Behaviourist - Evaluating

Question 1

Strength - Scientific

Answer 1

• Behaviourism -study behaviour that is observable, directly measurable.
• concepts such as feelings, thoughts are operationalised in terms of stimulus and response behaviours.
• Behaviourists believe that through use of scientific method = can analyse, quantify, compare behaviour
• enables to distinguish beliefs from real facts

Question 2

Strength and weakness - focus on here and now

Answer 2

• not concerned with events in a person’s past
• other therapies seek to explain a person’s behaviour in terms of things that happened in childhood or in terms of innate factors
• treatment of mental disorder doesn’t look for complicated causes - focuses on current symptoms.
• • SD - seeks to treat undesirable behaviour, fear by teaching a new stimulus resonse link between the feared situation and relaxation. -no attempt to understand why phobia developed only removal of symptoms.

Question 3

Strength - successful applications

Answer 3

• successfully aplied in the real world - treats mental disorders and in education
• classical conditioning applied in SD to help people suffering phobias
• operant conditioning successful teaching strategies - positive reinforcement and punishment help shape behaviour in education

Question 4

Weakness - nurture

Answer 4

• focuses exclusively on the surrounding environment.
• role of nature ignored
• behaviourist wouldn’t consider how our genetic make-up influence personality, behaviour
• role of external factors exaggerated - if learning was all that mattered - everyone could become sugeon.
• but behaviour is governed by many internal factors - motivation,emotion, innate abilities

Question 5

Weakness - determinist

Answer 5

• behaviourists believe that behaviour is only influenced by associations (cc) or rewards provided (opc) = people are controlled by external factors.
• doesn’t consider thought processes, suggest we are not making a choice when behaving
• the view that environment determines how we act undermines choice of free will. = no choices, no personal or moral responsibility for behaviour - cannot be held for wrongdoing

Question 6

Weakness - more relevant to animals

Answer 6

• Behaviourism have roots in experiments with non-human animals- Pavlov, Skinner. SD developed in research with animals
• human anxiety may not respond in same way
  Wolpe - used sd to treat a woman for fear of insects found it didn’t cure her phobia.