0.16 Learning theory and personality development  (Page 14/24)

Dollard also co-authored Children of Bondage , with a social anthropologist named Allison Davis (Davis&Dollard, 1940). Davis was one of the first Black professors to receive tenure at a university that was not an historically Black institution (the University of Chicago). He successfully challenged the racial bias in IQ tests of the past, helping to eliminate their use in the school systems of many cities, and he was recognized by the U. S. government with a postage stamp in a series that included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson. In their work together, Davis and Dollard focus on describing the personalities and socialization of eight adolescent Blacks in the deep south. They emphasize the demands placed on these youth by both their particular caste position and the social class into which they were born. Individuals may attempt to rebel against their feelings of inferiority with regard to class, and class mobility is possible, but not so with one’s racial identity:

In studying the status controls operating upon an individual one finds that most persons in our society are disposed to conceal, even from themselves, any inferiority in their social rank…Refusal to acknowledge one’s inferior status, and the building of defenses to decrease anxiety on this score are especially complex with regard to class status…Color caste, however, is so clearly and so rigidly defined that persons in the lower-caste society (as well as the general American reader of this book) will exhibit much less psychological resistance to the fact of caste status than to that of class position. (pg. 17; Davis&Dollard, 1940)

It was within this context, recognizing caste and class as socializing factors influencing personality development, that Dollard went on to study learning theories related to personality development:

“But what,” one may ask, “is the practical use of studying these class patterns of behavior?”…what good is such knowledge to the student of human nature, and to our society?…is it a valuable tool which will help us to predict behavior in any given situation and in the end to change it?

The writers’ studies of the class conditioning of Negro children have convinced them…that when properly understood the sanctions of the class position, as enforced by the family, the clique, and the larger class environment, are among the most important controls in the formation of human habits. In order to understand the powerful grip of this class behavior, we must first examine the social environment in which Negro children learn their habits and the specific methods by which this learning is reinforced. (pg. 259; Davis&Dollard, 1940)

John Dollard and Neal Miller: Psychodynamic Learning Theory

Sigmund Freud felt that only his approach to psychodynamic theory and psychoanalysis would allow for an understanding of human behavior. B. F. Skinner felt the same way about radical behaviorism. But very few psychologists have felt so strongly about one, and only one, approach to psychology. John Dollard and Neal Miller attempted to blend psychodynamic theory with learning theory, and the results were quite successful. Their theories on the relationship between frustration and aggression, social learning (developed more fully by Bandura, Rotter, and Mischel, whom we will cover in the next chapter), and conflict are standard topics in introductory psychology textbooks.