Behaviourist

• Phobias

  Phobias are a learned response from a negative experience. Phobias begin through learning a stimulus- response association via classical conditioning.

  Watson &Raynor- successfully gave little Albert a phobia of white rats through classical conditioning.
• Depression

  Operant conditioning- Lewinsohn- depression occurs due to a reduction in reinforcement due to environmental stressors.

  Classical conditioning- Seligman- people learn to take a passive response when they have had past experiences that have resulted in negative outcomes
• Evaluation of the behaviourist perspective:

  • Reductionist
  • Deterministic
  • Situational
  • Nurture
  • Scientific
  • Socially Sensitive
  • Somewhat Ethnocentric
  • Useful
• A strength of the behaviourist perspective is that it’s scientific as most the research done is in a lab setting with high controls. Watson and Raynor conducted an experiment in a controlled environment and tested if little Albert was scared of the rat beforehand. This is a strength as it means objective data is collected and a cause effect relationship can be identified. However, as little Albert couldn’t speak we couldn’t get any insight and so may have had to interpret how he felt which is subjective.
• A weakness of the behaviour is perspective is it deterministic which implies mental illness is out of our control. This implies phobias will be developed and we have no choice in that as we have been conditioned. This is an issue as it means people may use their mental illness as an excuse to get away with negative behaviour. However, there is some free will as we choose to be passive with learned helplessness and we can choose to seek help for that.