Essay on Humanism, Behaviorism, and the Cognitive Theory

Humanistic-Encouraging people strive to help others improve and become successful. Humanistic-Encouraging people are accepting of themselves, and accept others for who they are without question or criticism. (Peak Experiences, n.d.) People with this thinking style commit themselves into coaching and counseling others. They are considerate of others, and they provide other people with support and encouragement.

Behaviorism is a psychological approach that combines the elements of theory, philosophy and methodology. Behaviorism refers to that school of psychology that was founded by Watson. It was basically based on the assumption or belief that it is possible to change, train and measure behaviors (Drisoll, 2000). Behaviorism is a psychological school of thought that was established when Watson published his classic paper "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" (1913). The terms behaviorism is, therefore, that psychological perspective whose its explanations about learning are actually based on the relationship that exists between the events in the environment and behaviors that can be observed rather than on internal processes. It came up in the early 20th century basically as a reaction to the "mentalistic" psychology, which often was incapable of making predictions that rigorous experimental methods could be a test (Watson, 2008).

Behaviorism and social learning theory are examples of two mechanistic theories that focus on explaining children’s behavior. Social learning theory emphasizes observational learning and imitation. On the other hand, behaviorism is rooted in focusing on how the environment impacts development. The environment shapes the child’s development as the child strives to adapt to the environment. Both theories deal with explaining behavior and consist of similarities, but are composed of different elements of explaining behavior.

Behaviorists seek to understand how environmental responses and simple actions shape our development and decisions. Behaviorists believe that human behavior is learned. This belief gives behaviorists the second title of learning theorists (Berger, 2008).

Behavior :This perspective allows for us to focus on how we learn from the consequences our actions lead to. Its an if, then action as well as learning from what we see others doing. Behaviorism focuses on observable events instead of events such as thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. In behaviorism it's where the environment can play a role and the individual's behavior.

A humanistic psychologist would attempt to analyze Jake by putting themselves in his shoes. Humanism believes that all people are inherently good. Therefore, a humanistic psychologist would try to help Jake by encouraging him to achieve his full capability of emotional stability. In the psychological debate of free will v.s. determinism, the humanistic discipline believes strongly in free will. A humanistic psychologist would treat Jake by taking an extremely positive approach and encouraging self-exploration in order to overcome his anxiety

When I think of a humanist I think of someone who thinks outside of the box. A person who just doesn’t think about the basic things. That person may think about the history of something and dig more information about that thing and where it came from, how it became. They focus on artifacts. I feel like they have a better connection when humanist explain what they are thinking or when humanist find the meaning of something. They think very different compared to someone who isn’t a humanist.

In the 1950’s a new psychological perspective emerged, called Humanistic Psychology. This perspective emphasized the importance of self-esteem, self-expression, and reaching one's potential. This became known as the Humanistic approach which believed that people have free will and are able to control their own destinies. Two founding theorist of the humanistic approach were abraham maslow who studied motivation and emotional carl rogers who made significant contributions to the study of personality and the practice of psychotherapy. This theory is different from both cognitive psychology and Behaviorism as humanistic psychology focuses around the idea that actions are directly related to self esteem and that we are in control of our destinies. While behaviorism focuses on behaviors being learned, humanistic psychology focuses on us being in control of our behavior. Along with this Humanistic Psychology has a focus around the state of mind, revolving around self esteem, self-expression, and reaching one's potential and not studying how the mind works like the previous two. For me Humanistic psychology comes across as a way of thinking, that humans have significant control over their destinies, while cognitive psychology and behaviorism are both forms of research in studying how the brain operates and how we

It is said that humanistic psychology was developed upon the limitations of behaviourism. The humanistic approach is often referred to as the “third force” in psychology coming after psychoanalysis and behaviourism; it is an alternative approach to psychology (Maslow, 1968). It offered a more wholesome approach to psychology at the time in comparison to behaviourism and psychoanalysis. This essay will compare and contrast behaviourism and humanistic psychology; it will focus on their contributions to psychological theory and their applications in the real world.

As you read, the basic premise behind cognitive theory is the idea that the way we think about or perceive ourselves and others, determines how

The Behaviourism model concludes that all knowledge is gained not through biological influences, but from the learner’s environment, through Classical and Operant Conditioning. Watson believed that through Classical Conditioning, he could teach anybody anything and that all people started out as blank slates, ready to be programmed with information. The school of Classical Conditioning believes that people will learn through repetition and association, for instance, rote learning, or the association created between a teacher holding up their hand with a request for silence from the students. Classical Conditioning also assumes that the learner is entirely passive and that free will won’t come into play. Operant Conditioning Theory determines that learning will occur when actions are met with consequences of reinforcement, either

Behaviorist theory is the basis for inventions such as computer assisted instruction, mastery learning, minimal competency testing, educational accountability, situated cognition, and even social constructivism. Behaviorism is primarily based on the fact that there is a predictable and reliable link between a stimulus and the response it produces. If behavior is foreseeable, creators need to identify subskills, students must master that lead to a learned behavior, and then select stimuli and performance strategies that build the subskills. Creators assume that an instructional strategy that has had a certain effect in the past will do so again while cognitive theory on how people learn include cognitive, social psychological, and interactionist or experimental school of thoughts. The diversity is often put into two groups: the individual cognitive and the sociocultural. The individual cognitive group, initiated from Piaget 's theory, highlights the constructivist activity of individuals as they try to make sense of the world. The sociocultural group highlights the socially and culturally situated context of cognition as expressed by Vygotsky. Thoughts in cognitive psychology became significant when the metaphor of the central processing unit of the computer could be used to describe the functioning of the brain. Unlike behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology is worried with meaning or semantics. According to Wittrock 's generative learning perspective, people learn

Behaviorism claims that “consciousness” is neither defined nor unable concept; that it is merely another word for the “soul” of more ancient time (Watson, 1970). However, behaviorism holds the subject matter of human psychology it focus on the behavior or activities of the human being.

There are three main concepts of each theory to understand afore moving on. The humanistic theory offers incipient concepts to how personality works as well as the cognitive theory. Humanistic theory offers an incipient light of values when approaching the human nature and condition, opened a broader horizon in the construal of human nature in study, and it provides a wider range of efficacious methods in the practice and study of psychology. The convivial-cognitive theory edifies that people learn by mimicking other, identifies any internal possibilities for a certain demeanor, and it shines light on goal directed comportment. These are just some of the paramount aspects of each side of the story. (Phelps, 2015).

To certain extent, cognitivism could, nevertheless, be interpreted as a reaction to behaviourism. Similar to behaviourism, both families of theorists have the mutual opinion of learning occurs when stimulus and respond is connected. Yet instead of consequences determine, cognitivists emphasize the automatic innate mechanistic prevailing process in human brain which undergo intuitive receiving, organizing, storing and retrieving of information (Bigge, 1982). Cognition starts with sensory registers which input data whereas perception helps convert their senses into conscious awareness which later holistically kept in schema, or mental framework (Jordan, Stack and Carlile, 2009). The concept can be explained by one of Piaget’s main cognitive theory. Cognitivists tend to emphasis assimilation, the process which schema is expanded. When the newly added information does not correspond to pre-existing schema, the process of rearranging schema, accommodation, takes place in order to eliminate the contradicts within schema, enabling it to reach equilibration.