As compared with the psychoanalytic and humanistic perspectives on personality, the learning and social-cognitive perspectives: a. place less emphasis on the environment. b. emphasize research and objectivity to a greater extent. c. better highlight the role of emotional processes in personality.
The correct answer and explanation is:
The correct answer is:
b. emphasize research and objectivity to a greater extent.
Explanation:
Personality psychology includes several major perspectives, each focusing on different aspects of human behavior and personality development.
Psychoanalytic perspective (Freud, Jung) emphasizes unconscious motives, internal conflicts, and early childhood experiences. It relies heavily on subjective interpretation and clinical observations, often making it difficult to test hypotheses objectively or experimentally.
Humanistic perspective (Rogers, Maslow) focuses on conscious experiences, free will, and the innate drive toward self-actualization. It stresses personal growth, subjective meaning, and individual potential, which are often explored through qualitative methods like interviews and case studies rather than rigorous scientific experiments.
In contrast, the learning and social-cognitive perspectives approach personality from a more scientific, empirical standpoint:
- The learning perspective (behaviorism, operant and classical conditioning) emphasizes how the environment shapes personality through observable behavior and reinforcement. It focuses on external influences and learning history, measurable through objective experiments.
- The social-cognitive perspective (Bandura, Mischel) combines behaviorist principles with cognitive processes, emphasizing observational learning, self-efficacy, and cognitive interpretations of experiences. It uses experimental methods and quantifiable constructs to study how individuals interpret and respond to their environment.
Key point: Compared to the psychoanalytic and humanistic perspectives, the learning and social-cognitive perspectives emphasize research and objectivity more strongly. They rely on measurable behaviors, controlled experiments, and empirical data to build theories about personality development. This scientific approach allows for testing hypotheses and replicating results, contributing to greater reliability and validity in personality research.
While the psychoanalytic and humanistic perspectives provide rich qualitative insights about inner experiences and emotions, they tend to be less focused on objective measurement. The learning and social-cognitive approaches, therefore, represent a more scientific and empirical methodology within personality psychology.