Learning

Question 1

What is the definition of learning?

Answer 1

The change of behaviour as a function of experience.

Question 2

What are two learning-based approaches to personality?

Answer 2

Behaviourism and social learning theories.

Question 3

What is the goal of behaviourism?

Answer 3

A functional analysis that maps out exactly how behaviour is a function of the environmental situation.

Question 4

Behaviourism is the manifestation of what old philosophical ideas?

Answer 4

empiricism, associationism, and hedonism.

Question 5

What is empiricism?

Answer 5

The idea that all knowledge comes from experience.

Question 6

What is rationalism?

Answer 6

The structure of the mind determines our experience of reality.

Question 7

What is associationism?

Answer 7

The claim that any two things, including ideas, become mentally associated as one of they are repeatedly experienced close together in time.

Question 8

What is hedonism?

Answer 8

People (and organisms) learn for two reasons; to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This motivation explains why rewards and punishments shape behaviour.

Question 9

What is utilitarianism?

Answer 9

The best society is one that creates the most happiness for the largest number of people.

Question 10

What is habituation?

Answer 10

Behaviour changes as a result of experience.

Question 11

What is affective forecasting?

Answer 11

People tend to overestimate the emotional impact of future events, both good and bad.

Question 12

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 12

We learn to connect a stimuli with other stimuli and our natural responses follow the previously neutral stimulus..

Question 13

The feeling of anxiety due to unpredictability can also lead to a behavioural pattern called?

Answer 13

learned helplessness.

Question 14

What is the learned helplessness hypothesis?

Answer 14

This syndrome results from a history of unpredictable rewards and punishments, leading the person to act as if nothing she does matters.

Question 15

What is respondent conditioning?

Answer 15

The conditioned response is essentially passive with no impact of its own. (Pavlovs dog)

Question 16

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 16

The animal learns to operate on its world in such a way as to change it to that animal’s advantage. (Thorndike’s cats)

Question 17

What is a punishment?

Answer 17

An aversive consequence that follows an act in order to stop it and prevent its repetition.

Question 18

What is a habit hierarchy?

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

A state of psychological tension that feels good when the tension is reduced is called?

Answer 19

A drive. Pleasure comes from satisfying the need that produced the drive.

Question 20

A drive for food, water, physical comfort, avoidance of physical pain and sexual gratification is called?

Answer 20

A primary drive.

Question 21

A drive for love, prestige, money and power, as well as negative drives such as the avoidance of fear and of humiliation is called?

Answer 21

A secondary drive.

Question 22

What is the drive-reduction theory?

Answer 22

For a reward to have the power to encourage the target behaviour, the reward must satisfy a need.

Question 23

What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis?

Answer 23

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.