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Behavioral or Trait Theories
Juliana Daza
Medgar Evers College

PSYC 215-Theories of Personality
Professor Maureen D. Jarus
April 27, 2012

A personality theory is a system of concepts, assumptions, ideas and principles proposed to explain different personalities. Personality theorist seek to explain human behavior in terms of inner causes, instincts, feelings of inferiority, needs, conditions of worth, intentions, and so forth. In this research paper, I will be exploring both behaviorist theory, as well as the Trait theory in trying to understand serial killer Wayne Bertram Williams.
Behavioral Theories The Behaviorist theory places importance on the external environment, and on the effects of conditioning and learning. Ivan Pavlov was the first psychologist to discover and explore this theory at the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrated this form of learning which became known as “classical conditioning” in an experiment with dogs. He would place a small amount of meat on a dogs tongue, and after continuing to do this many times, the canines would salivate before they were giving the food. Before long, the dogs would begin to salivate as soon as Dr. Pavlov would enter the room. He realized that this was a reflex, whereas one stimulus will be followed by another r stimulus, because the two stimuli occurred close together. This reinforced that behavior can be attributed to experience. B.f. Skinner on the other hand, argued that most behavior is learned through “operant conditioning”, wherein the human being must make the correct response to be reinforced (receive a reward or avoid punishment). A response operates on the environment to produce consequences that either strengthen or weaken that behavior. If the response is reinforced, it is more than likely to recur. All of our behavior is determined by prior causes and by our environment.

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