Behaviorism: John B. Skinner's Approach To Psychology

1800 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Psychoanalytic concepts and techniques

Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. It is a form of materialism, denying any independent significance for mind. Its significance for psychological treatment has been profound, making it one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy. One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory, and that all behavior is determined by the environment either through association or reinforcement.
The behaviorist school of thought ran concurrent with the psychoanalysis movement in psychology in the 20th century. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, John B. Watson (1878-1958) …show more content…

Punishment is effective in quickly eliminating undesirable behaviors. Examples of punishment include:
Failure to do homework results in after-school detention (privilege of going home is in choice of theoretical structures, emphasizes parsimony.
Psychologist B F Skinner was interested in learning and behavior. Like teachers who have depended on behaviors to tell them what’s going on inside a person , Skinner believed that observing people’s behavior was the best way to figure them out.in skinners branch of psychology, learning is about changing behavior and begins to listen, he has learned to listen. Likewise, if you are explaining to students how to add numbers and the students consistently answers with the wrong answers but then begins to answer with the right ones, his behavior shows you that he has learned how to add. Skinner believed that people learn two different ways: they learn to avoid negative things and strive for positive things. So according to B F Skinner , if you give a child a piece of candy each time he gets an answer right, he will learn to figure out the right answer in order to get the candy because he is striving for positive things. On the other hand, if you give a child detention every time he gets the answer wrong, he will also learn to figure out how to get the right answer, this time in order to avoid negative things

Show More
Related

  • Watson, Skinner and Tolman

    1615 Words  | 4 Pages

    Born January 9, 1878 John B. Watson is credited as the founder of behaviorism. Behaviorism is a theory that equates behavior to conditioning. Typical examples of behavior conditioning are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is the pairing of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus that births an unconditioned response. Subsequently, a neutral stimulus brings a response without the natural occurring stimulus. Unified the two elements are thought of as a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response. Watson and Skinner classical conditioning are similar because they both require a form of behavior whether negative or positive, volun...

    Read More

  • Personality

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    Psychology covers a huge field and one interesting aspect of it is personality. Personality by itself involves various issues. Some aspects are Psychoanalytic, Ego, Biological, Behaviorist, Cognitive, Trait, and Humanistic. Different types of behaviors are amazing to learn about, mainly the behavior therapy, collective behavior, crime and punishment, and Social behavior and peer acceptance in children. I chose Behaviorism over the other aspects because I believe behavior determines human personality and is very interesting. You can tell what one is by his behavior, and one behaves according to what place he has in society. By doing this paper on Behavior, I hope to get a better understanding of, if behavior develops a personality or if personality guides behavior. I also see behaviorism helping me in the future with my personal and professional career by understanding human personality and behavior better than I do. No matter what your major is, if you can determine one's personality by his behavior you can really get your work done from that person and understand the better than you would otherwise. This person could be your employee or your employer. Behavior Therapy Behavior therapy is the application of experimentally derived principles of learning to the treatment of psychological disorders. The concept derives primarily from work of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. Behavior-therapy techniques differ from psychiatric methods, particularly psychoanalysis, in that they are predominately symptom (behavior) oriented and shows little or no concern for unconscious processes, achieving new insight, or effecting fundamental personality change. The U.S. psychologist B.F. Skinner, who worked with mental patients in a Massachusetts State hospital, popularized behavior therapy. From his work in animal learning, Skinner found that the establishment and extinction of responses can be determined by the way reinforces, or rewards, are given. The pattern of reward giving, both in time and frequency, is known as a schedule of reinforcement. The gradual change in behavior in approximation of the desired result is known as shaping. More recent developments in behavior therapy emphasize the adaptive nature of cognitive processes. Behavior-therapy techniques have been applied with some success to such disturbances as enuresis (bed-wetting), tics, phobias, stutteri...

    Read More

  • What Role Does Skinner Play In The Founding Of Behaviorism Summary

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    Behaviorism has the main goal of learning and how environmental influences affect behavior. Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner had a huge role in finding behaviorism. It is believed that human behavior is learned and can be controlled with rewards and or punishments. Behaviorism is when an individual responds to an environmental stimulus. The individual normally starts off with a “Clean slate” which means that they is no influences at the moment but as an individual grows they start to be shaped through positive and negative reinforcements. John B. Watson actually created the school of Behaviorism in 1913. Watson, Skinner and Pavlov all did studies regarding animals and the ways that the animal behaved. Behaviorism became a huge portion of psychology for about a half a century which has dramatically change psychology.

    Read More

  • Essay On Substance Dualism

    629 Words  | 2 Pages

    Behaviorism explains the human behavior in terms of operant conditioning. Everything that a human does (including ideas and feelings) are behaviors that can be explained in terms of basic physical factors. For example: genetic Inheritance or physical drives. "Also, it is which we refer to as mental activity and it can be explained and defined in terms of our observance" (Prof. Waita P.P.)

    Read More

  • Behaviourist Perspective Case Study

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    The behaviourist perspective was a dominant approach in psychology for the first half of the 20th century and has left psychology with some useful techniques.

    Read More

  • John Watson Research Paper

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    Behaviorism can be defined by events that can be directly observed, unlike the psychoanalytical theory. John Watson initiated the beginning of North American Behaviorism in the early twentieth century. He wanted to create an objective science in psychology, and so he rejected the unseen workings of the human mind that the psychoanalysts were concerned with.

    Read More

  • B. F. Skinner: Psychology And Operant Conditioning

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Skinner Box was used to conduct experiments using lab rats in attempts to modify behavior using positive and negative reinforcement. Skinner found it more productive to study

    Read More

  • B. F. Skinner's Influence On Behavioral Psychology

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    American Psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, or B.F Skinner, contributed greatly to and influenced the field of Behavior Psychology through his experiments, some being controversial, and his literary works. Influenced by many behaviorists and their works, Skinner sought to more thoroughly explain behavior by going deeper into their theories and applying his beliefs, creating his own theories. Skinner was a prolific author because of his education in English literature and authored over 20 books and 180 articles. B.F. Skinner was one of the most important modern psychologists and is considered a pioneer in behaviorism.

    Read More

  • Behaviorism And Operant Conditioning

    796 Words  | 2 Pages

    We must understand what influenced Skinner to research on operant conditioning. Thorndike’s law of effect focused on the learning by the consequences of the behavior used. Law of effect is defined as any behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and any behavior followed by un-pleasant consequences is likely to be stopped according to Thorndike, E. L. (1898). There is also the law of exercise that states the more an act is used in a situation, the more strongly the act becomes associated with the situation. The law of effect is the what, and the law of exercise can be looked as how often? The learning Thorndike saw take place and what he called it is trial and error. Learning was based on repetition of responses that lead to a desirable consequence. Skinner based his ideas on Thorndike, and this is how operant conditioning came

    Read More

  • John B. Watson's Theory: The Father Of Behaviorism

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    Behaviorism was established in the year 1913 by John B. Watson whose is known as the “father” of behaviorism. He published behaviorism called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it” (Cherry, 2016). In his paper theorist John B. Watson said: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any specialist I might select doctor, lawyer, artist.” Which, he meant that experiences we live through every day form our behaviors. According to Kendra Cherry, she stated that other behaviorists believed that any person could be trained to perform any task. Throughout the years of the 1920’s and 1950’s behaviorism grew to become famous in the world of psychology.

    Read More

  • Main contributors to behaviorism

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are five main contributors to behaviorism. They are Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B.F. Skinner, Albert Bandura, and Joseph Wolpe. The beh...

    Read More

  • Behavioral Theory of Personality: B.F. Skinner

    1529 Words  | 4 Pages

    B.F. Skinner is a major contributor to the Behavioral Theory of personality, a theory that states that our learning is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, modeling, and observation. An individual acts in a certain way, a.k.a. gives a response, and then something happens after the response. In order for an action to be repeated in the future, what happens after the response either encourages the response by offering a reward that brings pleasure or allows an escape from a negative situation. The former is known as positive reinforcement, the latter known as negative reinforcement (Sincero, 2012). A teenager who received money for getting an “A” is being positively reinforced, while an individual who skips a class presentation is being negatively reinforced by escaping from the intense fear and anxiety that would have occurred during the presentation.

    Read More

  • The Strengths and Limitations of the Behaviourist Approach in Explaining Behaviour

    2123 Words  | 5 Pages

    The idea of Behaviourism dates back to Descartes. Descartes was a philosopher that introduced the mind and body debate, he believed that the mind and body were two separate existences that casually interacted with each other, he named this his theory of interactive dualism however the idea of behaviourism didn’t derive from just this one point. Theories on the mind and body originated from as far back as Plato and Aristotle. (Gentile 2008) Another contributor to the idea of the behaviourism approach was John Locke with his belief that all humans are born with ‘tabular Rasa’ a blank state. Locke believed that the mind at birth had no innate conceptions and that all behaviour is learnt from the environment. Locke wanted to validate his nurture belief so employed empirical methods of research. All these different theories helped Behaviourism come into a discipline in its own right from the twentieth century onwards (Gentile 2008)

    Read More

  • How Did B. F. Skinner Influence Behaviorism

    856 Words  | 2 Pages

    Burrhus Frederic Skinner, more commonly known as B.F. Skinner, is perhaps one of the most important and influential behaviorist. Born on March 20th, 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, Skinner was the son of Grace and William Skinner, older brother of Edward Skinner, who died at the young age of 16 due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Skinner began his studies at Hamilton College, where he began his pursuit of becoming a writer. Attending a religious schooled proved to be difficult for Skinner, due to his atheism. After completing his B.A. in literature, Skinner began attending Harvard, where he would eventually earn his PhD, become a teacher, and begin his research.

    Read More

  • Behaviourism Theory And Neo-Neobehaviorism

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    As is the nature of schools of thought, behaviorism formed in opposition of the time’s psychological methodology and focus – introspection and consciousness. The basic tenants of behaviorism are as follows: psychology is a science and therefore it must follow scientific measures; behavior is produced by a stimulus and is predictable; an individual’s behavior is a pure result of the environment. Behaviorism’s foundation is a compilation of the works of Auguste Comte, John Locke, James Mill, and C. Lloyd Morgan. Comte’s positivism had been mulling for some time and resurged, becoming fundamental to the scientific zeitgeist of the 20th century. Locke’s idea of tabula rasa and Mill’s idea of mechanism are evident in the methodology of behavior.

    Read More

More about Behaviorism: John B. Skinner's Approach To Psychology

Open Document