Behaviourist Approach

• Behaviourist key assumptions:

  • interested in observable behaviour/measurable phenomena
  • believe mental processes are not as important as the role of the environment/experience
  • animal research is strongly generalisable to humans
  • there is no free will (it is an illusion - Skinner)
• Pavlov - Classical conditioning

  Learning through association

  • found dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell if it was repeatedly presented at the same time as food
  • showing how a neutral stimulus (a bell) can elicit a new learned response (conditioned response) through association
• (Pavlov) Extinction - If the bell (CS) is repeatedly presented without food, the salivation (CR) will slowly disappear
• (Pavlov) Spontaneous recovery - even though the CR appears to have disappeared, the dog will still sometimes salivate to a bell
• (Pavlov) Stimulus generalisation - the CS (the bell) can be changed slightly and still produce the same CR
• (Pavlov) Law of temporal contiguity - both stimuli have to be presented at the same time for the association to occur
• Skinner - Operant conditioning

  Maintenance of learning

  • suggested there is an active process whereby humans and animals operate on their environment
• (Skinner) In operant conditioning, there are 3 consequences of behaviour:

  1. positive reinforcement
  2. negative reinforcement
  3. punishment
• (Skinner) Positive reinforcement - receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed
• (Skinner) Negative reinforcement - where someone does something to avoid something unpleasant (the bad thing is taken away)
• (Skinner) Punishment - an unpleasant consequence for behaviour (finding a way to avoid this would be negative reinforcement)
• (Skinner) Schedules of reinforcement

  • refers to when and how often a behaviour is rewarded
  • should be at random points to avoid a decrease in effect
• Animal research

  • many behavioural/cognitive differences between humans and animals

  questions the generalisability of results from studies (like Skinner and Pavlov) that use animal research.

  • BUT - animal studies allow research into particular topics that we can't ethically use humans to study (e.g. Skinner's research with rats in boxes)
• Reductionism

  • there are other reasons behind the behaviours we exhibit as shown by phobias where it is not possible for some of them to be learned through conditioning (e.g. being scared of snakes having never met one)

  so there must be other explanations
• Scientific

  • conducted in labs/highly controlled environments which reduced the effects of EV's and strengthens interval validity of research

  BUT - lack of ecological validity due to the artificial conditions so may not be as applicable to real life behaviour as originally thought