Behaviourist Approach

Pavlov
1. Carried out a study with dogs after noticing they would drool to their feeder without food
2. Had the researcher (ns) give the dogs food (ucs) which produced drooling (ucr) leading to the researcher becoming a conditioned stimulus associated with pleasure a conditioned response
3. classical conditioning, learning by association
skinner
1. operant conditioning, learning by reward and punishment
2. pigeons and rats in skinners box
  1. positive reinforcement
    1. given food pellets when they pressed a leaver causing them to repeat this action
  2. negative reinforcement
    1. given electric shock on grid beneath them when pressing a certain lever, they leant to avoid this lever
claims that all behaviour is learnt through experience
evaluation
1. most studies done on animals which lacks external validity as it cannot be generalised to humans easily due to different norms and environment
2. research support from Watson and Rayners Little Albert, taught to associate white rat with loud bang so was scared of the rat, phobia also generalised, increases external validity
3. practical application to phobias how they are learnt and how to overcome them, treatments like flooding and desensitisation, token economies used in institutions and prisons work well
4. lab studies used so lack of extraneous variables so high reliability and replication but lacks ecological validity

Resource summary

	Created by Josie Troop over 2 years ago