Personality

The pattern of reward giving, both in time and frequency, is known as a schedule of reinforcement. The gradual change in behavior in approximation of the desired result is known as shaping. More recent developments in behavior therapy emphasize the adaptive nature of cognitive processes. Behavior-therapy techniques have been applied with some success to such disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stuttering, obsessive-compulsive behavior, drug addiction, neurotic behaviors of normal persons, and some psychotic conditions. It has also been used in training the mentally retarded. Collective Behavior much of collective behavior is dramatic, unpredictable and frightening, so the early theories and many contemporary popular views are more evaluative than analytic. The French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon identified the crowd and revolutionary movements with the excesses of the French Revolution; the U.S. psychologist Boris Sidis was impressed with the resemblance of crowd behavior to mental disorder. Many of these early theories depicted collective behavior returned to an earlier stage of development. Freud retained this emphasis in viewing crowd behavior and many other forms of collective behavior as regressions to an earlier stage of childhood development; he explained, for example, the slavish identification that followers have for leaders on the basis of such regression. More sophisticated recent efforts to treat collective behavior as a pathological manifestation employ social disorganization as an explanatory approach. From this point of view collective behavior erupts as an unpleasant symptom of frustration and malaise stemming from cultural conflict, organizational failure, and other social malfunctions. The distinctive feature of this approach is a reluctance to take seriously the manifest contest of collective behavior. Neither the search for enjoyment in recreational fad, the search for spiritual meaning on a religious sect, nor the demand for equal opportunity in an interest-group movement is accepted to face value.