Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology

384 Words2 Pages
Behaviorism and cognitive psychology have many major differences. Depending on the person, many people may look at them very different from someone else. Behaviorism concerns itself with the behavior that can be observed. It assumes we learn by associating certain events with certain consequences and will behave according to the consequence. It thinks that events happen together and become associated and that either event will have the same response. There is no noted difference between animal behavior and human behavior. People pick up their traits from their interactions and experiences Cognitive psychology assumes that humans have the measures to process and organize information in their mind. Cognitive psychology is less concerned with visible behavior and more with the process and thoughts behind it. It tries to understand concepts such as decision-making and memory. A few similarities are that they both deal with human behavior and are both old theories that have been replace by other, more recent approaches. They are different in that cognitive is the process and results of gaining knowledge and reasoning. Behaviorism has to do with the objective observation of the behavior. It is the basic idea that psychology is a study of external human behavior rather than mental. A cognitive therapist will usually treat emotional disorders such as depression. The therapist will encourage the client to challenge their selves and alter their thought processes to help with their disorder. A behavioral therapist will usually treat disorders such as phobias and obsessions. A client struggling with a phobia will be exposed to what they are afraid of little by little and take gradual steps to help reduce the fear. This is changing the way the person behaves in certain circumstances in order to alter their behavior. Self-actualization is the way you view
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