behaviourist

• 3 assumptions

  • born as a blank slate (tabula rasa)
  • behaviour is learnt through conditioning
  • humans and animals learn in similar ways
• babies are born as a blank slate and our environment shapes our behaviour
• newborns are born with basic, primitive response eg crying and the rest is a result of interactions with our environment
• this is called environmental determinism
• the social learning theory would explain how aggressive behaviour is learnt through observation and imitation of role models
• eg. bandura bobo doll study
• another assumption is that behaviour is learnt through conditioning
• there are two types of conditioning: classical and operant
• classical conditioning= an association is formed between a stimulus and a response
• eg. pavlovs dogs
• pavlovs dogs= repeatedly paired food (unconditioned stimulus) and a bell (neutral stimulus) which made the dogs salivate( unconditioned response). after several pairings, the dogs salivated to just the bell (conditioned response)
• operant conditioning= new behaviours are learnt through the consequences of our actions
• new behaviours can provide positve consequences (rewards) or negative ones (punishments)
• behaviours that are rewarded are reinforced and are more likely to be repeated
• eg. skinners rats - given a opositive reinforcement (food pellet) for pressing a lever = increased lever pressing
• reinforcements can either be positive (gain something pleasant) or negative (avoids something bad)
• another assumption is that the same principles/laws are common to all species
• many animals are like us genetically due to evolution and there are only quantitative differences
• it is appropriate to use animals in research and generalise to human behaviour
• eg. pavlovs dogs process was then applied to little albert