Behaviourist

• Behaviourist approach was developed to make psychology more scientific with high control experiments
• Classical Conditioning


  Learning through association

  • NS consistently paired with the UCS to become CS
• Pavlov (1897)

  Dogs associating bell with food and salivating
• Operant Conditioning


  Learning through trial and error

  • Making the connection between behaviour and concequences
• Skinner (1938)


  Rats learning to pull a lever for reward of food, and learning to press a button to prevent floor electrocution
• Positive Reinforcement


  Adding a stimulus to increase behaviour
• Negative Reinforcement


  Removing a stimulus to increase a behaviour
• Behaviourists believe that humans are born with a 'blank slate' (tabula rasa)
• Punishment


  Adding a stimuli to decrease behaviour
• Extinction


  Stopping reinforcement will stop behaviour
• (+) A03: Watson


  Little Albert, learnt fear response to white rats

  • Seeing a rat whilst hitting pole behind head to create CS
• (+) A03: Real Life Application

  Used to develop treatments like counter-conditioning to prevent phobias
• (-) A03: Unethical


  Used in settings to condition and control behaviours through token economies, such as prisons to prevent behaviours, no application to normal society
• (-) A03: Deterministic

  Environmental determinism due to believing that there is no free will involved in decision making, that the environment controls behaviours learnt