The behavioral perspective focuses only on observable behavior. From this point of view, Jake has anxiety because now he has to work hard in order to keep a good grade in the class. He might’ve had a previous experience where he had to work hard in a class that ended pretty bad, so now he associates a heavy workload with negative consequences, such as a failing grade. If Jake was treated using the behavioral approach, they would condition him to associate studying and working hard with positive consequences instead of with negative consequences. Psychologists today view the behavioral perspective as an important constituent to other modern perspectives.
Psychology can be defined as the systematic study of mental processes, couple with behaviors, and experiences (Kalat, 2011). There are many ways in examining, mental processes and behaviors among people, and therefore psychologist uses different perspectives to understand how human beings, think, act, and behave. Some psychologist uses one perspective to analyze behaviors, and other uses a multidimensional approach. Carter & Seifert (2013) identified 7 major perspectives that are used to study people’s behavior, and mental processes. These perspectives are the biological, evolutionary, psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, and the sociocultural perspective.
Social approach is interested in studying individuals in a social context, such as family, friends, institutions, and wider society. Social behavior may involve activity within a group or between groups. According to social psychological explanation it involves the way we learn from others around us - our peers and family and how we learn to model and imitate that behavior.
The behaviourist perspective is an idea that we can understand any type of behaviour by looking at what the person has learner. This includes personality traits such as shyness, confidence, optimism or pessimism. Behaviourist psychologists explain all human behaviour as resulting from experience. Two key psychologists are Pavlov and Skinner, although these two theorists believed that different processes were involved, they both explained all types of behaviour as being the result of learning. This is everything from shyness to aggression and happiness to depression.
The four major perspectives of Psychology are: Biological, Learning, Cognitive, and Sociocultural. First, is the biological perspective which relates to bodily events that affect the behavior, feelings, and thoughts. During the biological perspective electrical impulses shoot along the nervous system and hormones flow through the blood stream alerting the internal organs to slow down or speed up. The biological perspective affects the nervous system, hormones, brain chemistry, heredity, and evolutionary influences. A child who has been exposed to abuse may also grow up to abusive which is an example of the biological perspective. Second, is the learning perspective which the environment and experience affect the behavior of humans or animals. The environment either rewards or punish that maintains or discourage behaviors. Behaviors are based on acts and events taking place within the environment. Environmental influences, observations and imitation, beliefs, and values affect the learning perspective. A violent role model can influence a child to behave aggressively is an example of the learning perspective. Third, is the cognitive perspective which is the psychological approach that emphasizes mental process in perception, memory, language, and problem solving. The cognitive perspective shows how thoughts and explanations affect their actions, feelings, and choices. The cognitive approach is one of the strongest forces in psychology. A violent person may be quick to
A behavioral perspective is studying behavior of the person by looking at the stimulus and the response. Therefore, a behavioral psychologist would focus on Jake’s environment and his behavior to try and find a treatment. He would watch his behavior mostly and try and figure out
Psychodynamic is the act of exploring unconscious drives, internal motives, conflicts, and childhood experiences. Behavioral emphasizes objective, observable influenced by their environment. Humanistic is having free will and self-actualization. Cognitive emphasizes thoughts, perception, information processing, memory, and language. Biological is examination of behavior through genetics and biological process starting at the brain and moving to other parts of the nervous system. Evolutionary stresses natural selection, adaption, progression of behavior, and mental process. Sociocultural emphasizes social interaction with others and cultural determinants of behavior and mental processes.
The psychodynamic approach to psychology is the study of human behaviour from the point of view of motivation and drives. The original beliefs of this approach were created by Sigmund Freud in the 1800s. Although it is now generally seen negatively in the common view, sometimes comically, it has provided the inspiration for a few of the current leading approaches to psychology.
Firstly I'm going to evaluate Psychodynamic Psychology as this is one that I have previous knowledge about. First founded by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) an Austrian Psychologist who linked childhood experience with how it influences us as adults. He described that experiencing something in childhood resulted in similar behaviour as an adult. The Psychodynamic approach believes we have drives which can determine our behaviour and that these drives are shaped in childhood and this is where we develop our personality. The strengths to this approach is that if we get to the core of the problem psychologically and tackle the memory linked to the behaviour, it may change the way we interpret memory into the certain behaviour.
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.
Behaviourism and humanism are important schools in the field of psychology, as such, knowing the difference between behaviourism and humanism is essential for anyone intrested in psychology. Psychology is the scientific study of the human mental processes and behaviour, has a number of approaches that are also considered as school of psychology . Each approach presents a unique way of understanding the human mind and behaviour. Behaviourism pays attention to the external behaviour of human and ignores the mental processes which are unobservable. Humanism, on the other hand, looks at the individual as a whole. The main difference between behaviourism and humanism, the two school of
The six psychological approaches are biological, learning or behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, psychodynamic, and humanistic. Each approach is unique in its own way and used by psychiatrists to diagnose the problem. A biological approach is applied when the there is a known medical condition. The medical condition normally connects to mental health, and the solution comes from therapy. This particular approach looks at the whole body. The learning or behavioral approach is all about analyzing the person’s the behavior and modifying their behavior biased on their response to the environment. This approach works from positive and negatives items in their environment, and is sometimes cured by brings these elements in and out of their
topics, methods and approaches that have been taken by mainstream social psychologists, predominantly by means of experimental studies used to test their theories of
Behavioral analysis is how a person’s behaviours are based on the individuals’ personal history and past experiences. This is different then radical behaviorism, which Skinner fell into. Skinner believed that mental events, such as thinking, were not needed to explain behavior.
Last but not all, Humanistic approach sums up my personality a little more than psychodynamic does because it involves nature vs. nurture and that kind of sums it up just saying that. Environment and Heredity is kind of the main reasons of my attitudes and actions. In the article, Time-Limited Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Briggs conducts different forms of psychotherapy techniques to prove whether things in an adolescent’s life effect different adolescents differently. His study was a success and proved that many adolescents have different interpretations on the same issue. He read them off different problems and wanted to see how they would interpret them. He used children in the age groups of 12-17 and it worked out.