Behaviourist approach Flashcards
What are the key assumptions of the behaviourist approach?
- all behaviours are learnt from our environment
- focus on observable behaviour (behaviour that can be seen)
- animals and humans learn in the same way so behaviourists carry out experiments on animals and extrapolate the results to humans
- psychology should be scientific and the only things that could be objectively measured were the stimulus (input) and response (output), therefore behaviourists use mainly laboratory experiments to achieve this
- to behaviourists directly measuring the mind was untestable due to being subject bias
What is classical conditioning?
Learning by association it was first demonstrated by Pavlov who showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell or the sound was repeatedly present at the same time they were fed.
What was the process of Pavlovs classical conditioning experiment?
The dogs were presented with food, they salivated. The food was the unconditioned stimulus and salivation was an unconditioned response.
Then Pavlov sounded the bell the neutral stimulus before giving food. The bell and food had a temporal association because the two stimuli were experienced close together, so an association was formed. After a few pairings the dogs salivated when hearing the sound even when no food was present. The bell had become the conditioned stimulus and salivation had become a conditioned response. Salivation was triggered by the sound of the bell.
What is operant conditioning?
Learning by consequences, skinner argued that learning is an active process. When humans and animals act on and in their environment consequences follow these behaviours. If the consequences are pleasant they may repeat the behaviour if the consequences are negative they may no repeat the behaviour.
What is negative reinforcement?
Negative reinforcement occurs when performing an action stops something unpleasant from happening. Eg when a rat in skinner’s experiment had to press a lever to stop receiving an electric shock.
What is positive reinforcement?
Positive reinforcement is when a behaviour is followed by a desirable consequence a reward and is more likely to be repeated.
What is a punishment?
This is an unpleasant consequence.
What is a positive punishment?
It is adding something unpleasant
What is a negative consequence?
It is removing something pleasant
What is the Skinner box?
A hungry rat was placed in a cage. Every time he activated the lever a food pellet fell in the food dispenser which was positive reinforcement. The rats quickly learnt to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. This suggests that positive reinforcement increases the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated.
- in another experiment, a rat was placed in a cage in which they were subjected to an uncomfortable electrical current as he moved around the cage the rat hit the lever, this immediately switched off the electrical current which was negative reinforcement. The rats quickly learnt to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. This suggests that negative reinforcement increases the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated. This experiment was an example of shaping as skinner reinforced successive approximations to get to the final target behaviour (ie every time the rat pulled the lever it was given food, even before it had figured out the association).
How is it applicable?
Behaviourism has increased our understanding of the causes of phobias and attachment. It allows us to develop laws and principles by which to predict and control human behaviour, giving rise to therapies such as systemic desensitisation and token economy.
What is an example of the behaviourist approach?
Watson and Rayner used a 9 month old baby in an experiment to show the importance of the environment over instinct for learning and behaviour. When shown a range of stimuli such as fire, monkeys, dogs etc, Little Albert showed no fear response. A white rat would be presented to Albert paired with a metal bar being hit behind his head to make a loud noise. After a few presentations Albert developed a fear response to the rat which then generalised to anything fluffy or white such as a fur coat, dog , Santa mask etc. Watson found that you could condition a fear response into a baby purely by using the environment.
What support is there for behaviorism?
Behaviorism has experimental support, Pavlov showed that classical conditioning leads to learning by association. Watson and Raynor showed that phobias can be learnt through classical conditioning in the “little albert” experiment.
What is a strength of the behaviorist approach?
One strength is well controlled research, behaviorist’s focused on the measurement of observable behaviour within highly controlled lab settings. By breaking down behaviour into basic stimulus - response units, all other extraneous variables were removed. Allowing a cause and effect relationship to be established. For instance, Skinner was able to clearly demonstrate how reinforcement influenced an animals behaviour. This suggests that behaviourists experiments have scientific credibility.
However the problem with this is that behaviourists may have oversimplified the learning process. By reducing behaviour to such simple components , behaviourists may ignored an important influence learning that of human thought. Approaches such as social learning theory and the cognitive approach has drawn attention to mental processes involved in learning. This suggests that learning is more complex than observable behaviour alone and that private mental processes are also essential.
What is a strength of the behaviorists?
Another strength of the behaviourists approach is that the principles of conditioning have been applied to real world behaviours and problems.
For example operant conditioning is the basis of token economy systems that have been used in successfully in institutions. These work by awarding appropriate behaviour with tokens that are exchanged with privileges. For example of how classical conditioning has been applied to the treatment of phobias.
This increases the value of the behaviourist approach as it has widespread application.
