THE BEHAVIOURIST APPROACH

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

PAVLOV

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

• Animals including humans have innate reflexes consisting of an unconditioned stimuli and an unconditioned response
• In classical conditioning a neutral stimulus is presented just before the unconditioned stimuli several times

Classical Conditioning

• The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned response a conditioned response
• Pavlov trained dogs to salivate to the sound of the buzzer in this way

OPERANT CONDITIONING

OPERANT CONDITIONING

• Organisms spontaneously produce different behaviours and these have consequences, operant conditioning as proposed by Skinner is the process by which behaviour is changed by its consequences

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

Strengthens the response making it more likely to re-occur. Positive reinforcers are pleasant e.g. praise for effort

NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT

Remove something unpleasant e.g. completing work on time removes the fear of, or the experience of a detention

EVALUATION

SYSTEMATIC DESENSITISATION IS EFFECTIVE

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• Systematic desensitisation is an effective classical conditioning based therapy for phobias such as spiders
• The learned anxious response associated with the feared situation is gradually replaced with another conditioned response of relaxation so that the patient is no longer anxious

CAUSE-AND-EFFECT CAN BE ESTABLISHED

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• Skinner used highly controlled experimental methods to discocer causal relationships between variables
• By manipulating the consequences of behaviour (the independent variable) he could measure the effects on an organisms behaviour (the dependent variable) - cause and effect

ISSUES OVER GENERALISABILITY

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• Skinners research using rats and pigeons tell us little about human behaviour which results from free well rather than positive and negative reinforcement
• Skinner - free will is an illusion and what we believe are behaviours chosen through free will are actually the product of external influences.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONED ASSOCIATIONS CANNOT BE ACHIEVED WITH EQUAL EASE

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• Animals are biologically prepared to learn associations that aid survival very rapidly, but unprepared, therefore are slower to learn if not impossible
• This challenges the idea that any neutral stimulus can become associated with any unconditioned response

A LIMITED PERSPECTIVE ON BEHAVIOUR

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• Treating human behaviour as the product of conditioning underplays importance of other factors such as cognition or emotional states in shaping behaviour
• Skinner rejects this arguing that internal states are scientifically untestable. He asserted that complex behaviours such as ours interaction with each other or pathological behaviour could be explained by a reinforcement history.

APPLY

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• Shortly after eating breakfast with coffee while listening to music a traveller is seasick during the ferry crossing following this smell and taste of coffee induced nausea but the music does not. Apply what you know about classical conditioning to explain this outcome