| Summary: | "This book is an experimental approach to the study of personality. It considers personality to be just as valid a subject for scientific study as any other area, whether it be the analysis of perceptual processes or learning. Indeed, personality is a branch of the wider field of learning that deals with the special problems involved in motivation, aversive control, frustration and conflict, and disordered behavior and its treatment. The approach can be called behavioristic in that we are dealing with behavior that is observable, measurable, predictable, and controllable. Likewise, in the best experimental and behavioristic tradition, our approach is operational, which means that we explain our events in terms of specific operations that can be performed and observed. This book is divided into seven sections in which the following general topics are handled: (1) historical development and alternate viewpoints of personality; (2) basic principles of behavioral development; (3) the influence of biological conditions and early environment on personality; (4) the effects of aversive operations involving escape, avoidance, punishment, and anxiety; (5) frustration and conflict and their behavioral effects; (6) abnormal personality and its treatment; and (7) the basic principles involved in behavioral control and prediction"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
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