Behaviourist Approach

• key assumptions

  humans are born blank slates

  behaviour is shaped by environment/experience

  use of highly controlled experiments
• operant conditioning

  learning through consequence/reinforcement
• skinner’s box

  rats more likely to produce the behaviour when positively reinforced (pressing the lever releases a food pellet)

  rats more likely to produce the behaviour when negatively reinforced (pressing the lever removes the unpleasant electric shock)
• classical conditioning

  learning through association
• pavlov’s dogs

  demonstrated stimulus/response in dogs

  associated the sound of a ticking metronome/bell (NS) with food (UCS)

  associated the NS with food, forming a CS with CR of drool
• stimulus generalisation

  a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus will occur with similar stimuli

  little albert: fear of white rat also translated onto: dog, fur coat, santa mask
• ao3 - extrapolation issues

  investigations on animals applied to human behaviour
• ao3 - objective scientific method

  variables are systematically manipulated, the behaviour is observable (no inferences) and conducted under controlled conditions - demonstrated cause/effect
• ao3 - environmentally deterministic

  your behaviour is shaped by experience, biological factors do not contribute to behaviour.

  no free will - one experience defines the next, a ‘loop’ of continuous behaviour
• ao3 - potential ethical issues

  how behaviour can be exploited if it is truly down to stimulus/response units
• ao3 - reductionist

  reduces complex human thought processes down to simplistic stimulus/response units