Psychological Conditioning and Theories of Behavior

Ever heard a certain song that triggers your brain to recall something from the past. Then, you should know that you been conditioned to respond in a certain way when you hear that favorite song you known about for a long time. Throughout human history behaviorism has played a big role in the evolution of psychology. The three main characters that contributed on to the creation of behaviorism were Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner all helping behaviorism evolution into an important idea in psychology . Overall, behaviorism is very common around the world and being everywhere daily in ads or life situations.

Behaviorism was the staple of psychology from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. It started as a concept from Pavlov’s famous experiment where he came across the phenomenon of classical conditioning. Unfortunately it wasn’t until much later that the concept of conditioning became a paradigm for psychologists worldwide. Not long after Pavlov’s experiment was published a man named John Watson would soon pioneer a new scientific front in the field of psychology.

Behaviorism, cognitive and humanistic are all perspectives (or theories) of psychology. Behaviorism is a perspective that suggests that all behaviors are learned. What I mean by that is according to John B. Watson who founded the school of psychology, suggests the behaviors can be measured, trained, and changed. [ (Cherry, 2012) ] Based on article written by Kendra Cherry, behaviorism is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning and there are two major types of conditioning which are Classical conditioning and Operant

In Psychology learning is seen as a change in behaviour caused by an experience. Behaviorism, is seen as a learning theory; an attempt to explain how people or animals learn by studying their behaviour. The Behaviourists Approach has two theories to help explain how we learn, Classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In this task I will attempt to describe and evaluate this approach.

In 1913 Watson gave a lecture called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”. It was in this speech that Watson proposed the idea of an objective psychology of behavior called “behaviorism”. John saw psychology as the study of people’s actions and their ability to predict and control their actions. This became known as the behaviorist’s theory. During the next few years, different ideas about behaviorism was studied. (Muskingum.edu) Behaviorism came to be widely accepted among psychologists and the general public, becoming a popular field of study in the 1920’s through the 1960’s. It was a huge contradiction to the views of the eugenics movement, which claimed that heredity was the primary force determining a person’s potential and behavior. Behaviorism, with its promise of the possibility of change, and even improvement. (A science Odyssey, published by

B.F. Skinner was considered controversial during his time, but he has been painted in numerous different ways. Although behaviorism is no longer existent, his works still remain relevant in today’s world; teachers often use reinforcement and punishment techniques to fix behavior in the classroom, and animal trainers use frequently use his techniques to train all types of animals. Despite his controversy due to some of his publications, Skinner left a lasting legacy on both psychology and philosophy

The behaviourist approach to social psychology focuses primarily on how the behaviours of an individual have been learned. Skinner (1938) carried out research into operant conditioning. This research aimed to find out the effects of both positive and negative reinforcement on behaviour.

The book begins with the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning explains that this Utopia breeds people by artificially fertilizing a mother's eggs to create babies that grow in bottles. Everyone belongs to one of five classes, from the Alphas, the most intelligent, to the Epsilons, morons bred to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. All the babies are conditioned psychologically after birth, to make them happy citizens of the society with both a liking and an aptitude for the work they will do. One psychological conditioning technique is hypnopaedia, which is teaching people during their sleep, planting suggestions that will make people behave in certain ways. The Controller is one of the ten men who run the new world. One principle that the

We as humans are conditioned by external stimulus whether it is responses to food, predators, or any autonomic response, but because of our status as an animal our behavior will always be derived from the environment we are situated in. Classical conditioning is used as a learning method that involves the application of new behavior while associating an external stimulus with that specific behavior as opposed to Operant conditioning which associates behavior and a consequence whether it is a punishment or a reward. Conditioning is a very valuable external reaction that allows researchers to study their subjects, and is still applied today in psychology unlike other aspects that have been degraded. The evolution of behaviorism has grown over time with radicalization by modern

In the 1920s, American psychologist John Watson coined a novel movement of psychology known as behaviorism (Gluck, Mercado, Myers, 2011). “Inspired by the works of prominent psychologists Ivan Pavlov and Edward Thorndike, behaviorism is a discipline of psychology that places its focus on observable behaviors rather than internal consciousness”. Stemming off Pavlov’s earlier research, Watson’s experiment “Little Albert” could be considered one of his greatest psychological advancements in behavioral psychology (Green, 2009). While his controversial experiments did result in moral tensions regarding his research methods, he is still celebrated as an accomplished researcher in the field of psychology (Digdon, Powell, Harris, 2014). Considered by many the founder of behaviorism, John Watson’s works led to further psychological discoveries allowing his legacy to live on today.

John B. Watson left academic psychology in the early 20th century creating the place for other behaviorists (McLeod, 2015). These behaviorists started influencing the world of psychology by coming up with forms of learning in addition to classical conditioning. One of the most important behaviorists of that time was Burrhus Fredric Skinner commonly referred to as B. F. Skinner. Contrastingly to Watson’s views, Skinner's aspects seemed less extreme. One of the most important opinions of Skinner was the believing in the existence of mind. Even with the existence of mind, there is still need to learn the observable human behavior in addition to internal mental events.

All humans are created in similar ways and have unique biological elements. We all are conceived, grown in a woman’s womb, evolve through generations, and contain genes that form the physical aspects of humans. According to Friedman and Schustack (2012) B.F. Skinner proposed the idea that “who he was, his personality, was clearly the result of his reinforcement history” while being raised (p.193). Reinforcement is anything that may make a behavior stronger; this idea suggests that personality can be shaped through conditioning (Myers, 2013). Skinner determined the ideal way to analyze behavior was “to look at the causes of an action and its consequences”, known as “operant conditioning” (McLeod, 2007). According to Friedman and Schustack (2012) operant conditioning is defined as “changing of a behavior by manipulating its consequences” (p. 194). Through operation conditioning, a greater understanding of human behavior and personalities were brought into perspective; environments are a major aspect of what makes

The first theory of learning is called classical conditioning and was developed by Ivan Pavlov a Russian physiologist. He started working with dogs to investigate their digestive system, they were ties to a harness and Pavlov added monitors to their stomachs and mouths to measure the rate of saliva produced. He found out that when a lab assistant came in to give the dog food before the dog tasting the food it started to produce saliva, saliva is a reflex response and Pavlov found that unusual because saliva is produced when food touches the tongue but then Pavlov learned that the dog associated food to the lab assistant and like that the he developed his theory. He learnt that food led to an automatic release of

Behaviorism is a theory that behavior can be altered through conditioning. Behaviorism does not focus on thoughts or feelings of the subject, just their behavior. Ivan Pavlov was a major part of this movement of behaviorism with his theory of classical conditioning. The most important part of classical conditioning is that it is done through repetition. In his experiment he began with noticing that an unconditioned stimulus like dog food causes an unconditioned response like salivation. He then noticed that if there was a neutral stimulus like the blowing of a whistle, there would be no conditioned response like the dog not salivating. Then he began to condition the dogs. He would blow the whistle and then send food out to the dog, causing them to salivate. Because this was done repeatedly, when the dogs heard the whistle they knew food was coming and began to salivate (Slavin, pg 102). This meant he conditioned the dogs so that a conditioned stimulus like a whistle caused the dogs to have a conditioned response of salivation.

According to Boeree, C, George (2006), B. F. Skinner’s “entire system is based on ‘operant conditioning’”. Behaviourism is determined by the environment and is “concerning with the effect of external events such as reward or punishment for behaviour” (Duschesne,