Involves notes on:
- The Behaviourist Approach
- Social Learning Theory
- The Cognitive Approach
- The Biological Approach
- The Humanistic Approach
- The Psychodynamic Approach
- Comparison of Approaches
Involves strengths, weaknesses, and explanation of concepts
The Behaviourist Approach:
● 3 approaches that conflict with behaviourism: biological approach, cognitive approach and
social learning theory
● Assumptions:
○ Behaviourism is concerned with observable behavior
○ Psychology is a science
○ When born, our mind is a blank slate - Tabula Rasa (the biological approach conflicts
with this assumption → no genetic influence on behaviour)
○ There is little difference between the learning in animals and that in humans
○ Behaviour is the result of stimulus → response
○ All behaviour is learnt from the environment (classical or operant conditioning)
● Key psychologists:
○ Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
■ Classical conditioning
■ Research has allowed help in behavioural therapies
○ Watson (1878 - 1958)
■ Established behaviourism
■ Believed that psychology should primarily be observable scientific behaviour
■ Little Albert Study
○ Skinner (1904 - 1990)
■ Believed that the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes
of an action and its consequences
■ Introduced the idea of reinforcement
● Classical Conditioning → learning by association
○ Ivan Pavlov’s Dog experiment:
■ He saw how the dog salivated when food was present but did not when he
heard a bell
■ Therefore, whenever the dog was provided with food, Pavlov rang a bell
■ Eventually, the dog salivated whenever the bell was rung, even when there
was no food present
● Dog food - unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
● Salivation - unconditioned response (UCR)
● Bell - neutral stimulus (NS)
● NS + UCS = UCR
● NS → conditioned stimulus (CS)
● Salivation from bell - conditioned response (CR)
○ Watson and Rayner’s Little Albert experiment (1920):
■ A boy known as Little Albert was presented with a white rat to which he did
not react (NS)
■ They found that a hammer hitting a steel bar behind him upsets him (UCS)
■ They paired the two stimuli with Little Albert producing an upset reaction
after hearing the noise
, ■ The rat was then presented on its own, and he was upset without the noise
■ Albert also responded with anxiety to a rabbit, a fur coat and some cotton
wool
● Operant Conditioning → learning by consequence
○ B.F. Skinner’s Box experiment (1948):
■ A hungry rat would be placed in the box.
■ Inside the box was a lever which, when pressed, would deliver a pellet of
food
■ When the rat pressed the lever, a food pellet was dropped onto the tray. The
rat soon learned that pressing the lever would result in food (a reward)
■ Skinner observed that, as a consequence of its actions (receiving the pellet),
the rat continued to display this newly learned behaviour
○ Four ways operant conditioning can occur: positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement, positive punishment, or negative punishment
■ Positive → applies stimulus
■ Negative → removes stimulus
■ Reinforcement →increases the chance of behaviour reoccurrence
■ Punishment → decreases the chance of behaviour reoccurrence
● Strengths of the Behaviourist Approach:
○ By focusing on the measurement of observable behaviour within highly controlled
lab settings, behaviourism made psychology much more scientific and credible
○ It emphasised the importance of objectivity and replicability in research processes
○ We also can judge cause and effect relationships by using the experimental method
○ The conditioning principles have been applied to a broad range of real-world
behaviours and problems.
■ For example, due to our understanding of how phobias can be learned
through classical conditioning, we have developed successful therapies such
as Systematic Desensitisation to treat phobias
● Weaknesses of the Behaviourist Approach:
○ From a behaviourist perspective, animals (including humans) are seen as passive and
machine-like responders to the environment, with little or no conscious insight into
their behaviour, so criticism of the behavioural approach is that it is very, very
simplistic
■ It implies that we have no control over our behaviour and that our thought
processes are not important
○ Other approaches in psychology such as social learning theory and the cognitive
approach have emphasised the importance of mental events during learning
■ These processes, which mediate between stimulus and response, suggest
that people play much more active roles in their learning
■ This means that the learning theory may apply less to human than animal
behaviour
, Social Learning Theory:
● Assumptions:
○ It is a way of explaining behaviour that includes both direct and indirect
reinforcement, combining behaviourism with cognitive factors
○ Albert Bandura agreed with the behaviourists that much of our behaviour is learned
from experience but he didn’t like the lack of conditioning.
○ However, his SLT proposed a different way in which people learn: through
observation and imitation of others within a social context, thus social learning
○ SLT suggested that learning occurs directly, through classical and operant
conditioning, but also indirectly via cognition
● Key concepts of SLT:
○ Imitation
■ When an individual observes a behaviour from a role model and copies it -
merely a simulation so it is not exactly copying as it is not replicated down to
the tee
○ Identification
■ People (especially children) are more likely to imitate those with whom they
identify, called role models
■ They possess similar characteristics to the observer and/or are
attractive/have a high status
■ Role models may not be physically present in the moment of imitation
○ Modelling
■ The role model’s behaviour is called modelling - used when referring to
behaviour that is going to be imitated
○ Vicarious Reinforcement
■ Vicarious = observing the consequences of another person’s behaviour
■ Used to describe the reinforcement the observer sees the model receiving
■ They do not receive the reward themselves; they see someone else get it so
the reinforcement (like a reward) makes a behaviour more likely to happen
○ Mediational Processes
■ Attention
● For a behaviour to be imitated, it has to grab our attention
■ Retention
● The behaviour must be retained in our memories to be replicated
later on
■ Reproduction
● Whether we can reproduce the behaviour influences our decisions
on whether we try to imitate it or not
■ Motivation
● If perceived that the rewards will outweigh the costs, the behaviour
is more likely to be imitated
● Bandura et al. (1961) - the Bobo Doll experiment
○ Procedure: Half of the children were exposed to adult models interacting
aggressively with the Bobo doll and half were exposed to non-aggressive models
Aggressive models displayed distinctly aggressive acts - striking accompanied by
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