BEHAVIOURIST Assumptions Flashcards
What does the behaviourist approach believe?
Born neutral with no personality
Environment shapes who you are
Conditioned
Human behaviour should be studied scientifically
Thoughts and feelings exist but are not worthy of study
Behaviour can be reduced to stimulus - response relationships
Assumption - Humans are born as a blank slate
Humans are born as Tabula Rasa “ blank slate”
We are not born with in-built mental content
Internal events such as thinking and emotion do not drive our behaviour
Belief that our behaviour is learned from interactions with the environment
Responds to stimuli
Social and environmental factors have the greatest influence
Environmental determinism is our behaviour determined by the environment that we grew up in
What is classical conditiong?
Classical Conditioning is learnt through association
An association is made between a previously unlearned response and a neutral response
If the two are paired enough times, the neutral response will produce the unlearned response
Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1946) discovered classical conditioning by performing on dogs
Noticed that dogs would start salivating as soon as the lab assistant would walk into the room to feed them
What is operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning involves learning through consequence
Rewards and punishment are used to alter our behaviour
Positive reinforcement - Desirable is given in order that a behaviour will be repeated
Negative reinforcement - Undesirable is taken away in order that a behaviour will be repeated
Positive punishment - Undesirable is given in order that a behaviour will not be repeated
Negative punishment - Desirable is taken away in order that a behaviour will not be repeated
BF Skinner made a box that contained a lever for an animal to press for food to be delivered, it had a speaker and lights that could be used to trigger a behaviour and a shock generator was connected to the floor to deliver an electric shock in response to behaviour
Complete control over everything the animal inside would experience
Desired behaviour could be conditioned in the animal
Assumption 3 - Animals and Humans are the same
Both animals and humans are products of their environment and for both of them, all their behaviour is determined by stimulus response relationships
Generalise from humans to animals
Principles of operant and classical conditioning have been generalised from animals to humans
Classical conditioning has been used to treat phobias
Operant conditioning have been used to shape behaviour in schools
Relationship formation - Operant conditioning
New relationships may be positively reinforcing in many ways so we are more likely to repeat the behaviour (spend more time with them)
Attention / Compliments
Being with somebody we are more likely to help us avoid feelings of loneliness and rejection
Successfully avoiding these feelings is also reinforcing
We may feel punished if in a relationship (eg. excluded from events)
Punishment will decrease the likelihood that we will want to be alone
Relationship formation - Classical conditioning
We also like people who are associated with pleasant events
Meet someone when we are happy, we are much more inclined to like them than if we meet them when we are feeling unhappy
Previously neutral stimulus can become positively valued because of their association with a pleasant event
