Ao3

• strength

  • Scientific
  • Believe only observable behaviours should be studied, therefore all theories could be tested mainly controlled in lab studies
  • This makes the theory falsifiable (able to be proven right or wrong)
  • Falsifiability is an important feature of science to allow cause and affect relationships to be
• strengths

  • Have real-life applications
  • E.g - we know that positive reinforcement is more powerful than punishment so might use this in a child rearing or educational settings
  • Behaviorists techniques have also been used to train animals
  • Without this approach developments would not have occured
• Weakness

  • Takes on the nurture side
  • It ignores biological explanations for behaviour
  • It presents quite a narrow explanation for human behaviour
  • Behaviours have a biological cause which is ignored by behaviourists so this approach is therefore viewed as reductionist
• Weakness

  • Ethical issues
  • A lot of the research on which classical conditioning and operant conditioning is based on animals (carried out on animals)
  • Humans may not share enough similarities with these animals for us to apply them to human behaviour
  • Therefore results may not be generalisable