Behaviorism in Psychology

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Definition Of Behaviourism In Psychology A school ofpsychology that confines itself to the study of observable and quantifiable aspects of behavior and excludes subjective phenomena, such as emotions or motives. Also called behavioral psychology. Behaviorism is an approach to psychology that focuses on an individual's behavior. It combines elements of philosophy, methodology, and theory. It emerged in the early twentieth century as a reaction to depth psychology and other more traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested using rigorous experimental methods. The primary tenet of methodological behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B. Watson and others, is that psychology should have only concerned itself with observable events. There has been a drastic shift in behaviorist philosophies throughout the 1940s and 1950s and again since the 1980s. Radical behaviorism is the conceptual piece purposed by B. F. Skinner that acknowledges the presence of private events—including cognition and emotions—but does not actually prompt that behavior to take place. From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in psychology into the 20th century; but also differed from the mental philosophy of the Gestalt psychologists in critical ways. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning—which depends on stimulus procedures to establish reflexes and respondent behaviors; Edward Thorndike and John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to observable behaviors; and B.F. Skinner, who conducted research onoperant conditioning (which uses antecedents and consequences to change behavior) and emphasized observing private events . In

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