BehaviourismSummary:

All human behaviour is learned.

The essence of the behavioural approach is the first assumption that all behaviour is learned, and that when we are born we are like a blank slate (“tabula rasa”).Experience and interactions with the environment make us what we are.

We become what we become as a result of forming stimulus-response units of behaviour in reaction to the environment. This perspective has been called environmental determinism because it suggests that our behaviour is determined by the environments in which we exist. Task:

Make a list of some of things you have learned to do throughout your life. How did you learn that something was a bad thing to do?How did you learn something was good?

Do you think you would have learned different things if you had been brought up somewhere else?The second assumption is that all behaviour can be explained in terms of conditioning theory: stimulus and response links that build up to produce more

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complex behaviours. In essence; conditioning refers to changing behaviour in the absence of conscious thought. This means the person is unaware of why they are doing what they are doing.

Task:Make a list of some of the things that you do without even thinking.Where do you think you originally learned to do some of these things?

The third assumption is that virtually any response can be conditioned to any stimulus. This is particularly obvious in advertising. Successful adverts will get you to unconsciously associate their Brand Name (Stimulus) with a Positive feeling (Response). This will make you more likely to buy it, because for some reason you can’t quite put into words, it makes you feel good. Task: Name some brand names and products, and your emotional reaction to them.Where did this emotional response come from?Can you think of any adverts that have been very successful? Why is this?The fourth assumption is that we need look no further than the behaviour we can

observe in order to explain and

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understand how humans and non-humans operate. This is why of course it is called behaviourism. The focus is solely on observable behaviour. This means we only look at what people do in reaction to a stimulus. There is no need to look at perception, attention, language, memory, thinking and so on- it is sufficient to focus only on external and observable behaviours. Later behaviourists, such as Bandura, did recognise the importance of internal processes (eg: self-efficacy) so what has been said so far applies mostly to the approach taken by early behaviourists such as Watson and Skinner.Task:Write what your behaviour response would be to these stimuli (remember: it must be physical and observable):

1. You get out the shower and see a spider.2. A violent scene comes on the television.3. It starts raining and you’re outside.4. A person you are attracted to sits next to you in class.5. Your Psychology teacher is obviously in a mood already

and you haven’t done your homework.6. You have just seen an advert for your favourite food.

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The fifth assumption of the behavioural approach is that humans and non-human animals are only quantitatively different; i.e. they differ in terms of having more or less of something rather than differing qualitatively. This means that behaviourists can generalise from non-human animals (such as rats and pigeons) to human behaviour.

A lot of behaviourist research is conducted with non-human animals, although this is less the case than it used to be.

Task:What things do you have in common with animals?Are there any things that make humans unique over animals?

If a monkey/dog/rat has a certain response to a certain stimulus; does that mean that a human will?

There are contrasting perspectives within behaviourism:

Methodological behaviourism- The view that all perspectives use some behaviourist concepts to explain behaviour.Radical behaviourism- The view that all behaviour is learned. Skinner was a radical behaviourist but most behaviourists nowadays would take a less radical view.

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Neo-behaviourism- This is a newer development and an extension of behaviourism.

The best known example of Neo-behaviourism is social learning theory, an attempt by Albert Bandura to reformulate learning theory to include a role for cognitive and internal factors. There are three key concepts in Bandura’s social learning theory.

1) We often learn by observing other people and seeing whether their behaviour is rewarded or punished- thus, there is no need to actually carry out actions ourselves for learning to occur. Learning what actions are punished or rewarded by observation alone is known as vicarious reinforcement.

2) Internal factors are important in learning, for example, if we believe we can succeed on some task (eg. we have high self-efficacy) we are more likely to succeed.

3) The environment influences us but we also influence the environment by our actions- this is known as reciprocal determinism.

In other words, by your own actions you can create the circumstances you find yourself in. These circumstances,

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which you yourself created, then lead to further actions, in a negative feedback loop.

Task:Can you think of something you learned to do just by watching other people?

Do you think Bandura’s social learning theory is a better idea than Radical Determinism? Or do you think we all need to experience something to truly learn it?

Can you think of a situation where you thought you would fail, and you did? Do you think your mind-set contributed to your failure?

Do you think it is true that you can achieve things if you think positively?

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Behaviourists have been asking for many years, which is a better motivator: Punishment or Reward?

Early behaviourists never distinguished between punishment and reward, they saw them both as equally motivating. However this is not the case:

Imagine you broke a plate, and later told your Mum that you had broken the plate.

Your Mum, being angry, shouts at you.

You won’t associate breaking the plate with the punishment; you’ll associate telling with the punishment. Next time you may not be so truthful and instead just say nothing. Perhaps you may even hide what you have done, just to avoid punishment...Stimulus: “Tell Mum about broken plate” Response: “Get yelled at”

“Don’t tell Mum about the broken plate” “Don’t get yelled at”

Punishment it seems does not stop behaviour, and it can in fact encourage other negative behaviour.

Strengths and weaknesses of the behaviourist approach

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Strengths

Behaviour conditioning forms a fundamental part of psychological explanations. Conditioning has been demonstrated as successful in numerous species, under a variety of conditions. E.g. Dog training.

Many successful applications have been derived from the behavioural approach. For example behaviour therapy is clearly successful for certain mental disorders, such as phobias.

Social skills training is also related to learning theory and may be the best way to teach some individuals how to acquire certain skills (eg. teaching an autistic child some

basic self-care)

Social learning theory has also been applied to education. Skinner advocated programmed learning, a method of teaching whereby the task is broken down into individual “frames” or very small steps. A correct response acts as a reward.

Weaknesses

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The behavioural approach is based on the assumption that conditioning principles operate in similar ways in different species. By so doing, the behaviourists drastically underestimated the differences between species . This called Reductionism; it reduces the complexity of the behaviour, so much so it loses its original meaning & depth. For example, humans possess language and animals do not. This transforms our learning ability to be different to that of an animal. Rats who have learned to press a lever for a food reward will continue to keep pressing for a long time after food has stopped being provided. In contrast

most people will stop immediately if told that no more rewards will be given.

Behaviourism also suffers further from Reductionism because not all animals are the same, nor are their reactions to stimuli. The behaviourists such as Skinner

argued that virtually any response could be conditioned in any situation. In fact this is not the case. Cook and Mineka (1989) found that monkeys learned a fear response of a snake much faster than a fear response to a rabbit. Evolutionary explanations of human behaviour suggest that we are biologically more prepared to fear animals that were dangerous in our ancestral past, as opposed to ones that were not.

According to Skinner, behaviour is determined almost

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entirely by external stimuli, especially those signalling rewards and punishments, so they do not play any part in choosing their own actions. However, this view exaggerated the importance of external or environmental factors and minimised the role of internal factors (e.g. goals). This is called Determinism; it is too simple to say all behaviour is determined by external stimuli, without any choice at all made by the person. This takes away a person’s Free-will! They cannot choose how they will behave.Most Neo-behaviourists (such as Bandura) have accepted that this view is too limited, and have agreed that the factors determining behaviour include internal factors as well as external ones.

Nature vs.Nurture- Behaviourist’s assume that behaviour is determined by learning and environmental factors and largely (or even totally) ignored genetic factors. This assumption has been amply disproved in studies on genetic factors in intelligence, and on the causes of schizophrenia and depression.

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Different people react to exactly the same stimuli in different ways. The behaviourists assumed that any individual differences in behaviour could be explained in terms of differences in conditioning history. However, they have never shown this to clearly be the case, because it is very difficult to establish someone’s conditioning history over a period of several years. In addition, they failed to acknowledge the role of genetic factors in accounting for individual differences in intelligence and in susceptibility to various mental disorders.

Methodology

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The behaviourists were among the first psychologists to carry out proper laboratory experiments. In these experiments, the emphasis was on controlling the environment by manipulating certain stimuli or independent variables (eg: presentation of a tone in Pavlov’s research on conditioning of dogs) and then observing the participants behaviour (dependent variables). One way in which control was achieved was by using fairly sparse conditions so that the participants weren’t distracted by irrelevant stimuli. This meant it would be easier to see a causal link between the IV & DV, without any other possible variables

being an issue. It was then assumed that any findings in the laboratory applied to the real world.

Thus, the behaviourists made extensive use of the experimental method in their research. We will talk more about

this later. End of approach Task

1) Outline the 5 assumptions of the behaviourist approach in your own words, and give at least 2 strengths and 2 weaknesses of this approach.

2) Describe the methodology used in the behaviourist approach

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