert was not presented with any kind of loud noises or anything that would elicit fear in him other than the rat that he was conditioned to be afraid of or the furry objects he associated with that fear as well. Watson is associated with creation because he was able to further explain, through less than ideal methods, that what we experience and what stimuli we associate with each other can create who we are and how we react to the world around us.

Clark Hull was a renowned American psychologist that lived during the 20th century and studied many subjects while receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. His most important contributions were drive theory and his extensive study on how motivation and learning influence how we behave. His field of study is very interesting to me because I too have often wondered what causes us to do the things we do and what factors go into our decisions. Hull found that when we are deprived of things, it creates desires and a drive that fuels us to pursue a goal that helps us survive. This seems very logical to me. My main criticism would be neglecting the spiritual aspect of our motivation and how our beliefs move us to things that are even counter to our nature. I think often times our natural impulses and the things that push us toward being desperate, Christ calls us to do things very differently than the world around us. Certainly we are called to survive and to take the steps necessary to do that but we are also called from Scripture to fight contrary to what seems natural. While most of his most notable is noted as obsolete now, he laid the ground work for many things, such as behaviorism and the practice of hypnosis.