Behaviorism
Psychology has many different models and approaches. One such approach is called behaviorism. Behaviorism began its greatest development in the early twentieth century. It brought together the ideas of men like James, Dewey, Yerkes, Pavlov, Bekhterev, and Watson. Previous psychology had tried to combine the ideas of behavior and consciousness, but behaviorists said that modern psychology should discard all reference to consciousness. Behaviorists attempted to prove that all organisms, both man and animal, adjust themselves to their environment by means of hereditary adaptation and habit adaptation. When examining behaviorism in terms of their conception of human nature there are six key areas one must look at: nurturing vs. nature; how a person learns; a persons perception, thought, and speech; the idea of emotion; and of personality; and finally whether this is a study of physiology or psychology.On the idea of nurturing vs. nature, behaviorists tend to lean toward the side of nurture. Z. Y. Kuo said that, "all behavior is learned." While not all behaviorists were this fundamental they agreed that there were relatively few innate instincts. Th
The problem with behavioral psychology is that it sounds a lot like physiology. With all the talk of motor patterns and chains of movement it can easily be confused with physiology. In fact Bekhterev and Yenchman both actually attempted to take behavioral psychology to the point that it looked at nothing outside of anatomy and physiology. However, most behaviorists do recognize that something other than just these basic things is going on. They were determined to use the methods of natural science but they did not wish to merely obtain results already recorded by using just anatomy and physiology. Behavioral psychiatrists attempted to look beyond the organism and study it whole in its environment. They wanted to look at how it responded to its environment to develop the all-important personality. Conditioning, trial and error, frequency and recency, basic emotions, and habit-forming patterns were all parts of a greater whole not looked at by physiologists. The idea is that, while the two are similar, there is a difference that lies in the way a problem is approached. Watson, who can be considered the founder of behavioral psychology, said that, "while physiology deals with particulars, psychology, without neglecting the natural science aspect, is intrinsically interested in what the animal will do from morning to night or from night to morning." e majority of attention was given to experience. John Watson said that, "given a dozen healthy infants and I could take any one of them, at random, and train him to become any type of specialist I desired." However, Watson and other behaviorists did agree that instinct was present in the form of inherited or unconditioned reflexes. They could not deny that some actions were present from birth, yet they could categorize them as basic instincts and file them away as the precursor to all later actions which were brought on by experience. This idea was one way that behaviorists ruled out the idea of a consciousness. If all actions were merely reactions based on experience, then a human and an animal were basically identical, with the human being merely a more advanced animal. This way psychology could continue experimentation like a
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1484
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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