Summary of the Perspective
Principles of the Behaviourist perspective
  • Psychology is a science and the only way to be objective is to observe / measure behaviour (i.e. not infer anything about mental processes).
  • All behaviour is learned through Social Learning or classical / operant conditioning.
 
Types of Behaviour Studied
  • Can you teach / train anyone to do anything?
  • Who are children influenced by most?
 
Practical Applications
  • Issues of Mental Health – using CBT to think differently (cognitive) about the problems being faced and learn new ways of behaving (behaviourist).
  • Child Psychology – what do children learn from TV adverts?
  • Criminal Psychology – should you reward good behaviour in prison?
 
Debate it strongly links with
It takes the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate as it believes that behaviour is learnt from the people and situations surrounding a person.
 
Strengths
  • Allows psychologists to study the effect of the environment on behaviour
  • Very scientific usually under controlled experimental methods
  • Provides a strong counter argument to the nature side of the nature-nurture debate
  • Has many practical applications e.g.: ‘watershed’ for TV programmes, learning of language
 
Weaknesses
  • Deterministic
  • Reductionist as it ignores mental processes such as moods, thoughts and feelings
  • Classical and Operant conditioning is based on animal studies. The results of these may not be true of humans.
  • Tends to rely on laboratory experiments that lack ecological validity
 
Research Methods
  • Very scientific using strict laboratory experimentation
  • Often uses non-human animals as participants
 
Methodological Issues
  • Tends to lack ecological validity as settings/tasks can be artificial in a laboratory
  • Laboratory settings does provide good reliability as experiments can be replicated under controlled conditions
  • Ethical concerns can be raised about learning some behaviours e.g.: aggression in Bandura.
  • Snapshot studies
 
Core Studies