Personality: The Psychological Behaviorism Theory 143Precision of Theories
There are also formal differences in theories in terms of other
science criteria, for example, in the extent of precision of state-
ment. A known example of imprecision was that of Freud’sre-
action formation.If the person did not do as predicted, then the
reaction formation still allowed the theory always to be
“right.” Another type of difference lies in the precision or
vagueness of definition of concepts. Hull aimed to define his
habit strengthconcept with great precision. Rogers’s concept
of the life force does not have such a precise definition. Sci-
ence is ordinarily known for its interest in considering and as-
sessing its theory tools with respect to such characteristics.
The field of personality needs to consider its theories in this
respect.
Unifying and Generality Properties of Theories
Hans Eysenck showed an interest in applications of condition-
ing principles to problems of human behavior. He also worked
on the measurement of personality, in traits such as intelli-
gence and extroversion-introversion. Moreover, he also had
interest in variations in psychic ability as shown in exper-
iments in psychokinisis. (During a six-month stay at the
Maudsley Hospital in 1961, the author conveyed the spread of
our American behavioral applications and also argued about
psychic phenomena, taking the position that selecting subjects
with high “psychic” ability abrogated the assumptions for the
statistics employed.) Theorists vary in the number of different
research areas to which they address themselves. And that
constitutes an important dimension; other things equal, more
general theories are more valuable than narrow theories.
Another property of a theory is that of unifying power. The
example of Eysenck can be used again. That is, although he
was interested in behavior therapy, personality measurement,
and experimental psychic ability, he did not construct a theory
within which these phenomenal areas were unified within a
tightly reasoned set of interrelated principles. Both the general-
ityandthe unifying power of theories are very important.
Freud’s psychological theory was more general than
Rogers’s. For example, it pertains to child development, ab-
normal psychology, and clinical psychology and has been
used widely in those and other fields. And Freud’s theory—
much more than other theories that arise in psychotherapy—
also was high in thegoalof unification. John Watson began
behaviorism as a general approach to psychology. The behav-
ioral theories of personality (such as that of Rotter, and to some
extent the other social learning theories) exhibit some general-
ity and unification. The present theory, PB, has the most gen-
erality and unification aims of all. None of the personality
theories, with the exception of the present one, moreover, has
a systematic program for advancing further in generality and
unification.
In general, there are no demands in the field of personality
to be systematic with respect to generality or unification, and
there are no attempts to evaluate theories for success in
attaining those goals. Again, that is different from the other
more advanced, unified sciences. That is unfortunate, for the
more a theory of personality has meaning for the different
areas of psychology, employs products of those fields, and has
implications for those fields, the more valuable that theory
can be.
This view of the field of personality and its personality the-
ories is a byproduct of the construction of the theory that will
be considered in the remaining sections. The perspective sug-
gests that the field of personality will continue to stagnate until
it begins toworkits contents along the lines proposed.PERSONALITY: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
BEHAVIORISM THEORYMore than 45 years ago, while still a graduate student at
UCLA, I began a research program that for some years I did
not name, then called social behaviorism, later paradigmatic
behaviorism, and finally PB. I saw great importance in the
behaviorism tradition as a science, in fundamental learning
principles, and in experimentation. But I saw also that the
preceding behaviorisms were incompletely developed, ani-
mal oriented, and too restricted to laboratory research. They
also contained fundamental errors and had no plan by which
to connect to traditional psychology, to contribute to it, and to
use its products. Very early in the research program I began to
realize that animal conditioning principles are not sufficient
to account for human behavior and personality. In my opinion
a new behavioral theory was needed, it had to focus on
human behavior systematically and broadly, it had to link
with traditional psychology’s treatments of many phenomena
of human behavior, and it had to include a new philosophy
and methodology.Basic DevelopmentsThe early years of this program consisted of studies to extend,
generally and systematically, conditioning principles to sam-
ples of human behavior. This was a new program in behavior-
ism. Some of the studies were informal, some were formal
publications, and many involved theoretical analyses of
behaviors—experimental, clinical, and naturalistic—that had
been described in the psychology literature. One of the goals