Behaviourist approach evaluation Flashcards
Scientific Credibility = Strength
Behaviourism was able to bring the langauge and methods of the natural sciences into psychology by focusing on the measurement of observable behaviour within highly controlled lab settings. By emphasising the importance of scientific processes such as objectivity and replication, behaviourism was influential in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline, giving it greater credibility & status.
Real - Life Application = Strength
The principles of conditioning have been applied to a broad range of real-world behavioirs and problems. For instance, operant conditioning is the basis of the token economy systems that have been used successfully in institutuions, such as prisons and psychiatric wards. These works by rewarding appropriate behaviour with tokens that can then be exchanged for privileges. Treatments such as the treatment of phobias have the advantage of requiring less effort from a patient because the patient doesn’t have to think about their problem. Such therapies are also suitable for patients who lack insight.
Mechanistic view of behaviour = weakness
From a behaviourist perspective, animals (including humans) are seen as passive and machine - like responders to the environment, with little or no conscious insight into their behaviour. Other approaces in psychology, such as the social learning theory and the cognitive approach, have emphasised the importance of menral events during learning. These processes, which mediate between stimulus and response, suggest that people may play a much more active role in their own learning. This means that learning theory may apply less to human than to animal behaviour.
Environmental Determinism
the behaviourist approach sees all behaviour as determined by past experiences that have been conditioned. Skinner suggested that everything we do is the sum total of our reinforcement history. This ignores any possible influence that any sense of free will is simply an illusion. When something happens we impose a sense of having made the decision but, according to Skinner, our past conditioning history determined the outcome.
Ethical & Practical Issues in Animal Experiments
Although experimental procedures such as the Skinner Box enabled behaviourists to maintain a high degree of control over theor experimental ‘subjects’, many critics have questioned the ethics of conducting such investigations. The animals incolved were exposed to stressful and aversive conditions, which may also have affected how they reacted to the experimental situation
