Behaviorist Approach
- Created by: Beverley
- Created on: 17-04-13 17:44
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- Behaviorist Approach
- Research Methods
- controlled laboratory experiments
- Usually with animals
- controlled laboratory experiments
- Case study
- Watson and Rayner (1920)
- Aim: whether a phobia could be learned
- Method: showed him a white rat. if he tried to touch the rat a hammer would make a loud noise scaring Albert.
- Results: when presented with the rat he was frightened and tried to get away
- Conclusion: they successfully demonstrated behavior is learnt as phobias could be conditioned
- Evaluation: ethical issues, still showed evidence of a phobia after but less evident after a month. Methodological issue, just one case study, can't generalise
- Little Albert
- Watson and Rayner (1920)
- Basic Assumption
- behaviour is learned from experience
- nurture side
- all behavior is learned through reinforvement or punishment
- Law of effect
- can generalize from animal to human behaviours
- Classical Conditioning
- Learning through assocciation
- Ivan Pavlov
- used naturally occuring reflexes in animals
- e.g. Dog salivates when it sees food by ringing the bell with the food, the dog associates the bell with food
- if there is a long time gap between the 2 stimuli association is not learned
- if the bell is repeated rung without food the behaviour is extinguished
- if the tone and volume of bell is changed they still salivate
- e.g. Dog salivates when it sees food by ringing the bell with the food, the dog associates the bell with food
- used naturally occuring reflexes in animals
- Operant conditioning
- behavior is learnt from consequences
- consequences are rewards or punishments
- behaviors that receive punishment are more likely to be repeated
- consequences are rewards or punishments
- Burrhas Frederic Skinner
- Skinner Box
- a hungry rat had to learn to press a lever to get food (the reward)
- Skinner Box
- behavior is learnt from consequences
- Evalutaion
- Strengths
- scientific and attempts to formulate laws of human behavior
- animals used to study as they don't raise ethical issues
- new behaviors can be learnt by people suffering from psychological problems such as phobias
- Limitations
- denial of free will
- sees humans as mechanistic and determined by reinforcement and punichment
- minimises the effects of genes on behavior
- rejects biological approach
- behaviorists believe its easy to generalize between humans and animals
- criticized that all learning results from consequences
- ignores the importance of thinking and emotions
- denial of free will
- Strengths
- Application
- observative behaviour
- therapies eg. systematic desensitisation
- Research Methods
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