Behaviourists

Behaviourists

1. John Broadus Watson (1878-1958)

   • Established behaviourism (1913)
     • Should not study consciousness as can't be seen or meaningfully defined
       • Psychology should objectively study observable behaviour and responses
         • Environment determines behaviour and animal learning can apply to humans

2. Pavlov (1849-1936)

   • 1st to demonstrate classical conditioning (1920s)
     • Studied learning by association and used naturally occurring reflexes
       • We learn by making associations between responses and stimuli

3. Thorndike (1874-1949)

   • Work on learning theory led to development of operant conditioning
     • Law of Effect (1911)
       • Learning by trial and error
         • 4 consequences of learning

4. Skinner (1904-1990)

   • Radical behaviourism (1930s)
     • All behaviour learned from consequences
       • Called this operant conditioning
         • Most of his experiments on animals
         • Based on work of Thorndike