Behaviourism

Behaviourism:
The perspective of behaviourism was first acknowledged in 1913 with John B.

Watson’s paper “psychology as the behaviourist views it”, where Watson states that
all behaviourists have the belief that any behaviour is influenced by conditioning, no
matter what other influences that may be. After this point, behaviourism became the
dominant psychological school of thought from the 1920’s up until the 1950’s,
because it was the first school of thought that was truly measurable and objective.
Behaviourists have two main ideas, methodological and radical behaviourism;

and two main focuses, psychological, and analytical behaviourism. Methodological
behaviourism is the main belief of behaviourists, wherein the study of behaviour
should be the main focus of psychology as mental processes are independent from
behaviours and can’t contribute to psychological studies in any form. Radical
behaviourism was created as a theory that one’s past and present environments can be
used to understand why someone was to act positively or negatively. Psychological
behaviourism is the act of trying to explain behaviours through stimuli, responses,
histories, and reinforcements. Finally analytical behaviourism states that behaviours
influence mental states and processes through responses to outside stimuli.
Behaviourism used two methods of conditioning to gather information, these

being classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning was a method where
a created stimulus was used to recreate the outcome of a natural stimulus. This idea of
creating association was the main area of Ivan Pavlov’s experiments where he would
train dogs to learn when food was coming, first through the sound of a bell, then the
sight of a lab coat, up to a point where the response of salivation would be triggered
with just the slightest sight of the lab coat, showing that by training an organism one
way, their outcomes will alter to suit that training, proving behaviourist’s theories.
Operant conditioning on the other hand, uses reward and punishment to alter the
behaviour of an organism. Through this, positive outcomes would become more
likely to re-occur because of a reward for said positive outcome.
The creator of operant conditioning, B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), is regarded as

the most influential psychologist of the 20th century because of his contributions in
the field of behaviourism, that are still widely used in psychology to this day, a clear
example of this is a teacher giving students lollies for good work, the “reward” being
lollies, which reinforce said good behaviour. Skinner believed that all actions that we
as humans demonstrate, was a result of experiences leading to an outcome that would
indicate whether or not to repeat said experience. These outcomes become the
“reinforcement”, a main part of Skinner’s theory, where favourable outcomes would
stem from positive actions, leading to those actions likely being repeated. This theory
was inspired by Edward Thorndike’s law of effect, stating that positive outcomes
would mean that the response would be more likely to reoccur. Skinner became
interested in a scientific study of human behaviour while studying at Harvard, which
is when he created the “Skinner Box”, an apparatus to demonstrate positive
reinforcement on creatures such as mice or pigeons. To help with the war efforts,
Skinner trained pigeons to be used as a missile guidance system seeing as guiding
missiles was unheard of before that time. Skinner was also quite the writer,
publishing many pieces of both fiction and fact demonstrating his ideas of “radical
behaviourism”, with one of these works, Walden Two, describing a society where
people where trained using his theory of operant conditioning to be the perfect
citizen. For the 26 years leading up to his retirement in 1974, Skinner worked at
Harvard University’s psychology department, with his office staying even after he
had retired. The early behaviourists such as John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and Edward
thorndike influenced Skinner to pursue the study of behaviourism, and leave his
novelist career to focus solely on behaviourism.
Behaviourism as a theory was criticised by psychoanalysis for it’s scientific

approach to psychology that meant the inner workings of the mind were tossed to the
side as behaviourists believed that the mind wasn’t something to study because there
was no proof to back up any theories, unlike the observable behaviours that
behaviourists studied closely. Most other perspectives of psychology believed that
behaviourism wasn’t a true study of psychology as it used the scientific method, a
method that wouldn’t work well for psychology, where nothing can be defined as one
way or another. Although psychology has evolved to a point where the mind is truly
observable, the theories of behaviourism are still frequently used to this day, as
behavioural therapy and modification is an integral method of treating forms of
abnormal behaviour. Methods of conditioning has been utilised in gaining
comprehension of topics pertaining to learning, language, moral and gender
development.
References:
Graham, G (January 13, 2023) Behaviourism. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/
Cherry, K (November 7, 2023) What Is Behaviourism? Verywell mind

https://www.verywellmind.com/behavioral-psychology-4157183
Wahome, C (April 27, 2022) What Is Operant Conditioning? Webmd

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-operant-conditioning
Cherry, K (August 23, 2022) B. F. Skinner's Life, Theories, and Influence on Psychology. Verywell
mind https://www.verywellmind.com/b-f-skinner-biography-1904-1990-2795543
Mcleod, S (August 18, 2022) Behaviourist Approach. Simply psychology

https://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html

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Behaviourism:

The perspective of behaviourism was first acknowledged in 1913 with John B.

Behaviourists have two main ideas, methodological and radical behaviourism;

Behaviourism used two methods of conditioning to gather information, these

The creator of operant conditioning, B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), is regarded as

Behaviourism as a theory was criticised by psychoanalysis for it’s scientific

Cherry, K (November 7, 2023) What Is Behaviourism? Verywell mind

Wahome, C (April 27, 2022) What Is Operant Conditioning? Webmd

Mcleod, S (August 18, 2022) Behaviourist Approach. Simply psychology

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