behaviourist approach Flashcards
Who was wundt?
father of experimental psychology
What university did wundt go to?
leizburg and heidelburg
What did he do a university?
delivered first university course on scientific psychology
What did he do?
wrote first text book on principles of physiological psychology
What did he set up st leizburg university?
he set up first laboratory of experimental psychology
What did he discover?
he separated psychology from philosophy and biology and became the first person to be called a psychologist
What did he discover?
showed that introspection could be used to study mental states in replicable laboratory experiments
What is introspection?
the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures or thoughts images and sensations
Summarise Wundt’s method of studying introspection
he introduced a stimulus to the participant and ask the participant to record their thoughts and feelings, images and sensations, the participant was Wundt’s PHD students -simple sensory process
What are empirical methods?
scientific research methods that uses observeations and experiments to find concrete evidence
How was Wundt criticised?
Watson said that it was subjective( that it was only opinion based )
Watson believed that introspection wasn’t an empirical method
Watson argued that behaviourism was a more appropriate approach
Why was introspection not reliable?
We can only report a fragment of what we are thinking and often have little awareness of the process that influences are decisions
What is behaviour?
Behaviour is the way we act around people in certain situations
No mental process
Ignores mental processes of the mind as it focusses on behaviour that can be observed-cognitive
Controlled and measurable
Study behaviours in labs
high control over variables
highly scientific
Assumptions of behaviourist
-Behaviourists don’t lie introspection as they believe its too vague
-we are born as a blank slate, as everything we become is shaped by the process of learning from our environment
-They rely on labs to acheive this
key points of behaviourism
no mental process
controlled and measurable
human learning is the same as animal learning
What is classical conditioning?
classical conditioning is learning through association and first demonstrated by ian pavlov
Describe pavlovs method of classical conditioning
First the dogs were presented with the food, they salivated. the food was the unconditioned stimulus and salvation was an unconditioned innate response
Then Pavlov sounded the bell,(neutral stimulus) before giving the food. After a few soundings the dogs salivated when they heard the bell eve when no food was given . The bel had become the unconditioned stimulus and salvation had become the the conditioned response
The dogs had learnt to associate the bell with the food and the sound of the bell and salvation was triggered by the sound of the bell.
What did skinner do?
Discover operant conditioning
What did Skinner argue?
That learning is an active process
What is positive reinforcement?
Receiving an award for good behaviour
What is negative reinforcement?
Occurs when performing an action stops something unpleasant happening
What is a punishment?
This is an unpleasant consequence
What are the strengths of a behaviourist?
-very scientific and usually uses controlled experimental methods
- Allows psychologists to investigate the effect of the environment on behaviour
-Many useful applications such as desensitisation
What are the limitations of behaviourist?
- scientific experiments which lack ecological validity
-many animal studies are used which open up the ethical debate and cause problems when generalising to humans
-it is reductionist as it ignores the influences of nature and cognition on behaviour
