Behaviourist approach

• Behaviour is learnt through conditioning - classical - association formed between stimulus and response - pavlov's dogs - unconditioned stimulus - food, neutral stimulus - bell, unconditioned response - saliva, now salivating at bell alone.
• Behaviour is learnt through conditioning - Operant conditioning - behaviour is learnt through consequences, positive consequences - rewards, negative consequences - punishments, rewarded behaviours are more likely to be repeated. Skinner's rats - rats got positive reinforcement of food pellet for pressing the lever, increased lever pressing, positive or negative reinforcements, pleasant gained or avoids.
• Humans and animals learn in the same way - same principles apply to all species, behaviourists argue many animals are like us genetically due to evolution, only quantitative differences between humans and animals, so believe they behave and learn in the same way so can use animals research to generalise to humans. Pavlov's dogs and Little Albert - white rat.
• Humans are born as blank slates - tabula rasa, environment shapes our behaviour, behaviourists believe in the nurture side of the nature nurture debate, newborns only born with natural instincts crying etc, everything else is from our environment and life experiences, behaviours are a result of a learned response to stimulus in environment, behaviours aren't innate but solely determined on our environment known as environmental determinism.
• Bobo doll - aggressive behaviours are learnt from the environment and observations and imitations of role models, such as the Bobo doll experiment, some children saw someone being violent so were violent and others not.
• Application into aversion therapy - blank slate - alcoholism, smoking, over-eating experience not physical or biological cause believe we can unlearn behaviours if we learnt them.
• Application into aversion therapy - classical conditioning- addiction starts as a neutral stimulus and we come to associate it with a positive outcome. Counter condition by creating negative association with addiction, sick pain etc.
• Application of aversion therapy - Operant conditioning - addiction and unpleasant response - sick - negatively reinforced to continue to avoid addictive behaviour and achieve abstinence.
• Counter conditioning - aversive (unpleasant) stimulus, electric shock, = pain UCR. repeatedly paired with desirable behaviour, alcohol NS, now associates undesirable behaviour alcohol CS, with new negative response pain CR.
• Aversive stimulus - antabuse - drug affects how body breaks down alcohol by blocking action of enzyme, 'aldehyde dehydrogenase' causes a build up of acetaldehyde - toxin, causes unpleasant physiological effects, sweating etc. so if someone taking antabuse drink alcohol, associated with a negative reaction - sick rather than a positive one, antabuse stays active in system for at least 14 days.
• Aversive stimulus - rapid smoking - used to treat a smoking addiction, sit in a room and puff a cigarette every 6 seconds or until they feel sick, so develop an aversion to smoking, this is repeated over several session to make associations strong enough to develop severe aversion.
• Aversive stimulus - electric shock therapy - not a common treatment, used to treat gambling, either they take place in usual gambling activity or watch a video of themselves or someone else engaging in their usual gambling activity whilst receiving painful electric shocks until negative association is created.
• Aversive stimulus - covert sensitisation - less commonly used, used imagination rather than being directly exposed to aversive stimuli, imagine scenarios progressively getting worse, usually - upsetting or frightening scenarios.
• Effectiveness - p - antabuse, treating alcohol addiction, antabuse and placebo, the group with antabuse went longer without drinking than the placebo group.
• Effectiveness - p - rapid smoking, cigarette addiction, showed decrease in urge to smoke, rather than the control group with an anti-smoking video.
• Effectiveness - n - issues with non compliance, stop engaging so stop compliance, so question the long-term effectiveness of antabuse.
• Effectiveness - n - symptom substitution, only treats the symptoms not the cause, may appear successful but there may be underlying problems such as undesirable behaviour.
• Ethical issues - n - risk of harm, antabuse can have negative side effects when mixed with alcohol, heart failure, rapid smoking can cause health problems and is unethical compared to other treatments.
• Ethical issues - p - benefits long term, the costs are justified by long term benefits, breaking a serious addiction can bring benefits to health and personal relationships, benefits can outweigh the risks so can be ethical if valid consent is gained.
• Ethical issues - p - covert sensitisation, imagining scenarios occur when engaging in addictive behaviour, kraft 2005 effective and ethical and avoid the unpleasant reactions that antabuse has.
• Ethical issues - n - only treats the symptoms not the cause, negative association treat how they feel towards focus of addiction and in long term experience further psychological harm that has not been addressed, does not treat the underlying cause of addiction.
• Effectiveness conclusions - is effective in short term but not in the long term, not commonly used but other treatments are, the addiction making them feel ill and still addicted why would aversion therapy work.
• Ethical issues conclusions - relies on aversive stimulus, (unpleasant experience), risk of harm is unavoidable, need full informed consent from individuals, could be viewed as ethical due to long term benefits of being free from addiction, outweighing any short term harm (part of therapy).