The, Biological And Humanistic Approaches And Will Compare And Contrast Assumptions On Human Behavior

Inspiration. Although John Watson made tremendous waves in the study of behavioral psychology, he was not the first to explore it. Much of his inspiration was drawn from the ideas of Ivan Pavlov, one of his most known achievements being the conditioning of dogs. In the experiment, Pavlov was testing to see if he could make dogs, which would salivate in the presence of food, salivate over the sound of a bell by ringing it in the once the dogs were to be fed (How to Train a Brain, 2014).

Behaviourism is a psychological approach that emphasis on environmental factors influencing observable human behaviour. This approach consists of two main processes: Classical conditioning which means learning things by associating them with something e.g. if you ate Chinese food before and it made you feel queasy and unwell then the next time you see Chinese food you will associate it to that experience you had before. Operant conditioning which means learning things by positive and negative reinforcement and association e.g. when you do well in school and your parents buy you the game you’ve always wanted (positive reinforcement).

The biological approach focuses on both the physiological and evolutionary aspects which explain human behaviour.

The study that John Watson is best known for was that of Little Albert. In this study, Watson and his assistant placed an infant, baby Albert, in a room along with a white rat. At first, Albert attempted to reach out toward the rat as it moved around him however soon after Watson slammed together two steel pipes creating a noise loud enough to scare Albert. After this initial scare, the pipes were hit together each time Albert would reach for the rat eventually resulting in his complete fear of the rat and anything that resembled it (Watson & Rayner, 1920). It was in this study that Watson was using a strategy of conditioning that would pair Albert with an unconditioned stimulus and then conditioning him to become fearful of this stimulus. Do to his research in the field, Watson became known as the founder of behaviorism.

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

In this essay I will look at how biology contributes to understanding behaviour

Operant conditioning expert, Skinner (1938), studied the function of negative reinforcement in rats. Figure 1 shows the process of negative reinforcement, which resulted in the rats learning to go directly to the lever when the electric current occurred in order to ‘escape’ the electric current.

In psychology there are many different assumptions as to how human behaviour can be explained. The behavioural approach and the cognitive approach are just two of the approaches.

The apparent insurgency of our societal values in relation to our development and human nature has become unassailable. Throughout the vicissitude of humanity, we have progressed from our barbaric – and rather primitive-instinctual nature towards a sophisticated and dignified population. Perhaps our development did not progress as conciliating as one would hope, but some of the most influential psychological figures have enabled us to have a comprehensive understanding of why we are who we are today. Even still, the comprehension of who we are as human beings is still extensively researched due to our constant adaptive natures. Due to the frequent changes in our concepts and identities, psychology attempts to explain the processes and outcomes. Interestingly, the study of human behavior is still highly influenced by numerous psychologists such as Freud, Erikson, Skinner, Jung, James, Wundt, and Klein, just to name a few. There have been copious psychologists of late that assiduously developed our understanding of who we are and where we fit in. Many different psychologists had perspectives on the human mind and behavior, which led to diversely exciting areas of study. Admittedly, there is not a concise answer that explains human nature and behavior, but the vastness of information that has been expatiated by many psychologists in history expands to not only the multiple facets of this field but as well as practically every other field of study in existence today.

Behaviourism refers to a psychological approach which explains human development in terms of how they learn from experience rather than a result of inborn tendencies or higher order thinking. Learning from experience moulds and shapes behaviour and personality. (A2Healthandsocialcarepg84) The behaviourist movement began in 1913 when John Watson wrote the article 'Psychology as the behaviourist views it. ' Other psychologists such as, Pavlov, Thorndike and Skinner also worked to develop behavioural theories of learning. (A2Healthandsocialcarepg84) They focused their explanations solely on behaviour, concerning what people do rather than what may or may not be going on in their minds. Behaviourists suggest that all behaviour is learned either through classical or operant conditioning. (PsychologyASpg.50)

Ivan Pavlov was the first to introduce the idea of classical conditioning after doing many experiments on dogs and the way they salivated. After Pavlov, an experiment by Watson was done on baby Albert. Skinner was one of the first to introduce the idea of operant conditioning while doing experiments with pigeons, cats, rats, and dogs. Both of these ways to condition are used in every day life, whether we know it or not. Often times, we are conditioned to actions that we had no clue about.

Behaviourism is the approach based on the belief all human learning and behaviour is a response to external

The principals of operant conditioning, teaches how having certain coping techniques can reward certain undesirable behaviors. Conditioning human behavior has been studied for many years, Psychologists Edward Thorndike and B.F. Skinner, have dedicated majority of their lives to the study. Thorndike’s theory Law of effect. Thorndike suggest that certain stimuli and response become connected or dissociated from each other. His experiment worked by placing a cat into a box, then observing its behavior as it tried to escape and obtain the food on the other side. He studied several cats and plotted the time it took for them to escape from the puzzle box. The challenge to get out of box remained the same but the amount of time to get out of the box decreased, and while the animal may have not realized what it was doing, but knew what he had to do too receive the food. He concluded that animals learn from reward and punishment or trial and error. The theory of B.F. Skinner is based upon the idea that learning is of change in behavior. Operant conditioning is learning by consequence. To put it simply, an action which his rewarded is likely to be repeated along with an action that is punished is less likely to be repeated. B.F. Skinner introduced a new term into the law of effect known as reinforcement. Behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated while behavior which is no reinforced tends to disappear. conducted an experiment where he

Classical Conditioning is learning theory based on the assumption that the learning process occurs due to associations between an environmental stimulus and a natural occurring stimulus, as indicated in our textbook. This learning theory was developed by John Watson. He proposed that this theory is able to explain human behavior. Watson also assumed that our environment shapes our personality as a whole. His ideas were influenced by the findings of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. He is well-known as the Father of behaviorism, due to the fact, that his theories and experiments greatly influenced this school of psychology. One of his famous quotes suggested that one can take any human being, regardless their race, academic background, or culture and train him to be anything one can chose.

B. F. Skinner was a Harvard Psychologist who did the majority of the research on operant conditioning, although he did not “discover” it. He designed the operant box which is sometimes called the Skinner box. Skinner used rats in his research. Inside of the Skinner box there was a lever and a cup that stuck out of the wall. When the lever was pressed down, it would release a food pellet into the cup. Once the rat recognized that food was being released by pressing the lever, the rate in which the lever gets pressed is increased. Learning has been