Flint Lockwood's Theory Of Behaviorism

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Flint Lockwood is the main character of cartoon movie adaptation of the book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Flint is a young adult inventor who develops a scientific machine that is able to generate food with just a few commands typed into the computers software. However as a result of Flint’s recurrent miscalculations, this revolutionary machines is projected into the atmosphere over the island of Swallow Falls where Flint lives. At first this machine makes Flint famous and places Swallow Falls on the map. Not long after Flint becomes the center of a very dangerous situation that only he can fix. Flint’s personality, how he perceives the world and why he makes the decisions he makes are a result of classic conditioning he received during …show more content…

The theory of behaviorism indicates a person’s behavior is a result of external stimuli and classic conditioning rather than a biological reason or internal drive. The behaviorist believes people are born with a blank slate and only develop personality as they are conditioned by external stimuli. Free will does not exist within the behaviorist theory because the external environment is what dictates an individual’s responses to situations. The key concepts of behaviorism is through reinforcement the personality is conditioned or taught to respond a particular way to the external environment. In the event a person has been conditioned to misbehave, they can be reconditioned through operant conditioning to respond differently to the external stimuli therefore causing the poor behavior to become extinct. Behaviorism indicates there is little difference in how a human or an animal is conditioned therefore a lot experimental analysis tested in behaviorism is completed on animals. The behaviorist creates an opportunity for scientific analysis of how personality is created through learning from experiences but removes the idea that each person is created especially unique through their DNA and inner spirit. A positive of the behaviorist approach is the potential for everyone to be reconditioned to be productive members of society (Friedman, Schustack, 2012).
Flint Lockwood was born and raised in the fishing …show more content…

He created a machine that could make food with just a few commands on the keyboard. Through a series of misfortunes and Flint’s miscalculations the machine ended up in the atmosphere and became able to feed the entire island anything they wanted in large amounts. Flint finally got the attention he was seeking from the community. Flint’s machine began to fail but he covered it up and hoped to fix the machine before anyone found out because he was conditioned to believe he would only be accepted if his machine was working. Chaos ensued. Flint tail-spinned into a childish tantrum dwelling on his low self-esteem and worthlessness has he had been conditioned to believe by the town’s folk. But when Samantha Sparks, an out of town girl, began to encourage and love him has his mother used to do, Flint responded as he would to his mom. He picked himself up and figured out how he can shut down his malfunctioning machine and save the town’s

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