Video – PsychNut: Personality

17 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Ellis

kltangen — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:56:13 +0000

Albert Ellis is rational, systematic and confrontational. He is the founder of REBT: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Like Beck, Ellis is a cognitive theorist. He maintains that we are the cause of our misery. Fortunately, we also hold the cure. The key to being happy is to control your beliefs. Don’t give in to shoulds and oughts. Accept that you are not perfect but you are good.

16 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Beck

kltangen — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:55:04 +0000

Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy. He combined Freud and Rogers, added his own ideas, and created a new approach to personality and counseling. The heart of Beck’s approach is the impact of beliefs on behavior. What we believe impacts what we do. Just as our perceptual processes can be distorted, our thinking can be biased.

15 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Frankl

kltangen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:48:26 +0000

Let’s continue our introduction of existentialism with a look at Viktor Frankl. You don’t have to have been interned in a concentration camp (as Frankl was) to appreciate the importance of living each day as if it were your last. Although existentialism is known for its emphasis on anxiety, Frankl proposed that we are responsible for our attitudes, behaviors and reactions. Life may restrict you but we must give life meaning.

14 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Rollo May

kltangen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:10:50 +0000

Although existentialism is known for its emphasis on anxiety, May offered a solution: love. Not the fluffy thinking of romantic love but the solid thoughtful love that shows care, concern and a willingness to be helpful.

Rollo May helped introduce existentialism to the United States. He was born in Ohio but was greatly influenced by European philosophers and theologians, particularly Paul Tillich.

13 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Rogers

kltangen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:14:09 +0000

Along with Maslow, Carl Rogers introduced humanism as a reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Rogers is the father of counseling psychology and co-father of humanism in psychology (with Maslow). Rogers put the focus on the person coming to counseling, not the therapist and his theories. This is real help for real people.

11 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Rotter

kltangen — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:31:28 +0000

There are three major theories in Social Learning. The first was from Dollard and Miller. They gave us a better understanding of conflict. The second was from Bandura, who introduces observational learning. The third major theory is from Julian Rotter.

10 If You Know Nothing About Personality: Bandura

kltangen — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:53:35 +0000

If Dollard and Miller gave us the first Social Learning theory, Albert Bandura provided the second. Bandura introduced Observational Learning. He said people are smarter than the behaviorists believed. We can watch others and learn from their success and failure.

09 Know Nothing About Personality: Dollard & Miller

kltangen — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:06:47 +0000

Social Learning is behaviorism with a broader point of view. One of the best examples is work done by two Yale professors: John Dollard and Neal Miller.

Dollard & Miller try to use drive-reduction theory to explain human behavior. They combine Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Hull’s drive theory. Using rats in mazes, they tried to undercover the underlying processes of conflict.

08 Know Nothing About Personality: Skinner

kltangen — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:50:14 +0000

B.F. Skinner was the founder of operant conditioning. He showed how rewards and punishments impact the behavior of virtually everyone. Learn about positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment.

07 Know Nothing About Personality: Pavlov

kltangen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:17:05 +0000

Although he won a Nobel prize for his work in explaining the processes of digestion, Ivan Pavlov is best remembered for his discovery of classical conditioning.

He showed that the presence of an unconditioned stimulus (food) produces an unconditioned response (saliva of a given amount; varying somewhat between trials and between dogs). After sufficient pairings of the food with another, previously unused stimulus (e.g., light), the conditioned stimulus (light) could bring about a response (conditioned response). The conditioned response was weaker than the unconditioned response (i.e., less saliva) and forgettable (if repeated too often without food being presented).