Radical behaviorism

Behavioral Theory emphasizes that learning occurs based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. In this theory they believe our interactions with the environment help play a role in shaping our actions. This is where behaviorists believe that anyone can potentially learn by observing others, regardless of personality traits, genetic backgrounds and internal thoughts the only thing required is the right conditioning. In order for a new behavior to be modeled the…

Classical Conditioning is a type of learning that pairs a stimulus that would cause a predictable reaction with a stimulus that causes a neutral reaction, in the hopes that the neutral stimulus with invoke the response of the previous stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus will cause the unconditioned response without any need to condition it. The unconditioned stimulus will always produce the unconditioned response. The neutral stimulus will have a neutral reaction. This is crucial, seeing as how…

My client has suffered the last four years of her life, with a horrible smoking problem. This problem interferes with all that she does. She cannot work, because it causes her to smoke. She’d rather be in her house, watching some TV, where she has the option to smoke at any time. My client has no past of smoking, or any other drug use. She is the only one around with a problem like this. Smoking causes people to not only have bad coughs, but it causes lung cancer, and many other kinds of cancers…

I’ve got some crazy hungry cats. They crave wet food. Any time they hear the sound of the can being opened they immediately run to the kitchen, start to whine, and jump on the counter where they know it is going to be prepared. If they can’t hear the sound, it’s the smell that grabs their attention, but they usually keep an ear open for it, as it is the most exciting part of their day. Their meows and rubs against my leg seem to be their way of telling me to hurry up, as if that would speed up…

In Psychology there are many different approaches that offer explanations into the human mind and behaviour looking specifically at psychological processes, thoughts, feelings and motivations behind these behaviours. These main approaches are biological, behavioural, psychodynamic and cognitive. In addition to these explanations there is an argument within psychology that debates if physiological aspects or environmental aspects determine our behaviour, known as the nature versus nurture debate…

violence is very prevalent in communities with low income. The two theorists I have chosen are B.F Skinner (conditioning) John B Watson’s (Classical Conditioning) and Robert K. Merton 's (Anomie Theory). According to B.F Skinner, the study of behaviorism is simply observing what people do. John B. Watson was most famous for his experiments with Little Albert. In terms of conditioning, John would definitely take the stand of the nurture. The nature versus nurture…

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in Susquehanna Pennsylvania, a small town located on the Susquehanna River about twenty-three miles away from New York. As a youngster Skinner showed an interest in building different types of gadgets and contraptions. After spending his last six years being a professor of psychology at Harvard, Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia in 1989 and ended up dying on August 18, 1990 at the ripe old age of 86 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his later…

I’ve got a god awful habit that I just can’t seem to shake. In my family, nail biting could be considered hereditary. Everyone in my family bites their nails, even my 4 year old cousin Elias has been plagued with this monster, and for reasons that were unknown until this assignment came up. As a child, my mother was always so hypocritical of me biting my nails, always claiming that I was going to have a huge ball of nails in my stomach. Being a easily fascinated child, her words had the opposite…

This week I wanted to talk a little more about Pavlov. I find Pavlov and his research very interesting, and I find it even more interesting that people only think of Pavlov for his theories of conditioning. There are many more things that make up Pavlov’s contribution to psychology, including other psychologists that we would not even know about without Pavlov. This topic fits into this class because the entire section of 3.2 is about Pavlov. I am hoping that this will bring up some new…

in with a particular theory. Looking at the experiments of psychologists such as B.F Skinner show how highly scientific this approach can be. Skinner is one of the most well-known behaviourist psychologists, he “referred to his own philosophy as 'radical behaviourism ' and suggested that the concept of free will was simply an illusion. All human action, he instead believed, was the direct result of conditioning.” Cherry, K (2005). He is recognised primarily for his work involving operant…