Summary of the Perspective

Principles of the Behaviourist perspective

• Psychology is a science and the only way to be objective is to observe / measure behaviour (i.e. not infer anything about mental processes).
• All behaviour is learned through Social Learning or classical / operant conditioning.

 
Types of Behaviour Studied

• Can you teach / train anyone to do anything?
• Who are children influenced by most?

 
Practical Applications

• Issues of Mental Health – using CBT to think differently (cognitive) about the problems being faced and learn new ways of behaving (behaviourist).
• Child Psychology – what do children learn from TV adverts?
• Criminal Psychology – should you reward good behaviour in prison?

 
Debate it strongly links with
It takes the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate as it believes that behaviour is learnt from the people and situations surrounding a person.
 
Strengths

• Allows psychologists to study the effect of the environment on behaviour
• Very scientific usually under controlled experimental methods
• Provides a strong counter argument to the nature side of the nature-nurture debate
• Has many practical applications e.g.: ‘watershed’ for TV programmes, learning of language

 
Weaknesses

• Deterministic
• Reductionist as it ignores mental processes such as moods, thoughts and feelings
• Classical and Operant conditioning is based on animal studies. The results of these may not be true of humans.
• Tends to rely on laboratory experiments that lack ecological validity

 
Research Methods

• Very scientific using strict laboratory experimentation
• Often uses non-human animals as participants

 
Methodological Issues

• Tends to lack ecological validity as settings/tasks can be artificial in a laboratory
• Laboratory settings does provide good reliability as experiments can be replicated under controlled conditions
• Ethical concerns can be raised about learning some behaviours e.g.: aggression in Bandura.
• Snapshot studies

 
Core Studies

• Bandura
• Chaney