Psychology Approaches- behaviourist

• Assumptions

  • All behaviour is learnt
  • animal and humans learn in the same way
  • the mind is irrelevant to science as it cannot be observed
• Classical conditioning


  Learning through association
• classical conditioning study


  Ivan Pavlov

  • discovered dogs salivated before they were presented with the food
  • had associated the neutral stimulus food with the unconditioned stimulus of the bell
• Operant conditioning


  learning through reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement 


  A reward for a particular behaviour
• Negative reinforcement 


  Being rewarded by the removal of an unpleasant stimulus
• • both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood of the behaviour
• • both positive punishment and negative punishment decrease the likelihood of the behaviour
• Operant conditioning study

  Skinners box

  • conducted an experiment on rats in a specially designed box
  • every time the rat activated the levers it was rewarded with food( positive reinforcement)
  • Anytime the rat activated the lever it was rewarded by the removal of being electric shocked (negative reinforcement)
• Continuous reinforcement

  Being rewarded after every behaviour
• Variable ratio reinforcement

  Not guaranteed being rewarded after every behaviour
• Advantage of behavioural approach

  Real world applications

  • Classical conditioning used to treat phobias - systematic desensitisation
  • operant conditioning used in the school reward system
  • improve quality of life and raises value
• Disadvantage of behavioural approach

  Mechanistic view on human behaviour

  • animals seen as passive and machine-like with little to no conscious insight on their behaviour
  • Deficiency in this approach compared to later research
  • decreases plausibility
• Advantage of behavioural approach

  scientific credibility

  • research conducted in a highly controlled lab
  • bring methods of natural science into psychology
  • Raises plausibility