Personality and processes taking place in the human conscience in the process of its development have always been the subject of particular human interest, especially in the field of psychology. The main question raising considerations is the way the human personality is formed and what patterns influence the formation of his or her behavior. There are two main approaches to personality within the theory of personality that deserve particular attention and have to be thoroughly considered. In fact, they have many similarities but also contain substantial differences that distinguish them from one another and let them approach the study of personality from different angles.

The first theory to be considered is the social learning theory. The main scientist who developed the social learning ideas and formed the framework of its methodology and concepts was Bandura who justified the formation of personality and the system of his or her attitudes and behavior by the influence of a set of models that affected the process of cognition of a particular person. According to the specialists’ opinion, the process of social learning involves four stages – attention, retention, reproduction and motivation (Russell and Jarvis, 2003). These assumptions presuppose the attention paid by a person to another person who represents a behavioral model for him or her with the purpose of detecting the patterns of behavior that suit the person most of all and appear the most attractive; the next stage involves retention of this behavior, namely, the process of finding out the main ways to cope the interesting behavior; the next phase is reproduction of behavior itself; and the motivation sphere refers to the set of reasons chosen by the person to cope the interesting behavior. The most widely spread reason is the wish to gain a reward (Russell and Jarvis, 2003).

The second analyzed theory is the behavioral approach to the formation of personality. It is also one of the most popular and interesting psychological approaches to the discussed sphere assuming that the human behavior can be majorly explained in terms of the chaotic and unpredicted environmental influences. For this reason the objective inferences concerning the origin and concealed reasons for the formation of a certain pattern of behavior are made on the basis of observations (Behavioral Approach, 2008)

The main similarities that can be seen within the conceptual framework of these two theories is that they accept the subjective influence of other subjects on the formation of the person’s system of behavior, no matter whether it is conscious or subconscious. However, the behavioral approach adopts a more chaotic scheme of the behavior influences stating that the environment is the main determinant thereof, while the social learning theory admits the existence of a set of models that are adopted by different recipients and influence their behavior on a more stabile and predicted basis, through a certain process of adopting the behavioral pattern and with the help of particular motives. This core difference shapes the vision of personality in the psychological aspect by the scientists pursuing this or that approach: the social learning model is more structured and explains the human personality in a more formalized way. Behavioral approach is slightly different forming the vision of the personality as a set of independent variables determining its outer behavioral expression due to the ways the environment affects the person at a particular moment of time.