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Unit 8 Psychological Perspective
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- PEARSON (PEARSON)
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P1. Explain the principal psychological perspectives.Behaviourist Perspective (Pavlov, Skinner)
The behaviourist approach focuses on behaviour that can be observed. This is also known
as the ‘learning theory’ because it looks at in what way and how the human beings learn
and how this impact on their behaviour outside with social or personal relationships. The
key idea of this theory is that we can understand an individual’s behaviour by looking at
what the person has learned. This includes the personal traits for example, confidence,
shyness, optimism or other behaviours such as offering help with things like washing up.
Behaviourist perspectives believe that all human behaviours are a resulting from
experiences individuals have gone through in the past. Theorists believe that people learn
how to make or maintain relationships and ways of how to cope with stress or pressure is a
result of what people have learnt from other people.
Pavlov (classical conditioning and Russian psychologist) and Skinner (operant conditioning
and American psychologist) are the two theorists associated with behaviourist perspective.
These two theorists explained that all types of behaviours are a result of learning from
emotions such as shyness to aggression or happiness to depression. Classical conditioning
was the first theory of Ivan Pavlov in which he was investigating dog’s digestive systems.
Pavlov attached the dogs to harnesses and monitors to their stomachs to measure the dog’s
rate of salivation. During the experiment Pavlov noticed that one dogs was already salivating
when the assistant entered the room with a bowl of food before the dog had tasted the
food. As salivation is a reflex response which is being produced only because of food taste
and touching the tongue in that experiment was not the case. Pavlov then concluded that
the dog has already learnt to associate the assistant with food and every time it sees the
assistant would immediately know that it is food. Moreover, salivation is an automatic
response which means that it is not learned and named that as unconditioned response.
Afterwards, Pavlov presented the food with ringing the bell so the dog can associate the
food while listening to the bell ringing. Eventually, the dog associated the food with the bell
and began to salivate before the food was presented. Pavlov then called that association as
conditioned response of salivation to the conditioning stimulus of the bell.
Another theorist associated with behaviourist perspective was Skinner. Skinner was an
American psychologist who usually worked with rats and pigeons so he could discover the
key principles of learning new behaviours. To complete that experiment, he used a box
called the Skinner box. He placed a rat in that box, the rat started running around and
sniffed a few items at some point he presses the lever that released a foot pellet. Later,
when the rat has repeated the same actions, it will learn that by pressing the lever it will
release food pellet. The rat sees that as a ‘reward’, and it made it more likely to press it
again and have the same behaviour in the future. This is because rats require an ‘reward’
that will support that behaviour and is called instrumental learning.
There are two types of reinforcement. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
Skinner’s main idea was that learning only takes place through reinforcement. Positive
reinforcement is when the consequences of a behaviour are experienced as desirable. On
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, the other hand, negative reinforcement was carrying out a behaviour removes something
unpleasant. Skinner investigated the negative reinforcement with an experiment in which
he put the rat and a low electrical current on the floor of the Skinner box. It gave the rat an
unpleasant electric shock every time he pressed the lever, so the rat stopped pressing the
lever.
The behavioural approach is used in health and social health settings to do similar things to
health services. The main purpose of doing this is to change and shape people's behaviour
to understand ways to overcome difficult behaviours. Some commonly applications forms of
behaviourism approach are such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement,
punishment, token economy, self management, extinction, shaping, contracts, time out, and
systematic desensitisation.
Social learning (Bandura)
This theory is about the effects of individuals on behaviour. Social learning perspective
look at the psychological development and experiences. There are many influences around
people such as family, siblings, peers, friends, teachers, TV, internet, as well as celebrities
and sports personalities. According to social learning theory role models are especially
important on individual's life. When an individual observes somebody else that they admire
they are more likely to behave like them. For example, a celebrity promotes a brand of
clothes, their admires are more likely to buy clothes from the same brand. As humans our
behaviour is influenced by the presence of other people around us. This is demonstrated by
the famous social psychologist Solomon Asch as he was interested in the majority influence
concept. This concept is about the behaviour of an individual surrounded by the presence of
others that cause to change their behaviours in public or change their opinions and beliefs,
so they do not stand out from the crowd.
Human beings got a very powerful desire to fit in to social groups or friends even if that
means having different likes, dislikes, preferences, opinions or beliefs. Albert Bandura is a
psychologist that developed some of the main principles of social learning perspective.
Bandura acknowledged that behaviourism was a result of how people learnt directly
through their experiences. People as well as animals learn indirectly by looking at other’s
behaviours and actions and imitate them. For example, a young child will look at their
parents. If a parent is using inappropriate words at home the child is more likely to use the
same inappropriate words at home or to school as this was learned from their home
environment by imitating their parents and see it as normal. For the example given above
this perspective focuses on the effects of people such as family, parents, siblings, friends,
work colleagues or celebrities can have a big impact an individual’s behaviour and
development. According to the theorist Albert Bandura for the behaviour to be imitated it
must be rewarded and this can occur through ‘vicarious reinforcement’. For example, a
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