Behaviourism and Conditioning.Behaviourists believe that all humans are born with no general knowledge in how to behave as they grow up, they believe we learn this through the environment.

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Behaviourists believe that all humans are born with no general knowledge in how to behave as they grow up, they believe we learn this through the environment, society, the media, the people who surround us e.g. parents and through our own rewards, punishment and experiences.

Classic conditioning is a form of association, e,g when a young child used to get beaten by his mom it would be after she drank a lot of coconut smelling alcohol and the stench and the upset would make him sick. So now even 30 years on even the slightest smell of coconut the man is sick and gets very emotional. Classical conditioning was split by Watson into 2 different sets. Stimulus and response. And his idea was if they were repeated together often enough they would be learnt. So in the young child’s case

So Because of this the man now associates the smell of coconut with being beaten and being sick

UCS means “unconditioned stimulus” which is being beaten and the smell of coconut, because these are the things the man associates with being sick. UCR means “unconditioned response” which is the outcome of the equation, there believed to be unconditional because there not yet learnt. So when it is finally learnt its changes to conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditional response (CR).

Operant conditioning is when behaviour becomes more or less likely as a result of the consequences whether they be reward or punishment. There are three types of reinforcement, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. When positive re enforcement Is introduced this becomes a pleasurable feeling which then encourages that behaviour e.g. if a child comes home with a sticker for good listening, praise and reward would then be introduced so the child feels good and carries on with good listening.  All three types of re enforcement have a positive outcome in the end but vary on how long the positive outcome takes.

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Classical Conditioning

Russian born Ivan Pavlov was one of the early psychologists to study classical conditioning. Pavlov first published his findings in 1906. He introduced the idea of studying reflex responses through animals. One of Pavlov’s more famous experiments was on a dog. Pavlov taught the dog to associate the sound of a bell or music to his food resulting in the dog salivating when the bell rang rather than when his food was in front of him. He did this by first introducing the sound of the bell to the dog, he then gave the dog food and sounded ...

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