Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Ivan Pavlov was a noted Russian physiologist who went on to win the 1904 Nobel Prize for his work studying digestive processes. It was while studying digestion in dogs that Pavlov noted an interesting occurrence – his canine subjects would begin to salivate whenever an assistant entered the room.
In his digestive research, Pavlov and his assistants would introduce a variety of edible and non-edible items and measure the saliva production that the items produced. Salivation, he noted, is a reflexive process. It occurs automatically in response to a specific stimulus and is not under conscious control. However, Pavlov noted that the dogs would often begin salivating in the absence of food and smell. He quickly realized that this salivary response was not due to an automatic, physiological process.
While studying the role of saliva in dogs’ digestive processes, Pavlov stumbled upon a phenomenon he labelled “psychic reflexes.” While an accidental discovery, he had the foresight to see the importance of it. Pavlov’s dogs, restrained in an experimental chamber, were presented with meat powder and they had their saliva collected via a surgically implanted tube in their saliva glands. Over time, he noticed that his dogs who begin salivation before the meat powder was even presented. Fascinated by this finding, Pavlov paired the meat powder with various stimuli such as the ringing of a bell. After the meat powder and bell (auditory stimulus) were presented together several times, the bell was used alone. Pavlov’s dogs, as predicted, responded by salivating to the sound of the bell (without the food). The bell began as a neutral stimulus (i.e. the bell itself did not produce the dogs’ salivation). However, by pairing the bell with the stimulus that did produce the salivation response, the bell was able to acquire the ability to trigger the salivation response. Pavlov therefore demonstrated how stimulus-response bonds (which some consider as the basic building blocks of learning) are formed. He dedicated much of the rest of his career further exploring this finding.
In the later period of his life, Pavlov became interested in mental abnormality. He was struck with the apparent similarity of some of these symptoms to the behaviour difficulties of his dogs ( on whom he conducted his experiments of conditioning learning theory ) and tried to account for them in terms of his concepts of inhibition and excitation
Pavlov followed Janet, a famous French psychiatrist, and classify neurotic patients into two groups. In one group , are the hysterics, people characterized by a histrionic personality, a certain lack of moral scruple, an overt interest in sexual matters, and considerable liking for the society of other people. Symptoms appearing in the more extreme forms of hysteria are paralyses, perceptual dysfunctions such as blindness or deafness, and amnesia.
The second group of disorders are labelled as ‘ dysthymic’. People in this group are shy and unsociable in their behavior, have strong emotions, are given to anxiety and depression, and may even develop obsession and compulsive habits. Whereas the hysteric’s symptoms find an expression which is easily observable, those of the dysthymic are readily available only to his own introspection. Anybody can observe the paralyzed limb or the functional blindness of the hysteric, but the guilt-ridden anxiety and deep depression felt by the dysthymic may often escape notice.
Interestingly the majority of neurotics would be found in a mixed group containing symptoms characteristic of both hysterics and dysthymics. However, it is possible in a rough-and-ready manner to arrange patients in a continuum all the way from almost pure hysteria through various mixtures to the other pole of almost pure dysthymia.
Pavlov was amazed to observe the fact that the symptoms of the hysterics were always of an inhibitory nature. Paralysis involved an inhibition of the motor-affector system. Anesthesia and other perceptual dysfunctions involved an inhibition of the affector-perceptual mechanism.
Amnesia involve the inhibition of part of the cortical systems sub serving memory. Conversely, the symptoms of a dysthymic seemed to him to show evidence of an excess of excitatory potential and a failure to develop sufficient inhibitory potential. He concludes that hysterical symptoms are developed by individuals in whom the excitation-inhibition balance is tilted in the direction of excessive inhibition. Dysthymic symptoms develop in individuals in whom the excitation-inhibition balance is tilted in the direction of excessive excitation. It follows from his theory that hysterics should be difficult to condition in view of the excess of inhibitory over excitatory potential, whereas dysthymics should be very easy to condition in view of their excess of over-excitative inhibitory potential. Several attempts have been made to test this deduction and results have always tended to support Pavlov’s view.
Conditioning experiments can also be performed on human beings. While it is possible to use the salivary reflex, this is a little messy, and other reflexes have usually been preferred.One method frequently used involves the psycho-galvanic reflex, i.e. the sudden drop in the resistance of the skin to an electric current which follows any sudden stimulus .
In the experiment the subject may be shown a series of words on a screen. Every time one particular word is shown to him an electric shock is administered. Very soon the psycho-galvanic reflex which always accompanies the shock becomes associated with the word itself, which thus becomes a conditioned stimulus.
The relation between ease of conditionability and neurotic symptomatology does not seem to find any easy application to normal personalities. However, a well-known psychiatrist – C.G.Jung. postulated the existence of a continuum from extroversion to introversion on which all human beings could be placed. From his account, the extrovert emerges as a person who values the outer world both in its material and in its immaterial aspects, he is sociable, makes friends easily, and trusts other people. He shows outward physical activities, while the introvert’s activity is mainly in the mental, intellectual sphere. He is changeable, likes new things, new people, new impressions. His emotions are easily aroused, but never very deeply. He is relatively insensitive, impersonal, experimental, materialistic, and tough- minded.
Both extroverts and introverts can be bright or dull, stable or unstable, normal or mad. In saying that two people are extroverted there is no implication that they are alike with respect to all the various personality traits which psychologists have discovered. They are alike only with respect to those traits which form the syndrome or constellation of traits which constitutes extroversion-introversion.
It would be wrong to credit Jung with the discovery of this personality dimension. The very terms extroversion and introversion can be found as far back as the sixteenth century, and in more modern times the English psychologist Jordan and the Austrian psychiatrist Gross both anticipated Jung in putting forward theories very similar to his.
He did, however, popularize this particular typology and he made one important contribution to it. He pointed out that hysterical disorders tend to develop in extraverted persons, whereas introverts are more liable to symptoms of the dysthymic type. This link-up of extroversion and hysteria on the one hand and introversion and dysthymia on the other has received ample experimental support.
We can, therefore, extend Pavlov’s hypothesis and say that where the excitation-inhibition balance is tilted in the direction of an excess of excitation we are likely to find introverted individuals, whereas when the balance is tilted in the opposite direction we are liable to find extroverted individuals. According to this theory, then, we would expect extraverts to be difficult to condition and introverts to be easy to condition. This deduction also has received experimental support.
In extending Pavlov’s theory, however, we have lost the connecting link between excitation and inhibition on the one hand and personality on the other. While his hunch that hysteria and excessive cortical inhibition were related was merely based on reasoning by analogy, at least it did provide a link between these concepts. There appears to be no direct link between inhibition and extroversion or between excitation and introversion. In order to do so, however, we must go on a slight theoretical detour.
Actually there are two different kinds of activities which the young child has to learn. The acquisition of the first kind of activity is accounted for in terms of the law of effect. The young baby has to learn for instance to suck at the mother’s breast . Random movements of the head and mouth, perhaps guided to some extent by the mother, produce milk and a reduction in hunger, A few repetitions enable the infant to learn this series of events and to make use of this instrumental conditioning for the satisfaction of his bodily wants. This may serve as a prototype for the very many different kinds of activities in which what the individual learns benefits him directly and immediately. The law of effect ensures the success of this type of instrumental conditioning.
However, there are many activities which would be pleasurable and rewarding in themselves, but which society cannot permit. In the young child indiscriminate urination and emptying of the bowels may serve as an example. In older children and adults, we might use as an example the uncontrolled release of aggressive and sexual urges. The difficulty of controlling what is often called one’s ‘animal nature’ is proverbial; the miracle is that it can be done at all. Instrumental conditioning and the law of effect do not help us here; quite on the contrary, they would suggest that the highly pleasant and stimulating consequences of satisfying one’s aggressive and sexual urges immediately and without regard for the consequences should be learnt very firmly indeed.
Pavlovian conditioning is required as an additional variable. Unpleasant autonomic responses such as pain and fear become conditioned in the process of training to anti-social activities, and the individual, by not indulging in these anti-social activities, secures the immediate reward of a reduction in these painful autonomic responses. This may be a difficult idea to digest at first, and an example may make the conception more readily intelligible.
Let us take the little brown bear. Like the human infant, he also has to learn two types of activities : those which are immediately beneficial to himself, and those on which society has to insist as a condition of survival. As an example of the first type of activity let us take the provision of food. The mother bear has to teach him that blueberries are good to eat. She has little difficulty in doing this; she simply picks him up by the scruff of his neck, carries him to the nearest blueberry bush, and dumps him into it. In the course of his somewhat uncoordinated efforts to get out of the bush, he accidentally squashes a few of the berries with his paws and then reflexly licks his paws. The reward provided by the taste of the blueberry juice ensures that through the agency of instrumental conditioning he will from now on assiduously hunt for blueberries.
But the mother bear has another much more difficult job. The father bear, being somewhat cannibalistically inclined, would like nothing better than to make a meal of his son. The only way in which the mother can protect him is by teaching him to climb up the nearest tree whenever she gives him the signal that father is coming. She also has to teach him to stay on the tree until she gives a signal that all is clear. Now she can hardly explain these things to the little bear, and she encounters the additional difficulty that he finds life on the ground much more amusing than going up a tree and staying there, very bored and very much against his will.
However, being, like most animals, a good psychologist, she sets about her task very much according to the dictates of Pavlovian conditioning. Picking up the little brown bear by the scruff of his neck, she takes him to the nearest tree, honks very loudly, and then gives him a painful bite on his undercarriage. The little brown bear, surprised and hurt, seeks to escape from his suddenly aggressive mother and shins up the tree. After a while he tries to come down again, but the mother rears up and gives him another painful nip to send him upwards again. Finally, she gives two honks to indicate that the trial is over and that the little bear may come down again. The whole procedure is repeated a number of times, until finally the little bear has learnt his lesson and the vigilance of the mother can protect him from the baser instincts of his father. In fact, so well has he learnt his lesson that when the mother bear finally decides that he is old enough to fend for himself, she simply sends him up the tree by giving the warning signal and then goes away and leaves him for good. He is so well conditioned not to come down without her permission that he will stay on the tree for hours, even days, until hunger pains finally drive him down. What has happened? By pairing the warning signal (the conditioned stimulus) with the painful bite on his backside (the unconditioned stimulus), the mother has set up a conditioned reflex in which the warning signal produces a powerful fear reaction on the part of the little bear ; a fear reaction which can be relieved only by the action to which he has become conditioned, namely that of shinning up the tree. Thus the conditioned autonomic response becomes, as it were, an intermediary in the law of effect; the reward which the young bear gets for obeying the social laws of his clan is a reduction in anxiety rather than any external re- ward. Much the same happens when he is on top of the tree and wants to come down before having received the all- clear. As he begins to go down the tree, the stimuli he encounters have become conditioned in his past experience to the powerful and painful bite received from his mother ; consequently, the conditioned response, i.e. fear or anxiety, be- come stronger and stronger until finally he climbs upwards again in order to relieve his anxiety.
We thus arrive at the point where we consider conditioning the essential substratum of the socialization process. Where the religious person talks about conscience as restraining the evil-doer, the psychologist would point to the conditioning process as the agent responsible for the presence of the conscience in the mind of the evil-doer.
The psychologist would consider Pavlovian conditioning as the method by means of which this goal is reached. There is, in principle, no issue between the religious, and the Pavlovian approaches. The main difference is that neither the Freudian nor the religious approach provides an experimentally testable hypothesis to tell us the precise method by means of which the final result of socialization is brought about.
We are now in a position to link up, as we promised to do, the conditioning process on the one hand and extroversion- introversion on the other. We start out with the known fact that there are marked individual differences in the excitation-inhibition balance, differences which manifest themselves in different degrees of conditionability. Given that some individuals are easier to condition than others, and assuming for the moment that all individuals are subjected to a similar process of socialization, it would follow from our general theory that those who are most difficult to condition should be relatively under-socialized, while those who are relatively easy to condition would be, comparatively speaking, over-socialized. Over-socialization and introversion should therefore, in terms of our theory, go together, as should under-socialization and extroversion. The experimental evidence is not as extensive as one might wish, but as far as it goes it definitely supports this view. Let us look again at our neurotic extroverts and introverts, the hysterical and dysthymic groups respectively, be- cause in them we see to an exaggerated extent certain qualities characteristic of extroverts and introverts altogether.
Hysterics also tend to share the lack of a strong ‘inner light’, as it were, which serves them as a guide to action. They are easily swayed by momentary passions, by bad companions, or by the standards of any small group of which they happen to be members; while less extreme than psychopaths, they also may rightly be considered under- socialized.
Similar to the hysterics, but even more extremely extroverted according to their test performances, are the so-called psychopaths: these are people characterized by an almost complete absence of social responsibility. Many of them are pathological liars who tell lies almost by preference and re- gardless of the certainty of being found out. Others commit thefts without regard for the inevitable consequences; others again go absent without leave or contravene other rules and regulations pointlessly and in spite of the certainty of being found out and punished. Psychopaths generally seem almost completely lacking in this conscience or super- ego, which is so essential in making civilized life possible. Typically enough they also as a group are the most difficult of all to condition and the most strongly extroverted in terms of experimental tests.
Dysthymic groups show precisely opposite characteristics. Where hysterics and psychopaths try to ‘get away with it’ on every conceivable occasion, and even often under conditions where detection is inevitable, the typical dysthymic not only does not indulge in anti-social activities, but tends to worry excessively over the very slightest infringement of the social code which most people would dismiss with a shrug of the shoulders. Even mild peccadilloes may lead him to quite excessive methods of atonement, such as com- pulsive hand-washing a hundred times a day to cleanse him- self of some relatively unimportant misdoing. Small wonder, then, that what characterizes the extrovert most is to prefer action to thought, whereas to the typical introvert, thought is preferable to action. The stress of the socialization process is largely on the inhibition of action; the abandoning of aggressive or sexual activities of one kind or another. Consequently, the introvert – the over-socialized person, who has learnt his lesson too well – tends to generalize this rule to all activity and prefers to seek salvation in his own thinking. Conversely, the typical extrovert, not having heeded the lesson of the socialization process, prefers the immediate satisfaction of his impulses through action.
This is the general picture emerging from Pavlovian theory and modern research. There are many z’s to dot and fs to cross before we can feel certain about the exact relationships described here in broad detail, but it does not seem likely that the main outline of the picture will require any major revision. In any case, the substance of the chapter will serve to show how personality measurement can be geared to fundamental psychological theories which may be far away from the more obvious type of personality test . It is in the further advance of such more fundamental measurement that the greatest promise for an increase in our knowledge of personality would seem to lie.