Handbook of Psychology, Volume 5, Personality and Social Psychology

CHAPTER 6

A Psychological Behaviorism

Theory of Personality

ARTHUR W. STAATS

135

BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES AND PERSONALITY 135
Traditional Behaviorism and Personality 135
Behavior Therapy and Personality 137
THE STATE OF THEORY IN THE FIELD
OF PERSONALITY 140
The Need for Theorists Who Work the Field 141
We Need Theory Constructed in Certain Ways
and With Certain Qualities and Data 142
PERSONALITY: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
BEHAVIORISM THEORY 143
Basic Developments 143
Additional Concepts and Principles 146
The Concept of Personality 147
Definition of the Personality Trait 149
The Principles of the Personality Theory 150

Plasticity and Continuity in Personality 150

The Multilevel Nature of the Theory

and the Implications 151

PERSONALITY THEORY FOR THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 151

Biology and Personality 152

Learning and Personality 152

Human Learning and Personality 152

Developmental Psychology 152

Social Psychology 153

Personality Tests and Measurement 153

Abnormal Psychology 155

Application of the Personality Theory 155

CONCLUSION 156

REFERENCES 157

This chapter has several aims. One is that of considering the
role of behaviorism and behavioral approaches in the fields of
personality theory and measurement. A second and central
aim is that of describing a particular and different behavioral
approach to the fields of personality theory and personality
measurement. A third concern is that of presenting some of
the philosophy- and methodology-of-science characteristics
of this behavioral approach relevant to the field of personal-
ity theory. A fourth aim is to characterize the field of person-
ality theory from the perspective of this philosophy and
methodology of science. And a fifth aim is to project some
developments for the future that derive from this theory per-
spective. Addressing these aims constitutes a pretty full
agenda that will require economical treatment.

BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES AND PERSONALITY

Behavioral approaches to personality might seem of central
importance to personology because behaviorism deals with
learning and it is pretty generally acknowledged that learning

affects personality. Moreover, behaviorist theories were

once the models of what theory could be in psychology. But

certain features militate against behaviorism’s significance

for the field of personality. Those features spring from the tra-

ditional behaviorist mission.

Traditional Behaviorism and Personality

One feature is behaviorism’s search for generallaws. That is

ingrained in the approach, as we can see from its strategy of

discovering learning-behavior principles with rats, pigeons,

dogs, and cats—for the major behaviorists in the first and sec-

ond generation were animal psychologists who assumed that

those learning-behavior principles would constitute a com-

plete theory for dealing with any and all types of human

behavior. John Watson, in behaviorism’s first generation,

showed this, as B. F. Skinner did later. Clark Hull (1943) was

quite succinct in stating unequivocally about his theory that

“all behavior, individual and social, moral and immoral, nor-

mal and psychopathic, is generated from the same primary

laws” (p. v). Even Edward Tolman’s goal, which he later