Behaviourist

• Successful applications:

  Treating mental disorders & in education. Classical conditioning applied in aversion therapy to help addicts & systematic desensitisation help with phobias. Education-operant conditioning underlies successful teaching strategies. Positive reinforcement & punishment helped shape behaviour in class & school environment.
• Skinner (1954):

  Applied operant conditioning to teaching-designed a mechanical programmed instruction device. Believed classroom teaching often ineffective as students learn at different rates & reinforcements are therefore too variable to be effective & delayed due to lack of individual attention. Teaching machine: each student can work at own pace & receive reinforcements to encourage future learning. Answer correct-student reinforced, answer wrong- further explanation offered. Immediate feedback (effective). Breaks learning process into small steps so student receives frequent rewards.
• Scientific & objective:


  Studies behaviour that's observable & directly measurable. Intangible concepts (e.g, feelings & thoughts) operationalised in terms of stimulus & response behaviours. Believe through use of scientific method, we can analyse, quantify & compare behaviour. Enables us to distinguish beliefs from facts. Evidence to show treatments for mental disorders are successful or not.
• Focus on the here & now:

  Not concerned with someone's past. Treatments focus on current symptoms & trying to remove them (doesn't look at causes). E.g, aversion therapy treats alcoholism by teaching person new stimulus-response link between alcohol & nausea-reduces undesirable behaviour. Doesn't try understand why person turned to alcohol. Systematic desensitisation- new link made between fear & relaxation. Doesn't try find out why phobia occurred in first place. Some people may prefer not looking into past or less complicated to do so- not successful for all disorders.
• Emphasis on nurture:

  Environment shapes behaviour. Nature ignored. E.g, wouldn't consider how genetic make-up could influence personality & behaviour. Role of external factors exaggerated. Behaviour is actually governed by many internal factors such as motivation, emotion & innate abilities. (If learning was all that mattered, everyone could become surgeon or rocket scientist).
• Determinist:

  Believe behaviour influenced almost exclusively by associations made between certain environmental stimuli (classical conditioning) or rewards/punishments provided by environment (operant conditioning). Controlled by external factors. Doesn't consider thought processes that occur before we behave in certain way & suggests we're not making choice. Undermines free will- says no personal or moral responsibility for behaviour. Bad social implications (can't be held responsible so should be punished to change behaviour rather than being taught to think responsibly).
• More relevant to animals than humans:

  Behaviourism roots in experiments with animals (Pavlov & Skinner). Systematic desensitisation also initially developed with animal research.
• Wolpe (1958):


  Created phobia in cats by placing them in cages & administering repeated electric shocks. Found he could reduce this learned anxiety response by placing food near cage that was similar to OG. Eating diminished anxiety response (reciprocal inhibition)-gradually cats could be placed in cages more & more similar to OG without anxiety symptoms.
• Wolpe (1973):


  (Human anxiety may not respond in same way). Treated woman for insect fear & found SD did not cure phobia. Her husband (she was not getting on with) was nicknamed after insect. Fear was not result of conditioning-represented marital problems. Wolpe recommended marital counselling which succeeded where SD failed.