Title: Chapter 14 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach: Relevant Research
1Chapter 14The Behavioral/Social Learning
ApproachRelevant Research
2Gender Roles
3Young girl learning how to dress and act feminine
4Macho men flexing their muscles
5Gender roles as rules for behavior
- Gender roles act as normative guidelines or
rules for behavior. - They have both prescriptive and proscriptive
aspects. They prescribe (promote) certain
behaviors as being consistent with ones gender
role, and proscribe (discourage) other behaviors
as being inconsistent with ones gender role. - They affect a wide range of our behaviors,
influencing how we dress, how we move, how we
talk, what products we buy, what household tasks
we do, what sports and hobbies we pursue, what
college majors we choose, and what professions we
enter. - With the womens liberation movement of the
1970s, many people began to express concern about
how gender roles shape and restrict our behavior. - The restrictiveness of their gender role on
womens behavior is easy to illustrate.
6 Exercises for men
- 1. Sit down in a straight chair. Cross your
legs at the ankles and keep you knees pressed
together. Try to do this while youre having a
conversation with someone, but pay attention at
all times to keeping your knees pressed together. - 2. Bend down to pick up an object from the
floor. Each time you bend, remember to bend your
knees so that your rear end doesnt stick up, and
place one hand on your shirt-front to hold it to
your chest. This exercise simulates the
experience of a woman in a short, low-necked
dress bending over. -
- 3. Run a short distance, keeping your
knees together. Youll find that you have to
take short, high steps if you run this way.
Women have been taught it is unfeminine to run
like a man with long, free strides. See how far
you get running this way for 30 seconds.
7 Exercises for men
- 4. Walk down a city street. Pay a lot of
attention to your clothing. Make sure your pants
are zipped, shirt tucked in, buttons done. Look
straight ahead. Every time a man walks past,
avert your eyes and make your face
expressionless. -
- This exercise simulates a womans experience
of trying to avoid bad encounters with men who
decide that she looks available.
8Sandra L. Bem
- A self-described feminist, Sandra Bem argued that
traditional gender roles limit both womens and
mens potential for personal development. - She proposed that masculinity and femininity are
not the extremes of a single dimension but are
instead separate dimensions of personality. - She saw androgyny (having socially desirable
masculine traits and social desirable feminine
traits) as a more appropriate ideal for our
culture than the acquisition of traditional
masculine or feminine gender roles.
9Traditional single-dimensional model of
masculinity and femininity
Masculine Feminine
10The androgyny model (Bem, 1974)
Masculinity (agentic orientation) Masculinity (agentic orientation)
High Low
Femininity (communal orientation) High Androgynous Feminine
Femininity (communal orientation) Low Masculine Undifferentiated
11Psychological androgyny choosing activities
without regard to traditional gender roles
12A female Israeli soldier the rule, not the
exception
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14Gender type and psychological adjustment
- The congruence model Early researchers proposed
that the most well-adjusted people are those who
adopt the gender role that society has
traditionally prescribed for people of their
gender. - The androgyny model Bem proposed that the most
well-adjusted people are those who are
psychologically androgynous, as opposed to being
traditionally masculine sex-typed or
traditionally feminine sex-typed. - The masculinity model This model maintains that
being highly masculine is the key to better
mental health and high self-esteem. - Which model has the best research support? When
it comes to individual success, self-esteem, and
well-being, the data favor the masculinity model.
However, when it comes to social success and
harmonious relations with others, the masculinity
model receives the least support.
15Gender type and interpersonal relations
- When he was much younger, your instructor and his
colleagues studied how strangers gender role
orientations influenced the quality of their
initial interactions. - In the first of these studies, Ickes and Barnes
(1978) compared interactions in which the male
and female partners had traditional gender roles
with interactions in which one or both of the
partners was androgynous.
16Average amount of talking during five minutes of
interaction (Ickes Barnes, 1977)
17Average amount of gazing at partner during five
minutes of interaction (Ickes Barnes, 1977)
18Average amount of smiling during five minutes of
interaction (Ickes Barnes, 1977)
19Average liking expressed by partners after five
minutes of interaction (Ickes Barnes, 1977)
20Average marital satisfaction in married or
cohabiting couples (Antill, 1983)
21Average marital satisfaction in married or
cohabiting couples (Antill, 1983)
22- Mass Media Aggression
- and Aggressive Behavior
23Banduras four-step model of how observed
aggression leads to expressed aggression
- The person must attend to the aggressive action
performed by the model. - The person must remember the aggressive action
and how to perform it. - The person must expect that his or her own
expression in that form will result in a
rewarding outcome. - The person must enact the previously modeled
aggressive act.
24Mean number of aggressive acts imitated by first-
and second-grade children (Slife Rychlak, 1982)
25Seriousness of criminal act at age 30 as a
function of viewing aggression on TV at age 8
(Eron, 1987)
26Percentage of respondents who engaged in acts of
violence as a function of viewing televised
aggression (Johnson et al., 2002)
27Media aggression and aggressive behavior
- One possible interpretation of these findings is
that children who are already aggressive watch
more TV. If these same children engage in more
aggressive behavior later in life, that would not
be surprising. - However, when the data analyses control for the
childrens initial aggressiveness, the results
still indicate that greater exposure to TV
results in more aggressiveness later in life. - The aggressive acts observed later in life may
not be ones that were portrayed on TV and in
films seen earlier, raising the question of how
to account for these apparently novel acts of
aggression. - Phillips (1983) analyzed crime statistics data
and found that the homicide rate increased by an
average of 12.46 over the expected rate three
days after highly publicized heavyweight
championship fights.
28Long-term effects of playing violent videogames
- One study revealed that adolescents who played a
lot of violent videogames were more likely to
argue with teachers and get into physical fights
(Gentile et al., 2004). - Another study revealed that college students who
frequently played these games were more likely to
have engaged in violent acts during the past year
(destroying property, hitting, threatening to
hurt someone) than students who rarely played
such games (Anderson Dill, 2000). - In a third study, the more often young
adolescents played violent videogames at about
age 13, the more they displayed violent behavior
30 months later (hitting, threatening to hit,
pulling hair) (Moller Krahe, 2009).
29 30Martin E.P. Seligman
- Identified the phenomenon of learned helplessness
in laboratory animals. - Went on to explore the phenomenon of learned
helplessness in people. - Proposed that, because people make attributions
about the causes of their successes and failures,
an attributional model of learned helplessness is
needed to account for the human data.
31Shuttle box used in learned helplessness
experiments
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34Effect of inescapable shock on avoidance learning
in dogs
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36Learned helplessness in humans
- In a study by Hiroto and Seligman (1975), human
participants were randomly assigned to a
condition in which they had to solve a problem in
order to turn off an irritating noise. For the
participants in one condition, the problems were
solvable. For the participants in the other
condition, the problems were insolvable. - After experiencing this first set of problems,
all participants were given a second set of
problems to solve. All of these problems were
solvable, but the participants who had felt
helpless to turn off the noise performed
significantly worse than those who were able to
turn it off. - Many researchers have replicated this basic
effect with human subjects. - In fact, a similar effect has been demonstrated
in people who learned through observation or
simple instruction that they are helpless.
37Learned helplessness in the elderly
- Langer and Rodin (1976) induced learned
helplessness in residents who had been randomly
assigned to one of two floors of a retirement
residence. - Within a few weeks, the residents in the
responsibility-induced condition reported feeling
happier than those in the learned helplessness
condition. - Staff and nurse records also revealed that they
visited other residents more, sat around less,
and showed better adjustment (93 vs 21). - Most dramatically, 18 months later only 15 of
the responsibility-induced residents had died,
compared to 30 of the learned helplessness
residents. - Given these results, was this study ethical?
Should it be repeated?
38Learned helplessness and psychological disorders
- Severely depressed people act as if they suffer
from learned helplessness (perceptions of
helplessness in one area of their lives are
overgeneralized to other areas of their lives). - The neurotransmitter serotonin appears to play a
role in the development of both learned
helplessness and depression. - By ruminating about their depression and their
sense of hopelessness, depressed people may
prolong the depression for weeks, months, or even
years. - In one study, when rats were exposed periodically
to the location in which their initial
helplessness experience had occurred, the
researchers found no decline in helplessness over
time. - Severely depressed humans often move to a
different city or state following a major loss,
in order to avoid encountering the cues
associated with their loss and sense of learned
helplessness.
39Locus of control
- Self-report measures of locus of control assess
ones general perceptions that ones outcomes
have either an internal or an external locus of
control. - Sample locus of control items
- When I make plans, I am almost certain to make
them work. - I usually dont set goals because I have a hard
time following through on them. - Individual differences on locus of control scales
tend to be fairly stable over time. - One study found that newly-divorced women became
more external for a time, but returned after a
few years to a locus of control level similar to
that of married women.
40Locus of control and well-being
- Psychological disorders
- External locus of control scores are associated
with higher levels of anxiety and depression. - Suicide attempters frequently experience an
increase in distressing events outside their
personal control prior to the attempt. - The rate of suicide in a country correlates .68
with the average (external) locus of control
score for that countrys citizens. - Achievement
- Graduate students with high internal locus of
control scores receive higher grades and better
teaching evaluations. - Externals are likely to make excuses following a
poor performance, whereas internals take
responsibility and work to improve. - Studies conducted in the workplace also reveal
that internals achieve higher levels of
performance than externals do.
41Locus of control and well-being
- Psychotherapy
- Israeli soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic
stress disorder scored highly external after
leaving the battlefront but became increasingly
internal as they recovered. - Externals may do better in more structured and
directed forms of psychotherapy, whereas
internals may do better in more client-centered
forms. - Health
- People with high internal locus of control scores
are healthier and practice better health habits
than those with an external locus of control. - These effects are most evident in people who
place a high value on good health.
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