Learning Theories

Theories of Learning
&
Social aspects of Human Behaviour

Theories of Learning
&
Social aspects of Human Behaviour
Dr S. S. Srinithi
Psychologist
Sanmira Centre for Psychological Interventions
Tirunelveli
e- mail: nithisri33@gmail.com
Organised
by
Department of Education
Manonmaniam Sudaranar University

Principles of Learning Behaviour
Learning is relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from
practice or experience.
Learning is basically a change in behaviour: the term behaviour refers to
some action which may be muscular, glandular or mental or
combination of these. The change in behaviour can be desirable or
undesirable, adaptive or maladaptive.
The change in behaviour is relatively permanent- Change in behaviour
happened as result of learning is not always permanent that is any
learned behaviour is capable of being changed, modified or
unlearned.
Change in behaviour results from practice or experience- changes in
behaviour occurring due to fatigue, illness, brain injury and
maturation cannot be attributed to learning. Instead change in
behaviour resulting only from practice or experience is considered as
learning.
Not all behaviours are learned in the same way. Also, same behaviour
can be learnt in different ways. This can be explained by two different
schools of thought: Association learning & Cognitive learning.
Two main schools of thought on learning that remain fundamental to

Principles of Learning Behaviour
Association Theories: Classical Conditioning
Learning happens as a result of connections between stimuli and
response. Association theories include Classical conditioning and
Operant conditioning.
Classical Conditioning: Deals with how stimulus controls behaviour.
Classical conditioning gets its name from that fact that it is the kind of
learning situation that existed in early classical experiments of Ivan
Pavlov. Classical conditioning is also sometimes called respondent
conditioning.
Idea of learning by associations was accidentally proved when Pavlov
originally intended to study process of digestion. Rising to the credit
of being the first experimental study on learning; classical
conditioning was understood when Pavlov noted that mere sight or
smell of food or sound of the person who usually gives food is
enough to cause salivation in the dog which was subjected to study.
Further as he became interested in these psychic secretions
prepared to investigate it .

Principles of Learning behaviour

Pavlov distinguished among the different elements of this experiment
such as unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response,
conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.
• Unconditioned stimulus: A stimulus that leads to an automatic
response without prior training (Example: Bodily responses)
• Unconditioned stimulus: A response that occurs automatically to an
unconditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned stimulus: Neutral stimulus on repeated pairing with the
unconditioned stimulus converts to a conditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned response: Response that was originally given to a
stimulus as result of conditioning gets elicited contingent on the
presenting a conditioned stimulus.

Principles of Classical Conditioning
Acquisition: How much time should elapse between presenting the neutral
stimulus (the tone) and the unconditioned stimulus?
With many species and procedures, half a second works well.
What do you suppose happen if the food (UCS) appeared before the tone
(CS) rather than after? Not likely
Extinction: After conditioning, what happens if the CS occurs repeatedly without
the UCS?
Gradual disappearance of the learned response of salivation to the bell sound or
CR is known as extinction.
Spontaneous Recovery: Sudden reappearance of the extinct CR after rest
pause. Extinction was suppressing the CR rather than eliminating it.
Generalization: Tendency to respond to stimuli similar to the CS is called
Generalization. Generalization can be adaptive.
Discrimination: Learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus
and similar but irrelevant stimuli is discrimination.

Association Theories: Operant Conditioning
Operant Conditioning: explains how behaviour is controlled by its
consequences. Operant conditioning is learning from the
consequences of behaviour which was conceptually proposed by
B.F. Skinner.
Operant conditioning differs from classical conditioning in two
important ways. First, in order for operant conditioning to occur, the
learner must behave (operate and hence the name operant) in a
way that produces some consequences (reinforcement). The control
of the learning is in the hands of the learner. If the learner takes no
action no operant conditioning can occur. The second difference
between operant and classical conditioning concerns the kind of
behaviour that is acquired. In classical conditioning the most
effective learning occurs with automatic reflexive behaviour like
salivation. Operant conditioning is not limited to reflexive responses,
but may involve the acquisition of a wide range of voluntary
behaviours like pressing the lever.

B.F. Skinner
Skinner Box

Principles of Operant Conditioning
Reinforcement: Reinforcement can be defined as a stimulus or the
event that increases the likelihood that behaviour will be repeated
• Positive reinforcement: Presence of stimulus brings about an
increase in the proceeding response.
• Negative reinforcement: Absence of a unpleasant stimulus to bring
about an increase in the proceeding response.
Punishment: the counter part of reinforcement. It can be defined as a
stimulus or the event that decreases the likelihood that behaviour
will be repeated.
• Positive punishment: A positive punishment is an aversive stimulus
or event that brings about decrease in the proceeding response by
giving in something.
• Negative punishment: A negative punishment is a pleasant stimulus
or event that when removed leads to decrease in behaviour.

Effective Reinforcement: Which reinforcement is more effective-
continuous or partial reinforcement?
One might suppose that behaviour would best be acquired by
reinforcing every response. This is called a continuous
reinforcement. However, the best results are not obtained from the
continuous reinforcement. Skinner has found that only partial
reinforcement is effective.
Continuous reinforcement is not possible in the real life situation. The
fact that unreinforced behaviours continued often with great
frequency and persistence, illustrates that reinforcement need not
be received continuously in order for behaviour to be learned and
maintained. In fact, behaviour that is reinforced only
occasionally may ultimately be learned better than the
behaviour that is always reinforced. Thus it has been found that
only partial reinforcement is effective. For the administration of the
partial reinforcement Skinner has developed schedules for

Cognitive Theories
These theories emphasize that many human learning involves cognition
or high mental processes such as the perception, reasoning, memory
and problem solving. The cognitive learning involves information
storage and processing without explicit building up stimulus response
association or manipulation of reinforcers.
Cognitive theorists view learning as a reorganization of a number of
perceptions .This reorganization allows the learner to perceive new
relationships, solve new problems and gain a basic understanding of
a subject area. A fifth grader suddenly realizing that multiplication is a
successive addition; a chimpanzee suddenly understanding that by
putting short sticks together, a banana that was out of reach is now
obtainable; or an eighth –grader discovering a way to calculate the
area of parallelogram-these are all examples of cognitive learning.
Cognitive theories include following the two types of learning: Insight
Learning & Observational Learning.

Cognitive Theories: Insight learning
The Aha! Phenomenon in Problem Solving.
The classic study of insight in animals was conducted by Gestalt
psychologist Wolfgang Kohler during World War I.
Wolfgang Kohler

Kohler’s work suggest that insight learning often involves two phases. In
the initial phase, problem solving is used to derive a solution; In the
second phase, the solution is stored in memory and retrieved when a
similar problem-situation presents itself . Hence insight learning
intimately related to memory and thinking.

Principles of Insight Learning: There are principles involved in
perceptual organization are ingrained in insight learning. Some of the
basic laws propounded by Gestalt psychologists are as follows:
Figure and ground: Everything is perceived in the context of its
background. There exists a close relationship between figure and
ground.
Pragnanz: When an object/fact is being perceived; some innate gaps
are filled by the perceiver and a whole figure understood.
Continuity: Objects/facts having continuity are learnt easily because
they can easily make a whole.
Similarity: Individuals tend to grasp things which are similar.
Proximity: Things that are proximate are picked up first and learnt
easily than distant things. I

Cognitive Theories: Observational learning
People do imitate the actions of others-models there by learning from
models and imitating the same.
Observational learning involves modeling or copying the behaviour of
another person-model. Since we imitate the behaviour of the models
like our parents, teachers, superiors and stars from the field of sports,
cinema or politics, the observational learning is also known as
imitation learning.
We learn our life style, sex appropriate behaviour, language, dancing,
aggression and violence and many interpersonal skills by
observational learning.
Observational learning was proposed by Albert Bandura, an American
psychologist.

Bandura has identified four factors that accounts for observational
learning. First you pay attention to the model’s actions; second, you
must remember the model’s actions; third, you must have that ability
to produce the actions, and fourth, you must be motivated to perform
the actions.
Principles of Observational Learning
Attention: Learning cannot happen in the absence of focus on the task.
Something novel or different in some way draws attention.
Retention: Learning can happen by internalizing information in memory.
Recalling the information later when required in order to respond to a situation
that is similar to the situation which facilitated first learning of the information.
Reproduction: Reproducing the previously learned information (behaviour, skills,
knowledge) when and where it is required.
Motivation: Motivation energizes any action. Often that motivation stems from
observing someone else being rewarded or punished for that particular act.
This usually motivates to do, or avoid, the same act

Factors affecting Social Learning
Attributes of the model: Imitation is more probable when the model and the
observer share the same gender and age. Models of high status and those
held prestigiously are more often imitated. When the values and attitude of the
observer matches with that of the model, imitation is more likely.
Attributes of the observer: Developmental status of the observer, being a child
or an adult, showing delay or progress in developmental milestones can
impact the ability of the observer to model a behaviour. Observers with low
self-esteem and low self-confidence are more likely to engage in imitation.
Ironically, self efficacy (belief in the ability of self pertaining to a given task) on
the other hand improves while observing a model.
Attributes of the behaviour being observed: Reward consequence associated
with a particular behaviour can affect the probability of its imitation and might
override the influence of model’s as well as observer’s attributes. Complex
behaviours are less readily imitated than the simple once. Relevance of
particular behaviour for a given observer can make imitation more likely.
Appropriateness of a given behaviour for a given context increases the
probability of a behaviour being imitated

Identify the type of learning?
Classical conditioning/ Observational learning

Identify the type of learning?

Social Competence
The effective handling of social interaction is Social competence. In other
words, social competence refers to getting along well with others, being able
to form and maintain close relationships, and responding in adaptive ways in
social settings. Social competence is the product of a wide range of
cognitive abilities, emotional processes, behavioural skills, social
awareness, and personal and cultural values related to interpersonal
relationships .
Components of Social Competence can be read as follows
Self-regulation: It includes the abilities to control impulses, delay gratification, resist
temptation and peer pressure, reflect on one’s feelings, and monitor oneself.
Much of self-regulation involves the management of emotion. Emotional regulation is
the extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and
modifying emotional reactions to accomplish one’s goals. Much of this ability to
regulate emotions develops from interaction with primary caregivers, from the
child’s inborn temperament, and from the match between caregiving and
temperament.

Social Competence
Interpersonal knowledge and skills: Social competence also includes understanding
others’ needs and feelings, articulating one’s own ideas and needs, solving problems,
cooperating and negotiating, expressing emotion, “reading” social situations
accurately, adjusting behaviour to meet the demands of different social
situations, and initiating and maintaining friendships.
Positive self-identity: Positive self-identity, an intrapersonal category of social
competence, includes sense of competence, personal power, sense of self-worth,
and sense of purpose.
Cultural competence: Developing cultural competence includes acquiring knowledge of,
respect for, and the ability to interact effectively and comfortably with people of
varying ethnic or racial backgrounds.
Adopting social values: This component of social competence is described as
encompassing caring, equity, honesty, social justice, responsibility, healthy
lifestyles and sexual attitudes, and flexibility. Social values are likely to vary by
culture. Some more or less basic values may exist from culture to culture, yet these
may be valued to different degrees and in different proportions across cultures.
Planning and decision-making skills: The ability to act in a purposeful way, by making
choices, developing plans, solving problems, and carrying out positive actions to
achieve social goals is another important component of social competence.

Social Cognition
Refers to how an individual thinks about his/her social world.
Favored by Heuristics, Schemas.
Heuristics: Adopting simple rules to do complex decision making or
drawing inferences in a rapid or efficient manner.
• Representativeness heuristic: List of attributes possessed by
members of a given group is called prototype. Comparing a newly
acquainted person with the prototype that has been already set is
known as representativeness heuristic. People apply
representativeness heuristic in assessing whether a particular cause
resembles the other in order to anticipate its likely effect or
consequence.
• Availability heuristic: The easier it is to bring the information in the
mind, the greater will be its impact on subsequent judgments or
decision.
• Anchoring and Adjustment heuristic: dealing uncertainty in many
situations using something that we know as a starting point
and then making adjustment to it.

Social Cognition Continued….
• Status Quo Heuristic: Objects and options that are more easily,
retrieved from memory may be judged as ‘good’ and better than
the ones that are new. Thus a status quo is applied to objects or
options.
Schemas: Schemas are mental frame works for organizing social
information. They guide individuals to their actions and help to
process information that are relevant to particular context.
Schemas once formed are resistant to change. Since people of
same culture more or less share similar experience they may tend
to hold on to same schema.
Schemas influence three basic processes of social cognition:
attention, encoding, and retrieval. Here, attention refers to the
social information that will be attended to; encoding refers to the
process used to store the attended information; retrieval refers to
bringing the stored information for some relevant use.

Schema determines what information will be attended to; what of the
attended information will be encoded (stored); What information
among the encoded will be available for later use (retrieval)
From a given array of schemas, what schema will be used in a given
time is determined by strength and better development of a
schema. Secondly, priming also decides what schema will be in
operation. Priming means a temporary increase in the
accessibility of specific schema occurring as a result of recent
experience exerting an effect on current thinking.
Schemas can distort our understanding of the social world while
also resisting for change. This aspect of schema to remain
unchanged even in the face of contradictory information is
known as perseverance effect. Individuals hold on to
perseverance effect because of the self-fulfilling nature of
schemas as they make expectations come true. In fact, schemas
shape the social world of an individual to a greater extent.

Reasoning by Metaphor: Linguistic device, metaphor compares an
abstract concept with another unrelated concept by suggesting a
similarity between them. Thus, a metaphor can activate different
kinds of social knowledge and influence how a person will
interpret his/her social events.
All our words are words are crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind
-Khalil Gibran
Automatic and Controlled processing in Social thought: Social
thought can occur in two distinctly different ways; one in a
systematic, logical, and highly effortful manner known as
controlled processing and the other in a fast, relatively effortless
and intuitive manner known as automatic processing.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Our perception of other’s personalities and feelings as well as the
causes for their behaviour guide us in deciding how we will respond
to them and what sort of relationships we will have with them. The
process of seeking to know and understanding others is social
perception. This includes the unspoken language (non-verbal
communication), understanding the cause of other’s behaviour
(attribution) and the process of combining social information
(impression formation and impression management.
Non-verbal behaviour/ Communication: Communication between
individuals that do not involve the content of spoken language but
relies instead on an unspoken language of facial expressions, eye
contact, and body language.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
It is relatively irresistible to express through face, eye contact, posture
and body movements. It is hard to conceal information revealed
though this silent but eloquent language. It is crucial to note the non
verbal communication and miutest differences in its expression.
Non verbal expressions are revealed through five basic channels:
facial expression, eye contact, body moments, posture and
touching.
Facial expression: Understanding other’s current mood and feeling is
facilitated by facial expressions. Six different basic emotions are
represented in human face: anger, fear, happiness, sadness,
surprise, and disgust. These emotions occur in many combinations
and in varying strengths
People belonging to different geographical areas exhibit similar
emotions through more or less similar facial expressions in similar
emotion–provoking situations that it can be readily and adequately
recognized by persons from outside the cultural group.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Certainly these expressions are not identical as different cultures have
different emotional display rules. Most intricate and indeceptive form
of non verbal behaviour is micro expression. Micro expressions are
fleeting facial expressions lasting only few tenths of a second. Such
expressions happen on the face of and very quickly after an
emotion. People who deceive show exaggerated facial expression
for example smiling more and more broadly than usual or
expressing greater sorrow or other emotions than it is typical for the
individual in a given circumstance.
Eye Contact: Other’s feelings can be read from their eyes. While high
level eye contact corresponds to liking and positive feelings; gazing
someone continuously with least regard to what the person being
seen does (called staring) corresponds anger and hostility. Eye
contact can reveal deception. More frequent eye blink and a relative
increase in pupil dilation and unusually decreased eye contact
express dishonesty.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Eye Contact

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Body language: Gestures, postures and movements express vividly
about people’s emotional state. Greater the frequency of such
behaviours; higher the level of arousal. Larger patterns of
movements involving the whole body reveal relevant information
about the person engaging in it. Body orientations and postures are
indictors of contrasting emotional reactions. More specific
information about the person can be obtained from the gestures
practiced by them. Most important of all these are the emblems.
Emblems are body movements carrying specific information in a
given cultural context. Emblems vary greatly from culture to culture.
But every culture has its unique emblems revealing greetings,
departures, insults and description for many different physical
states.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Touching: Interpretation of touching depends on several factors relating
to who does the touching; the nature of physical contact; the context
in which it takes place. These factors reveal whether the touch
suggests affection, sexual interest, dominance, caring or even
affection.
Despite these factors, when touching is considered acceptable, positive
reactions often result. But if touching is considered acceptable, it
results in positive reactions. But if touching is considered a power
play, or if it is too prolonged or intimate or occurs in the context
where toughing is inappropriate, it provoke negative emotion
ranging from sadness to anger. When all age groups viewed in
combination there appears to be no gender differences in the
meaning given to touch.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
There may be inter-channel discrepancies meaning that there may be
inconsistencies between non verbal cues from the basic channels
that inform the reliability of communicated information.
Non verbal cues involve non verbal aspects of people’s speech which
is refereed as paralanguage. Paralanguage include pitch, tone and
volume of the voice. It is essential to note that pitch of the voice
often rises when the content is not trustworthy. Additionally sentence
repairs (starting a sentence and interrupting it and then starting it
again) commonly speaks the non trustworthy nature of the content.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Attribution: Seeking for the ‘why’ aspect of behaviour is attribution. It is
the process through which we seek to identify the causes of others’
behaviour and so gain knowledge of their stable traits and
dispositions.
The theory of correspondent interference speaks about using
information about other’s behaviour as basis for inferring their traits.
According to this theory, we tend to focus on actions that are
informative in a given social context, thereby we identify behaviours
that correspond to a person’s traits when only those behaviours are
freely chosen. Rather , behaviours that are being forced are less
indicative of the person’s traits.
Similarly, we attend to non common effects caused by specific factors.
These non common effects inform specific reasons for a behaviour.
Contrastingly we also make note of uncommon effects meaning
infrequent effects.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Attention is usually attracted to factors low in social desirability than
that are high on this dimension (i.e) we learn traits of other persons
by their out-of-ordinary behaviour against behaviours displayed
much like others. Knowledge about why people behave the way
they did is crucial to our understanding of the social world and
making sense of the social relationships.
According to Kelly’s covariation theory, we focus on following three
major types of information:
Consensus: the extent to which the person in context react in much the same
way to a given stimulus or event as like other people. Higher the proportion
of people reacting in the same way, the higher is the consensus.
Consistency: The extent to which the person in context reacts to a given
stimulus or event in the same way on other occasions overtime.
Distinctiveness: The extent to which the person in context reacts in the same
manner to other different stimuli or events.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
From Kelly’s theory, we are most likely to attribute another person’s behaviour
to internal causes under conditions in which consensus and distinctiveness
are low but consistency is high. In contrast we are most likely to attribute
another person’s behaviour to a combination of internal and external factors
when consensus is low but consistency and distinctiveness are high.
Some internal causes of behaviour tend to be quite stable over time such as
personality traits and temperament. Other internal causes can and often do
change greatly; for instance motives, health and fatigue. Similarly some
internal causes are controllable. The same is true for external causes of
behaviour. Some are stable over time while others are not stable overtime.
When we try to understand why others do what they do, including what goals
they want to accomplish, We usually have a wide range of possible
interpretations to choose from. For which, we engage in differing degrees of
abstractions. So other’s behaviour are not just viewed as products of
present situation but as refection of personal goals, motives, intentions and
thought process.
Therefore it is not just other person’s behaviour that shapes our perceptions
about them but of our interpretation of it which plays a crucial role.

Social Relationship
Social Perception
Impression Formation: Impressions serve as mental representations
that serve as basis for reaction to that person. Gestalt psychologists
propounded that the whole is greater than sum of its parts. In a
similar line Solomon Asch, one of the founders of experimental social
psychology revealed that impressions are not formed simply by
adding together all traits we observe in another person rather we
perceive these traits in relation to one another. So these traits do not
exist individually but become a part of an integrated dynamic whole.
First impressions are formed within very brief periods say even within
1/10 th of a second and they may not be always accurate. In such
instances, those impressions may be changed subject to certain
conditions: by acquiring new information, rejecting existing
information, reinterpreting previously received information.
First impressions are formed on the basis of small amount of
information and these impressions show a better-than-chance level
of accuracy

Social Relationships
Love, Liking and close relationships
People clearly differ in how much they are liked.
We don’t merely interact with people, we form relationships with them.
Some of these are insignificant and short lived while others are long
term and significant.
Social psychologists mean liking as an interpersonal attraction which is
beyond physical attractiveness.
Initial feelings of liking or disliking others stem from internal sources:
our basic needs, motives and emotions. Need for affiliation
(tendency to be in the company of others) is very basic among
human species. People differ greatly in the strength of this tendency.
This difference in tendency to affiliate is a stable disposition.
Tend to seek the amount of social contact that is optimal for us,
preferring to be alone some of the time and to be in social situations
some other time.

Attachment Style: Individuals differ in their attachment style (i.e). the
way in which they form emotional bonds and regulate emotions
pertaining to close relationships.
Attachment style exerts strong effects on both thinking about others
and the relationship with them. In turn, these effects influence
important aspects of our behaviour, such as the tendency to seek
others’ support or engage in self disclosure (revealing one’s
innermost thoughts and feelings).
Attachment style clearly plays an important role in our relationship with
others and in the cognitive and neural processes that underlie these
relationships.
External events can temporarily boost or reduce the need for affiliation.
Stressful events and similarly disturbing events increase the need to
affiliate. Also affiliation provides for the opportunity for social
comparison where people compare themselves with others.

Role of our affect in liking others: A positive affect often leads to
positive evaluations of other people and negative affect leads to
negative evaluations. These effects occur in two different ways:
directly and indirectly. When another person says or does that
makes us feel good or bad, the feelings have a direct effect on how
much we like the person. There is also indirect effect sometimes
known as associated effect where in liking or disliking someone is
influenced by unrelated events or people in one’s life. Even though
the individual is not in any way responsible for what one is feeling,
he/she may be evaluated positively when one is feeling good or
negatively when one is feeling bad. Here classical conditioning plays
a role.

Proximity decides our social relationship. Reason attributed to is
repeated exposure effect that means that more familiar we are with
almost anything; the more we tend to like it because we have been
exposed to it over and over. Another explanation says that we
respond to unfamiliar people with mild discomfort but later as we
become more familiar; unpleasant feelings are replaced with
positive ones.
On the flip side, initial negative emotions may become exaggerated on
repeated exposure. Depending on the nature of interaction, the
above said changes happen in feelings.
Repeated exposure effect holds true even with social media. Apart from
helping to build relationships, social media facilitate sharing of
emotional thoughts which may further favor social intimacy and
increase the level of life satisfaction and perceived levels of social
support providing for basic need to affiliate.

Culturally appropriate physical attributes such as physique, complexion
can influence social relationship. This has a stereotypical advantage
that what is perceived as beautiful are likely to be regarded as
good. This effect proposes that we desire to form relationship with
attractive people. This desire leads to perception that they may be
more socially warm. Physically attractiveness is associated with
popularity, good interpersonal skills and high self-esteem.
Opposites are attracted when the differences are combined so that they
help to make individual parts to work together (i.e) when opposites
are complimenting each other. This affiliation of opposites also
forms basis for relationships. But affiliation seems more probable
with similarity than with complimenting opposites. Similarity
sometimes form basis for important kind of relationship. Research
reveals that similarity leads to liking or that liking leads to similarity -
people who like each other become more similar overtime.

Similarity sometimes form basis for important kind of relationship.
The effect of attitude similarity in interpersonal attraction is a strong
one. It holds equally true for males and females regardless of age,
education and cultural differences. When two people like each other
and discover they are similar in some specific respect, this factor
constitutes a state of balance which is emotionally pleasant. When
two people like each other later find out that they are dissimilar in
some specific respect, the result is imbalance, which is emotionally
unpleasant.
Research reveals that similarity leads to liking or that liking leads to
similarity - people who like each other become more similar
overtime.

According to theory of social comparison, individuals compare their
attitudes and beliefs with those of others because it is way to
evaluate accuracy of one’s own views and their ‘normality’ in finding
that other people agree with them. When we learn that someone
else holds the same attitude and beliefs just as we do , it makes us
feel good because such information suggests that we have sound
judgments and that we are in contact with reality.
Dissimilarity suggests the opposite and creates negative feeling.
However, dissimilarity coming from out group members is less
comfortable as we expect them to be different from ourselves.

Reciprocal liking and disliking: We tend to like those who express liking
towards us and dislike those who express dislike from us.
Social skills: Social skills refer to a combination of aptitudes that help
individuals who posses them to interact effectively with others.
Others in turn would like people who behold these social skills.
Social skills are of great value in any social setting. Individuals high
in social skills attract more people around them. Social skills are
considered to be very important for success in social life.
Following are some of those social skills that are essential for
successful social living:
• Social astuteness (Social Perception)
• Interpersonal influence
• Social adaptability
• Expressiveness

Personality and Liking: People with certain traits attract more people
towards them when compared to others.
Major personality theory the Big Five postulates five broad aspects of
personality.
• Openness: being imaginative, seeking new ideas, pursuing new
experiences.
• Conscientiousness: being organized, neat , on time with respect to
deadlines and meetings.
• Agreeableness: Approaching others with trust and cooperation.
• Extraversion: Strong tendency to be out going, expressive, warm and
energetic.
• Emotional stability: the degree to which people do not have large
swings in mood over time.

People high in agreeableness and extraversion are viewed as rather
likable; they receive higher ratings of interpersonal attractiveness
from others.
Characteristics such as trustworthiness, cooperativeness,
agreeableness (kind and interpersonally warm), extraversion
(outgoing and sociable), emotional stability, physical health and
physical attractiveness are found to be desirable in others by people
of both the gender and are being valued greatly irrespective of the
king relationship established with others.
It is also true that factors such as the type of relationship and stage of a
relationship define the desired characteristics we expect in those
whom we form relationship.

Close relationship: regardless of whether relationships are formed
voluntarily or are result of birth or external constraints (for example in
places where we work), they certainly play a crucial role in close
relationships.
But love is hard to define and may mean different things to different
people or have different meaning within different kinds of
relationships.
To most people, love plays a key role in their personal happiness. Love
is a familiar experience on many but not in all cultures. Love is a
basic emotional reaction and it apparently aids in psychological
adjustment.
According to social psychologist, falling in love leads to an increase in
self-efficacy and self esteem. Both self efficacy and self esteem are
significant and essential aspects of psychological health and
happiness.

Social psychology remarks that love is not merely a close relationship
extended to physical intimacy and it involves more than merely being
romantically or sexually interested in another person. Though specific
details appear to vary from culture to culture but the experience of
love appears to be a relatively universal one.
Two basic features of love: desire and commitment grew out of
conditions that make love an important adaptive strategy for stress
prone survival of human species.
Sternberg proposed the triangular model of love which gives an
important framework for understanding various components of love.
This theory suggests that love relationship is made up of three basic
components which may be present in varying degrees in different
couples.

• First component is intimacy: Closeness felt by both the people and
strength of the bond that holds them together. Partners high in
intimacy have concern in each other’s welfare and happiness. They
value, like, count on and understand one another.
• Second component is passion : based on romance, physical
attraction, and sexuality – the sexual motives and sexual excitement
associated with couple’s relationship.
• The third component is decision/ commitment; it represents cognitive
factors such as the decision to love and be with a person, plus a
commitment to maintain the relationship on a permanent long-term
basis.
When all three angles of this triangular framework of love are equally
strong and balanced it is described as consummate love.
According to Sternberg consummate love is the ideal form but often
difficult to attain or maintain.

Sternberg’s model conceptualizes compassionate love which is a
combination of intimacy plus commitment. This type of love is based
on a very close relationship in which two people have a great deal in
common, care about each other’s wellbeing and express mutual
liking and respect.
Companionate love is also being described by this model.
Companionate love not as exciting as relationships with level of
passion but is does serve as a foundation for lasting committed
relationship. –for instance marriages that last many years.

Relationships with family members: Family is our first and most
lasting close relationship. Even though the structure of family has
changed a lot over time, relationship with family members are still
important. They certainly change as we mature and move through
different phases of life, but they remain a constant foundation for our
social existence.
Social psychologists have studied early relationships between parents
and children to see how events during childhood shape our social
relationships throughout life. Infants acquire two basic attitudes
during their earliest interactions with an adult.
The first is an attitude about self, self esteem. The behaviour and the
emotional reactions of the care giver (parent) provide information to
the infant that he or she is valued, important, loved individual or at
the other extreme someone who is without value, unimportant and
unloved.

The second basic attitude concerns other people and involves general
expectancies and beliefs about them. This attitude is interpersonal
trust and based largely on whether the caregiver is perceived by the
infant as trustworthy, dependable and reliable or as relatively
untrustworthy, undependable and unreliable.
Research finding suggests that we develop basic attitude about self and
about others long before we acquire language skills.
Based on the two basic attitudes, infants, children, adolescents and
adults can be roughly classified as having a particular style involving
relationships with others. Four such styles can be identified:

• A secure attachment style: A person with secure attachment style is high in both
self-esteem and trust. Secure individuals are best able to form lasting, committed,
satisfying relationships throughout life.
• Fearful- avoidant attachment style: Someone low in both self-esteem and
interpersonal trust has a fearful-avoidant attachment style. Fearful-avoidant individuals
tend not to form close relationships or tend to have unhappy ones.
• Pre-occupied attachment style: Low self-esteem combined with high interpersonal
trust produces a pre-occupied attachment style. Individuals showing this pattern of
attachment want closeness (sometimes excessively so) and they readily form
relationships. They cling to others but expect to be rejected eventually because they
believe themselves to be unworthy.
• Dismissing attachment style: Those with dismissing attachment style are high in
self-esteem and low in interpersonal trust. This combination leads people to believe
that they are very deserving of good relationships. But because these individuals don’t
trust others, they fear genuine closeness. They are the kind of people who say they
don’t want or need close relationship with others.
These contrasting styles of attachment can strongly shape the relationship that individuals
have with others. Attachment styles although formed early in life, are not set in stone;
they can be changed by life experiences. However, attachment styles tend to be stable
over long periods of time and for that reason can have strong implications for a wide
range of life outcomes.

Relationship with other adult family members: Besides the mother and
father (or other initial care givers), other adult family members may
interact with infants and young children. Every interaction is
potentially important as young person develop attitudes about the
meaning and value of such factors as trust, affection, self-worth,
competition and humor as all of these affects the way the child
interacts with other adults and with peers.
Relationship with siblings interpersonal behaviour: Siblings provide
useful interpersonal learning experiences. Unlike the relationship
between parent and child, sibling relationships often combine
feelings of affection, hostility and rivalry. Sibling rivalry is far
suppressed by the shared memories and affection that siblings feel
for one another.

Friendships, the relationships beyond the family: Beginning in early childhood,
most of us establish casual friendship with peers who share common
interest. These relationships generally begin on the basis of proximity. Such
relationships are maintained in part by mutual interests and by positive rather
than negative experiences together, sometimes developing into much
stronger social ties.
Close friendships: Many childhood friendships simply fade away. But sometimes
a relationship begun in early childhood or adolescence can mature into a
close friendship that involves increasingly mature types of interaction. Such
friendships can survive for decades – even for an entire life. Once a close
relationship is established, the two individuals spend increasing amounts of
time together, interacting in varied situation, self-disclosing and providing
mutual emotional support. Cultural differences exist with respect to friendship
too.
Gender and friendship: women tend to place greater emphasis on intimacy – expecting to
share and discuss emotions and experiences with their friends and receive emotional
support from them. Men in contrast tend to form friendships on the basis of activities-
playing sports, working on joint projects, sharing hobbies. Perceived similarity between
people is related to friendship formation.

Social Influence
Efforts by one or more people to change behaviour, attitudes or feelings
of one or more others. The many ways in which people produce
changes in others particularly in their behaviour, attitudes or beliefs is
referred to as social influence. Social influence is indeed a very
powerful force in the sense that it often succeeds in changing the
behaviour of another person towards whom it is directed. Social
influence is neither good nor bad. Social influence often includes
efforts by one or more people to include some kind of change in
others.
Social Psychologists discuss the following three major forms of influence
• Obedience: Efforts to change others’ behaviour by orders or
commands
• Conformity: Efforts to change others’ behaviour through norms about
how to behave in a given situation.
• Compliance: Efforts to change others’ behaviour through direct
request.

Social Influence
Obedience is a major type of social influence in which orders are
directed to one or more people to behave in specific ways.
Obedience is a less frequent means to exert social influence when
compared to compliance and conformity.
Conformity is doing what we are expected to do in a given situation or
behaving in ways consistent to social norms. Distinguishing private
and public conformity is feeling or thinking as others do and doing or
saying what others around us say or do respectively. In order to gain
approval and acceptance from fellow social members, social norms
are conformed called as normative social influence.
Following factors affect social conformity
• Cohesiveness: The extent to which we are attracted to a particular
social group and want to belong to it. Greater the cohesiveness,
greater is the tendency to follow norms of the group

Social Influence
• Group Size: Size of the group influence compliance. Larger the size
of the group; greater will be the tendency of the group member to
conform.
• Status within a Group: Members of a group differ in their status. One
such important difference is seniority. Junior members feel more
pressure to conform than the senior members as their position inside
the group is not assured. Conformity is one way of gaining status.
• Descriptive versus Injunctive norms: Conformity depends on whether
norms are descriptive or injunctive. Descriptive norms describe what
most people do in a given situation while injunctive norms specify
how people ought to behave (appropriateness of a behaviour) in a
given situation. Norms that are felt salient to the people involved for
given situation are followed be it descriptive or injunctive.

Social Influence
Gaining compliance is getting others to say ‘yes’ to request.
Compliance underlies the following principles:
Liking/ Friendship: more willing to comply with the request from people
whom we like;
Commitment/Consistency: Sense of commitment to a position or action
consequentially leads to compliance.
Scarcity: Intention of securing outcomes that are scarce makes us
practice compliance;
Reciprocity: We feel obligated to reciprocate for the favor provided by
others there by making us compliant.
Social validation: Tendency to act and think like others in order to
ensure the appropriateness and validity of our action results in
compliance;
Authority: By simply following a legitimate authority, we act out to be
compliant.

Social Influence
Different tactics are being followed by us to ensure compliance which ingrains the above
said principles:
• Getting others to like us so that; they may say yes to various requests from us. This
may be accomplished by using flattery or self –promotion. Calling attention to
incidental similarities between them and us can also favor liking therein further
compliance.
• Foot - in- the - door technique: Presenting with a smaller request that is too trivial
and hard to refuse and then following it up with a larger request that tests the
consistency of behaviour. To stand the test of consistency behaviours are self-
directed to be compliant.
• Low ball procedure: When initial commitment makes it difficult to say ‘No’ later on
even if the circumstances under which commitment has been changed.
• Lure effect: Starting with a deal that is appealing and proving further deals that the
individual may not like. But the individual continues to agree in order to manifest
consistency and commitment.
• Door-in- the-face technique: Starting with a larger request, rejecting which smaller
requests are being presented to the individual that he/she would typically wish to
agree as he has rejected the initial one.
• That’s-not-all technique: Offering an incentive for accepting a request even before
the target individual would say yes or no for that request would also facilitate
compliance

• Socialization has three major goals: teaching impulse control and
developing conscience; preparing people to perform social roles; a All
humans have a need for affiliation, the motivation to interact with other
people in a cooperative way.
• Man, being a social animal, enjoys being with others and seek to socialize
for his/her subjective well being.
• According to Vygotsksy, socialization during early years of life enables
language development consequentially resulting in cognitive development.
• Socialization provides for social comparison, a tendency to self-evaluate
ones’s own attitude and beliefs in comparison with others.
• The opportunity for observing others; facilitate learning of appropriate
behaviour.
• Socialization permits social support, an inevitable component especially
during crisis management.
• Mere presence of other people either as an audience or as co-actors can
influence our performance on many tasks. This effect is known as social
facilitation.
• Being with others has important benefits for an individual, such as increased
self-knowledge encouraging self-enhancement
Goals of Socialization

Dr S. S. Srinithi
e-mail: nithisri33@gmail.com
From

Learning Theories

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