Behavioural, cultural and humanistic approaches

Three other approaches explain how personality develops.

1. Behavioural approach: personality is simply our response to the environment. The basic unit of personality is the response: patterns of behaviour learnt because they were reinforced (rewarded). Learning theories explain this:

• classical conditioning (Pavlov): learning by association;
• instrumental (operant) conditioning (Skinner): learning from rewards and punishments;
• observational learning (Bandura): learning by watching others.

2. Cultural approach: a group's economic maintenance system, how it gets its food and livelihood, shapes its child-rearing practices, which in turn shape personality. Example: the Birhor, a nomadic hunting-gathering tribe of Jharkhand, raise children to be independent, adventurous and self-reliant, because hunting needs those qualities. Settled farming communities tend to raise children to be obedient and responsible.

3. Humanistic approach: it sees people as basically good, with a natural drive to grow and fulfil their potential.

• Carl Rogers: the fully functioning person. Each of us has a real self (what we are) and an ideal self (what we wish to be). A big gap between them causes unhappiness. Children need unconditional positive regard: love and acceptance without conditions. He developed client-centred therapy.
• Abraham Maslow: self-actualisation, the highest human need: becoming all one can be. Self-actualised people are self-aware, accept themselves and others, are creative, and live in the here-and-now.

So both the environment (behaviourists, culture) and inner growth (humanists) shape who we are.