The three-term contingency model, or stimulus response consequences (SRC) outlined earlier builds on the earlier work in behaviourism, with the S-R component derived from associative learning theory (outlined earlier in this thesis), proposed by Watson, and on the R-C component, derived from operant conditioning theory proposed by Skinner.
While an important step beyond the existing basic associative learning and operant conditioning models, this three-term contingency model seems to not necessarily be complete (McGuire 2000). Presenting one organism with the same stimuli as another will rarely garner the same response. It was suggested that it is the organism itself, and the internal processes of that organism (attention, perceptions, etc.) that help each organism derive meaning of the stimuli they face, with different organisms deriving different meaning of the same stimuli presented.
The three-term contingency continued to fail to account for the impact of the organism, and the influence of factors internal to the organism on the meaning they derive from stimuli, or
anticipation of consequences. Internal processes such as attention, perception, and memory impact upon the organism’s view of the stimulus.
The stimulus organism response (SOR) (McGuire 2000) introduces the role of the
cognitive mediating elements such as emotional response, attention, perception and memory, to help account for the role of the individual, with O representing cognitive mediating factors, and SOR thereby forming the basic foundation of social learning and cognitive-behavioural theories.
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Models such as SOR, bringing together the external and the internal stimuli to help better explain behaviour, are most widely used in the discipline and practice of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and much of the theory surrounding cognitive-behaviour therapy can be attributed to the growth of these models. The growth of cognitive-behavioural models marked the move towards consideration of an individual’s interpretation of events (Scott 1989). The underpinning of cognitive-behaviour models was that “thought processes, emotions and behaviour are
interdependent phenomena”, that along with discrete and visible behaviour, an individual’s interpretation of events has a sizable impact on their behaviour (Scott 1989).
The work of Aaron Beck (Beck 1976) did much to further the consideration of mentalistic concepts in behavioural studies, suggesting that the meaning an individual derives from an event will impact upon their emotional responses. The influence of mental processes on emotions and behaviour has been considered before with studies such as that of Kelly, suggesting that an organism’s anticipation of an event offers partial explanation of their resulting behaviour (Kelly 1955).
The stimulus-organism-response model has been previously used to examine consumers’
purchase behaviour in stores as well as their store patronage behaviour (Buckley 1991). While the stimulus is manipulable by retailers, the organism and response components of the model are outside of their control, strictly within the limits of the consumer’s skin. The stimulus-organism-response model recognised and utilised by Buckley takes on board the concept that the physical store attributes are interpreted as perceived store attributes- a process known as ecological validity (Buckley 1991). In addition to this, Buckley also examines the consumer characteristics as well as perceived item characteristics. While the latter is not being explored within this thesis, the role of the consumer characteristics is of specific interest.
Other studies have considered that certain stores themselves serve as reinforcing stimuli (Meoli, Feinberg et al. 1991)- so that the number and proportion of stores that are reinforcing stimuli in a mall for consumers has an impact upon the probability that a consumer will choose a
particular mall. If stores qualify as reinforcing stimuli in terms of how they are liked by
consumers, then we should expect to see differences between customers in the number of stores they ‘like’ in a mall, and hence, the attraction of the mall itself.
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Given the potential of internal processes to act as stimuli for the individual, this chapter shall seek to see if some key internal tendencies can give greater illumination to help the
interpretation of the choice of shopping centre.
Considering ‘The Organism’
With cognition such a popular and dominating force within the field of psychology, and in itself varied in the components contained within the cognitive domain, a researcher examining the role of cognition in a wider behavioural context is left with a decision to be made about which of the internal evaluations and processes to consider. Along with attitude research, studies have found that consumer behaviour with respect to decision-making, may be controlled partially by personality variables. However, concepts such as personality do not initially look as though they would sit well within a behavioural perspective. They seem to be at odds with the behaviourist’s rejection of the internal components and processes of the organism, that is, all things that cannot be directly observed. However, research in the personality domain suggests that such a concept can be linked to aspects of learning (Gray 1970), and so may be cautiously used in behavioural models to explain consumer choice. Further, behaviourists have themselves suggested that not only is behaviour shaped by the external environment, but that the effect of the environment has a role to play in developing personality also (Naik 1998). Skinner suggested that an individual’s tendency to behave in a particular fashion would be driven partly by their expectations of the consequences of that behaviour, given previous past experience, and not from some unobservable internal factor. In previous examinations of individual differences, research in the human domain has referred to variations in behaviours like risk taking (Fraser, Gilliam et al. 2001) and activity (Sih, Kats et al. 2003) as personality types, while research on variations in non-human animals explain this using terms such as coping styles, strategies and, notably, behavioural tendencies (Dall, Houston et al. 2004; Sih, Bell et al. 2004). Personality may be seen from a behavioural perspective to serve as a proxy measure of previous experiences and expectancies about what effects their behaviour may have.
Previous studies in the area have long suggested that certain personality dimensions affect the role of susceptibility to reinforcement. Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (Gray 1970;
Smillie, Pickering et al. 2006), suggested a link between biological systems and personality. The theory suggested that the amount an individual reacts to reinforcement is mediated by
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personality dimensions, while Eysenck also suggested an explicit link between a personality dimension and conditioning (Eysenck and Levey 1972). This shall be explored further in later sections.
Personality can be used to convey the concept that a person’s actions originate from some causal force within. Many researchers have suggested that personality has important behavioural consequences (Ozer and Benet-Martinez 2006; Carver and Scheier 2008). Perspectives and definitions of personality are many and varied, including Allport’s definition (Allport 1961) that
“personality is a dynamic organisation, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings” (Carver and Sheier 2004 p5). This then, covers the underlying aspects of cognition- personality is not merely the
collection of internal processes, it is the organisation of those processes, tied to the physical body, and used to determine the way a person relates to the world around them (Carver and Scheier 2008). No two people share the exact same personality, yet psychologists have, for years, attempted to measure personality across multiple dimensions, to help describe individuals in terms of multiple dimensions of personality. Personality provides a level of consistency within the individual, yet allows the individual to respond differently to different situations.
While there are many perspectives of personality in psychology, the dispositional and biological perspectives are the main ones considered for this research. The dispositional perspective of personality posits that people display consistency in their thoughts, feelings and behaviour- that a person’s nature, or disposition, is carried with them, as part of them, and endures across time and space, not shifting aimlessly from one instant to the next (Carver and Scheier 2008). This implies that personality is a relatively stable and constant phenomenon, so that a person is the same today as they will be a year from now. The dispositional perspective derives from the fact that individuals are different from each other on many dispositional dimensions, and that a person’s core personality is defined by the intersection of these multiple dispositions, with no two people sharing the same intersection of dispositions. The dispositional perspective allows for periods of unpredictability and short-term changes to core personality as people are affected by substantial events. Much personality research from the dispositional perspective has
attempted to uncover which dispositional dimensions are most important to personality, and improve the ways in which these may be measured, catalogued and their interaction modelled.
This trait-and-type approach is one of the most prevalent in the dispositional perspective of personality. Although there can be many types and sub-types, each individual is described as
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having one type, which is largely fixed. Individuals are described as having varying amounts of many traits.
The attempt to categorise people according to their dispositions is not a new phenomena, though it has been a popular facet of modern psychology research. Attempts were made by Galen (circa 150AD), building on the earlier works of Hippocrates (circa 400BC) to categorise people into distinctive groups as choleric (irritable), melancholic (depressed), sanguine
(optimistic) and phlegmatic (calm), based upon the belief that each personality type reflected an excess in one of four bodily fluids (Carver and Scheier 2008). This is reflected in the biological perspective of personality- that our bodies in some way determine our personality.
As new dimensions emerged, individuals were categorised into distinctive categories, or types. In the same way Galen placed people into one of four distinctive categories based on bodily fluid excesses, Jung categorised individuals as introvert or extrovert (Jung 1933). More recent attempts to ‘categorise’ people in personality research have moved away from the idea of grouping people into distinctive categories, and moved toward classifying people depending on where they lie on some continuous dimension. So, rather than classify a person as being
distinctively introverted or extroverted, the emphasis is on where on some continuum of introversion/extroversion they lie.
Eysenck attempted to categorise individual’s personality as one of four types, depending on how they scored on two continuous trait scales, introversion-extraversion (Jung 1933), and
neuroticism (emotional stability). The introversion-extraversion dimension encompasses the disposition towards social interaction, liveliness, activeness and dominance. The neuroticism dimension concerns changeability of emotion- how quickly and how easily a person gets upset and distressed. Eysenck saw both extraversion and neuroticism dimensions as being rooted in the physical body, inseparable from the organism at a biological level.
Extraversion
Eysenck saw extraversion as tied to the degree to which the cerebral cortex is stimulated (Eysenck 1967; Eysenck 1981), with low levels of activation associated with a person being sluggish and drowsy, and high levels of activation associated with high levels of being alert. He suggested that introverts have a higher baseline level of cortical arousal than extraverts, leading
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them to more easily become over-aroused, and for them to refrain from social interaction.
Extraverts, with lower levels of cortical arousal are more likely to seek out external stimulation.
Eysenck’s extraversion scale is biologically based on constructs drawing from learning theory and from brain models developed by Pavlov (Zuckerman 2005). Eysenck went on to compare his extraversion personality type with Pavlov’s consideration of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ nervous systems (Eysenck and Levey 1972), suggesting a similarity between his ‘introverts’ and Pavlov’s
‘weak’ personalities, and between ‘extroverts’ and ‘strong’ personalities. Eysenck’s extraversion dimension of personality has several links to behavioural work. Not only is it drawing on the work of perhaps the first of the behavioural researchers, but conditioning experiments by Eysenck himself suggested a link between extraversion and conditionability. Eysenck examined whether the connection between an unconditioned stimulus (a puff of air in the eye) and a conditioned stimulus (a tone delivered through earphones) could be related to extraversion, though with mixed results (Eysenck 1965). Situational cues will vary in relevance to individuals, based on extraversion. The ties between Eysenck’s personality dimensions and behavioural research further suggests that of the different personality inventories, Eysenck’s is the most appropriate. This leads to the following hypothesis to be examined in study 1:
Neuroticism
Eysenck proposed that people who are more highly aroused in the brain’s emotion centres score higher on the neuroticism dimension of personality, which has high potential for individuals to learn from situations. Highly emotional people may be more easily conditioned than people with more stable emotions, as they will have many emotions in many situations. Studies by Eysenck and Gray repeatedly suggested that conditionability is predicted neuroticism, which relates more with emotional stability, though to a lesser extent than by extraversion. Nevertheless,
neuroticism is likely to affect the importance of situational cues to an individual.
Examining each dimension alone suggests that personality cannot be considered a
uni-dimensional construct. Not all introverts are alike, while not all extroverts are alike. Introverts can differ substantially from each other when they have very different levels of emotional stability, as can extroverts. The emotional stability of introverts and extraverts enabled Eysenck to develop a more satisfactory picture of personality types.
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Examining the interaction of these dimensions allowed Eysenck to suggest four distinct personality types for individuals, based on whether they scored above or below the average on extraversion, and above or below the average on neuroticism. Comparisons may be drawn between the types identified by Eysenck, and the four types suggested earlier by Hippocrates and Galen. A summary of the interaction of Eysenck’s extraversion and neuroticism
dimensions, and the usual characteristics is provided in figure 2.14. Additionally, Galen’s categories of personality are superimposed in blue to aid comparison.
Whether personality dimensions such as those mentioned above have a place in a behavioural perspective still must be considered. Eysenck’s Personality Inventory was deemed the most appropriate of the alternative personality inventories, as central to it is its biological bases.
From the preceding discussion, two final hypotheses are proposed for study 1:
H2: Shopping centre response is affected by organism traits H3: Organism traits relate to salience of situational stimuli
Responsive
Figure 2.14: Categories of personality based on scores on Eysenck’s Extraversion and Neuroticism scales
Source: Adapted from Eysenck 1975/ Carver& Scheier 2008.
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The conceptual model proposed for study 1 amends the stimulus-organism-response model put forward by Belk, to explore the effect of personality on mediating the impact of situational cues on shopping centre choice, as shown in figure 2.15 below.