Compare And Contrast The Main Theoretical Concepts Relating To The Behaviourist And Cognitive Approach To Psychology
Compare And Contrast The Main Theoretical Concepts Relating To The Behaviourist And Cognitive Approach To Psychology
In this essay I am going to explore two of the major approaches to Psychology, Cognitive theories and Behaviourist theories. I will discuss in some detail the two approaches, state how they compare and illustrate the similarities and the differences between them.
John Watson, one of the founders of Behaviourism, based his theories on the principles of learning outlined by Pavlov who suggested the theory known as Classical Conditioning; he trained dogs to salivate whenever he rang a bell. Dogs have a natural reflex response to salivate when they see food, Pavlov rang a bell when the dogs were given food and after several repetitions of this action, the dogs began to salivate whenever they heard the bell, even when there was not any food there. This approach rejected the idea of the conscious mind. Albert Ellis & Aaron T Beck developed the present form of the Cognitive approach to psychology in the 1950's. This development emerged from a growing dissatisfaction with the narrowness of the behaviourist approach as it neglects complex human activities such as planning and communication.
Behaviourists emphasise the relationship between the environment surrounding a person and how it affects a person's behaviour. This approach has a tendency to ignore mental processes. Behaviourists believe that studying the brain is not ultimately the best or most effective way to understand behaviour. A person might act oddly in one particular environment, but normal in others. Whilst cognitive psychologists agree with the behaviourist theory that the environment surrounding a person does have some influence on their behaviour, they are more interested in the interaction between the environment and the memory, and how it prompts mental processes such as thought, perception and attention The Cognitive Psychologists primary interest is in the brain and an individuals mental capabilities, they choose to try and explain behaviour in terms of the mental processes that cause it.
The Behaviourist approach limits the content of Psychological study to be only observable behaviour. Behaviourists make the assumption that nearly all behaviours are caused by learned relationships between a Stimulus that excites the senses and a Response, which is the reaction to the Stimulus, for example a child might see a Spider (Stimulus) and be frightened (Response to seeing the Stimulus). In contrast Cognitive Psychologists have criticised the Stimulus, Response theory for not considering the mental processes that occur between the Stimulus and Response, for example going back to the situation of a child seeing a Spider and ...
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The Behaviourist approach limits the content of Psychological study to be only observable behaviour. Behaviourists make the assumption that nearly all behaviours are caused by learned relationships between a Stimulus that excites the senses and a Response, which is the reaction to the Stimulus, for example a child might see a Spider (Stimulus) and be frightened (Response to seeing the Stimulus). In contrast Cognitive Psychologists have criticised the Stimulus, Response theory for not considering the mental processes that occur between the Stimulus and Response, for example going back to the situation of a child seeing a Spider and being frightened, the Cognitive approach would say that to understand why the person who saw the Spider reacted in a frightened manner, we need to understand what the mediating Cognition was, it could be that the child has some memories on a parent or other person seeing a spider and behaving in a frightened way.
Behaviourists believe that since very little behaviour in human beings is inherited, the focus is on the role of experience, which is expressed through learning. It is easy to say that our past experiences determine how we behave, but how do we learn? Behaviourists believe that we learn through association, in other words we form connections between events and ideas. In contrast to the behaviourists views on learning, Cognitive Psychologists believe that the human brain is genetically able to process and organise information in certain ways, for example; language is developed in most human infants at approximately the same age, no matter in which country or on which continent they live in and regardless of the language spoken by the parents.
While the first Behaviourists saw learning as a case of trial and error, Cognitive Psychologist argue that we tend to organise our experience in certain ways, this is shown as Insight, which means a rapid change in the way someone organises a problem, typically this is characterised by a change in behaviour from random responses to rule based responses. So Cognitive Psychologists believe that mediating processes operate in an organised way not by trial and error as the Behaviourists believed.
Both Behaviourist and Cognitive Psychologists have carried out a lot of research using animals. For the Cognitive approach, studies have portrayed a comparative and ecological perspective on intelligence and issues of the mind. Studies have also illustrated that the sensory functions and levels of Cognition can depend greatly on early experience. Animal research has shown Cognitive Psychologists about modes of adapting to change, such as evolution and intellectual development. This research has shown important connections between stress and disease and has suggested some Psychological interventions for coping with stress more effectively. For the Behaviourists, research has given a good understanding of drug abuse and physical dependence. Behaviourists have carried out research on Rats and Mice and this has contributed importantly to understanding the nature and extent of genetic vulnerability to drug dependence.
Behaviourists maintain the opinion that cognitive psychologists are unscientific in their approach because they choose to focus on ideas that cannot be observed and measured. This is a contrast to the behaviourists opinion that science must be based on the study of events that can be observed and recorded. Cognitive psychologists criticise this behaviourist theory, saying that by treating the mind as empty, behaviourists are ignoring the mental processes that are central to human behaviour such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding and problem solving.
While behaviourists view learning as changes in the manner in which humans respond to stimuli or situations, the cognitive approach focuses on the knowledge that provokes the response. In terms of the information-processing model, learning can be considered as information gathering. Information can be any meaningful data that humans gather and store in the memory for later use; this can include information such as the names of clients in a business or remembering where you parked your car in your local supermarket. They believe that the information we store in our memory has to be significant.
In conclusion the cognitive approach to Psychology deals with the mental processes such as memory and problem solving. By focusing on mental processes it places itself opposite behaviourism, which tends to ignore the mental processes of the human mind. In this day and age it seems that the cognitive approach has become more popular that the behaviourist approach and it is one of the dominant approaches to psychology. Behaviourism is focused on what individuals choose to do rather than what they may be thinking or feeling, if focuses on what you can see not the emotions. It is difficult to measure the thinking or feeling of independence and the behaviour of others, as well as the expectations of others in any particular given situation, for example John Watson believed that given the right environment anybody could be made into anything.
Sources of Information
Psychology - A New Introduction by Richard Gross, Rob McIlveen, Hugh Coolicun, Alan Clamp and Julia Russell (Twelfth Edition)
Hilgards Introduction to Psychology by Rita L Atkinson, Richard C Atkison, Edward G Smith, Daryl J Bern and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (Second Edition)
Basic Psychology by Henry Gleitman (First Edition)
www.sntp.net/behaviourism.thml
http://scs.une.edu.au/Materials/573/573_4.html
