• Behaviorism was founded as an attempt to move away from introspective,
unmeasurable concepts in psychology.
– Behaviorists wanted to establish psychology as a science like physics or
chemistry, with the emphasis only on what is observable and measurable.
• Personality isn’t a “thing” inside you that causes consistency in behavior; it
is that consistency.
• Basic principles of learning theory
• Our responses and behaviors are learned
– We learn to maximize pleasure (reward), avoid pain (punishment)
– Born with certain instinctual responses
– Learn through
– association (classical conditioning)
– consequences (operant/instrumental conditioning)
• observation
Behavioral theory emphasizes:
• Observable behavior
– Later included cognitive/social features
– situational variables
– the function of behaviors
– ways of altering behavior patterns
– testable hypotheses, experimentation
• relevance of animal models
John Watson
• Personality = “The end product of our habit systems.”
• Conditioning principles account for almost all human behavior
• Because we’ve all had unique learning histories, we’re all different
Titany answered the question on November 29, 2021 at 08:02