The Behaviourist Perspective.

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The Behaviourist Perspective. The basic proposal of the behaviourist perspective is that the positive and negative reinforcers, which we receive in our everyday lives, condition all human behaviour.  According to behaviourists we are all born as ‘blank slates’ and everything we do has to be learned or ‘conditioned’.  Behaviour can be conditioned in two ways, 1, Classical Conditioning and 2, Operant Conditioning. One example of a behaviour, which can be learned by conditioning, is phobias.  The behavioural model proposes that all phobias are developed through
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classical conditioning.  This is where the association to a particular stimulus learns a particular response.  Ivan Pavlov (1903, cited in Gross & Mcilveen 1996) was the first to outline the principles of classical conditioning when he and a team of researchers discovered it whilst investigating the salivation reflex. Pavlov was collecting saliva from dogs that were in harnesses as he presented them with food and noticed that the dogs were eventually salivating on sight of the bowl.  He also started ringing a bell when the food was presented and the dogs would salivate.  After a number of repetitions the bell ...

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