behaviourism

• is the behaviourist approach freewill or deterministic?

  • environmental determinism - behaviour is determined by stimulus response conditioning (eg classical/operant conditioning)
• is the behaviourist approach nature or nurture?

  • nurture - human beings are born as a tabula rasa (black slate) and behaviour is learned
• is the behaviourist approach reductionist or hollistic?

  • environmental reductionism - reduces behaviour to simple stimulus-response associations
• is the behaviourist approach idiographic or nomothetic?

  • nomothetic - creates general laws of behaviour (cause & effect etc) and uses labatory experiments to generate quantitative data to make generalisations
• is the behaviourist approach scientific?

  • yes - uses scientific methods to investigate key concepts like classical / operant conditioning
• does the behaviourist approach have real world applications?

  • yes - has led to the development of numerous treatments, like systematic desentisisation, flooding and aversion therapy
• what are the main assumptions of behaviourism?

  • study behaviour that can be observed and measured
  • does not investigate mental processes, seen as irrelevent as you cannot observe them
  • like experiments to be controlled and objective, so they rely on lab studies in order to achieve this
• what are the main beliefs of behaviourism?

  • behaviour is learnt
  • mind described as a 'blank slate' at birth which is written on by life experiences
  • following darwins work, they associate animals and humans
  • therefore, during research they can use animals to replace humans in experiments
  • they believe in two key forms of learning - operant conditioning and classical conditioning
• what is classical conditioning?

  • learn by association
  • by pavlov (1927)
  • showed how dogs can be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell, if that bell was repeatedly presented at the same time they were given food
  • gradually, pavlovs dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell (a stimulus) with the food (another stimulus) and would produce the salivation response everytime they heard the sound
  • thus, pavlov was able to show how a neutral stimulus (the bell) can come to elicit a new learned response (conditioned response) through association
• describe the process of stimulus and response for pavlovs dog study before conditioning

  • food (unconditioned stimulus) --> salivation (unconditioned response)
  • bell (neutral stimulus) --> no salivation (no conditioned response)
• describe the process of stimulus and response for pavlovs dog study during conditioning

  • food (unconditioned response) + bell (neutral stimulus) = salivation (unconditioned response)
• describe the process of stimulus and response for pavlovs dog study after conditioning

  • bell (conditioned stimulus) --> salivation (conditioned response)
• what is operant conditioning?

  • learn by outcome
  • skinner (1953)
  • designed to teach rats how to push a lever
  • this behaviour is not natural to rats, so operant conditioning with positive and negative reinforcement were peformed in order to teach the behaviour
  • positive and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood that behaviour will be repeated
  • punishment decreases the likelihood that behaviour will be repeated
  • used negative reinforcement for a satiated rat (electric shock)
  • used positive reinforcement for a hungry rat (food)
• what is positive reinforcement?

  • rewarding a behaviour
  • eg, the rat gets a treat when it pushes the lever
• what is negative reinforcement?

  • occurs when an animal/human avoids something unpleasant, the outcome is a positive experience
  • eg, the rat pressed the lever to stop the electric shocks
• what does punishment mean?

  • an unpleasant consequence of a behaviour
• give 1 strength of behaviourism

  • based on well controlled research
  • uses lab settings
  • by breaking down behaviouur into basic stimulus, response units, all other extraneous variables were removed, allowing cause and effect relationships to be established
  • eg, skinner was able to clearly demonstrate how reinforcement influenced an animals behaviour
  • therefore, this shows that their research has scientific credibility
• give 1 limitation of behaviourism

  • may have over simplified the learning process
  • by reducing behaviour to such simple components, they may have ignored an important influence on learning ; that of human thought
  • other approaches, eg slt or the cognitive approach, have drawn attention to the mental processes involved in learning
• give 1 limitation of behaviourism

  • it sees all behaviour as conditioned by past conditioning responses
  • skinner suggested that everything we do is the sum of our reinforcement history
  • according to skinner, our past conditioning history determines outcomes (skinner said free will is an illusion)
• give 1 strength of behaviourism

  • the principles of conditioning have been applied to real life behaviours and problems
  • eg, in prisons, a token economy system has been used (operant conditioning) to reward good behaviour with tokens, this can be exchanged for priviledges
  • classical conditioning is used to treat phobias via counterconditioning (the basis of systematic desentisisation)