ELSEVIER''''S DICTIONARY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES phần 2 doc

58 pending on whether or not it meets one’s per- sonal standards; modeling/observational learning - a procedure in which an individual observes another person perform some behav- ior, notes the consequences of that behavior, and then attempts to imitate that behavior; vicarious punishment - the observation of the punishment of a model’s behavior that results in the decrease of the probability of that same behavior in the observer; and vicarious rein- forcement - the observation of the reinforce- ment of a model’s behavior that results in the increase of the probability of that same behav- ior in the observer. Bandura’s essential re- search and theoretical formulations have fo- cused on observational learning, the role of thought in establishing and maintaining be- havior, the application of behavior principles and social learning to therapeutic contexts, and the ways in which children learn to be aggressive. See also AGGRESSION, THEO- RIES OF; BEHAVIOR THERAPY AND COGNITIVE THERAPY, THEORIES OF; ROTTER’S SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY. REFERENCES Bandura, A., & Walters, R. (1963). Social learning and personality develop- ment. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Bandura, A. (Ed.) (1971). Psychological mod- eling: Conflicting theories. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton. Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bandura, A. (1977a). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84, 191-215. Bandura, A. (1977b). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prenctice- Hall. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cogni- tive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. BANDWAGON EFFECT. See ASCH CONFORMITY EFFECT; BYSTANDER INTERVENTION EFFECT. BARANY METHOD/EFFECT. The Aus- trian-Swedish physiologist Robert Barany (1876-1936) designed the Barany method/test to reveal whether the semicircular canals and the labyrinth system of the inner ears are func- tioning properly by rotating the person in a specially-constructed chair (called the Barany chair) which allows for rotation of the indi- vidual’s head/body in three planes. Thus, the Barany effect is the participant’s response as she is seated in a revolving chair that rotates in each of the three planes in which the semi- circular canals are positioned. See also AP- PARENT MOVEMENT, PRINCIPLES, AND THEORIES OF. REFERENCE Barany, R. (1906). [Barany chair]. Archiv fur Ohren-, Nasen- und Kehlkopfheil- kunde, 68, 1-30. BARBER’S POLE EFFECT. See PERCEP- TION (I. GENERAL), THEORIES OF. BARGAINING THEORY OF COALI- TION FORMATION. A widespread phe- nomenon of social interaction is the formation of coalitions (two or more persons acting jointly to influence the outcomes of one or more other persons; or situations where a sub- set of a group agrees to cooperate in the joint use of resources in order to maximize re- wards). A salient feature of current theories of coalition formation is their parsimony where each theory proposes one guiding principle for predicting coalition formation. However, in the bargaining theory of coalition formation (a descriptive theory), there is an emphasis on the bargaining process leading to a given coa- lition and focuses on how negotiations might change as a result of the nature and outcome of prior events (cf., game theory which is a normative/prescriptive approach dealing with how individuals ought to behave whereas bargaining theory deals with how individuals do behave). Among the several assumptions and hypotheses of the bargaining theory of coalition formation are the following: given a competitive orientation, persons are motivated 59 to form a coalition which maximizes expected reward; persons either implicitly or explicitly evaluate the most favorable outcome they can expect (Emax); the least favorable outcome they can expect (Emin), and the most probable expected outcome (E-hat) in each of the pos- sible winning coalitions; an individual strong in resources is more likely to expect and ad- vocate the “parity norm” as a basis for reward division, whereas an individual weak in re- sources is more likely to expect and advocate the “equality norm;” a person’s most probable expected outcome (E-hat) is that value which is halfway between Emax and Emin; a person who has been excluded as a member of the winning coalition is more likely to concede more than a person who was included (also, the larger the number of excluded trials, the greater the concession rate); the extent to which a member of the winning coalition will be tempted to defect - or actively seek a counter-coalition - is a function of the devia- tion of his share in the present coalition from his maximum expectation (maxEmax) in al- ternative coalitions; the larger the offer to defect, the greater the probability that it will be accepted; and the stability of a coalition is an inverse function of the temptation values of the coalition members. Essentially, the bar- gaining theory of coalition formation draws heavily from several theoretical contributions, in particular, the exchange theory proposed by the American social psychologists John Thi- baut (1917-1986) and Harold H. Kelley (1921-2003); for example, the concept of “ex- pected outcome (E-hat)” in bargaining theory is equivalent to the concept of “comparison level” in exchange theory, and the concept of “maxEmax” in the former theory is equivalent to the concept of “comparison level for alter- natives” in the latter theory. Various sources for the bargaining theory of coalition forma- tion include F. C. Ikle and N. Leites regarding the concepts of “maximum and minimum expectations” and “most probable expected outcome;” T. C. Schelling regarding the con- cept of “split-the-difference;” G. C. Homans concerning “two norms for the division of rewards;” J. S. Adams regarding the concept of “equity;” and W. A. Gamson concerning the concept of “parity norm.” Other theories of coalition formation (cf., Kahan & Rapoport, 1984) include T. Caplow’s “triad theory;” J. M. Chertkoff’s “modification of reciprocated choices theory;” W. A. Gamson’s “minimum resources” or “minimum winning coalition theory;” W. H. Riker’s “political coalitions theory;” and L. S. Shapley and M. Shubik’s “pivotal power index/theory.” See also DECISION-MAKING THEORIES; EX- CHANGE AND SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY. REFERENCES Shapley, L. S., & Shubik, M. (1954). A method of evaluating the distribu- tion of power in a committee sys- tem. American Political Science Re- view, 48, 787-792. Caplow, T. (1956). A theory of coalitions in the triad. American Sociological Re- view, 21, 489-493. Thibaut, J., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Schelling, T. C. (1960). The strategy of con- flict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press. Gamson, W. A. (1961). A theory of coalition formation. American Sociological Review, 26, 373-382. Homans, G. C. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Har- court, Brace & World. Ikle, F. C., & Leites, N. (1962). Political ne- gotiation as a process of modifying utilities. Journal of Conflict Resolu- tion, 6, 19-28. Riker, W. H. (1962). The theory of political coalitions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social ex- change. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Ad- vances in experimental social psy- chology. New York: Academic Press. Chertkoff, J. M. (1967). A revision of Cap- low’s coalition theory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 172-177. Chertkoff, J. M. (1970). Sociopsychological theories and research on coalition formation. In S. Groennings, E. W. Kelley, & M. Leiserson (Eds.), The 60 study of coalition behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Rapoport, A. (1970). N-person game theory: Concepts and applications. Ann Ar- bor: University of Michigan Press. Komorita, S. S., & Chertkoff, J. M. (1973). A bargaining theory of coalition for- mation. Psychological Review, 80, 149-162. Kahan, J., & Rapoport, A. (1984). Theories of coalition formation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. BARNUM EFFECT/PHENOMENON. The Barnum effect, named after the American showman, charlatan, and entrepreneur Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891), refers to the fact that a cleverly worded “personal” description based on general, stereotyped statements will be accepted readily as an accurate self- description by most people. The Barnum phe- nomenon is behind the fakery of fortune- tellers, astrologers, and mind readers and often has contaminated legitimate study of personal- ity assessment. The effect is consistent with Barnum’s often-quoted aphorism “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Barnum, a circus showman, knew that the formula for success was to “have a little something for every- body.” An early study of the Barnum effect (Forer, 1949) had a group of college students take a projective test on which they were given bogus feedback. In fact, each student was given the same interpretation. In general, the students felt that these interpretations were accurate and fitted them well. Thus, the ten- dency to accept standard feedback of a vague, universalist nature is the Barnum effect. Other studies, also, report that when the same vague, positive, and flattering statements are given to individuals as a personalized horoscope, per- sonality profile, or handwriting analysis, they believe them to be accurate descriptions of them personally. Some researchers report that people are more willing to believe flattering statements about themselves than statements that are scientifically accurate. Various sug- gestions have been offered by researchers to avoid falling prey to the Barnum effect, such as beware of all-purpose descriptions that could apply to anyone, beware of one’s own selective perceptions, and resist undue flat- tery. See also ASTROLOGY, THEORY OF; GRAPHOLOGY, THEORY OF; PERSON- ALITY THEORIES; PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC AND UNCONVENTIONAL THEORIES. REFERENCES Forer, B. (1949). The fallacy of personal vali- dation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118-123. Halperin, K., & Snyder, C. (1979). Effects of enhanced psychological test feed- back on treatment outcome: Thera- peutic implications of the Barnum effect. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 47, 140-146. Johnson, J., Cain, L., Falke, T., Hayman, J., & Perillo, E. (1985). The “Barnum ef- fect” revisited: Cognitive and moti- vational factors in the acceptance of personality descriptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1378-1391. BARTLETT’S SCHEMATA THEORY. = schema theory. The English psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) pro- posed an admittedly vague theory - the sche- mata theory of memory - as a way of invali- dating and repudiating the classical trace the- ory of memory (i.e., the hypothesized modi- fication of neural tissue resulting from any form of stimulation such as learning new ma- terial). Bartlett stressed the constructive, over the reproductive, aspects of recall and adapted his schemata theory (based on the assumption that schemata are cognitive, mental plans that are abstract guides for action, structures for interpreting and retrieving information, and organized frameworks for solving problems) from the English neurologist Sir Henry Head’s (1861-1940) work on sensation, neurology, and the cerebral cortex. Unfortunately, Bart- lett’s theory apparently was too speculative to gain wide acceptance in the psychological community, even though it led many people to think somewhat differently about the dynam- ics and nature of memory. Other forms of schema theory - the mental representation of some aspect of experience based on prior ex- perience or memory, structured to facilitate perception and cognition - are Sir Henry Head’s approach that emphasized a person’s 61 internal body image; and the concept of a “frame” described by the American cognitive scientist Marvin L. Minsky (1927- ), which is a schema formalized in terms of artificial in- telligence, along with his concept of “knowl- edge-line,” or “K-line,” that is a hypothesized connection that reactivates a memory in an associative network model. See also ARTIFI- CIAL INTELLIGENCE; CONSTRUCTIV- IST THEORY OF PERCEPTION; MEM- ORY, THEORIES OF; TRACE THEORY. REFERENCES Head, H. (1920). Studies in neurology II. Lon- don: Oxford University Press. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychol- ogy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Oldfield, R., & Zangwill, O. (1943). Head’s concept of the schema and its appli- cation in contemporary British psy- chology: Part III. Bartlett’s theory of memory. British Journal of Psy- chology, 33, 113-129. Minsky, M. L. (1967). Computation: Finite and infinite machines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Zangwill, O. (1972). “Remembering” revis- ited. Quarterly Journal of Experi- mental Psychology, 24, 124-138. Minsky, M. L. (1980). K-lines: A theory of memory. Cognitive Science, 4, 117- 133. BASEMENT/FLOOR EFFECT. See MEASUREMENT THEORY. BASE-RATE FALLACY. See PROBABIL- ITY THEORY/LAWS. BASIC RULE. See FREUD’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY. BATESON’S VIBRATORY THEORY. See MENDEL’S LAWS/PRINCIPLES. BAYES’ THEOREM. This theoretical speculation, often employed in psychological statistics (e.g., Hays, 1963/1994), indicates the relation among various conditional probabili- ties. Bayes’ theorem is named in honor of Thomas Bayes (1702-1761), an 18 th century English clergyman and mathematician who did early work in probability and decision theory. Although Bayes wrote on theology, he is best known for his two mathematical works, “Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions” (1736) - a defense of the logical foundations of Newton’s calculus against the attack of Bishop Berkeley; and “Essay Towards Solv- ing a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances” (1763) - a posthumously published work that attempts to establish that the rule for deter- mining the probability of an event is the same whether or not anything is known beforehand on any trials or observations concerning the event in question. In its simplest version, Bayes’ theorem may be expressed in the fol- lowing way: For two events, A and B, in which none of the probabilities p(A), p(B), and p(A and B) is either 1.00 or 0, the follow- ing relation holds: p(A|B) = p(B|A)p(A)/ p(B|A)p(A) + p(B|~A)p(~A). Bayes’ theorem gives a way to determine the conditional prob- ability of event A given event B, provided that one knows the probability of A, the condi- tional probability of B given A, and the condi- tional probability of B given ~A [Note: Once the probability of A is known, then the prob- ability of ~A is simply 1-p(A)]. In psychol- ogy, Bayes’ theorem has been used frequently as a model of choice behavior and attitude formation because it gives a mathematical rule for deciding how prior information (e.g., one’s past choices or opinions) may be modified maximally in the light of new information. Moreover, in various practical situations - such as educational and clinical settings - good selection or diagnostic procedures are those that permit an increase in the probability of being correct about an individual given some prior information or evidence, and such conditional probabilities often may be calcu- lated via Bayes’ theorem. As a mathematical device, this theorem is necessarily true for conditional probabilities that satisfy the basic axioms of probability theory and Bayes’ theo- rem, in itself, is not controversial. However, the question of its appropriate use has been an issue in the controversy between those who favor a strict “relative-frequency” interpreta- tion of probability and those who allow a “subjective” interpretation of probability as well. This issue emerges clearly when some of 62 the probabilities used in figuring Bayes’ theo- rem in a given situation are associated with “states of nature” or with “non-repetitive” events in which it is usually difficult to give meaningful “relative-frequency” interpreta- tions to probabilities for such states or “one- time” events. A term in probability reasoning related to Bayes’ theorem, and advanced by the French mathematician Pierre Simon La Place (1749-1827), is called insufficient rea- son (or the principle of indifference) which states that a person is entitled to consider two events as equally probable if the individual has no reason to consider one more probable than the other. The criterion of insufficient reason enables the notion of “uncertainty” to be transformed into “risk” statements and provides a justification for the employment of “prior probabilities” in Bayesian inference in the absence of other bases for estimating them. Critics of this approach suggest that it leads to contradictions eventually and assert, consequently, that nothing useful may be in- ferred from such a result. See also ATTI- TUDE/ATTITUDE CHANGE, THEORIES OF; CHOICE AND PREFERENCE, THE- ORY OF; DECISION-MAKING THEORIES; PROBABILITY THEORY/LAWS. REFERENCES Bayes, T. (1958). Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances (1763). Biometrika, 45, 293-315. Hays, W. L. (1963/1994). Statistics for psy- chologists. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston/Harcourt Brace. BEAUTY AND PHYSICAL APPEAR- ANCE PRINCIPLE. See INTERPER- SONAL ATTRACTION THEORIES; LIPPS’ EMPATHY THEORY. BECK’S COGNITIVE THERAPY THE- ORY. See BEHAVIOR THERAPY AND COGNITIVE THERAPY, THEORIES OF. BEHAVIOR-EXCHANGE MODEL AND THEORY. See EXCHANGE AND SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY. BEHAVIOR THEORY OF PERCEPTION. See PERCEPTION (II. COMPARATIVE APPRAISAL), THEORIES OF. BEHAVIOR THERAPY AND COGNI- TIVE THERAPY, THEORIES OF. The term behavior therapy originated in a 1953 report by O. Lindsley, B. F. Skinner, and H. Solomon that described their use of operant conditioning principles with psychotic pa- tients. Later, A. Lazarus (1958) used the term in referring to J. Wolpe’s application of the technique of reciprocal inhibition to neurotic patients, and H. Eysenck (1959) used behavior therapy to refer to the application of modern learning theory to neurotic patients’ behavior. The early usage of the term behavior therapy was linked consistently to learning theory; it was called conditioning therapy, also, which had as its goal the elimination of nonadaptive behavior and the initiation and strengthening of adaptive habits. L. Krasner (1971) asserts that 15 factors within psychology coalesced during the 1950s and 1960s to create and form the behavior therapy theoretical approach: the concept of behaviorism in experimental psy- chology; instrumental/operant conditioning research; the treatment procedure of recipro- cal inhibition; studies at Maudsley Hospital in London; the application of conditioning and learning concepts to human behavior prob- lems in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s; learning theory interpreta- tions of psychoanalysis; use of Pavlovian classical conditioning to explain and change both normal and deviant behaviors; impact of concepts and research from social role learn- ing and interactionism in social psychology and sociology; research in developmental and child psychology emphasizing modeling and vicarious learning; formulation of social influ- ence variables and concepts such as demand characteristics, experimenter bias, placebo, and hypnosis; development of the social learning model as an alternative to the disease model of behavior; dissatisfaction with, and critiques of, traditional psychotherapy and the psychoanalytic model (cf., Gross, 1979); ad- vancement of the idea of the clinical psy- chologist as “scientist-practitioner;” develop- ment in psychiatry of human and social inter- action and environmental influences; and re- surgence of utopian views of social- environmental planning. The unifying theme in behavior therapy is its derivation from em- pirically based principles and procedures. 63 Four general types of behavior therapy have been advanced by psychologists: interactive, instigation, replication, and intervention therapies; and five different approaches in contemporary behavior therapy are recog- nized: applied behavior analysis, neobehavior- istic mediational S-R model, social learning theory, multimodal behavior therapy, and cognitive-behavior modification. A number of specific behavior and cognitive therapies based on these principles and theories have been developed since the 1960s, such as ra- tional-emotive therapy/ABC theory; cognitive therapy [the American psychiatrist Aaron Temkin Beck (1921- ) is often called the “fa- ther of cognitive therapy”]; self- instructional/stress inoculation; and covert modeling therapy [cf., ACT theory and ther- apy - formulation of the basic concepts of “acceptance and commitment therapy,” or “ACT,” that is grounded in radical behavior- ism; corollary terms are “ACT-R,” or behav- ioral analysis of a client seeking therapy; and “ACT-HC,” or acceptance of limitations and commitment to healthy behavior and care]. It has been suggested that the various challenges facing behavior and cognitive therapy theories today concerning their procedures and effec- tiveness may best be met by the use of a “technical eclecticism” (cf., Lazarus, 1981), where there is a willingness to employ appro- priate techniques across the various theoretical perspectives. However, the specific methods used in the diverse behavior therapy theories all have the common attributes of scientific examination of behavior grounded in learning theory, including the control of appropriate variables, the appreciation of data-based con- cepts, and the high regard for operational definitions of terms and replicability of re- sults. The development of behavior therapy was not monolithic in concept, theory, or practice, and its roots are wide and varied. Thus, essentially, behavior therapy theory (cf., O’Donohue & Krasner, 1995) may best be characterized, generally, as the application of the laws of modern learning theory to all types of disorder, including individual, situ- ational, and environmental aspects. See also ABC THEORY/MODEL; BANDURA’S THEORY; BEHAVIORIST THEORY; DE- PRESSION, THEORIES OF; LEARNING THEORIES AND LAWS; SKINNER’S DE- SCRIPTIVE BEHAVIOR AND OPERANT CONDITIONING THEORY; WOLPE’S THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF RECIP- ROCAL INHIBITION. REFERENCES Lindsley, O., Skinner, B. F., & Solomon, H. (1953). Studies in behavior therapy. Waltham, MA: Metropolitan State Hospital. Lazarus, A. (1958). New methods in psycho- therapy: A case study. South African Medical Journal, 33, 660-664. Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by recipro- cal inhibition. Stanford, CA: Stan- ford University Press. Eysenck, H. (1959). Learning theory and be- haviour therapy. Journal of Mental Science, 195, 61-75. Eysenck, H. (Ed.) (1964). Experiments in behavior therapy: Readings in mod- ern methods of mental disorders de- rived from learning theory. Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press. Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression: Clinical, experimental, and theoretical as- pects. New York: Hoeber. Kanfer, F., & Phillips, J. (1970). Learning foundations of behavior therapy. New York: Wiley. Cautela, J. (1971). Covert conditioning. In A. Jacobs & L. Sachs (Eds.), The psy- chology of private events: Perspec- tives on covert response systems. New York: Academic Press. Krasner, L. (1971). Behavior therapy. Annual Review of Psychology, 22, 483-532. Beck, A. T. (1974). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New York: In- ternational Universities Press. Meichenbaum, D. (1977). Cognitive-behavior modification: An integrative ap- proach. New York: Plenum. Kazdin, A, & Wilson, G. (1978). Evaluation of behavior therapy. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Gross, M. (1979). The psychological society. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kendall, P., & Hollon, S. (Eds.) (1979). Cog- nitive behavioral interventions: Theory, research, and procedures. New York: Academic Press. 64 Lazarus, A. (1981). Multimodal theory. New York: Guilford Press. O’Donohue, W., & Krasner, L. (1995). Theo- ries of behavior therapy. Washing- ton, D. C.: A.P.A. BEHAVIORAL CONTRAST EFFECT OR PHENOMENON. See GENERALIZATION, PRINCIPLE OF. BEHAVIORAL DECISION-MAKING THEORY. See DECISION-MAKING THE- ORIES. BEHAVIORAL MECHANICS, THEORY OF. The theory of behavioral mechanics is the behavioral and psychological counterpart of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in physics where the rate of responding in the psycholo- gist’s operant conditioning paradigm is analo- gous to the phenomenon of velocity in the field of physics. The three major propositions or principles of the theory of behavioral me- chanics - which are considered to hold for groups as well as for individual organisms - may be stated as follows: once a course of action or behavior has been initiated, that particular behavior or course of action will continue until such time as a force may be imposed upon it; the strength of a course of action or behavior is characterized by its “be- havioral momentum” whose two components are its “behavioral mass” and “behavioral velocity;” and when a force is imposed upon a course of action or behavior, that force pro- duces a change in the behavioral momentum and that change evokes a “behavioral counter- force” that acts in opposition to the imposed force. In various empirical studies, the basic relation between the organisms’ rate of re- sponding and experimental sessions involving both fixed-interval and variable-interval schedules of reinforcement has yielded a power function which, in turn, yields func- tions for the specific behavioral variables of acceleration, mass, and momentum. In practi- cal terms, this overall numerical approach allows behavioral force values to be assigned to diverse experimental conditions or scenar- ios, such as the clinical assessment of the be- havioral influence/force of a medication dos- age. See also OPERANT CONDITIONING PARADIGM; OPERANT CONDITION- ING/BEHAVIOR, LAWS/THEORY OF. REFERENCES Dzendolet, E. (1999). On the theory of behav- ioral mechanics. Psychological Re- ports, 85, 707-742. Killeen, P. R. (1992). Mechanics of the ani- mate. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 57, 429-463. BEHAVIORAL POTENTIAL THEORY. See ROTTER’S SOCIAL LEARNING THE- ORY; TOLMAN’S THEORY. BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF HUMOR AND LAUGHTER. Within the context of humor and laughter theory analyses, the phe- nomenon of play may be considered as a be- havior consisting of the following elements: an emotional aspect of pleasure; a demonstra- tion more often in the immature, than in the adult, individual; a lack of immediate biologi- cal effect concerning the continued existence of the individual or the species; embodiment of species-specific features and forms; a rela- tionship of the duration, amount, and diversity of play to the position of the species on the phylogenetic scale; a demonstration of free- dom from conflicts; and a behavior that is relatively unorganized, spontaneous, and ap- pears to be an end in itself. Behavioral theo- ries of humor and laughter, also, may contain instinctive, exploratory, aesthetic, and learned actions without subsuming their basic func- tions. Contemporary approaches that employ the behavioral paradigm to humor analysis may be found in studies that examine the “drive-reduction/stimulus-response learning” aspects, and the arousal-change or experimen- tal arousal aspects of humor responses. For example, concerning the latter, it has been suggested that humor springs from an “arousal jag” that stems from an experience of threat, discomfort, uncertainty, unfamiliarity, or sur- prise that is followed by some event that signi- fies safety, readjustment, release, or clarifica- tion; in this sense, the humor experience may be more or a behavioral or neurophysiological event than a psychological state. Regarding the drive-reduction model and humor, the basic experimental premise is that the humor response takes on the function of a “secondary 65 reinforcer” because humor reduces the per- son’s sexual and/or aggressive drives. The tenets of classical behavioral theory are indi- cated, also, in the famous “nature versus nur- ture” theoretical controversy that permeates the history of psychology. In the present con- text, at issue is whether humor-related behav- iors are learned (“nurture”) or are innate (“na- ture”). Many psychologists assume that laugh- ter and humor are maturational processes demonstrating individual differences in ex- pressive frequency and time of onset. How- ever, some psychologists label laughter as an “instinct,” an “orienting response,” an “un- conditioned mechanism,” or a “reflex,” while others accept the inborn nature of the laughter response, but maintain that what is laughed at is extended or elaborated via learning, repeti- tive behavior, habit, and experience. See also DARWIN-HECKER HYPOTHESIS OF LAUGHTER/HUMOR; FREUD’S THEORY OF WIT/HUMOR; HUMOR, THEORIES OF; INSTINCT THEORY OF LAUGHTER AND HUMOR; NATURE VERSUS NUR- TURE THEORIES; SULLY’S THEORY OF LAUGHTER/HUMOR. REFERENCE Roeckelein, J. E. (2002). The psychology of humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF TIMING. The behavioral theory of timing (Killeen & Fetterman, 1988) is based on the observation that signals of reinforcement elicit “adjunc- tive” (elicited or emitted, interim or terminal) behaviors where transitions between such behaviors are caused by pulses from an “in- ternal clock.” The interbehavioral transitions are described as a Poisson process, with a rate constant proportional to the rate of reinforce- ment in the experimental context. Addition- ally, these adjunctive behaviors may come to serve as the basis for conditional discrimina- tions of the passage of time. This behavioral theory of timing constitutes a formalization of the notion that behavior is the mediator of temporal control, and relies on a classical model of timing, the clock-counter model, or pacemaker-accumulator system, in which an oscillator of some type generates pulses that are summed by a hypothetical “accumulator.” P. Killeen and N. Weiss (1982) have general- ized the behavioral timing system to one in which variability may arise not only from inaccuracy in the “pacemaker,” but also from errors in the “clock-counter;” such a general- ized model is consistent with many of the data on relative accuracy in human time percep- tion. The “accumulator,” “pacemaker,” “clock,” and “counter” are key hypothetical constructs in the behavioral theory of timing. See also SCALAR TIMING THEORY; TIME, THEORIES OF. REFERENCES Killeen, P., & Weiss, N. (1987). Optimal tim- ing and the Weber function. Psycho- logical Review, 94, 455-468. Killeen, P., & Fetterman, J. G. (1988). A be- havioral theory of timing. Psycho- logical Review, 95, 274-295. Church, R., Broadbent, H., & Gibbon, J. (1992). Biological and psychologi- cal descriptions of an internal clock. In I. Gormezano & E. Wasserman (Eds.), Learning and memory: The behavioral and biological sub- strates. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Fetterman, J. G., & Killeen, P. (1995). Cate- gorical scaling of time: Implications for clock-counter models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 21, 43-63. Church, R. (1997). Timing and temporal events. In C. Bradshaw & E. Sza- badi (Eds.), Time and behavior: Psychological and neurobehavioral analyses. Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland. BEHAVIORIST, BEHAVIORISTIC, AND BEHAVIORISM THEORY. Behaviorist theory (“behaviorism”) was the most signifi- cant movement in experimental psychology from 1900 to about 1975. It was launched formally in 1913 by the American psycholo- gist John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) but had its origins in the writings and work of the French philosophers Rene Descartes (1596- 1650) and Julien Offray de LaMettrie (1709- 1751), as well as the later experimentalists Ivan Pavlov, Jacques Loeb, and E. L. Thorndike. Behaviorist theory remains influ- ential today in spite of much criticism leveled 66 against it after about 1960. In general, behav- iorist theory developed as an alternative orien- tation toward studying and explaining one’s conscious experience, and it originally re- jected both the methods and tenets of mental- ism (where the proper subject matter of psy- chology was purported to be the study of mind, favoring the method of introspection, or “looking into one’s own experience”). In Wat- son’s classical approach, behaviorist theory was formulated as a purely objective experi- mental branch of natural science whose goal was the prediction and control of behavior, whose boundaries recognized no dividing line between humans and “lower” animals, and which rejected concepts such as mind, con- sciousness, and introspection. Various refor- mulations and versions of Watson’s classical behaviorist approach, called neobehaviorist theory (or “neobehaviorism”), appeared in the 20 th century under the labels of formal behav- iorism (including logical behaviorism and purposive/cognitive behaviorism), informal behaviorism, and radical behaviorism. Formal behaviorist theory, under the influence of logical positivism (where propositions in sci- ence need to be verified by empirical and observable means), attempted to explain be- havior in terms of a theory that consisted of operational definitions of concepts, processes, and events both directly observed and unob- served. The logical behaviorism of the Ameri- can psychologist Clark Leonard Hull (1884- 1952), formulated in terms of a hypothetico- deductive learning theory, was the most sys- tematized theory of the formal behaviorists. Another variation of the formal behaviorist theories was the American psychologist Ed- ward Chace Tolman’s (1886-1959) purposive/ cognitive behaviorist theory, which rejected the highly mechanistic approach of Watson and Hull, and espoused the notion that organ- isms are always acting to move toward or away from some goal where their purpose is to learn about their environments, not simply to respond to stimuli. Tolman’s theory devel- oped the “internal” concepts of purpose, cog- nition, cognitive maps, and expectancies as a way of explaining behavior. Informal behav- iorist theory, or liberalized stimulus-response theory, formulated “covert mediating events” (called “fractional, unobservable responses”) between the initial stimulus and the final re- sponse in a learned behavior. In this way, the covert behaviors of memory, thinking, lan- guage, and problem solving could be cast into behavior theory terms where the notion of the “central mediating response” was a core con- cept. Radical behaviorist theory is closest of all the neobehaviorist variations to Watson’s classical theory. This approach proposes that whatever cannot be observed and measured does not exist; it also rejects the “fuzzy” and ill-defined concepts in psychology such as mind, free will, personality, self, and feelings, even though it allows an organism’s “private world” to be studied scientifically (Skinner, 1938, 1953, 1963, 1974). The theoretical ap- proach of the radical behaviorists is the only type of behaviorist theory that is exerting a serious influence on mainstream psychology today, while the other behaviorist variations have passed into history. It is possible that present-day cognitive psychology is a new form of behaviorist theory with historical roots in Tolman’s purposive/cognitive psy- chology and Hull’s logical behaviorism, and a new term (such as behavioralism; cf., Ions, 1977) may be needed to combine the behav- iorist position with the cognitivist position, both of which commonly reject traditional mentalism (i.e., the doctrine that an adequate account of human behavior is not possible without invoking mental events as explanatory devices, and which also posits that mental phenomena cannot be reduced to physiologi- cal or physical events). See also HULL’S LEARNING THEORY; LASHLEY’S THE- ORY; LOEB’S TROPISTIC THEORY; SKINNER’S BEHAVIOR THEORY/OPER- ANT CONDITIONING THEORY; SPEN- CE’S THEORY; TOLMAN’S THEORY. REFERENCES LaMettrie, J. (1748/1961). Man as machine. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the be- haviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177. Watson, J. B. (1919). Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. Phila- delphia: Lippincott. Watson, J. B. (1925). Behaviorism. New York: Norton. 67 Watson, J. B. (1928). The ways of behavior- ism. New York: Norton. Watson, J. B., & McDougall, W. (1929). The battle of behaviorism. New York: Norton. Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive behavior. New York: Appleton-Century. Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organ- isms: An experimental analysis. New York: Appleton-Century. Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles of behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Cro- fts. Hull, C. L. (1952). A behavior system: An introduction to behavior theory con- cerning the individual organism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan. Miller, N. E. (1959). Liberalization of basic S- R concepts: Extensions to conflict behavior, motivation, and social learning. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychol- ogy: A study of a science. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill. Skinner, B. F. (1963). Behaviorism at fifty. Science, 140, 951-958. Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York: Knopf. Ions, E. (1977). Against behavioralism. Ox- ford, UK: Blackwell. BEKESY’S THEORY. See AUDITION AND HEARING, THEORIES OF. BELL-MAGENDIE LAW. This generalized principle, initially described by the Scottish anatomist, surgeon, and neurophysiological pioneer Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) in 1811, was restated independently in 1818 by the French physiologist Francois Magendie (1783-1855). The Bell-Magendie law states that the ventral roots of the spinal nerves (“ef- ferents”) have motor functions, whereas the dorsal roots of the spinal nerves (“afferents”) have sensory functions. Bell’s work in physi- ology was considered in his own time as the most important since the English physician William Harvey’s (1578-1657) discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1628. The dif- ferentiation of the sensory and motor nerve functions had been known by the early Greek physician Galen (c. 130-200), but this knowl- edge was lost by later physiologists who be- lieved that the nerves functioned nondifferen- tially in transmitting both sensory and motor impulses. Bell’s explorations of the sensori- motor functions of the spinal nerves triggered a bitter and prolonged priority dispute (i.e., who discovered the principle first?) with Ma- gendie. Apparently, Magendie did not know of Bell’s discovery, which was published pri- vately in 1811 as a monograph of only 100 copies. Today, both scientists are given credit for the discovery known as the Bell-Magendie law. The discovery of the distinction between sensory and motor nerves in the Bell- Magendie law provided the basis for the Eng- lish physician/physiologist Marshall Hall’s (1790-1857) work on the reflex arc and reflex functions. Bell’s experimental work led to the discovery of the long thoracic nerve in the body named Bell’s nerve. Additionally, the term Bell’s palsy refers to Bell’s demonstra- tion that lesions of the seventh cranial nerve creates facial paralysis. Magendie’s work, on the other hand, was concerned with wide- ranging and comprehensive studies in experi- mental physiology extending from the rela- tionships between sensations and the nervous system to the relationships between intellect and the number of convolutions in the brains of animals on different levels of the phyloge- netic scale. The Bell-Magendie law - stating that afferent neurons enter the spinal cord dorsally (from the back), and efferent neurons exit the spinal cord ventrally (from the front) - was elaborated by later workers in physiology into the principle that conduction from cell to cell within the central nervous system occurs only in the direction from receptor to effector. See also NEURON, NEURAL, AND NERVE THEORY. REFERENCES Bell, C. (1811). Idea of a new anatomy of the brain. London: Strahan & Preston. Hall, M. (1833). On the reflex action of the medulla oblongata and medulla spi- nalis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 123, 635-665. [...]... BIOCHEMICAL THEORIES OF PERSONALITY AND ABNORMALITY See PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, THEORIES OF; SCHIZOPHRENIA, THEORIES OF BIOCHEMICAL/NEUROLOGICAL THEORIES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA See SCHIZOPHRENIA, THEORIES OF BIOFEEDBACK, PRINCIPLES OF See CONTROL/SYSTEMS THEORY BIOGENETIC LAW See RECAPITULATION, THEORY/LAW OF BIOGENETIC RECAPITULATION THEORY See RECAPITULATION, THEORY/ LAW OF BIOGENIC AMINE THEORIES See DEPRESSION, THEORIES. .. views Psychological Review, 41, 309- 329 , 424 -449 Cannon, W (1936) Gray’s objective theory of emotion Psychological Review, 43, 100-106 Leeper, R (1948) A motivational theory of emotion to replace “emotion as disorganized response.” Psychological Review, 55, 5 -21 Webb, W (1948) A motivational theory of emotion Psychological Review, 55, 329 -335 Cannon, W., & Rosenblueth, A (1949) The supersensitivity of. .. also ALLPORT’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY; FREUD’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY; INTELLIGENCE, THEORIES/ LAWS OF; NATURE VERSUS NURTURE THEORIES; PESONALITY THEORIES REFERENCES Spearman, C E (1 927 ) Abilities of man New York: Macmillan Thurstone, L L (1931) Multiple factor analysis Psychological Review, 38, 406- 427 Cattell, R B (1948) Concepts and methods in the measurement of group syntality Psychological Review,... OF; JAMES-LANGE/LANGE-JAMES THEORY OF EMOTIONS REFERENCES Cannon, W (1915) Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage: An account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts Cannon, W (1931) Again the James-Lange and the thalamic theories of emotion Psychological Review, 38, 28 1 -29 5 86 Cannon, W (19 32) The wisdom of the body New York: Norton Bard,... LAWS, AND THEORIES BIG BANG HYPOTHESIS/THEORY See TIME, THEORIES OF BIG FIVE MODEL/THEORY OF PERSONALITY See PERSONALITY THEORIES BIG LIE THEORY See PERSUASION/ INFLUENCE THEORIES BILLIARD BALL THEORY See CONTEMPORANEITY, PRINCIPLE OF BINAURAL SHIFT EFFECT See APPENDIX A 73 BIOBEHAVIORAL INTERACTION HYPOTHESIS See GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY BIOCHEMICAL THEORIES OF DEPRESSION See DEPRESSION, THEORIES OF BIOCHEMICAL... reinforcement Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 29 3-311 Capaldi, E J (1966) Partial reinforcement: An hypothesis of sequential effects Psychological Review, 73, 459-477 Capaldi, E J., & Capaldi, E D (1970) Magnitude of partial reward, irregular reward schedules, and a 24 -hour ITI: A test of several hypotheses Journal of Comparative and Phy-siological Psychology, 72, 20 3 -20 9 Robbins, D (1971)... DEPRESSION, THEORIES OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION, DOCTRINE OF See DARWIN’S EVOLUTION THEORY BIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF DEPRESSION See DEPRESSION, THEORIES OF BIORHYTHM THEORY This speculation states - in its modern version - that there are three different biorhythm cycles that influence three different general aspects of human behavior: a 23 -day cycle that affects physical aspects of behavior, a 28 -day cycle that... Appleton-Century-Crofts Rescorla, R A., & Wagner, A R (19 72) A theory of Pavlovian conditioning Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement In A Black & W Prokasy (Eds.), Classical conditioning II Current research and theory New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts Mackintosh, N (1975) A theory of attention: Variations in the associability of stimuli with reinforcement Psychological Review, 82, 27 6 -29 8... PRINCIPLE See DECISION-MAKING THEORIES BOURDON EFFECT/ILLUSION See APPENDIX A; PERCEPTION (I GENERAL), THEORIES OF BOWDITCH’S LAW See ALL-OR-NONE LAW/PRINCIPLE; MULLER’S DOCTRINE OF SPECIFIC NERVE ENERGIES BOW-WOW AND ANIMAL CRY THEORY See LANGUAGE ORIGINS, THEORIES OF 79 BRAIN-FIELD THEORY See APPARENT MOVEMENT, PRINCIPLES OF BRAIN-LOCALIZATION THEORY See GALEN’S DOCTRINE; LEARNING THEORIES AND LAWS BRAIN-SPOT... also ADLER’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY; IDIOGRAPHIC/NOMOTHETIC LAWS; SEXUAL ORIENTATION THEORIES REFERENCES Adler, A (1 927 ) Practice and theory of individual psychology New York: Humanities Press Adler, A (1937) Position in family constellation influences life style International Journal of Individual Psychology, 3, 21 1 -22 7 Schooler, C (19 72) Birth order effects: Not here not now! Psychological Bulletin, . DEPRESSION, THEORIES OF. BIOCHEMICAL THEORIES OF PER- SONALITY AND ABNORMALITY. See PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, THEORIES OF; SCHIZOPHRENIA, THEORIES OF. BIOCHEMICAL/NEUROLOGICAL THEORIES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA HUN- GER, THEORIES OF. BLUE-ARC PHENOMENON. See VISION AND SIGHT, THEORIES OF. BODILY HUMORS, DOCTRINE OF. See GALEN’S DOCTRINE OF THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS. BODILY ROTATION, THEORY OF. See. RECAPITULATION, THEORY/ LAW OF. BIOGENIC AMINE THEORIES. See DE- PRESSION, THEORIES OF. BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION, DOC- TRINE OF. See DARWIN’S EVOLUTION THEORY. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF DEPRES- SION.