Essay on Behaviorism Types, History, and Today - 2278 Words

Behaviorism is one of the many schools of psychology and it has one main overall focus. The main overall focus is it studies how a human behaves and is supposed to behave in order to detect human behavior discrepancies. As a behaviorist view, everything you see has a set behavior and should perform a certain, similar to robots. Watson stated that â€Å"psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is †¦ prediction and control† (1913, p.158). A more in depth perspective it is that they also believe people have no free will and that there environment dictates how they will behave. They all believed in the term â€Å"tabula rasa† also known as the state of mind being blank when†¦show more content†¦Classical conditioning is a type of learning through which an organism learns to associate one stimulus with another. Classical conditioning is also referred to as Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning. Pavlov’s experiment consist of a dog, food, and a neutral stimulus tone of C. The way he did it in his first demonstration was he showed the dog the food and the dog salivated. He then took the food away and gave the dog a neutral tone of C; the dog did not salivate. This was before classical conditioning and this mean the dog was accustom to his own reaction of how he behaved. During Classical conditioning though he presented the food to the dog with a neutral tone of C and the dog salivated. We ll if you do this several times you will get the dog to salivate without the food by just giving him a neutral tone of C. Therefore this creates the dog’s old behavior to go under extinction and be replaced with a new behavior. John B. Watson (1878-1958) was the next of the men to conduct behaviorist style experiments. In 1919, Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Rayner, conducted a study to prove that fear could be classically conditioned. The subject of the study, known as Little Albert, was an emotionally stable 11-month-old infant. The experiments he began with this kid that he struck a piece of metal with a hammer to leave aShow MoreRelatedThe Role of Research and Statistics in the Field of Psychology1359 Words   |  6 PagesJohn B. Watson work on classical behaviorism that paved the way for B. F. Skinners radical or operant behaviorism which has had a large impact on educational systems. Watson was one of the influential psychologists of the twentieth century. His material is still used in most psychology and educational psychology texts. Watson helped with defining the study of behavior anticipated Skinners emphasis on operant conditioning and the importance of learning and environmental influencesRead MoreOrigins of Behaviorism Essay1714 Words   |  7 PagesOrigins of Behaviorism Behaviourism originated with the work of John B. Watson from 1913. 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