JOHN DOLLARD AND NEAL MILLER

Submitted By- Isha Arora

Submitted To- Dr. Nidhi Verma Ma’am
Enrollment No- A50706920034
Course- B.A (H) Applied Psychology
Semester- 4th
 Introduction
Social Learning Approach

 The social- learning approach to personality, suggests that new behaviours can be acquired by observing and
imitating others. It emphasizes on the importance of observing and modelling the behaviour, attitudes and emotional
reactions of others. It focuses on the learning that occurs within a social context.

Biographies of John Dollard and Neal Miller

 John Dollard was born in Wisconsin in 1900. He earned a PhD in Sociology at University of Chicago and studied
psychoanalysis at the Berlin Institute. He taught anthropology, psychology and sociology at Yale. He individually
researched the issues of race relations and social class, believing much can be predicted about a person if you
understand the culture he/she was born into at the time. Social class determines a series of specific learning
experiences.
 Neal Miller was born in Wisconsin in 1990 and his father was an educational psychologist. Miller earned a PhD
in psychology at Yale, studying with Clark Hull, who specialized in learning theory and drive reduction. When
Miller joined the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, he began collaborating with Dollard, exploring ways to
understand psychoanalytic theory using behaviourist techniques. Miller received citation for Outstanding
Lifetime Contribution to Psychology in 1992 from the APA. The citation especially noted his work in using
animal models to understand social learning, pathology, health and other topics of interest to psychologists.

Key Points

 Social learning theory was proposed by Neal Miller and John Dollard in 1941. According to them, learning
theory in its simplest form, is the study of circumstances under which a response and a stimulus become
connected. So their theory is also called S-R learning theory/ drive reduction theory/ reinforcement theory of
personality.
 John Dollard and Neal Miller attempted to blend psychodynamic theory with learning theory.

 Dollard and Miller took on an ambitious challenge: to translate Freud’s theory into the concepts of learning
theory, which they regarded as more scientific and then to test this new theory in the laboratory. Such an
approach is based on the belief that Freud has worthwhile clinical insights but that his theory was phrased in
largely untestable terms. By more clearly defining his theory and then actually manipulating the causes of
behaviour in an animal laboratory, Dollard and Miller hoped to refine and validate the fundamental ideas of
psychoanalytic theory.

 Miller and Dollard argued that in order to understand human personality, it was necessary to understand the
principles of learning. It is also important to understand the social circumstances in which that learning takes
place. Thus, Miller and Dollard called their approach Social Learning Approach.

 It is interesting to note that the theory represents the collaboration between Miller, a psychologist and Dollard, a
sociologist. Thus, personality becomes an interesting field, combining different levels of analysis.
 Four Fundamental Concepts about Learning
Miller and Dollard summed up the primary concepts of learning theory by suggesting that “in order to learn one must
want something, notice something, do something and get something”. These conditions correspond to the learning theory
concepts of drive, cue, response and reward.

 Drive: Wanting Something- In common language, a drive is a need such as hunger, thirst, sleep, money or
recognition and so on. Miller and Dollard defined a drive as “a strong stimulus which impels action”. Drive stimuli
can be internal (hunger or even thoughts) or external (infliction of pain or discomfort in environment). Drives are
primary (natural responses to physical need or discomfort) or secondary (culturally determined or learned such as the
need for money, need for approval, ambition). Different acquired needs are developed in different learning
circumstances. For example- Dollard and Miller theorized that ambition is fostered more in the middle class than in
lower class.

 Cue: Noticing Something- Cues are discriminative stimuli that a person notices at the time of behaviour. Distinctive
sights, sounds, smells may serve as cues. Even internal thoughts can act as cues to a behaviour. Cues determine when
he will respond, where he will respond and which response he will make.
Learning consists of strengthening the cue- response connection. For example- A red traffic light is a cue to stop,
whereas green is a cue to go.

 Response: Doing Something- Responses are aspects of a person’s behaviour. Any behaviour that can be
changed by learning can be considered a response. These include not only overt such as shouting or fainting
but also covert like thinking.

A list of all the responses that may occur in a given situation, arranged in order from the highest probability
to
the lowest probability is termed as response hierarchy. For example- A 2 year old Jason, hearing that it is
bedtime, is more likely to cry than to go quietly to bed. In this example, the response hierarchy might include
the following responses-
R1 (most likely) = cry
R2 = grab teddy bear
R3 = hide
R4 = demand daddy
The most likely response in the hierarchy is called the dominant response. In this example, crying is the dominant
response. The dominant response will occur unless circumstances prevent it. With learning, responses change their
positions in the hierarchy. By the time a child is 8 or 10, R5 should be the most likely response. The new hierarchy,
revised by the learning is termed as the resultant hierarchy.

Rewards make responses move higher in the response hierarchy, whereas punishment extinction make responses
move lower.

 Reward: Getting Something- Miller and Dollard said that drive reduction is reinforcing. Immediate
reinforcement after the response is more effective than delayed reinforcement. For example- if a child is
immediately rewarded after a correct response, then he would be able to identify the reward with the act that he
must learn to perform.
 The Learning Process
 If drives are satisfied by the dominant response, no learning will occur. However, the dominant response does not
bring about drive reduction.

 Learning Dilemma- a situation in which the existing responses are not rewarded. This produces change. A new
response can be learned if there is a drive and if the new response occurs and is rewarded. Thus it is important to
arrange the situation so that the desired new response will occur. This may involve, providing models to be imitated
or any of a variety of strategies used by parents, teachers and therapists.

 Many of the learning principles that Dollard and Miller described are already familiar: punishment, extinction,
generalization and discrimination. Others may now like- spontaneous recovery and the gradients of reward and
punishment.

 Undesirable responses can be eliminated by immediate punishment. Then another response from the response
hierarchy will occur. This new behaviour will occur more often if it is rewarded.
 Extinction- When a response is not rewarded, it becomes less frequent and gradually stops occurring. For well-
learned responses, extinction may be a very slow process. For example- if the sibling didn’t react to the teasing,
there would be no joy in that and it would soon be abandoned.

 Spontaneous recovery- Even after a response has extinguished, it will occasionally reoccur. For example- A child
who has not cried at bedtime for many weeks may, once in a while, do so again. If not rewarded, these responses
disappear again quickly.

 Stimulus Generalization- It is the transfer of a response pattern from one environment to another which offers
similar cues. For example- a child who has learned to be afraid of one dog, who bit the child, will also be afraid of
other dogs- the fear generalizes to other dogs. The response (fear) will be more likely or stronger for cues that are
quite similar. If bitten by a large dog, the child will be more afraid of other large dogs.

 Discrimination means responding only to particular cues. If repeated learning experiences occur in which
responses are rewarded only to highly specific cues and not to similar ones, the learner will discriminate among
these stimulus cues.
 Gradient of Reward- It states that the more closely the response is followed by reward, the more it is strengthened.
For example- a student is given a treat immediately for completing his homework, because the response is immediate,
he is more likely to repeat the behaviour again.

 Gradient of Punishment- It states that the more immediately punishment follows misbehaviour, the more effective it
is in reducing the strength of the tendency to misbehave. For example- if you immediately punish the child for
misbehaving with his younger brother.

 For human beings, the capacity to think and to use language makes it possible to create greater closeness between the
response and the reward or punishment. By talking about a child’s misbehaviour before a punishment, the parent
causes the child to think about the misbehaviour. This makes the punishment more effective. Similarly, talking about a
praise behaviour can effectively bring it into a higher position on the gradient.

 Anticipatory responses- Responses that precede reward are strengthened and as they are strengthened they tend to
occur earlier and earlier as the behavioural sequence is repeated. For example- we learn to pull the hand away from a
hot stove faster and faster so that eventually we don’t even touch it. Behaviour becomes more efficient.
 Learning by Imitation
Dollard and Miller theory suggests that learning can occur by imitation.

 Same Behaviour- For a child to emit the same behaviour as the person being imitated, it is necessary not only for
the behaviour to be the same but also for the controlling cues to be the same.

 Copying- It occurs when the learner tries to produce the same behaviour as the model and understand there is a
discrepancy between what the model is doing and what the learner is doing. For example- a young child who is
trying to be like his father, is copying. In the case of copying, the cues come from the model’s behaviour and the
reinforcement is recognition of response similarity to the model.

 Matched Dependent Behaviour- In this the learner produces a response that matches the model’s response and
depends on the model to provide a cue for the behaviour. For example- An older brother (model) who runs
(response) to greet this father upon hearing his father’s footsteps (cue). His younger brother runs just like the model
(matched response) but has not yet learned to recognize his father’s footsteps as an appropriate cue for the
behaviour. Instead, his response is cued by seeing his brother running (dependent cue).
 Four Critical Training Periods of Childhood
Dollard and Miller credited Freud with pointing out the importance of childhood and its conflicts. They describe
the three psychosexual conflicts that Freud expressed, translated into the language of learning theory. They also
added a fourth important childhood conflict, focusing on anger.

 Feeding occurs upon birth and reduces the hunger drive, it is rewarding. The responses an infant has made just
before being fed are therefore strengthened. The presence of the mother, who is repeatedly on hand at these
times, becomes a secondary reward. A hungry child who is consistently left to cry without being fed learns not
to cry for food, crying as a response is extinguished. General character traits of apathy and apprehensiveness
develop. A child fed appropriately develops love for the mother and more sociable personality.

 Cleanliness Training as Freud described the anal stage has to do with toilet training. The young child has
learned to connect the internal physical cues of a full bladder and bowel with the responses of urinating and
defecating. In cleanliness training more complex behaviour like going to the bathroom, undressing also take
place. If this stage is rushed, excessive conforming and guilt may be learned. Additionally, the child may learn
to avoid the parents in order to avoid punishment.
 Early Sex Training related to Freud’s phallic stage, it often consists of punishment for masturbation, which results
in conflict, sexual impulses remain tempting but also arouse anxiety. By generalization, a child may develop a bed
phobia since masturbation frequently occurs and is punished in bed. Dollard and Miller regard their learning
analysis as consistent with Freud’s ideas about Oedipal rivalry and castration fear. Besides developing conflict over
sexual impulses, a child at this stage may learn a fear of authority figures, generalized from experience with the
punishing parents (especially the father).

 Anger- Anxiety Conflicts- Dollard and Miller thought that anger- anxiety conflict was sufficiently important to add
it, as a fourth critical training period. Because childhood produces many frustrations, including those that come
from childhood dependency, mental limitations and sibling rivalry, children must learn to deal with anger. When
children express their anger overtly, perhaps by hitting or throwing things, they are punished. In this way, they
learn to be anxious about anger. Children need to have anger described to them and to learn how to use this
powerful emotion responsibly.
 Conflict
Intrapsychic conflict was a key idea in psychoanalytic theory and Dollard and Miller offered extensive learning
analyses of conflict. If a situation provides cues for two incompatible responses (responses that cannot both
occur at the same time), there is conflict.

Conflicts assume many forms. We sometimes must choose between two desirable responses, at other times the
choices are unpleasant or the same situation may cue both approach and avoidance responses. In all of these
cases, a choice between incompatible responses must be made. Thus these are situations of conflict.

Four Types of Conflict

 Approach- Avoidance Conflict- Approach means moving toward something. Avoidance means moving
away from it. Obviously you can’t move toward and away from the same thing at the same time. Approach-
avoidance conflict arises when a goal has both positive and negative aspects and thus leads to approach and
avoidance reactions at the same time. For example- if a person wants to eat a cake but also wants to avoid
gaining weight.
 Avoidance- Avoidance Conflict- In this the person must choose between two goals, both of which are
undesirable. If possible, the person will avoid both. If constrained to stay in the situation, the person will
become immobilized partway between the two goals, where the two avoidance gradient cross, since movement
in either direction would increase anxiety. Such decisions invite postponement and procrastination. For
example- making a decision between doing a homework assignment or doing housework.

 Approach- Approach Conflict- If two goals are both associated with approach tendencies, there is very little
conflict. In this situation, a person is trying to make a choice between two desirable options. For example- a
student wishes to pursue a graduate degree and has been accepted into two graduate programs and needs to
make a decision about which one to attend. In this situation the student might, in addition to comparing the
quality and prestige of the programs, they might also consider the location, climate and other amenities before
making a final decision.
 Double Approach- Avoidance Conflict- It is a situation when a person must choose between two options,
each of which has both desirable and undesirable aspects. The strength of each avoidance tendency increases
more steeply than the approach tendency as the person comes nearer the goal. Thus, when the person is far
from either goal, little conflict is experienced and the positive hopes of approach prevail. After the choice is
made and the person moves toward a goal, avoidance tendencies increase. If they become strong enough, the
approach and avoidance gradients cross and the person stops, hesitantly and anxiously, no longer moving
toward the goal. Since real life offers many more choices and many more sources of approach and avoidance, it
would be complicated. For example- choosing between two different cars, each with differing pros and cons.
One car gets great gas mileage and has lots of fancy stuff (approaching) but it is very expensive and expensive
to maintain (avoidance). The other car is cheap and cheap to maintain (approaching) but very boring and won’t
last long term (avoidance).
Thank You