behaviourist approach

• who began the behaviourist movement

  John Watson in 1913
• what is the behaviourist approach

  attempts to explain behaviour in terms of learning, studying changes in behaviour that are caused by a person's direct experience of their environment
• what are explanations called

  stimulus-response (S-R)
• who created classical conditioning

  Ivan Pavlov
• why were labs used

  it is argued that lab experiments are the best way to achieve these outcomes, allowing strict control of any extraneous variables
• why were animals used

  it was more convenient and made replication easier, behaviourists believed there was no qualitative difference between man and animals
• NS


  neutral stimulus
• UCS


  unconditioned stimulus
• UCR


  unconditioned response
• What were paired together

  NS & UCS
• CS 


  conditioned stimulus
• CR


  conditioned response
• What does scientific mean

  only focus on observable behaviour which can be objectively measured
• who created operant conditioning

  Skinner
• what is operant conditioning 


  learning through consequences and reinforcement
• positive reinforcement 


  add or give something positive to make the behaviour more likely
• negative reinforcement 


  something unpleasant stops, to make behaviour more likely
• punishment 


  add something negative to decrease that behaviour
• describe skinners box

  • on a wall there is a lever that delivers food. the rat wanders until it accidentally presses the lever
  • leave the animal in the box and measure how frequently the animal pressed the lever over time
  • frequency indicates the strength of the conditioning of the behaviour
• why do behaviourists not collect qualitative data

  • it is subjective, so not scientifically recognisable
  • it isn't repeatable
  • it is open to interpretation
• what are the positives of the behaviourist approach

  • real life applications
  • scientific credibility
  • using animals
• explain real life applications

  applied to a broad range of behaviours. Classical conditioning has been used to treat phobias, how phobias are learnt allowed development of therapies (systematic desensitisation which attempts to control a patients fear response)
• explain scientific credibility

  brought the methods of science into psychology by focusing on measurable, observable behaviour within highly controlled labs. Emphasised the importance of scientific processes (objectivity & replication)
• explain the positives of using animals

  gives more control, means you reduce the effect of demand characteristics and individual differences, more easily repeatable
• what is a criticism of the behaviourist approach

  ethics of using animals
• explain the negatives of using animals

  the ethics is questioned e.e. pavlov connecting a tube to the dogs cheek, animals also behave differently to animals as humans have much more complex cognitive processes