Learning Flashcards
(23 cards)
What is the definition of learning?
The change of behaviour as a function of experience.
What are two learning-based approaches to personality?
Behaviourism and social learning theories.
What is the goal of behaviourism?
A functional analysis that maps out exactly how behaviour is a function of the environmental situation.
Behaviourism is the manifestation of what old philosophical ideas?
empiricism, associationism, and hedonism.
What is empiricism?
The idea that all knowledge comes from experience.
What is rationalism?
The structure of the mind determines our experience of reality.
What is associationism?
The claim that any two things, including ideas, become mentally associated as one of they are repeatedly experienced close together in time.
What is hedonism?
People (and organisms) learn for two reasons; to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This motivation explains why rewards and punishments shape behaviour.
What is utilitarianism?
The best society is one that creates the most happiness for the largest number of people.
What is habituation?
Behaviour changes as a result of experience.
What is affective forecasting?
People tend to overestimate the emotional impact of future events, both good and bad.
What is classical conditioning?
We learn to connect a stimuli with other stimuli and our natural responses follow the previously neutral stimulus..
The feeling of anxiety due to unpredictability can also lead to a behavioural pattern called?
learned helplessness.
What is the learned helplessness hypothesis?
This syndrome results from a history of unpredictable rewards and punishments, leading the person to act as if nothing she does matters.
What is respondent conditioning?
The conditioned response is essentially passive with no impact of its own. (Pavlovs dog)
What is operant conditioning?
The animal learns to operate on its world in such a way as to change it to that animal’s advantage. (Thorndike’s cats)
What is a punishment?
An aversive consequence that follows an act in order to stop it and prevent its repetition.
What is a habit hierarchy?
The behaviour you are most likely to perform at a given moment resides at the top of your habit hierarchy, while your least likely behaviour is at the bottom.
A state of psychological tension that feels good when the tension is reduced is called?
A drive. Pleasure comes from satisfying the need that produced the drive.
A drive for food, water, physical comfort, avoidance of physical pain and sexual gratification is called?
A primary drive.
A drive for love, prestige, money and power, as well as negative drives such as the avoidance of fear and of humiliation is called?
A secondary drive.
What is the drive-reduction theory?
For a reward to have the power to encourage the target behaviour, the reward must satisfy a need.
What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis?
The natural, biological reaction of any person to being blocked from a goal, is to be frustrated, with the resulting urge to lash out and injure.
