Learning and

Cognitive Theories
of Personality
UNIT 3 DOLLARD AND MILLER
THEORY OF PERSONALITY
Structure
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Objectives
3.2 The Stimulus Response Paradigm
3.3 Structure versus Dynamics of Personality: The Major Elements
3.3.1 Habit
3.3.2 Drive
3.3.3 Cue
3.3.4 Reinforcement
3.4 Miller’s Experiment on Secondary Drives
3.4.1 Implications of Miller’s Experiment
3.5 Explanation of Social Behaviour of Human beings and Higher Mental
Processes Using the S-R Paradigm
3.5.1 Language and Culture
3.5.2 Principles of Development of the Human Child
3.6 Conflict
3.7 Psychopathology and Treatment
3.8 Critical Evaluation of Dollard and Miller’s Approach to Personality
3.9 Let Us Sum Up
3.10 Glossary
3.11 Unit End Questions
3.12 Suggested Readings
3.13 Answers to Self Assessment Questions

3.0 INTRODUCTION
We hope that you must have watched the TV serial “Mahabharat”. In that TV serial
after the great war of Kurukshetra was over, Duryodhana, the king of the Kauravas
was hiding beside the Dvaipayana Lake. The Pandavas, accompanied by Krishna,
sought him out and challenged him for the last duel. Duryodhana opted for a mace
fight with his archenemy Bhima. Both Duryodhana and Bhima were of almost equal
ability in mace fighting, with Duryodhana having a slight edge over Bhima. The duel
started and both were striking to kill. As the battle continued, Bhima started showing
signs of fatigue. At that moment Krishna drew Bhima’s attention to himself and
slapped his own thigh. In mace fighting hitting below the waist is illegal. But with the
cue from Krishna, Bhima remembered the promise he had made during the dice
game at the court of Hastinapur. In that ill fated game, Draupadi was conquered by
the Kauravas. When Duryodhana was hurling insults on her, Bhima had promised
that he would break Duryodhana’s thigh with a mace. Now, enraged, he hit
34
Duryodhana on the thigh. Duryodhana fell down vanquished. The Pandavas and Dollard and Miller
Theory of Personality
Krishna rejoiced, while Duryodhana was left to die a painful death.
If you analyse this well known story from a psychological perspective you would be
intrigued by a few questions. What was the motive of fighting? Were the motives
same for Bhima and Duryodhana? What happened as the fighters affronted each
other? How did they decide their strategies of action? What was the impact of
Krishna’s behaviour on the motive of Bhima? What were the consequences? You
may identify the following elements – a motive or drive, a habitual pattern of responses,
a set of stimuli and cues, a range of different modes of responses to those cues and
finally the reinforcement in the form of fulfillment of motive for the Pandavas and the
opposite for Duryodhana.
In the previous units you have learnt about classical and operant conditioning. It may
have occurred to you that complex social situations like this episode from Mahabharata
cannot be explained on the basis of conditioning only. While psychoanalytical
assumptions can provide an explanation of such motives and actions, they are not
scientifically verifiable. Catering to the need of explaining complex social issues, two
American psychologists named John Dollard (1900 - 1980) and Neal E. Miller
(1909 -2002) worked within the stimulus-response paradigm during the thirties and
forties. Both of them were trained in psychoanalysis, and wanted to demystify the
tenets of psychoanalysis by demonstrating that many psychoanalytical principles
can be explained in behavioural terms and even verified by animal experiments.

3.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you should be able to:
l Discuss Dollard and Miller’s position within S-R paradigm;
l Compare between the structure and dynamics of personality;
l Discuss Miller’s experiment on secondary drives;
l Explain the social behaviour and higher mental processes from the viewpoint of
Dollard and Miller;
l Explain the role of culture and socialisation in human behaviour from the
viewpoint of Dollard and Miller;
l Discuss Miller’s experiment on conflict; and
l Critically analysis the S-R paradigm of behaviour with reference to Dollard
and Miller.

3.2 THE STIMULUS RESPONSE PARADIGM

In unit 2 you have read that Skinner emphasised on the association of operants with
the reinforcement. In Skinner’s approach the stimulus itself was of relatively less
importance. Also, the antecedent of behaviour, though included in ABC analysis,
was regarded as nothing more than a context of behaviour. What is the nature of
stimulus itself and its relevance to the motive of the organism determine the response?
This deficit of Skinner’s approach has been addressed in the Stimulus response
paradigm.
Unlike classical conditioning and operant conditioning, the stimulus-response
paradigm of learning cannot be attributed to the work of any single scientist. The
contributions were of Dollard and Miller served as a bridge between learning theories 35
Learning and and the cognitive approach. You would learn more the next unit. Dollard and Miller
Cognitive Theories
of Personality worked upon the premises forwarded by Hull, who emphasised the concepts of
‘Drive’ and ‘Habit’. Hull (1943) postulated that every behaviour is a response to a
specific stimulus, and this behaviour is impelled by a drive. If repeatedly the drive is
reduced by the organism’s response to the stimulus, a ‘habit’ is formed.
Dollard and Miller took off from Hull’s postulates and through animal experiments
and theorisation, extended the concepts to diverse human behaviour. They recognised
the significant role of culture and socialisation in determining the nature of drive,
response and drive reduction. Apart from Dollard and Miller, some other famous
scientists working within this paradigm were J. F. Brown, L. W. Doob, R. R. Sears,
O. H. Mowrer, who collaborated with Dollard and Miller on a number of research
articles.

3.3 STRUCTURE VERSUS DYNAMICS OF

PERSONALITY: THE MAJOR ELEMENTS
What do you understand by the two terms ‘structure of personality’ and ‘dynamics
of personality’? Structure refers to a relatively stable aspect of personality that is
expressed repeatedly in different situations. If you say ‘P is depressive in disposition’,
you are talking about structure. Dynamics is the relatively flexible process of
development of certain characteristics. If you say ‘P had lost her parents early in life,
and consequently had a difficult childhood; now ‘P’ has lost her husband also and is
extremely depressed’, you are talking about dynamics.
Dollard and Miller were more concerned with dynamics of behaviour, though they
did not ignore structure. In Hullian terms, ‘habit’ is a relatively stable association and
thus may represent structure of personality. Drives, stimulus (cue) and reinforcements
that lead to development of a habit are elements of the dynamics. Dollard and Miller’s
approach to personality rests on the understanding of these elements. You would
learn about the elements within the S-R paradigm as postulated by Dollard and
Miller in the following subsections.

3.3.1 Habit
You may define habit as an association between a stimulus (cue) and the organism’s
responses to it. Personality structure largely constitutes of habits. Perhaps your mother
was a bit over-anxious whenever you had a late night party. This is her habit – a
relatively stable bond between your adventure and her negative apprehensions.

3.3.2 Drive
Drive is the energizer of behaviour. It is a stimulus, often internal, which is strong
enough to make the individual engage in action. Hunger is the drive that impels your
eating behaviour.
However, you must remember that though drive pushes you to action, it does not
determine the direction of behaviour. When hungry, you would feel the pang and
would be restless, but drive would not tell you what to eat and how to eat. That you
can eat a cake and not a piece of stone has been learnt by you through experience.
You need other stimuli or cues for that.
Drives may be primary or secondary. Primary drives are linked with physiological
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processes. Examples are hunger, thirst, sleep, sex etc. Secondary drives are acquired
through experience. Especially for human beings, most of what we do throughout Dollard and Miller
Theory of Personality
the day is energized by secondary drives. Your passion for music is an acquired or
secondary drive.

3.3.3 Cue
A cue is a stimulus that guides the organism to act in a specific mode. Thus cues give
direction to our actions. You may say it supplements drive. If you are driven by
hunger you would take anything that reduces the drive. If you get a piece of bread,
you would chew it. If you get a glass of milk you would drink it. Chewing and
drinking behaviours are different. Your choice of behaviour depends on the ‘cue’
you get – a solid thing on a plate or a liquid thing in a glass.

3.3.4 Reinforcement
After a response has taken place, you may see two possible consequences. It can
reduce your drive, or your drive may continue in the same or even greater intensity.
If you are thirsty and you drink water, your thirst will be quenched. If you eat a
couple of biscuits, you would feel thirstier. So water would be a positive reinforcer,
while biscuits would be a punishment. You would learn to drink water and avoid
biscuits whenever you feel similar dryness in your throat.
Just like drives, reinforcers can be primary or secondary. Food is a reinforcer to
your primary drive of hunger. A sitar recital by Pandit Ravishankar is a reinforcer for
your secondary drive of enjoying music.

Self Assessment Questions 1

1) Write True (T) or False (F)
a) Sex is a secondary drive.
b) A habit is an association between a stimulus and the response.
c) Drives give direction to our behaviour.
2) Who was the major proponent of the concept of habit and drive within the
S-R paradigm?
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3.4 MILLER’S EXPERIMENT ON SECONDARY

DRIVES
Miller conducted a series of experiments with rats to understand the nature of drive,
cue and reinforcement. In his now classic experiment (Miller, 1948) a number of
albino rats were placed in a white compartment whose door opened to a black
compartment. The rats received an electric shock while placed in the white
compartment and learnt to run through the open door to the black one. Subsequently
Miller made a different arrangement within the white compartment. The door,
previously kept open, was now kept closed and a wheel had to be rotated to open
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Learning and it. The rats were not given any shock. However, as soon as they were placed in the
Cognitive Theories
of Personality white compartment, they tried to go to the black one, and even without any shock,
learnt to rotate the wheel and to open the door. Their urge to move to the black
compartment was so strong that even if after learning wheel rotation, the mechanism
was changed and a bar had to be pressed for opening the door, the rats quickly
learnt to press the bar.

3.4.1 Implications of Miller’s Experiment

Miller interprets the rat’s behaviour at the second phase of the experiment as an
evidence of secondary drive. The electric shock generated in the rats a primary
drive of avoiding pain. The experimental arrangement however developed in them a
secondary drive – that of fear of the white compartment. In the second condition,
the placing of the rats within the white compartment itself (which was earlier a neutral
stimulus) generated in them a secondary fear drive. This drive impelled them to learn
to rotate the wheel, or press the bar although the shock was not given. Miller calls
this fear drive secondary as it is not associated with the original drive of escape from
pain, but is a derivative of it. The learning to rotate the wheel to open the door is
known as Instrumental Learning, as it is instrumental to the drive reduction.
In unit 1 and 2 the concepts of generalisation and discrimination in Pavlov’s and
Skinner’s theories have been discussed. Dollard and Miller also emphasised the
generalisation and discrimination take place in relation to stimulus response bond.
For example, if the rat develops a secondary drive of fear for a red compartment, it
may develop fear of an orange coloured compartment as well. Similarly, if a rat that
has developed a secondary fear reaction to a red compartment is given a reward of
food from an orange compartment, it will learn to discriminate successfully between
the two.
Dollard and Miller also emphasised the fact that apart from learning to respond in a
certain way, we also learn not to respond under certain circumstances. We learn to
suppress the immediate response tendencies because of the negative value of certain
stimuli. This is of immense importance in development of human social behaviour, as
you would shortly come to know.

3.5 EXPLANATION OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF

HUMAN BEINGS AND HIGHER MENTAL
PROCESSES USING THE S-R PARADIGM
Dollard and Miller’s special credit lies in their attempt to explain human behaviour in
complex social situation in terms of stimulus response paradigm. Coming back to
the case of Bhima and Duryodhana, we can try to analyse in Dollard and Miller’s
terms, the habit, drive, cue and reinforcement.
The habits were almost same for Duryodhana and Bhima – aggression, arrogance,
responding to challenge and egoism. But the drives were different for the two
characters. For Bhima, it was a fight for officially establishing the victory of the
Pandavas – the final way to ruling the kingdom. Thus it was more of a secondary
drive. For Duryodhana it was a kill or die situation. His drive was survival – a
primary one, and perhaps, establishing his superiority was a secondary one. As the
duel started, both Bhima and Duryodhana were trying to win. They were manoeuvring
every move according to the demand of the situation. Both were keenly observing
38 the movement of the other and responding to the other’s movement by being
defensive, or initiating a new offence. Each movement was a stimulus or cue to the Dollard and Miller
Theory of Personality
other’s response. The course of fight, where Bhima was slowly but steadily losing
ground, was interrupted by a different cue from Krshna – the slapping of the thigh.
Indeed, Krshna strategically changed the cue and aroused a different drive in Bhima
by this cue. It changed the mindset of Bhima – the drive now became revenge
fuelled by the memory of a past pain, of the frustration of not being able to save his
wife from public humiliation. His aggressive vigour increased, and violating the rule
of fair fighting, he defeated Duryodhana through unjust means. What were the
reinforcements? Of course, it was the positive feedback of joyous feeling and
enhanced esteem for Bhima. For Duryodhana, it was the opposite - extreme pain,
degradation and loss of hope.

3.5.1 Language and Culture

It was indeed a cue to a complex memory – a symbolic behaviour. In other words,
you may call it a non-verbal gesture with a very significant ‘meaning’. You may as
well call it a language to communicate a certain idea to the fighting man. In our
everyday social interaction, and even in ‘talking to ourselves’, language is the single
greatest resource. Dollard and Miller (1950) suggested that words and gestures
may also serve as secondary reinforcers. When you get angry because somebody
has spoken in a demeaning way about your family, you are actually responding not
to any physical harm, but to the symbolic value of the words spoken. Here words
are the secondary reinforcers to generate the same response as the actual physical
harm directed toward your loved ones. We know how certain gestures also elicit
our responses – take ‘V’ for victory sign with fingers as an example.
It is through language and its value as secondary reinforcers that you can claim
yourself as a rational being. The very logic you use is expressed through symbols.
Language is the vehicle of your emotions also. Thus culture strives on the secondary
reinforcement value of our language. In turn, it is the culture itself which, through an
elaborate learning procedure create a large array of secondary reinforcers and make
our life a rich and complex one.
In the previous section you have learnt that we practice not to respond to certain
stimuli. What culture or socialisation really teaches you is a kind of discrimination
among stimuli. You may respond freely to some stimuli. But socialisation means that
you must respond in a symbolic way to most stimuli, and also inhibit your spontaneous
response tendencies for many. For example, a child can run and embrace her mother.
But at school he/she soon learns to express his/her positive feelings to the teacher
not by embracing hi/her, but by smiling and greeting. He/she also learns to suppress
his/her anger against his/her teachers, although he/she may express it in controlled
ways with his/her peers. Thus the mother, the teacher and the peers need to be
discriminated, a function carried out skill fully through the process of socialisation.

3.5.2 Principles of Development of the Human Child

The above discussion emphases that socialisation is of singular importance in the life
of an individual. Indeed, this is not a premise of S-R paradigm only. Each and every
observer of human behaviour emphasises the role of child rearing techniques and
stages of development..
Dollard and Miller (1950) provided an account of how the ‘infant’ gradually acquires
a number of secondary reinforcements through feeding schedules, toilet training and
other socialisation processes. Thus Dollard and Miller agree with psychoanalysis 39
Learning and that there are certain critical periods of development. The different stimuli acquire
Cognitive Theories
of Personality meaning through this process, and the child learns to respond to some stimuli in a
particular way, and also learns not to respond for others. In this context, Dollard
and Miller (1941) recognised the role of imitation in human development. For
example, a young girl sees her elder brother finishing his breakfast cleanly and hears
her mother praise him. She imitates this behaviour and receives praise. So the elder
sibling becomes a model to be followed for the young girl, who starts imitating him in
other respects also. In S-R paradigm, imitation is also known as matched dependent
behaviour. You will learn in the next Unit how cognitive theorists like Albert Bandura
rendered a very significant place to imitation and modelling for human behaviour
modification.
You need to know in this context how Dollard and Miller explained the defences
that are crucial in Freudian notion of development. Repression, for Dollard and
Miller is learning not to think about certain things. Obviously they conceptualised
repression as one point on a continuum from slight difficulty to remember certain
things to complete forgetting. Displacement has also been given considerable
emphasis by Dollard and Miller. You may have heard of Miller’s famous Bobo-doll
experiment where he showed experimental generation of displacement (Miller, 1939).
Rats were trained to hit another rat to get food. It was observed that if, after training,
a Bobo doll was kept in the cage instead of a second rat, the hitting was directed
against the doll. Thus Miller explained displacement also in terms of secondary drive
and reinforcement, where the doll acquired a symbolic value as cue to aggression.

Self Assessment Questions 2

1) Tick the correct answer.
a) In Miller’s experiment the secondary drive was the
(i) white compartment (ii) fear of the electric shock (iii) running (iv)
fear of the white compartment.
b) Miller’s Bobo doll experiment gave an explanation of (i) secondary drive
(ii) displacement (iii) repression and (iv) habit.
c) If a pigeon learns to pull up a cover to get the grains kept under it, this
may be called (i) instrumental learning (ii) operant learning (iii) cognitive
learning (iv) habit formation.
2) Write True (T) or False (F).
a) Dollard and Miller suggested that socialisation is responsible for
developing secondary drives in human infants.
( )
b) Imitation cannot be explained in terms of S-R paradigm. ( )
c) Words may serve as secondary drives. ( )

3.6 CONFLICT
Conflict refers to contradictory response tendencies elicited by one or more than
one stimuli. If you want to eat the cake and have it too, you are in a conflict, because
after you satisfy your impulse to eat, you cannot have it! Conflict, in behavioural
terms may be of four types: Approach-Approach conflict, Approach-
avoidance conflict, Avoidance -Avoidance conflict and Double Approach Avoidance
conflict.
40
 X Dollard and Miller
Theory of Personality
O N

Y
In this figure you can see two points - ‘X’ and ‘Y’. They intersect at the point ‘N’.
Suppose you are the organism and you are placed slightly nearer to X, which means
the valence of X is a bit higher than Y for you. If both X and Y are pleasant and elicit
approach responses, what will you do? Probably you will go straight for X without
hesitation and be satisfied with it, as Y has relatively less attraction to you because
of its distance from O. However, if you are placed just in the middle at N, you may
experience approach-approach conflict – should you take the ‘gulab jamoon’ or
the ‘ice cream’? Usually this is a mild form of conflict and once you decide for the
gulab jamoon, you are happy with it.
What happens if both X and Y are unpleasant and elicit avoidance? Since X is more
repellent to you owing to your position, you would go away from X and come up to
the intersection N. As you cross this point N, the avoidance force of Y becomes
stronger. You tend to go away from it till you cross the intersection again and go
nearer to X. Thus in your attempt to avoid both, you would run from one to the
other. Of course it is assumed that you have no way out. This is avoidance - avoidance
conflict.
In approach avoidance conflict there are not two points like X and Y. There is only
one point - X, which generates both approach and avoidance tendencies. Consider
how you feel when you are tempted by your friend with a dish of your favourite sea
food. You remember how you suffered from nasty spells of stomach ache after you
savoured sea food a month ago.
Miller (1944) along with his associates studied behaviour of albino rats in conflict of
approach and avoidance tendencies. They trained the rats in semi starved condition
to run an alley to get food from a place where a light was on. Then they trained the
same animals under satiated condition to avoid the same place by giving electric
shock as soon as they reached there. The intensity of the shock varied for different
groups of rats. Then the rats were released at the start of the alley under different
levels of starving and their behaviour was observed.
For each rat the point with a light represented a conflict as this point was associated
with hunger reduction and pain avoidance. Just like your dish of sea food, it
represented both approach and avoidance. It was found that the rats went to a
certain extent toward the goal and at one point near the goal stopped. It was further
observed that when hunger was strong and the intensity of shock during training was
less the rats came closer to the goal point rather than when the shock was strong or
hunger less. This means that whether you would succumb to the temptation or not
depends on how much you like the food and how strong the stomach ache was.
Double approach avoidance conflict is an extension of the same where both X and
Y points are present and both represent approach and avoidance. This is the
toughest of the choices.

3.7 PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT

You may now have an educated guess as to how Dollard and Miller would explain
psychopathology. Often, the faulty or unwarranted acquisition of secondary drives 41
Learning and like fear responses to neutral stimuli may cause expression of symptoms. Anxiety
Cognitive Theories
of Personality disorders may be explained as a kind of erroneous development of secondary drives.
A phobia may be the result of secondary fear drive to an innocuous stimulus. At
other times, psychopathology is an expression of unresolved conflict. For example a
strong double approach avoidance conflict may lead to a feeling of being trapped in
an insoluble condition, and since break from the situation is not possible, the organism
may break from reality orientation itself, thus manifesting psychotic features.
In this context, you also need to learn about the frustration aggression hypothesis
forwarded by Dollard et al. (1939). They stated that when a goal directed behaviour
is thwarted, frustration ensues. This in turn leads to aggression. Later on they modified
their notion to state that frustration leads to arousal, but aggression takes place only
if the individual has learnt that aggression might be successful for drive reduction in
such cases. Other reactions to frustration are also possible. However, in a number
of disorders where aggression in a pathological form is the main symptom, the role
of frustration needs to be understood.
So far as treatment is concerned, the problematic acquisition of secondary drive
must be taken care of (Dollard and Miller, 1950). You may try to make this drive
extinct and facilitate a new learning. When conflict is the major source of problem,
you may try to change the parameters within the conflict situation by either shifting
the relative valence of the conflicting issues, or providing a realistic way out of the
limited situation by opening up new action possibilities. In case of pathological
aggression, the frustrated drive may be taken care of either by fulfilment, or by
modifying its nature through new learning.

Self Assessment Questions 3

1) Write True (T) or False (F).
a) Conflict always entails at least two stimuli. ( )
b) If I have to choose between two distasteful food items, I may experience
approach avoidance conflict. ( )
c) Dollard and Miller explained psychopathology in terms of unconscious
conflict. ( )
2) What is Frustration aggression hypothesis?
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3.8 CRITICAL EVALUATION OF DOLLARD AND

MILLER’S APPROACH TO PERSONALITY
As may be apparent to you, Dollard and Miller’s approach is an attempt to
incorporate complex human life within the behavioural paradigm. Thus apparently it
may be applied more convincingly to human conditions than, for example, Skinnerian
approach. However, it has been criticized as over simplistic and shallow. The
psychoanalysts strongly criticize the simplification of defences and unconscious
42 processes.
The S-R paradigm in general has been critiqued as lacking a singly unified theory. Dollard and Miller
Theory of Personality
Miller’s discrete experiments are valuable by themselves, but alternate interpretations
may be made when generalised to human social situation. The experiments may not
be adequate to claim the explanation applicable to all the richness of human life.
However, the main merit of the approach lies in the attempt to bridge the gap between
strict behavioural and the cognitive approaches.

3.9 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have learnt about the nature of S-R paradigm and Dollard and
miller’s position within this paradigm. We have learnt to analyse with experimental
examples the components of behaviour, namely habit, drive, cue and reinforcement.
We have gone through the explanation of complex human behaviour by using these
concepts. In the course of this learning, we have also come across how Dollard and
Miller have tried to integrate psychoanalytical notions in behavioural paradigm. We
have learnt about their views on development of the individual within the society and
the nuances of it. We have also learnt about different types of conflict. Finally we
have studied the explanation of psychopathology and suggested treatment by Dollard
and Miller.

3.10 GLOSSARY
Habit : Within S-R paradigm, habit is an association between a
stimulus and a response.
Drive : Within S-R paradigm, drive is a stimulus that impels or
energizes behaviour.
Primary drive : An innate and internal stimulus that energizes behaviour.
Secondary drive : A learnt internal stimulus that energizes behaviour.
Cue : An external stimulus that gives direction to behaviour.
Reinforcement : An event that follows a stimulus response bond and
increases the possibility of occurrence of the response.
Within the S-R paradigm reinforcement consists of
reduction of drive.
Instrumental learning : Within S-R paradigm, the learning of responses that is
instrumental to bringing about a desirable goal.
Conflict : Within S-R paradigm, conflict refers to simultaneously
present opposing drives.
Types of conflict : There are four types of conflict. When the organism is
equally driven toward two stimuli, it is known as
approach-approach conflict. When the organism is
equally repelled by two stimuli it is known as avoidance-
avoidance conflict. When the organism is simultaneously
attracted toward and repelled by a single stimulus, it is
known as approach-avoidance conflict. When the
organism is simultaneously attracted toward and repelled
by two stimuli, it is known as double approach-
avoidance conflict.
43
Learning and
Cognitive Theories
of Personality
3.11 UNIT END QUESTIONS
1) Discuss the stimulus response approach to behaviour with special reference
to Dollard and Miller’s point of view.
2) Differentiate between primary and secondary drive.
3) Define with suitable examples, habit, drive, cue and reinforcement.
4) Write a critical note on Dollard and Miller’s explanation of psychoanalytical
concepts in terms of learning paradigm.
5) Describe Miller’s experiment of approach - avoidane conflict.

3.12 SUGGESTED READINGS

Hall, C.S., Lindzey, G., Campbell, J. B. (1997) Theories of Personality. New
York: Wiley.
Pervin, L. A. & John, O. P. (1997) Personality: Theory and Research. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.

3.13 ANSWERS TO SELF ASSESSMENT

QUESTIONS
Self Assessment Questions 1
1) a) False b) True c) False
2) Clark L. Hull

Self Assessment Questions 2

1) a) (iv) b) (ii) c) (i)
2) a) True b) False c) True.

Self Assessment Questions 3

1) a) False b) False c) False.
2) Frustration aggression hypothesis refers to an assumption by John Dollard and
Neal Miller. It states that when goal directed behaviour is thwarted, frustration
ensues resulting in aggression. Initially they tried to posit aggression as the
invariable effect of frustration. Later they modified their premise by recognising
other reactions to frustration also.

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