Behavioural

• What is behaviourism?


  • Behaviourism is concerned with how environmental factors (called stimuli) affect observable behaviour (called responses).
  • The behaviourist approach proposes two main processes whereby people learn from their environment through conditioning principles
• Conditioning

  • Classical conditioning: Learning be association
  • Operant conditioning: Learning through consequence of behaviour
• What does behaviourism believe in?

  • Behaviourism believes in scientific methodology (controlled experiments) and that only observable behaviour should be studied because this can be measured
  • Behaviourists reject the idea that people have free will, believing that the environment determines all behaviour. Behaviour can be reduced to learned Stimulus-Response units (S-R)
• Introspection?

  Grounding for research in psychology but is subjective (e.g. self report) 1880
• Behaviourists?

  • Started by John Watson 1913
  • Pavlov
  • Skinner
• Classical conditioning: Pavlov

  • Studied by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov
  • Looked at natural releases and neutral stimuli
  • He managed to condition dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through repeated association of the sound of the bell and food
  • Attachment due to association with food
• Classical conditioning: Watson and Rayner 


  • The Little Albert experiment
  • Little Albert: Shown a rat and at the same time hears a loud noise that scares him
  • Watson does this enough times causing Albert to associate the rat with the loud noise as his flight or fight response is triggered
  • Illustrates that you can create a phobia in someone through classical conditioning  
• Classical conditioning explained

  • UCS-> UCR                       
  • UCS+NS-> UCR
  • CS-> CR
• Theory

  People believed that the only reason a baby loves it’s mother is because she feeds it
• Operant conditioning: Skinner

  B.F Skinner
• The law of reinforcement

  The probability of a response occurring increases if it is followed by a reward, or positive reinforcement, such as food or praise. Or when something unpleasant is removed, negative reinforcement (more likely to repeat a behaviour than if you are punished)
• Primary reinforcers


  rewarding stimuli that are needed for life
• Secondary reinforcers:


  rewarding stimuli associated with primary reinforcers
• Continuous reinforcement:


   the state of affairs in operant conditioning in which every response is followed by a reward
• Partial reinforcement:


  schedules of reinforcement in operant conditioning in which only some responses are rewarded
• Punishment:


  unpleasant consequences that reduce the likelihood of you repeating the behaviour 
• Reinforcement effectiveness


  Negative reinforcement is the fastest way to make someone learn, it is stronger/more effective than positive reinforcement
• Evaluation: Strength


  Well controlled research

  • Highly controlled lab settings 
  • By breaking down behaviour into basic stimulus-response units, extraneous variables are removed (allows causes and effect relationships to be established)
  • E.g. Skinner able to clearly demonstrate reinforcement influenced in animal behaviour 
  • Scientific credibility
• Evaluation: Strength

  Real world application

  • Operant conditioning is the basis of token economy systems and have been used in institutions such as prisons successfully 
  • Work by rewarding particular behaviour with tokens that can be exchanged for privileges 
  • E.g classical conditioning has been applied to the treatment of phobias
  • Increases the value of the behaviourist approach because it has widespread application 
• Evaluation: Limitation

  Environmental determinism

  • Sees all behaviour as conditioned by past conditioned experiences 
  • Skinner suggests that everything we do is the sum total of our reinforcement history 
  • We have no free will, our past conditioning history determined the outcome 
  • This is an extreme position and ignored the influence of conscious decision -making processes on behaviour
• Evaluation: Limitation


  Ethical issues

  • High degree of control over experimental subjects 
  • Animals were housed in harsh, cramped conditions and deliberately kept below their natural weight so they were always hungry
• Behaviourism for 16 markers

  • Nurture
  • Reductionist
  • Nomothetic