Psychology, 5/e   Camille B. Wortman
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Exploring Tacit Theories of Human Behavior

Everyone has a set of tacitly accepted strategies for explaining why people behave as they do. These may range from simple assumptions about someone else's intentions to more or less complicated accounts that may be based upon stereotypes ("Jocks are unintelligent") or lots of experience ("Every time I talk to the teacher, I get the feeling that..."). We do not usually intentionally make up these strategies, and we rarely think about the strategies themselves. Sometimes our assumptions reflect our basic views of human nature; sometimes they are merely convenient ways of dealing with unusual information.

Our assumptions concerning human behavior and our accounts of our own behavior may match one of the four major perspectives in psychology. One is the behaviorist perspective, where behavior is understood to be controlled by external rewards and punishments. A second perspective is that of the psychoanalysts, who explain behavior according to unconscious urges and conflicts. A third approach is that of the humanistic psychologists, who account for behavior through the person's view of self. A fourth perspective is that of cognitive psychology, which explains behavior in terms of internal thought processes especially for our problem-solving capabilities, our thinking styles, and creativity.

This exercise uses a questionnaire that attempts to show the extent to which each person responding to it accepts or rejects explanations of behavior offered by each perspective. It is designed to demonstrate how the various theoretical perspectives in psychology are used in our everyday thinking.

Experimental Procedure

To administer this questionnaire, you first will need to make ten copies of the next two pages. You then will need to enlist nine cooperative participants who have not taken the introductory psychology course.

STEP 1 Complete one copy of the questionnaire yourself and set it aside to analyze after you have administered it to the rest of your sample.

STEP 2 Have the nine people who have agreed to participate as your subjects complete both Part one and Part two of the questionnaire. You may administer it to all at the same time and place, or individually and at different times and places.

STEP 3 Analyze the results by following steps one through four as described on pages 17 to 18.

Analyzing the Results

STEP 1 Record the responses to questions 1-9 on the following chart:

STEP 2 Compile the group characteristics by counting how many participants answered "1" on question 1, "2" on question 1, and so on, and record the tallies in the following chart:

STEP 3 Now record the response to Part Two of the questionnaire:

STEP 4 Compile the group characteristics by counting how many participants answered A on question 1, D on question 1, and so on, and record the tallies in the following chart:

Interpretation and Discussion

The following chart reflects how a psychoanalyst, a behaviorist, a humanist, and a cognitive psychologist would be most likely to answer Part One of the questionnaire. Note that the only difference between a psychoanalyst and a behaviorist is the answer to question 7. The only major difference between the humanist and the cognitive psychologist is the answer to question 3. Compare each subject's responses to the chart and try to determine which perspective most reflects that subject's answers. The first questions to examine are 7, in which a "1" is unique to the psychoanalytic perspective, and then 3, in which a "2" is unique to the humanistic approach. Please understand that it is unlikely that anyone will match one of the perspectives perfectly (few may even come close). However, after determining which of the two general patterns the subject most closely matches, either the psychoanalytic-behaviorist or the humanist-cognitive, the distinction within the general pattern can be clarified by looking at questions 3 and 7.

Now that you have determined which of the approaches you and your subjects tend to agree with in a tacit way, look at the answers to questions 10 through 13 in Part Two. A psychoanalyst is most likely to agree with question 1; a behaviorist is most likely to agree with question 2; a humanist is most likely to agree with question 3; and a cognitive psychologist is most likely to agree with question 4. Examine the chart in Step 3 and note whether each subject's responses in Part One agree with their views as expressed in Part Two. Another way to look at your subjects' responses is to look at their group totals in Step 4. Is there a pattern in the totals? For instance, do most of your subjects agree with one or two of the views in questions 10 through 13? Do these explicit views agree with any patterns you discern in the totals in Step 2?

Discussion

Chapter One of your text discusses each of the four theoretical perspectives involved in this exercise, as well as a fifth perspective, the neurobiological perspective. The text suggests that each of these views has value, even though they all approach the questions implied from different points of view and sometimes lead to different explanations and conclusions.

This exercise is intended to demonstrate to you that different people, as well as different theories, have different points of view regarding the nature of human behavior. It is sometimes surprising to find that other people have quite different assumptions than do we about why people act the way they do in certain situations. Hopefully, this exercise has clarified some of the kinds of values that are associated with the various theoretical perspectives discussed in the text, and has also shown you that different people have quite unique perspectives regarding how they see human nature.

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