Behaviourist approach

Question 1

ASSUMPTION 1: humans are born like a blank slate

Answer 1

• Our mind is a ‘tabula rasa’, all our behaviour is learned.
• central to this assumption is the support for the idea of nurture rather than nature, the view that social and environmental factors have the greatest influence on behaviour, over and above innate and biological factors
• it ignores factors such as genetics, physiology and evolution (all examples of nature in explaining behaviour.
• the perspective is termed environmental determinism e.g. dentists = pain etc,behaviour is determined by the environment; good behaviour is rewarded etc

Question 2

ASSUMPTION 2: behaviour learned through conditioning

Answer 2

• behaviour is learned through operant and classical conditioning.

Question 3

what is operant conditioning?

Answer 3

• in Operant conditioning new behaviours are learned through positive reinforcement. a reinforcer is something that will increase the chance that behaviour will occur again.
• B.F Skinner (1938) demonstrated via the skinner box that an animal can learn behaviour through being rewarded
• animals in the experimented that were given a food pellet when they pressed the lever (positive reinforcement) were more likely to press the lever than animals given an electric shock (negative reinforcement).
• tested on mice

Question 4

what is classical conditioning?

Answer 4

• in classical conditioning, new behaviours are learned through association
• pavlov (1902) first observed classical conditioning within the salivation of dogs
• before conditioning, food is an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and salivation is an unconditioned response (UCR)
• during conditioning, a neutral stimulus (NS) such as the sound of a bell is presented alongside the UCS, this is repeated, this is where association occurs.
• after conditioning, the bell is now the conditioned stimulus (CS), which produces a conditioned response (CR), salivation.

Question 5

ASSUMPTION 3: humans and animals learn in similar ways.

Answer 5

• the laws of learning are the same humans as they are animals
• Pavlov developed the principles of classical conditioning. the same principles have been applied in behaviourist therapies, to help overcome problems such as phobias. in systematic desensitisation, for example, the client will learn to associate the phobia with relaxation instead of feelings of anxiety.

Question 6

STRENGTH: Scientific approach

Answer 6

• behaviourism was first introduced by John B. Watson at the beginning of the 20 century. he recognised that Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes could be used to create a really objective, and therefore scientific, psychology. Behaviourism continues to embody the truly scientific approach, seeking to study behaviour that is observable and directly measurable. intangible concepts such as feelings and thoughts are operationalised in terms of stimulus and response behaviours. Behaviourists believe that, through the use of the scientific method, we can analyse, quantify and compare behaviour.
• such a scientific approach is advantageous because it enables us to distinguish mere beliefs from real facts. for example, people may believe that wearing a gold token around your neck will ward off evil spirits, but how would we know this to be true without conducting experiments.

Question 7

STRENGTH: focus on the here and now

Answer 7

• the behaviourist approach is not concerned with events in a person’s past. Other approaches in psychology seek to explain a person’s behaviour in terms of things that happened in childhood, or in terms of innate factors.
• The behaviourist approach means that the treatment of mental disorders does not have to look for complicated causes but just focuses on the current symptoms and trying to remove them.
• E.g aversion therapy is used to treat alcoholism by teaching the person a new stimulus - response link between alcohol and nausea, thus reducing the undesirable behaviour. The treatment does not seek to understand why the person may have turned to alcohol.
• some people prefer such a direct approach and the success of such therapies suggests that it is not always necessary to look for deep meanings. On the other hand, the approach does not work for all people or all disorders. This suggests that focus on the here and now is not always sufficient.

Question 8

STRENGTH: Successful applications

Answer 8

• Behaviourist principles have been successfully applied in the real world, most notably in the treatment of mental disorders and in education. e.g classical conditioning principles are applied in aversion therapy to help people with addictions, and they have also been applied in systematic desensitisation to help people suffering from phobias.
• In education, operant conditioning underlies successful teaching strategies. positive reinforcement and punishment have helped shape behaviour in the classroom, as well as in the school environment in general.

Question 9

WEAKNESS: emphasis on nurture

Answer 9

• The behaviourist approach focuses exclusively on the surrounding environment as a means of shaping behaviour. Therefore, in terms of the nature - nurture debate, the role of nature is ignored.
• for example behaviourists would not conside how our genetic make-up could influence personality and behaviour.
• in addition, the role of external factors (i.e nurture) is exaggerated within this approach. If learning was all that mattered, then everyone could become a surgeon or a rocket scientist. Our behaviour is governed by many internal factors, such as motivation, emotion and innate abilities.

Question 10

WEAKNESS: determinist approach

Answer 10

• Behaviourists believe that behaviour is influenced almost exclusively by the association we make between certain environmental stimuli (classical conditioning), or the rewards/punishments provided by our environment (operant conditioning). Thus people are controlled by external (environmental) factors.
• The determinist approach does not consider the thought processes that occur before e behave in a certain way, and suggests that we are not making a choice when we behave. This view that our environment determines how we act undermines the choice of free will that we have as human beings when making such decisions it means that people cannot make choices and have no personal or moral responsibility or their behaviour.
• The implications of this are that people cannot be held responsible for any wrongdoing - instead they should simply be punished in order to change their behaviour rather than being taught to think responsibly.

Question 11

WEAKNESS: more relevant to animals than humans.

Answer 11

• It is worth remembering that behaviourism has its roots in experiments with non human animals, such as the research by Pavlov and Skinner. Systematic desensitisation was also initially developed in research with animals.
• Wolpe (1958) created a phobia in cats by placing them in cages and administering repeated electric shocks. he then found he could reduce this learned anxiety response by placing food near a cage that was similar to the original. The act of eating apparently diminished their anxiety response (reciprocal inhibition), and gradually the cats could be placed in cages that were more and more similar to the original cages without symptoms of anxiety.
• Human anxiety may not always respond in the same way, Wolpe (1973), treated one woman for a fear of insects and found SD did not cure her phobia. It turned out that later her husband, with whom she has not been getting along, was nicknamed after an insect. So her fear was not the result of conditioning, but a means of representing her marital problems;Wolpe recommended marital counselling, which succeeded where SD failed.

Question 12

What are the strengths of the behaviourist approach?

Answer 12

• Scientific
• focus on the here and now
• successful applications

Question 13

What are the weaknesses of the behaviourist approach?

Answer 13

• emphasis on nurture
• determinist approach
• more relevant to animals than humans

Question 14

What are the assumptions of the behaviourist approach?

Answer 14

• humans are born like a blank slate
• behaviour learned through conditioning
• humans and animals learn in similar ways.

Question 15

How does the behaviourist explain the formation of relationships?

Answer 15

Operant conditioning:

• following operant conditioning principles, reinforcements and punishments drive our behaviour. A new relationship may be positively reinforcing in many ways, for example, the attention someone gives us, their compliments or even the company of someone we like is rewarding. for these reasons, we are likely to repeat the behaviour, that is, spend more time with them. Also, being with somebody else may help us avoid feelings of rejection and loneliness.
• Classical conditioning;
• In addition to liking people with whom we share a pleasant experience, we also like people who are associated with pleasant events. If we meet someone when we are feeling happy (positive mood), we are much more inclined to like them when we are feeling unhappy

Question 16

How are the assumptions of the behaviourist approach applied to Aversion therapy?

Answer 16

• The main assumption of the behaviourist approach is that all behaviour is learned. behaviourist therapies use the principles of classical and operant conditioning in order to help people learn behaviour. The underlying principles of the behavioural therapies are based on the notion that most forms of mental illness occur through maladaptive or faulty learning; therefore a person can relearn how to behave in a ore functional, healthy way.
• Aversion therapy uses classical conditioning to help patients learn to associate the undesirable behaviour with undesirable feelings, e.g. associate alcohol with feeling sick.
• Aversion therapy uses drugs which reward patients for abstinence with feelings of calmness, that is, positive reinforcement, the idea is that good behaviour is rewarded, and so will be repeated.

Question 17

What are the main components of Aversion therapy?

Answer 17

• Individuals are repeatedly presented with an aversive (that is, unpleasant, stimulus, such as an electric shock or a drug that makes them feel nauseous at the same timethat they are engaging in the undesirable behaviour being treated. (Note the use of the electric is not the same as electroconvulsive therapy.
• The aversive stimulus (the shock) is a UCS which produces a UCR, such as avoidance. When the stimulus (the shock) is repeatedly paired with the undesirable behaviour (such as drinking alcohol), the behaviour (for example, violence, which was an NS and is now a CS), leads to the same consequences . As a result clients lose their wish to engage in the undesirable behaviour.
• Aversion therapy uses operant conditioning to help patients. By making the association between a pleasant stimulus (alcohol) and an unpleasant response (feelings of sickness), the person should tend to avoid future contact with the stimulus, for example, an alcoholic might avoid going to a pub or other social situations where people are drinking. thus negative reinforcement is in operation.

Question 18

Evaluate the effectiveness of Aversion Therapy?

Answer 18

• In a study on alcoholics, Miller (1978) compared the effectiveness of three types of treatment:
  1: Aversion therapy (using shock)
  2: Counselling therapy + aversion
  3: Counselling
  ONe year later, recovery was the same for all groups, indicating that aversion theory offered no benefit.
  In contrast, smith et al (1997) found that alcoholics treated with aversion therapy (using shocks or a drug to induce nausea) had higher abstinence rates after one year than those treated with counselling alone. Smith (1988) also reported success with a group of 300 smokers; 52% of those treated with shocks maintained abstinence after one year.
  Dropout:
• Bancroft (1992) reported that up to 50% of patients either refuse treatment or drop out of aversion therapy programmes, which makes it difficult to evaluate.
  Symptom substitution:
• Although therapies based on behaviourist assumptions can be effective in modifying behaviour, critics argue that the therapies fail to treat the possible underlying causes. The problem of this is that the original symptom may be removed (alcoholism) yet a new one will appear for example gambling.

Question 19

Evaluate the ethical issues of Aversion Therapy.

Answer 19

The treatment of homosexuality;
- For many years aversion therapy was used in the UK and USA as a treatment to cure homosexuality. Shockingly it wasn’t until 2006 that the American Psychiatric Society (APA) considered this method too unethical. The method was used on men, and involved them being given drugs to make them feel nauseous, as well as being placed in dirty surroundings whilst being shown pin up pictures of males. it was thought this would cause them to form an association between negative feelings and the images in order to turn them straight.
Control;
- Aversion therapy is seriously unpleasant for the patient, and for this reason has been branded unethical. Techniques which involved punishment in particular, for example electric shocks have been criticised for exercising too much control over the patient, and brainwashing them into treatment.
- However this therapy cannot be administered without full patient consent, where all the other attempts at treatment have failed. Also, new developments in aversion therapy have resulted in more refined treatments.
In response to such ethical criticism, some therapists will use covert sensitisation as an alternative ‘milder’ form of therapy.