The History Of Behavioral Psychology

Our personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood during psychosexual development. In comparison behaviourism believes the opposite. They believe that as Freud’s theories cannot be scientifically proven. Freud’s psychodynamic theory was to understand the unconscious mind and the reasons behind certain behaviors which later led him to investigate the meaning of dreams. The Behaviorist approach to psychology was to study observable behaviour and argued that the psychodynamic approach lacked validity and was not quantitative research.

"The behaviourist approach has been a dominant influence in psychology, it represents one of the ‘hardcore' approaches, which has contributed a great deal to our understanding of psychological functioning " (Malim & Birch, 1998)

The 20th century saw a response to Edward Titchener’s critique of Wundt’s experimentation. This contributed to the study of behaviorism by John Watson. Behaviorism was proposed to emphasizing the study of obvious behavior. In the final decades of the 20th century saw a rise of the cognitive science which is a interdisciplinary approach to studying the human mind. Cognitive science considers the mind as subject for investigation

Psychodynamic is an approach within psychoanalysis (a human behaviour theory) which was found by Sigmund Freud. He believed that the unconscious mind which was developed primarily from childhood experiences is what drives our behaviour. Freud thought of the human mind as though it was an iceberg the conscious mind (which you’re in control of) as the tip, and the unconscious mind (which you have no control over) as the larger part of the iceberg. This led to him believing that personality was made up of 3 important elements, ID (instinct e.g. sex, hunger, lust, aggression and so on), Ego (reality and how you perceive the world) and Superego (morality, following rules within society and being sensible).

Behaviorists emerged from frustration with psychoanalysts emphasis on the unconscious due to their desire to focus only on what was observable. The mind of course not being something that is capable of

According to McLeod (2017), behaviourism is an approach in psychology that focuses on scientific testing and investigating how environmental interactions cause all human behaviour to be learnt. Behaviourists do not focus on covert behaviour, such as feelings or thoughts, as they cannot be scientifically

Behaviorism has been a topic of many controversies in the early stages of developing. This paper will present a synthesis of several articles discussing behaviorisms and its development through various schools of theories, in addition known researchers and conclusions. The first article that illustrates behaviorism is, “Behaviorism at 100” by Ledoux (2012), which details the last 50 years of the study of behaviorism. The next article is “Behaviorism” by Moore (2011), maps the beginning of behaviorism with B.F.Skinner and addressing functionalism and structuralism. The article named “Psychology as the behaviorist views it”, written by Watson (1913) put his emphasis the aspects of psychology and how behaviorist view introspection. Green (2009) article “Darwinian Theory functionalism and the First American psychological revolution”, is very adamant to have is readers to know that functionalism was the foundation that behaviorism was built. Clark (2004) article “The classical origins of Pavlov’s conditioning”, give insight into classical conditioning abroad and in the United States. The last article named “Little Albert’s alleged neurological impairment” written by Digdon , Powell and Harris (2014), focus on ethical concerns and that may have been overlooked. The synthesis paper will provide behaviorism and conclusions that can draw overall messages from the articles mentioned above.

Psychology, the scientific study of the human mental processes and behavior. The study of psychology has a lot of approaches, a number of psychological paradigms. They include behavioral paradigm, biological evolutionary paradigm, biological genetic paradigm, biological neuroscience paradigm, a cognitive paradigm, humanistic paradigm, psychodynamic paradigm and sociocultural paradigm. When we looking at these paradigms, the behavioral paradigm, and humanistic paradigm are 2 important paradigms of the psychology in university, as such, realizing these both approaches, the behavioral paradigm and the humanistic paradigm, are essential for every students who interested and studied in psychology at present. These paradigms have been primary for the development of the psychological area and they also called behaviorism and humanism.

Behavioural Psychology originated in the late 19th to early 20th century and was concerned with the prediction and control of the observable, measurable, external aspects of human experience. Behaviourist psychologists rejected the introspective method used by previous philosophers and psychologists and instead relied on using observation and data that was objective and empirical. This is known as an anti-mentalist approach; Behaviourists considered the workings of the mind

As mentioned before, Ivan Pavlov founded classical conditioning. What is interesting is he founded this type of learning by accident while experimenting with a dog and how the body goes through digestion. During his experiment on the dog, he noticed something unusual that triggered the dog causing it to salivate. A natural behavior humans and animals possess is salivating when food is seen, but the dog did not only salivate at the sight of food, it also salivated at the sight and sound of the things that are associated with the food, such as the food

This quote ties in to our topic of discussion, psychologist or any researcher at that matter will always be questioning. This is how we have come to learn as much as we have today. The psychologist were always coming up with new ideas and concepts and challenging them until they figured out how behavior works. Behaviorism is a school of thought that was joined from no other than John B. Watson. Behaviorism is the theory or doctrine that human or animal psychology can be accurately studied only through the examination and analysis of objectively observable and quantifiable behavioral events, in contrast with subjective mental states. Behaviorism was a movement in psychology and philosophy that emphasized the outward behavioral aspects of thought and dismissed the inward experiential, and sometimes the inner procedural, aspects as well; a movement harking back to the methodological proposals of John B. Watson, who coined the name. There are a couple of main components within behaviorism, operant and classical conditioning.

It explains how the early forms of psychology encouraged mental life as the proper subject matter of psychology, and introspection was the proper method to engage that subject matter. In 1913, John B. Watson suggested an alternative classical S-R Behaviorism. Watson believed behavior had a subject matter of it own right and it should be studied through observational methods that are found more familiar to all sciences. Although Watson's ideas were proven to be inadequate his general views have remained influential even if some of the various versions have differed over the years. B. F. Skinner saw a completely different approach that included verbal behavior and saw behaviorism as a philosophy of

Classical conditioning says that we learn behaviours by associating the response to the stimulus. An example of this can be found from the work of Ivan Pavlov. In the 1890s Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, carried out some experiments with a dogs. He noticed that when a dog eats food, they salivate: this is an unconditional response to an

   First began by John B. Watson, behaviorism is one of the most widely studied theories today. B.F. Skinner and His Influence in Psychology B.F. Skinner was one of the most famous of the American psychologists. He was

A significant piece of several psychological theories in the late nineteenth century was introspection, which is “the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes” (Press, 2013). In retort to this theory behaviorism came about. Behaviorism is predominantly concerned with observable and measurable aspects of human behavior. In other words behaviorism does not look at the biological aspects but it suggests that all behaviors are learned habits and changes in response to the environment. It endeavors to explain how these particular habits are formed. Behaviorism claimed that the causes of behavior was not necessarily found in the complexities of the mind but could be observed in one’s immediate environment, from stimuli that produced, reinforced, and punished certain responses also known later on as conditioning. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that the scientist began to discover the actual systems to learning, thereby laying a foundation for behaviorism. A theorist by the name of Ivan Pavlov was a major contribution to the discovering of significant behavioral theories.