Free Essay About Behaviorism

Behaviorism is the thought that animals and humans alike respond to certain stimuli when it is introduced at the right time which helps them learn. This is also referred to as classical associationism or how someone will learn to display intelligent behaviors when negative or positive elements are introduced to help them learn (associative learning). Behaviorism was the area in psychology that attempted to explain how animals and humans react to things that are introduced in their environment that helps them to learn. There are three stages of behaviorism and the first stage is known as Watsonian behaviorism which greatly involved the use of animals to explain how behavior was shaped by the introduction or withholding of certain things (Birnbaum). Classical conditioning and can be attributed to the work of a psychologist known as Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was able to attribute the encouragement in a dog’s natural environment that showed dogs would learn certain behaviors from naturally occurring things in the environment. To demonstrate and test his theory Ivan was able to observe dogs when they were exposed to food deprivation. He noted that these dogs would salivate when they saw a person and recorded that this was an involuntary response by the bodies need for food like blinking when someone blows in a person eyeball. The reason that dogs salivate when they are hungry and see a person is attributed to association. The dog's that were used in the experiment associate people with eating because people feed them. If the dog were to constantly be exposed to only a basket full of food and no people than the dog would salivate when it seen the basket (Huit).
The second stage of behaviorism is referred to as Operationism which includes a school of thought surrounding socio-behaviorism. A man named B.f. Skinner was the person who can be attributed with the theory of operant conditioning. This era of behaviorism went on from around 1930 to 1960 and is where scientific findings were introduced into the theories of behaviorism to help explain them. In skinners explanation he describes how people and animals respond to stimuli in their environment depending on the consequences of their actions. Therefore if they do something and there is a good consequence they will be more likely to do this again than if there is an adverse consequence (tripod). Edward Thorndike was the psychologist responsible for studying how consequences of behavior could be associated with intelligent responses. In his experiments he put cats inside of a puzzle box that would only let the cat through if they exhibited a certain behavior i.e. pulling a string, and eventually the cats would be rewarded if they made it through. Through this experiment he was able to associate the rewards being a reinforcement that helped the cat learns the behavior to get out of the puzzle and reach their reward which was food. Based on this Thorndike created what is known as the law of effect which is made of two parts. Part one states that behaviors are more likely to be repeated in the future if they end in a reward. The second part demonstrated that behavior that begets negative consequences will most likely not repeat itself in future situations (McLeod).
The last stage is known as cognitive behaviorism which is an assertion that people do not respond to life because of emotions or behaviors and instead they react to life depending on how they view reality. Therefore this theory asserts that changing a person’s perception of the reality they live in can be a great way to help them cope with things like PTSD. Ulrick Neisser was considered the father of cognitive psychology who wrote a book which compared the human brain to computers saying they work in many of the same ways (world).

Works Cited

Birnbaum, Lucille. 'Behaviorism In The 1920S'. American quarterly 7.1 (1995): 1. Web.
Huit, Hummel. 'Educational Psychology Interactive: Classical Conditioning'. Edpsycinteractive.org. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.
McLeod, Saul. 'Edward Thorndike - Law Of Effect | Simply Psychology'. Simplypsychology.org. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.
tripod,. 'After Watson's Discoveries'. Joeeharrisjr1.tripod.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.
world, {sychologist. 'Cognitive Approach (Psychology) - Cognitive Psychology - Psychologist World'. Psychologistworld.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.