Behaviorism, Term Paper Example

Behaviorism  is a term that is generally explained within the context of psychology.  It is a very in-depth field of science within this arena.  It is often best associated with Pavlov[1] and his field of classical conditioning.  In addition the subject matter of operand conditioning  is more associated with people like Thorndike, Watson and Skinner in the USA. ” Behaviorism is dominated by the constraints of its [naïve] attempts to emulate the physical science, which details a refusal to speculate what happens inside the organism.”  (Atherton)   Behaviorism is mainly used for skill development in animals or condition of learning.

Pavlov associated the following with ‘classical conditioning.’ :

• Unconditional Stimulus (food) –> Unconditional Response (salivation)
• Unconditional stimulus (food) –> Conditional Stimulus (bell)
• Conditional stimulus (bell) –> conditional response (salivation)   source:  (Atherton)

These type of change responses can be used for bad or good stimuli.  The smell of baking may remind one of home cooking and  the safety and security of  home.  Whereas  the smell of whiskey might remind you of a drunken father, who beat you up as a child and evokes thoughts of fear and repression.

Operand conditioning, considers when an organism is responsible for a certain behavioral pattern.  In this section to play a cycle of repetition.  [Fig 1 refers].  Hence and decedent our history of the behavior influences its action and subsequent consequences of same.  The philosophical concept of behaviorism refers to a  person’s state of mind, whether it  is that of a mental state. i.e. sadness or that have a physical state.  The only  real determinant about a person’s actual state of mind is through his behavior..” Logical behaviorists believe that any statement about the internal or private world of individuals may be translated into a statement about publicly observable actions. For instance, if I say, “I am happy”, this may be translated into a description of my physical state – increased heart rate, smiling, etc. If none of these things were present – the behaviorist would argue – then the person is not really happy”  (Philosophy online).

The behavioural psychologist B.F. Skinner conducted experiments on rats and assumed that what was appropriate behavior in rats equally applied to human beings. .” He took the extreme liberty of transferring his experience and theories of rats directly to human beings. It should be kept in mind that rats and people are tremendously different creatures, yet Skinner had no problem with easily assuming what was true for rats, on a very simple scale, would be applicable to human beings in very different and complex situations.”  (Zimmer).

Pro’s and Con’s

The pro’s

• the concept of selection places, a current emphasis on the active choosing agent;
• living systems gaining knowledge of themselves and the world that surrounds them;
• anthropologist benefit by gaining a greater understanding of cultural awareness and understanding individual response patterns.

The con’s

• researchers have a general tendency to consider that behavioural conditions in animals reflect the same response in humans;
• behaviourism is fundamentally flawed in a number of different areas, e.g.  The black box concept of the mind cannot adequately describe the mental process

The biggest problem associated with behaviourist theory is that the bulk of the experimentation has been conducted with animals.  This concept of relating animal to human behaviour is not scientifically accurate and a great deal more of human experimentation is required in order to validate the theory and assumptions based upon animal testing.  This was established in 1984 and not a great deal of progress has been made in this area ” Although many experiments have been done showing evidence of both Pavlovian conditioning and operant conditioning, all of these experiments have been based on animals and their behavior. K. Boulding (1984) questions Skinner’s application of principles of animal behavior to the much more complex human behavior. In using animals as substitutes for humans in the exploration of human behavior, Skinner is making the big assumption that general laws relating to the behavior of animals can be applied to describe the complex relations in the human world. If this assumption proves false, then the entire foundation upon which behaviorism rests will come crashing down.”  (Naik)

Works Cited

Atherton, JS. Behaviourism. 2009. 10 5 2010 <http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/behaviour.htm>.

Naik, Payal. Behaviorism as a Theory of Personality: A Critical Look. 8 1998. 10 5 2010 <http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/naik.html>.

Philosophy online. Philosophy of Mind. 2010. 10 5 2010 <http://www.philosophyonline.co.uk/pom/pom_behaviourism_introduction.htm>.

Zimmer, Gene. B.F. Skinner. 1999. 10 5 2010 <http://www.sntp.net/behaviorism/skinner.htm>.

[1] Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian) widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning.