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... attention, therefore we learn from it. An example of this is when we drive the same route to work everyday and learn there is a gas station on the way. We did not have to be reinforced to learn that the gas station was there.
Social learning theory however states that when reinforcement is present it assist learning but is not a necessary component for learning. There are several types of motivational reinforces, extrinsic or external reward such as a gold sticker for good work, intrinsic or reward from within such as positive self-talk, vicarious reinforcement with occurs when we learn behavior from the success and mistakes of others, and self-reinforcement or setting standards for yourself then regulating your behavior according to self-rewards or self-produced consequences, Bandura also developed the concept of self-efficacy; a persons belief they are capable of the specific behavior required to produce a desired outcome in a given situation. Self-efficacy is different then self-esteem that reflects a persons feeling of worth. Combined, self-efficacy and self-esteem direct our career choices, educational preparations, and level of accomplishment.
Critics of Bandura's theory believe that he has emphasized overt behaviors and for his bias against psychoanalysis. He ignores distinctly human problems such as conflict and unconscious motivation. Neal Miller and John Dollard's theory focuses on what Bandura ignores, conflict and drives. They discovered that people form habits. A habit is some kind of learned association between a stimulus and response that makes them occur together frequently. Because habits are learned they may also be unlearned.
In order to unlearn a habit, drives, cues, responses, and reinforcement must be understood. Primary drives are associated with physiological processes that are necessary for survival. They would include eating to reduce hunger. Secondary drives are learned on the basis of primary drives.
We must make money in order to buy food; therefore we must learn a job skill. Cues are specific stimuli that tells us when, where, and how to respond. A cue might be in the form of McDonalds golden arches. When we become aware of a cue we respond to it. Miller and Dollars believed there is a hierarchy of response. This tendency for certain responses to occur before others is evident when we run to avoid pain then cringe in order to tolerate the pain The hierarchy enables us to try out different responses.
The way it works is that when a behavior is not reinforced, it will be inhibited so another behavior or response can grow stronger and supersede it in the response hierarchy. They termed this phenomenon as extinction. When a response is not fixed in the hierarchy, a learning dilemma may take place. We will try different responses till one is developed that satisfies the drive. Responses become learned when they are reinforced. Reducing a drive is reinforcing to an individual and thus will behave in ways that relieve the tension created by strong drives.
Primary rein forcer's are those that reduce primary drives. Secondary reinforces are originally neutral but they acquire reward value on the basis of having been associated with a primary rein forcer. An example of this would be earning money. Miller and Dollars explain frustration as something that occurs when one is unable to reduce a drive because the response that would satisfy it has been blocked. We experience a conflict when frustration occurs from a situation in which incompatible responses are taking place at the same time. There are four different ways in which a conflict can occur.
Approach approach conflict is when a person is attracted to two goals, both of positive value, yet they are incompatible. Choosing between majors is a very common conflict of this type. Avoidance avoidance conflict occurs when a person must choose between two undesirable alternatives. This occurs often when you must decide to clean the house or write a report. Approach avoidance conflict occurs when one goal is both attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Many smokers find themselves in this type of dilemma on an hourly basis. Double approach avoidance conflict occurs when a person must deal with multiple goals that both attract and repel at the same time. Every person experiences this; usually it is referred to as life. Dollars and Miller believed that if they could measure the complex forces that impel human behavior and if we could develop formulas that encompass all of the variables involved, we could also predict a persons actions in reference to a particular goal. Perhaps the reason a New Yorker, Albert Ellis (1913 -) took a different stance on why we do things is because of his childhood. His mother was ill prepared to raise Ellis, his younger brother and sister when his fathers constant travels and eventual divorce took him away from the family.
Ellis also suffered from nephritis, a chronic illness that caused severe headaches and kept him in the hospital and kept him from playing like other children. He was shy and introverted and often outdone by his brave extroverted brother. The Great Depression made his life even more of a struggle as the family barely made it without going on welfare. Despite these disappointments and hardships, Ellis refused to be miserable. He majored in English at City College and wrote six novels, none of which were published.
His fascination for sex led him to pursue psychology in his graduate work. At Teacher College of Columbia University he had hoped to do his dissertation on love but his idea was censored. Finally he opted for a safe topic, A Comparison of the Use of Direct and Indirect Phrasing with Personality Questionnaires (England 420). An analyst associated with the Horney Institute for psychoanalysis unofficially trained Ellis. Hw discovered himself to be an effective analyst but he gave it up to find a more efficient way of helping clients.
The New Jersey state system objected to his research on sex despite his noted authority in the state. He moved to New York and became a well-know practicing psychologist. Ellis has written many books including Sex Without Guilt, the Civilized Couples Guide to Extramarital Adventure and Why Some Therapies Dont Work The Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology (Behave net 10 / 20 / 99). He is currently doing workshops with topics such as Better, Deeper and More Enduring Brief Therapy and Treating Anxiety Disorders Effectively: Therapeutic Methods that Work! in Kansas, Iceland, and Oklahoma (Lima 10 / 01 / 99).
Ellis theory is that people have a strong innate inclination to live and be happy, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. They are goal oriented active and changing creatures with a strong compulsion to fulfill their potential. But people also engage in numerous irrational thoughts, unsuitable feelings, and dysfunctional behaviors that are inclined to sabotage their potential. People are born with a distinct proneness to engage in self-destructive behavior and learn through social conditioning, to exacerbate rather than to minimize that proneness.
People spend much of their energy trying to impress, live up to expectations of, and outdo the performances of others. They are ego-oriented, identity seeking, or self-centered. Many people care too much of what others think of us. Our inappropriate emotions are caused by our tendency to exaggerate the importance of other peoples acceptance. His A-B-C Theory states that A is an activating event, B is our belief system, and C is the emotional consequence. We perceive A, the activating event causing C the emotional consequence when in reality is B the belief system that caused C the emotional consequence.
Being frightened might be perceived as being caused by a dog chasing you when in reality your belief that all dogs are bad causes you to be frightened. Also, we inherit a tendency to turn cultural preferences into musts and social norms into absolute should's. This is determined by external as well as internal forces. People have some free will and are capable of changing their behavior patterns. Everyone is unique and must take responsibility for our actions.
Ellis developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, which asks the clients to commit themselves to actions that correspond to their true value system. By using an eclecticism approach, REBT encompasses many different techniques borrowed from many different theories. Rational Emotive Cognitive Therapy teaches clients to recognize their should and must thoughts, how to separate rational thoughts from irrational beliefs, and how to accept reality. Emotive evocative therapy uses role-playing, psychodrama, humor and unconditional acceptance to reduce destructive ideas by making them seem absurd.
Behavior therapy helps clients change patterns of undesirable behaviors. In vitro desensitization and in vivo desensitization are two of the skills used in behavior therapy. By exposing the client to the anxiety-producing event gradually and pairing these experiences with relaxation skills, the client learns how to control the anxiety. The difference is vitro desensitization uses the imagination to expose the client while vivo desensitization uses the actual event or simulation. The roller coaster fear classes that are currently in the news use these techniques to help people overcome their fear.
Closely related to Ellis theory is Aaron Becks (1921 -) cognitive theory. Aaron Becks mother fell into depression after her only daughter died but it lifted when she gave birth to Beck. He jokes that he had the ability to cure his mother at an early age illustrated his need to control. He developed a near fatal illness when his broken arm became infected. This led him to believe that he was inept and stupid. He began working cognitively on these beliefs and his father encouraged his interests in science and nature.
Eventually he graduated from Brown University magna cum laude in 1943 and was certified in psychiatry in 1953. He joined the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Science from Brown as well as Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1990. He was also elected a fellow of the Royal college of Psychiatrists and has written over 350 articles and 12 books. His concern with the lack of scientific basis for psychoanalysis led him to study the dreams of depressed people. He hypothesized that their dreams would contain more hostility then in non-depressed people. He found that this was not correct and that a reoccurring theme in the dreams was defeat, deprivation and loss.
He saw that people distorted reality to the point where they could not recognize success when it occurred. Although his cognitive theory was originally developed to facilitate treatment for depression, it has become an effective treatment for many other disorders. There are three basic concepts in cognitive theory. The first being cognition's.
Cognition's refer to a persons awareness. Brought on by stimuli, they are changing information processes. The second concept is that of schemas. A schema is many associated thoughts grouped together. The third concept is cognitive distortions or errors in logic. When schemas are created on the basis of faulty or irrational logic a distortion occurs.
There are several common distortions. Arbitrary inference is defined as a drawing a specific conclusion without supporting evidence or even in the face of contradictory evidence. An example of this is when a student gets a C on their first exam and concludes that they will not be able to pass the course. Selective abstraction is defined as conceptualizing a situation on the basis of a detail taken out of context and ignoring all other possible explanations. An example of this is when a woman finds out that she is pregnant; she suddenly begins to notice many pregnant women. Overgeneralization is defined as abstracting a general rule from one or two isolated incident and applying it too broadly.
An example of this is when upon hearing about a robbery leads one to conclude that everyone is being robbed. Magnification and minimization is defined as seeing an event as more significant or less significant than it actually is. An example of this is when a high school girls thinks her life is over when she doesnt get ask to a dance. Personalization is attributing external events to oneself without evidence of connection. An example of this is when a parent blames himself or herself every time a child misbehaves.
Dichotomous thinking is categorizing situation is extremes. An example of this is when a person sees their performance as really good or really bad. Cognitive therapy teaches client to do five things. The first is to monitor their negative thoughts. The second is to recognize the connections between cognition's, affect, and behavior. The third is to examine the evidence for these biased cognition's.
The fifth is to learn to identify and alter the beliefs that predispose them to distort their experiences. There are several ways that this is achieved. Decatastrophizing or the what if technique asks clients to imagine the consequences of an action or the worst possible scenario. They can mentally prepare and often realize that the worst is not so bad. Role-playing is another technique derived from this theory. Rehearsing situations they will later find themselves in, they can gain confidence and become aware of set behaviors that work well.
In conclusion, there are many different techniques available to behavior cognitive therapist. These skills were developed from theories of many prominent thinkers of our time. Each of these thinkers can to their conclusions in part because of their history and interactions with the world. Craighead, Linda W. , et al. , ckm. Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions.
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Helping Skills. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1999. Sonderegger, Theo. Psychology. Nebraska: Cliffs Notes, 1998. Stone, Gerald.
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Research essay sample on Rational Emotive Cognitive Theory
