Behavourism Flashcards
what does the behaviourist approach focus on?
observable behaviour
what should psychology be?
scientific and objective and so they relied on lab experiments.
where is all our behaviour learnt from?
the environment
what do they suggest about animals and humans?
that humans learn in the same way which means that animals can be experimented on in the place of humans
what was the ucs, ucr, ns, cs, cr in palov’s research?
ucs-food ucr-salivation ns-bell ns+ucs=cs cs-bell cr-salivation
what is operant conditioning?
behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences, we operate on our envirnoment.
what did skinner do and find?
they had rats in designed cages called skinners boxes. when a rat activated a lever, it was rewarded with a food pellet (positive reinforcement). a desirable consequence which was the food pellet led to the rat learning how to activate the lever and repeating it.
also if pressing the lever meant that the animal avoided an electric shock( negative reinforcement) behaviour would be repeated.
what is positive reinforcement?
when a certain or desired behaviour is performed and is rewarded leads to a person repeating the behaviour.
what is negative reinforcement?
when a animal or human produces a desired behaviour means they avoid something unpleasant meaning will repeat behaviour.
what is punishment?
something that decreases likelihood of a behaviour in order to avoid an unpleasant consequence.
what is a strength of the behaviourist approach?
it has a real life application. the principles of conditioning have been applied to broad range of real world behaviours. token economy system reward appropriate behaviour with tokens in exchange for privileges, typically in prisons. these suitable for patients who like insight into condition
what is a limitation of behaviourism?
the approach sees all behaviour as determined by past experiences that we have been conditioned to and so ignores influence of free will. this is environmental determinism. skinner said ‘free will was an illusion’. when something happens due to past experiences and decisions. this ignore influence of conscious decision making processes on behaviour.
what is a limitation of the animal research?
it has ethical and practical issues. while experimental procedures such as skinner boxes allow high level of control over their research subjects, they have drawn attention to ethical issues. the animals involved were exposed to stressful and aversive conditions, this affected how react in the situation. this means validity of findings might be questioned because observable behaviour not normal.
