Behaviourist Approach - Assumptions

Behaviourist Approach - Assumptions

1. Assumption 1: Humans are born like a blank slate

   • Behaviorists believe that when we are born our mind is a 'tabula rasa' = blank slate.
   • We are not born with in-built mental content; internal events such as thinking and emotion do not drive our behaviour.
     • Instead, the belief is that all of our behaviour is learned from interactions with the environment:
       • We do not think about behaviour, we just respond passively to different types of enviromental stimuli.
       • Central to this assumption is the idea of nurture over nature.
         • -the view that social and environmental factors have the greatest influence on behaviour
         • -ignores factors of genetics, physiology & evolution.
         • Environmental determinism - our behaviour is determined by the environment that we grow up in.
           • For example, when we are young we might associate dentists with pain and anxiety from a young age. Accodring to behaviourists, such expericence may mean that as an adult you fear the dentists.

2. Assumption 2: Behaviour is learned through conditioning

   • There are two types of conditioning in the behaviourists approach: classical and operant conditioning.
     • Classical conditioning
       • It tends to involve involuntary behaviour.
       • Two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person/animal.
       • -involves learning through association between two stimuli that occur together in time.
       • Ival Pavlov first described the following process from his observations of salivation if dogs.
       • -explains how we learn behaviour through association
     • Operant Conditioning
       • Largely about voluntary behaviour - behaviour we actively choose & think about.
       • -explains how voluntary behaviour is learned
       • -based around the idea of reinforcement (rewards)
         • There are two types of reinforcement:
           • Positive
             • -a pleasant stimulus received after a behaviour is performed.
           • Negative
             • -escaping something unpleasant.
       • B.F.Skinner (1938) demonstrated via the Skinner Box that an animal can learn to behave in certain wayy due to being rewarded (positively reinforced) with food.

3. Assumption 3: Humans and animals learn is similar ways

   • The laws of learning are the same for both humans and animals.
     • We are able to study animal learning in a lab and make generalisations about human behaviour.
       • For example, Pavlov developed the principles of classical conditioning with dogs, where he showed how thet could be conditioned.
         • The same principles have been applied to humans in behaviourist therapies, to help people overcome problems e.g. phobias.
           • In systematic desensitisation, the client will learn to associate the phobic object with the feeling of relaxation instead of anxiety.
           • Similarly, operant conditioning principles that were developed in the lab with animals (e.g. Skinner's research with rats) are applied in many contexts to help shape human behaviour, for example, in education and prisons.