EGO STATES

Definition: The Ego States are an important aspect of transactional analysis that talks about how
a person feels, behave or think at any point of time.
According to Dr Eric Berne, people usually interact with each other in terms of three
psychological and behavioral patterns classified as parent ego, adult ego and child ego, often
called as a PAC Model. This classification is not made on the basis of the age group of an
individual rather these are related to the ways in which an individual behaves. Thus, it is
observed that a person of any age group may possess varying degrees of these ego states.
Parent Ego: 
The parent ego, refers to the behavior and attitude of an emotionally significant
individual who acted with quite a maturity when he was a child. He possesses the parental traits
of being overprotective, dogmatic, distant, indispensable and upright and behaves very
judiciously at any time.
There are two types of a parent ego: critical and nurturing. The critical parent ego is one
when an individual shows the critical and evaluative behavior while interacting with the others.
Whereas the nurturing parent ego is one, when individual shows the kind and nurturing behavior,
not only towards children but towards all with whom he interacts.
Adult Ego: 
The adult ego shows the logical thinking and reasoning ability of an individual. The
person behaving or interacting with adult ego seeks all the information properly, validate it using
his reasoning skills and then provide it to the other people. The person possessing the adult ego
can be judged through his discussions and the way he thinks about a situation before arriving at
the conclusion.
As the individual grows, he updates his parent data to identify what is valid or not valid,
similarly the child data is also updated to determine which feeling should be expressed and
which should be left unspoken. In this way, the adult ego helps an individual to control his
emotional expressions appropriately.

Child Ego: 
The child ego, refers to the state of an individual when he behaves illogically and takes
quick actions to satisfy the immediate needs without thinking much about its consequences. The
creativity, depression, conformity, dependence, hate, fear, etc. are some of the main
characteristics of this ego state. The child ego represents the childhood state when an individual
has not become social and is in its initial stage of development.
The child ego can be natural, adaptive and rebellious. The natural child is sensuous,
impulsive, affectionate and does things that come naturally. Whereas the adaptive child is one,
who is trained and instructed by parents to behave in a manner taught by them. The rebellious
child is one who is not allowed to open up and experiences anger, fear and frustration.
ANALYSIS OF TRANSACTIONS
Definition: The interactions between people give rise to the Social Transactions, i.e. how
people respond and interact with each other depends on their ego states. The transactions routed
through ego states of persons can be classified as complementary, crossed and ulterior.
Complementary Transactions: A transaction is said to be complementary when the person
sending the message gets the predicted response from the other person. Thus, the stimulus and
response patterns from one ego state to another are parallel. These are:
1. Adult-Adult Transaction: The manager acts with the adult ego state, who tries to clarify
and inform employees about the issues and has a concern for the human needs and facts
and figures. I am O.K. you are O.K is his life position. This is an ideal transaction.

2. Adult-Parent Transaction: Here, the manager tries to implement the information being

processed by him, but rather the employees with the parent ego stick to the clichés and
the rules of the past. The employee tries to control the manager with his parent ego but is

temporary.
3. Adult-Child Transaction: Here the employee possesses the child ego state, and this can
be effective only if the manager knows about it and let his employees to be in this state to

be creative.
4. Parent-Parent Transaction: Here the manager is in the parent ego, and his life position
is I am O.K. you are not O.K. Reprimand, reward, criticism, rules, praise, etc. will be the
sources used by him. This transaction is effective only if the employee supports him and

join forces with him.

5. Parent-Adult Transaction: Here, both manager and employee might be frustrated. The
manager may feel devastated if the employee does not perform as directed while, the
employee may feel irritated because the manager is not acting with the adult ego .
6. Parent-Child Transaction: This is the ideal situation if the manager acts with adult ego
while the employee is in child ego. The employee may find this transaction

advantageous.
7. Child-Parent Transaction: The manager in the child ego might not contribute
efficiently towards the effectiveness of management. Although the child ego is
characterized by creativity, it does not suffice the role of a manager. Here, the employee

controls the manager.

8. Child-Adult Transaction: There is a lack of rationality when a manager acts with a
child ego. Here, the employee in the adult ego gets discouraged as he wants to make
logical and realistic decisions, but the manager may land up to the unrealistic decisions

made on the basis of whims, fancies and emotions.

 9. Child-Child Transaction: The manager acting with child-child ego is inefficient to lead
his employees successfully and hence turn out to be the liability to the firm.

Non-Complementary Transactions: A transaction is said to be non-complimentary or crossed

when the person sending the message does not get the predicted response, or the stimulus and
response lines are not parallel.

In the above transaction, The manager is trying to interact on an adult-to-adult basis, but the
employee responds on the child-to-parent basis, this would block the communication, and no
further transaction could be done.

Ulterior Transaction: This is the most complex transaction because the communication has the
double meaning. Such as, on the surface level the communication may have a clear adult
message, but it may carry some hidden message on the psychological level and gets
misinterpreted.
 LEARNING

Theories of Learning
Definition: The Learning is the enduring change in the behavior brought about as consequences
of experience. Simply, learning is the acquisition of new behaviors. It is agreed that learning
involves changes in the behavior, that we practice in our daily lives and which becomes a
permanent part of our existing set of behaviors.

Several experts are still skeptical about the process of how the new behavior is acquired and how
any individual can influence the other person’s behavior through teaching. This has resulted in
the development of several theories of learning. The theory is the set of factors or variables that
explain the reason for the existence of theory, i.e. for what objective the theory is formulated.
Many theories of learning are old and well established while many other theories are in its
evolutionary stage.

The Theories of human learning can be grouped into three categories:

 Conditioning Theory
 Cognitive Learning Theory

 Social Learning Theory

 Many psychologists believe, that behavioral change must be permanent as any temporary
change in the behavior due to any reason is not a part of learning. Also, any change in the
behavior may not be necessarily an improvement over the previous behavior, since an individual
also learns the bad habits, prejudices, stereotypes, work restrictions, etc. while dealing with
different situations or experiences.

Cognitive Learning Theory

Definition: Edward Tolman has contributed significantly to the Cognitive Learning Theory.
According to him, individuals not only responds to stimuli but also act on beliefs, thoughts,
attitudes, feelings and strive towards goals.

In other words, An individual creates a cognitive map in his mind, i.e. an image of the
external environment, preserves and organizes information gathered, as a result of the
consequences of events encountered during the learning process. Thus, the organism learns about
the event and objects on the basis of a meaning assigned to stimuli.

Tolman was the first behaviorist who challenged the conditional theory on the belief that
stimulus-response theory is unacceptable, as reinforcement was not necessary for the learning to
happen and asserted that behavior was mainly cognitive. He believed that the environment offers
several experiences or cues which are used to develop the mental image i.e. cognitive map.

Thus, cognitive learning theory is based on the cognitive model of human behavior, i.e. it
emphasizes on the free will and positive aspects of human behavior. Cognition refers to the
individual’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, knowledge and understanding about himself and the
environment. Thus, an organism applies this cognition in learning which results in not merely the
response to a stimulus, but the application of internal image of the external environment, so as to
accomplish the goal.

Tolman has conducted an experiment to elucidate the cognitive learning theory. He

trained a rat to turn right in the ‘T’ maze in order to obtain food. One day, he started a rat from
the opposite part of the maze, according to the operant conditioning theory, the rat should have
turned right due to the past conditioning, but instead, it turned towards where the food was kept.

Thus, Tolman concluded that rat formed a cognitive map in its mind to figure out where
the food has been placed, and reinforcement was not a precondition for learning to take place.

Conditioning Theory
Definition: The Conditioning Theory refers to the behavioral process, whereby a reaction
(response) becomes more frequent to a given object (stimulus) as a result of reinforcement,
which is a reward for the response in a given situation.

In other words, conditioning is a process in which the ineffective object or event becomes
so much effective that it makes the hidden responses clearly visible to all. The conditioning
theory is based on the premise that learning is establishing the relationship between the stimulus
and response. Thus, the stimulus-response theories are central to the principle of conditioning
theory.

There are two main theories of conditioning:

 Classical Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning
 The first contributor to this field was Edward.L.Thorndike, who gave the “Law of
Effect”. According to this law, any behavioral responses that are followed by rewards or
satisfactory results are most likely to become the established pattern and occurs again and again
in response to the same stimulus. Simply, an individual develops the permanent behavior for a
given stimulus, if some rewards are associated with it.

Example: If your Mother has given some work and on the completion of it, she gave you some
monetary reward, and you learned that for doing the same work, again and again, you get the
reward. So you will always be ready to take that work with the hope of getting the reward.

Definition: The Classical Conditioning Theory was proposed by a Russian Physiologist Ivan

Pavlov. According to this theory, behavior is learnt by a repetitive association between the
response and the stimulus. The classical conditioning theory is based on the assumption that
learning is developed through the interactions with the environment. Also, the environment
shapes the behavior and internal mental state such as thoughts, feelings, emotions do not explain
the human behavior.

Here, an organism learns to transfer response from one stimulus to a previously neutral stimulus.
Classical conditioning is comprised of four elements:

 Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Which invariably causes to react in a way.

 Unconditioned Response (UR): Takes place when the US is presented.
 Conditioned Stimulus (CS): The object that does not bring about the desired response
 Conditioned Response (CR): a particular behavior that an organism learns to produce, when
the CS is presented.
Pavlov conducted an experiment on a dog and measured the amount of saliva secreted by a
dog, with a use of a surgical procedure, when it is exposed to different stimulus or object. At
first, when Pavlov presented a piece of meat (US) to the dog, he noticed a great amount of
salivation (UR) whereas, in the second time, when he just rang the bell, he observed there was no
effect of a bell on the dog’s salivation.

After this, Pavlov rang the bell accompanied with meat and noticed the salivation of a dog.
He repeated this process several times, and finally, one day he just rang the bell without meat
and observed that dog still salivated to the bell alone which was originally a neutral stimulus.
 Thus, he found out, that the dog has become classically conditioned (CR) to the sound of
the bell (CS). And every time he rings the bell the dog salivates.

Operant Conditioning
Definition: The Operant Conditioning theory states that people are likely to emit responses that
are rewarded and will not emit any responses that are neither followed by any reward nor
punishment. Thus, an individual tries to establish an association between a particular behavior
and consequence.

The Operant Conditioning Theory is given by B.F. Skinner, who believed that behavior is
voluntary and is determined, maintained and controlled by its consequences. According to him,
one must focus on the external or observable causes of behavior rather than the internal mental
events such as motivation, thoughts, feelings, etc.

B.F. Skinner performed an experiment; wherein the Rat was placed in a glass box, called
as a “skinner box.” In that box, there were two levers, one attached to the feeding tube, while the
other produced the electric shock. The rat pressed the first lever attached to the tube and got the
food to eat, but as soon as it pressed the other lever, it got the shock. A rat discovered from its
actions, the lever which is rewarding and the one which gives a shock (negative response) and
pressed only that lever which resulted in food. Thus, Skinner observed, that the rate of response,
as well as the change in the response, was seen after the behavior was performed, not before.

Often, the operant conditioning is also called as an Instrumental Conditioning, which

means learning is developed through the rewards and punishments given for a particular
behavior. There are three elements that result in the development of a new behavior; these are:

 Stimulus Situation (the event or object)

 Behavioral Response to the situation

 Consequence of a response
Example: A vehicle driver applies the brakes in order to avoid the accident, thus, the possibility
of an accident without the application of the brakes is stimulus situation. The application of
brake is the behavior and escape from the accident is the consequence of behavior.

Thus, through this process, an organism learns to distinguish between the behaviors that
are rewarding and try to engage them in those behaviors.