Evaluation of the behaviourist approach

• Behaviourists have significantly contributed to the still-developing recognition of psychology as a science. The experimental methods used by Pavlov and Skinner rejected the earlier emphasis in psychology on introspection and encouraged research that focused on more objective dimensions of behaviour.
• According to behaviourists, their emphasis on the scientific method has led to an increasingly valid and reliable understanding of human behaviour. These methods have also helped psychology gain credibility and status as a scientific discipline, which in turn attracts more funding and research opportunities.
• The behaviourists were influential in encouraging the use of animals as research subjects.
• Using non-human animals in research gives experimenters more control over the process, without demand characteristics or social desirability bias influencing findings.
• Many consider using animals in experiments to be unethical as there is less concern about protection from harm for non-human subjects.
• Some argue that findings from animal experiments are not generalisable to human behaviour: Skinner’s operant conditioning theory may provide an understanding of rat behaviour, but not human behaviour
• The behaviourist approach has made important contributions to our modern understanding of human mental illness. For example, many phobias are thought to be the result of earlier unpleasant learning experiences.
• The improved understanding of mental illness as a result of the behaviourist approach has helped psychologists develop therapies such as systematic desensitisation that attempt to re-condition a patient's fear response
• Some addictions can be better understood through operant conditioning- for example, the monetary rewards of gambling could be seen to reinforce the destructive behaviour. This demonstrates that the behaviourist approach has many real-world applications in the understanding or treatement of abnormal behaviour.
• The behaviourist approach has been criticised for its limited view regarding the origins of behaviour. Behaviourists ignore alternative levels of explanation including the role of cognition and emotional factors in influencing behaviour.
• Skinner believed that even the most complex of human interactions could be explained using operant conditioning principles.
• Since the behavioural approach suggests that all behaviour is learned, it falls on the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate, in which our experiences and surroundings shape our behaviour directly rather than any internal or biological factors.
• The fact that behaviourists believe that behaviour is controlled by something as simple as a stimulus-response association, as in classical conditioning, is an example of environmental determinism. Behaviourists argue that humans have little choice in their behaviour, and our behaviour is simply the product of environmental learning.