AO3

• Classical conditioning has been applied to therapy

  Systematic desensitisation it works by eliminating the learned anxious response (CR) that is associated with a feared object or situation (CS)
• Real-Life Applications

  An increased understanding of classical and operant conditioning has led to the development of treatments and therapies for serious mental disorders. For example, token economies have been used as a way of dealing with offending behaviour: inmates who carry out socially-desirable behaviour (such as tidying their cell and avoiding conflicts) receive tokens (secondary reinforcers) which can be traded for privileges (primary reinforcers), such as extra TV-time. Therefore, behaviourist principles have had positive impacts on the lives of many.
• Environmental Determinism

  • The behaviourist approach sees all behaviour as the product of past reinforcement contingencies, leaving no room for free will or conscious choices. This hard deterministic stance may be a more appropriate explanation for animal behaviour, whereas explanations of human behaviour should also account for emotions, motivations and reasoning skills (e.g. as social learning theory does). Hence, the behaviourist approach may be a limited explanation for human behaviour.