Case Study 3 Flashcards
How can Dollard and Miller’s learning theory be used to explain this change in Malcolm X’s attitudes and behaviour?
- Drive: need for belonging
- Cue: presence of white americans
- Before incarceration: worked as a hustler, had a white girlfriend, straightened his hair; fulfilling need for belonging WHILE appealing to White Americans
- His R1 (emulate white people) did not fulfill the need and he was punished
- Then, relied on second R2 to join the nation of Islam and assimilate with other black youth
What learning processes (e.g., classical conditioning, operant conditioning, observational learning) do you think shaped Malcolm X’s personality? Identify specific examples to illustrate how these learning processes shaped his personality.
- Positive punishment: beatings received from father
- Negative punishment: him being incarcerated or removed from school
- Observational learning: finding a social group in Boston, following the trends (i.e. zoot suits, dancing, criminality); Mimicking the advocacy style of his father, but in joining the nation of Islam
- Extrinsic reinforcement: the “X” in his name; replacement of the slave name received by his relatives
- Intrinsic reinforcement: drug use
- Vicarious reinforcement: observation of other black youth in Boston
- Self-reinforcement: two forms (reward/self-approval), from his wife: “he died for what he believed in”
As described by Smith and Shoda (2009), theorists have proposed five cognitive- affective variables (i.e., “person” variables) that interact with environmental variables (i.e., situations) to determine behaviour: Encodings, expectancies and beliefs, affects, goals and values, and competencies and self-regulation skills.
- Encoding: inferiority schema (racism)
- Expectancies and beliefs: wealth and material success meant power/survival; Pimping was a mode of social approval
- Affects: anger and resentment
- Goals: enabling himself to thrive/fight for justice/to be spiritual, capacity for social influence
Maslow maintained that, in the hierarchy of conative needs, lower-order needs have greater strength, potency, and priority than higher-order needs. Were Malcolm X’s actions consistent with this assertion?
- Risked safety needs; at the risk of death
- EX: ongoing death threats, bombing of home
- DID NOT ALIGN with Maslow’s assumption
How does Maslow’s notion of the self-actualized individual differ from Rogers’ notion of the fully functioning person? Can both concepts be applied to Malcolm X?
- Rogers: only achieved after lower order needs are satisfied; Emphasized the actualizing tendency: motive that subsumes other motives; Majority of us are in the process of self-actualization
- Maslow: an end state only achieved by a small amount, rare amount, of people; Seeking a final state
At what point in his life do you believe that Malcolm X achieved self-determination?
Only when he went to Makkah (saw others)
