The Behaviourist Approach Flashcards
What are the key assumptions?
It studies behaviour that can be observed, all behaviour is learnt, Psychology should be seen as a science, there is little difference between learning in animals and humans, Behaviour is the result of stimulus respoonse links.
What is classical conditioning?
When an unconditoned stimulus, which produces an unconditioned response, and a nuetral stimulus are associated they result in the the conditioned stimilus creating a conditioned response, without the original unconditioned stimiulus.
What is operant conditioning?
Behaviour is either encouraged by positive reinforcement (giving something good) or negative reinforcement (taking away something unpleasant). Behaviour is discouraged by positive punishment (giving something unpleant) or negative punishment (taking away something good)
What was Pavlov’s research?
Pavlov’s dogs experiment involved dogs being given food (an unconditioned stimulus) and a bell being rang at the same time (nuetral stimulus). When they became associated the dog had a conditioned response of salivating when the bell was heard (conditioned stimulus). This happened through classical conditioning.
What was Skinner’s research?
The Skinner Box involves a rat in a box. Everytime the rat activated a leaver, it was rewarded with a food pellet. This lead to the rat pressing the leaver a lot more as it was being rewarded through positive reinforcement, demonstrating operant conditioning.
What was the Little Albert experiment?
The boy was presented with a rat (neutral stimulus) and a loud noise (unconditioned stimulus). When Little Albert was presented with the rat, the noise was also made. This created an association and the rat (conditioned stimulus) created fear in the boy (conditioned response). The fear was also present when presented with other fluffy objects. This happened through classical conditioning.
What are the strengths of the approach?
It has scientific credibility as experiments have been carried out in labs
There is real life application to treat phobias
Using animals has allowed studies to be done on humans that wouldn’t be allowed otherwise.
What are the weaknesses of the approach?
It is determinist, ignoring any influence of free will.
There are differences between animals and humans so evidence may not be true for humans.
There are ethical issues of experimenting on animals
It doesn’t explain aspects such as memory and problem solving as these are internal events which cannot be observed.
