OCR AS Psychology: Core Studies - Behaviourist Perspective (2)

Describe how the behaviourist perspective could explain gambling behaviour: Griffiths studied the cognitive biases held by regular fruit machine gamblers. This study focuses on how individual differences in behaviour can occur, although Griffiths suggests that one of the reasons people become addicted to gambling is the use of variable reinforcement (sometimes you win) and 'near misses'. This is a behaviourist strategy used by casinos, owners of amusement arcades and The National Lottery to ensure that people keep coming back. Other Behaviourist explanations: Savage-Rumbaugh et al reported on an opportunistic case study of two pygmy chimps who appeared to have spontaneously developed the ability to use symbols to communicate in much the same way humans use spoken and other symbolic language systems. The researchers were keen to point out that this use was spontaneous, although it is also stated in the study that the pygmy chimps had observed their mother's training using the lexigram symbols, which involved operant techniques of reinforcement. This indicates that social learning and vicarious reinforcement (learning from the outcomes for others) also played a role in the use of the symbols. Similarity: One similarity between studies which could be considered from the behaviourist perspective is the use of observations as a data collection technique.In Savage-Rumbaugh, Chimpanzees were observed using the lexigrams throughout the research, with high levels of control in the formal tests. In Bandura’s research time sampling was used of a videoed observation lasting 20 minutes.Difference: One difference between studies which could be considered from the behaviourist perspective is that Savage-Rumbaugh did not have a large sample size (only 4 main chimpanzees) whilst Bandura Ross and Ross had a much larger sample of 72 participants, ...representative and ... more generalisable conclusions than SR.