Personality Development

Personality Development 2(1+1)

Lesson 6 : Development of Personality- Behavioural perspective

Radical behaviorism

• Skinner says we can understand people by focusing exclusively on their behavior as the external forces have shaped it throughout their lives.
• Behavior is determined by its consequences.
• The most important factor in shaping behavior is reinforcement. He explained that most behavior that we observe in people is maintained because it is reinforced in some way.
• He suggests that that we must conduct functional analysis; analyzing both situations and behaviors to identify events that function as stimuli and as reinforcers.

Functional analysis: It helps readily to change behaviour, once it has been discovered that a person’s behavior is maintained by certain reinforcers. These reinforcers can be withdrawn, leading to extinction of behavior or used to reinforce alternative forms of behavior. This process is known as behavior modification.