144 A Psychological Behaviorism Theory of Personality
was to advance progressively on the dimension of simple-
complex with respect to behavior. The low end of the dimen-
sion involved establishment of basic principles, already
begun with the animal conditioning principles. But those prin-
ciples had to be verified with humans, first with simple behav-
iors and laboratory control. Then more and more complex
behaviors had to be confronted, with the samples of behavior
treated becoming morerepresentativeof life behaviors. The
beginning of this latter work showed convincingly the rele-
vance of learning-behavior principles for understanding
human behavior and progressively indicated that new human
learning principles were needed to deal with complex human
behavior. Several areas of PB research are described here as
historical background and, especially, to indicate how the the-
ory of personality arose in an extended research-conceptual
development.
Language-Cognitive Studies
My dissertation studied how subjects’ verbal responses to
problem-solving objects were related to the speed with which
they solved the problem. It appeared that people learn many
word labels to the objects and events of life. When a situation
arises that involves those objects and events, the verbal re-
sponses to them that individuals have learned will affect their
behavior. The research supported that analysis.
There are various kinds of labeling responses. A child’s
naming the letters of the alphabet involves a labeling reper-
toire. Studies have shown that children straightforwardly
learn such a repertoire, as they do in reading numbers and
words. Theverbal-labeling repertoireis composed of various
types of spoken words controlled by stimulus events. The
child learns to say “car” to cars as stimulus events, to say
“red” to the stimulus of red light, to say “running” to the visual
stimulus of rapidly alternating legs that produce rapid move-
ment, and to say “merrily” to people happily reveling. More-
over, the child learns these verbal labeling responses—like
the nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs just exemplified—in
large quantities, so the verbal-labeling repertoire becomes
huge. This repertoire enables the person to describe the many
things experienced in life, but it has other functions as well.
As discussed later, this and the other language repertoires are
important components of intelligence.
As another aspect of language, the child also learns to make
different motor responses to a large number of words. The
young child learns to look when hearing the word “look,” to
approach when hearing the word “come,” to sit when told the
word “sit,” and to make a touching response when told to
“touch” something. The child will learn to respond to many
words with motor responses, constituting theverbal-motor
repertoire.This repertoire enables the person to follow direc-
tions. It is constituted not only of a large number of verbs, but
also of adverbs, nouns, adjectives, and other grammatical ele-
ments. For example, most people could respond appropriately
to the request to “Go quickly, please, to the top-left drawer of
my dresser and bring me the car keys” because they have
learned motor responses to the relevant words involved.
Important human skills involve special developments of the
verbal-motor subrepertoire. As examples, ballet dancers, vio-
linists, NFL quarterbacks, mechanics, and surgeons have spe-
cial verbal-motor repertoires that are essential parts of their
special skills.
Another important part of language is the verbal-
association repertoire.When the wordsaltis presented as a
stimulus in a word-association task, a common response is
pepperorwater.However, an occasional person might re-
spond by sayingwoundorof the earthor something else that
is less usual. Years ago it was believed that differences in as-
sociations had personality implications, and word-association
tests were given with diagnostic intent. Analysis of word asso-
ciations as one of the subrepertoires of the language-cognitive
repertoire suggests more definitively and specifically that this
constitutes a part of personality. Consider a study by Judson,
Cofer, and Gelfand (1956). One group of subjects learned a
list of words that included the sequencerope, swing,andpen-
dulum.The other group learned the same list of words, but the
three words were not learned in sequence. Both groups then
had to solve a problem by constructing a pendulum from a
light rope and swinging it. The first group solved the problem
more quickly than did the second. Thus, in the present view
thereasoning abilityof the two groups depended on the word
associations they had learned.
Word associates are central to our grammatical speech, the
logic of our speech and thought, our arithmetic and mathemat-
ical knowledge, our special area and general knowledge,
our reasoning ability, our humor, our conversational ability,
and our intelligence. Moreover, there are great individual
differences in the verbal-association repertoire such that it
contributes to differences on psychological tests. Additional
repertoires are described in the PB theory of language-
cognition (see Staats, 1968, 1971, 1975, 1996).Emotional-Motivational StudiesAn early research interest of PB concerned the emotional
property of words. Using mylanguage conditioningmethod I
showed subjects a visually presented neutral word (nonsense
syllable) paired once each with different auditorily presented
words, each of which elicited an emotional response, with one
group positive emotion and with another group negative in a