Behaviourist Approach

Behaviourist Approach

1. Pavlov

   • Carried out a study with dogs after noticing they would drool to their feeder without food
   • Had the researcher (ns) give the dogs food (ucs) which produced drooling (ucr) leading to the researcher becoming a conditioned stimulus associated with pleasure a conditioned response
   • classical conditioning, learning by association

2. skinner

   • operant conditioning, learning by reward and punishment
   • pigeons and rats in skinners box
     • positive reinforcement
       • given food pellets when they pressed a leaver causing them to repeat this action
     • negative reinforcement
       • given electric shock on grid beneath them when pressing a certain lever, they leant to avoid this lever

3. claims that all behaviour is learnt through experience

4. evaluation

   • most studies done on animals which lacks external validity as it cannot be generalised to humans easily due to different norms and environment
   • research support from Watson and Rayners Little Albert, taught to associate white rat with loud bang so was scared of the rat, phobia also generalised, increases external validity
   • practical application to phobias how they are learnt and how to overcome them, treatments like flooding and desensitisation, token economies used in institutions and prisons work well
   • lab studies used so lack of extraneous variables so high reliability and replication but lacks ecological validity