Outline and Evaluate the Behaviourist Approach to Abnormality

Outline and Evaluate the Behaviourist Approach to AbnormalityThe main assumption of the biological approach is that all behaviour, normal or abnormal is learnt from the environment. This happens in three main ways. Social leaning operant conditioning and classic conditioning. Social learning is learning from observing and imitating a model for behaviour e.g a parent. So eating disorders may be learnt from observing a parent dieting and being rewarded by her friends, the child imitates in attempt to get those same rewards. Bandura (1961) did an experiment with children and bobo dolls. He showed some of the children a clip of an adult behaving aggressively towards the doll. Those who had seen the clip tended to act more aggressively towards the doll, especially if the behaviour had been rewarded in the clip.Classical conditioning is learning through association. This means that abnormality e.g. a phobia is learnt associating a unconditioned response with a conditioned stimuli. If a person was bitten by a dog they may learn to associate the same pain and fear of when they were bitten to all dogs. Watson and Rayner (1920) conducted an experiment on little Albert. Whenever Albert was presented with a white mouse Watson made a large clanging sound behind his head. He learnt to associate the fear of the noise with all white fluffy objects.He (Albert) did not have a fear of mice before the experiment, so this proves that a phobia can be learnt.Operant conditioning is learning through reward and punishment. This means that if someone exhibits aggressive behaviour and learnt that it is an effective way of getting what they want, they are more likely to repeat the behaviour, normal or abnormal.The main problem with this theory is that the behaviourist approach is very reductionist because it reduces explanations for behaviour to simple reward and punishment. While some behaviours, such as the acquisition of phobias, can be explained this way, there are many abnormal behaviours that seem to be passed on genetically, for example schizophrenia. It is difficult to explain them in terms of conditioning.It also views behaviour as a product of the environment and there is no room for free will and conscious choice.However humans clearly have a degree of free will and are able to decide when to carry out some behaviours and when to resist them. However the behaviourist approach would be a good explanation of the effects of media on mental health. Anorexia has long been linked with the 'perfect' body image as portrayed in the media. People may learn to be anorexic through social learning by observing models and actresses, reading about the diets they are on, and copying the behaviour they see.Much of the research into classical and operant conditioning has been conducted on animals. Aside from the possible ethical implications of animal research, there is also the issue of generalising findings from one species and applying them to another. Assumptions have to be made that at least some human physiology and psychology is the same as animal physiology and psychology, but clearly humans are different to animals.

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