BEHAVIOURISM
John B. Watson (1878—1950) put forward an entirely new docturine named behaviourism which was
quite contrary to structuralism and functionalism. He concluded that the whole
idea of consciousness cannot be proved by any scientific test, for
consciousness cannot be seen, touched or exhibited in a test tube. Even if it exists,
it cannot be studied scientifically, because admittedly it is subjected only to
private inspection. Therefore, if we intend to make psychology a science of
behaviour, we should concentrate only on the observable and measurable
behaviour. We have to discard altogether not only the concept of consciousness
but also all mentalistic notions like soul, mind, mental life, images and
ideas. etc.
Consequently, behaviourism as a method of studying behavior focused its
attention totally on the overt or observable behaviour. For this purpose, it
tried to reduce all of man’s activity, including his thinking, feeling and volition
to the level of that behavior which could be observed and objectively recorded.
Thus a behaviourist is not interested in
the feeling of fear (because it is not measurable) but pays attention to the
changes in heart rate and blood pressure which are the effects of fear and can
be objectively measured. The theory of behaviourism as propagated by Watson was
in fact based on the findings of the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov
(1849—1936), the propagator of the theory of class conditioning.
In his classic experiment, Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate at the
sound of a bell by substituting that sound for the sight, smell of meat, and conclude
that all behaviour is a response to some stimulus in the environment. Watson tends
to apply this approach in the field of human behaviour. In the famous experiment
with an 11-month old baby named Albert, he conditioned the baby’s behaviour to
fear a rat by substituting the rat with a sudden loud noise. He concluded that
behaviour is merely the response to some environmental stimulus. How we behave
and why we behave in a particular way can be successfully demonstrated and
explained through habit formation or conditioning. Thus conditioning through
environmental influences and not hereditary endowments or innate differences is
responsible for shaping the behaviour of a child.
Behaviourism, thus, tried to project human beings as little more than
rather complex machines, which respond in a particular fashion to a particular
kind of stimulus. The behaviour of an individual may, thus, be supposed to be controlled
by environmental forces and not by hereditary endowments or innate differences.
His strong convictions about the
stimulus response automatization and environmental influences made Watson
assert boldly in 1926:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants. well informed and my own specified
world to bring them up in and I will guarantee to take any one at random and
train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant chief and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his
talents penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors.”
The doctrine of behaviourism propounded by Watson and his disciple thus
ushered a new era in the field of psychology by making it somewhat
materialistic, mechanistic, deterministic and objective like most of the
physical and natural sciences. However, it suffered from a number of drawbacks,
limitations shortcomings. For this reason, it has been subjected to criticism
and has been modified and refined in a number of ways by contemporary psychologists
like Lashley. Tolman, Hull and Skinner. While Lashley devoted himself, physiology
and Tolman believed in purposive behaviourism. B.F. Skinner, a leading American
behaviourist of the present age, emphasized a system of learning known as
operant conditioning, quite different from the type of conditioning advocated
by Pavlov and Watson. The task of behavior modification he advocated and the
teaching machines he popularized by using the principles of reward, yield
significant influence in the fields of psychology, education and medicine.
Assumptions of Behaviourism
- Behaviorism (also called the behaviorist approach) was the primary paradigm in psychology between 1920 to 1950 and is based on a number of underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioral analysis:
- Psychology should be seen as a science. Theories need to be supported by empirical data obtained through careful and controlled observation and measurement of behavior. Watson (1913) stated that “psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is prediction and control” (p. 158).
- Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion. Observable (i.e. external) behavior can be objectively and scientifically measured. Internal events, such as thinking should be explained through behavioral terms (or eliminated altogether).
- People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior
- When born our mind is 'tabula rasa' (a blank slate).
- There is little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals. Therefore, research can be carried out on animals as well as humans (i.e. comparative psychology.
- Behavior is the result of stimulus – response (i.e. all behavior, no matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response association). Watson described the purpose of psychology as: “To predict, given the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).
- All behavior is learnt from the environment. We learn new behavior through classical or operant conditioning.
Merits of Behaviourism
and its Contribution to Education
1. Behaviourists
in the study of behaviour rejected the notion of structuralism for figuring out
what people were feeling or seeing or the functionalists’ notion of how and why
they were thinking. Instead, they focused on what was actually being done by
the people and observed by the observer or investigator. In this way, they
introduced the scientific method for studying behaviour, which is essentially
based on the objective observation of the behaviour and the events.
Behaviourism thus helped in replacing introspective measures with the
scientific and objective measures.
2. Behaviourists,
while giving second place to hereditary characteristics, highlighted the role
of environment in shaping and modifying the behaviour of children. It helped in
revolutionizing all the programmes and methods related to education, training
and rehabilitation by emphasizing a greater need to provide the best possible
learning situations and environment for better growth and development of the
child.
3. The
approach to dealing with abnormal and mentally sick persons as well as
delinquent, maladjusted, backward and problem children was also drastically
changed on account of the experimental findings of the behaviourists. In particular,
the techniques of shaping behaviour and the behaviour modification programmes
advocated by the behaviorist ushered a new era into this field.
4. Since
behaviourists did not believe in entities like the ‘mind’, and the
mind-body problem, the mental approach to human behaviour was altogether
discarded. As a result, all concepts related to the doctrine of mentalism like
sensation, emotion, perception were dropped from psychology and education
texts, giving way to new concepts like Stimulus, response, habits, learning,
and conditioning.
5. Behaviourism
helped in extending the scope of educational psychology to include the study of
animals as a way to learn more about human nature.
6. Behaviourism
advocated the use of reinforcement, and rewards (in place of punishment and
unpleasant experiences) as inducement for the acquisition of desirable
behaviour and for giving up the undesirable.
7. Behaviourism
highlighted the role of motivation and definition of the aims and purposes in
learning and shaping of the behaviour.
8. Behaviourism
gave rise to new ideas and in the field of learning and instruction like
programmed learning and individualized self-instructional programmes involving teaching
machines and computer-assisted instruction.
Reference:
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http://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
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