Behaviourism

• Outline behaviourism


  Behaviourism suggests we learn from personal experiences as everyone is born as a blank slate, believing that behaviour is entirely controlled by the environment and that internal processes have no influence. The approach states that we learn behaviour through classical conditioning (learning through association), and operant conditioning (learning through consequence).
• Outline classical conditioning

  Classical conditioning occurs when two stimuli occur together over a period of time so that the unconditioned response (UCR) is transferred to the conditioned stimulus (CS), and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is no longer needed to produce the conditioned response (CR). When the UCS and neutral stimulus (NS) aren't presented together over a long period of time a process called extinction occurs where the CR diminishes.
• Who investigated classical conditioning and how

  Behaviourists usually conduct research through highly controlled lab experiments with animals as they believe we learn the same way. Classical conditioning was investigated by Ivan pavlov in 1897 and john Watson in 1920. Pavlov showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell by presenting it with food, and Watson showed that a baby (little Albert) could be conditioned to express fear towards a rat that had previously only elicited an emotion of happiness, by presenting the rat with a loud banging noise.
• Outline operant conditioning

  When operant conditioning occurs, positive reinforcement (promise of reward) strengthens the behaviour and negative reinforcement (threat of punishment) weakness the behaviour. This is shown through skinners box in 1948 that showed a rat could be conditioned to press a lever in order to release food (positive reinforcement) and avoid an electric shock (negative reinforcement).
• What are the strengths of behaviourism

  high degree of control over extraneous variables ensures they cannot confound the results allowing a cause and effect relationship to be established, e.g. the use of a cage with no other influences in skinners study. Furthermore the standardisation of variables means they can be measured accurately, increasing the internal reliability which in turn increases the external reliability as it can be easily replicated.

  
  

  real life applications e.g. reward systems in schools and prisons (token economy).
• Weaknesses of behaviourism

  The use of animals and children is unethical as they cannot give informed consent and animals have generalisability issues

  
  

  Reductionist and determinist view as it ignores free will and internal processes

  
  

  Artificial conditions lack real world settings therefore it lacks ecological validity.