Compare and Contrast Structuralism and Functionalism Brandi Macias National University Psy 426 Dr. Paul Jenkins November 11, 2012 COMPARE AND CONTRAST STRUCTURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM Structuralism and functionalism are both theories of psychology that found their origins in the early years of the birth of psychology. Both of these theories involved the study of the human mind and how it works. Additionally, they were both concerned with the mind at the conscious level. These are a few of the similarities between structuralism and functionalism. Throughout this paper we will further explore some of the differences between these two systems of psychology.
The Behaviorists are a group of psychologists who focus on these stimulus-response connections, the two most famous being Watson and Skinner. Behaviorism arose because there was dissatisfaction with approaches in psychology that involved 'unscientific, techniques such as introspection and dealt with immeasurable aspects of behavior such as the role of the unconscious mind. Behaviorists try to explain the causes of behavior by studying only those behaviors that can be observed and measured. They leave focused their efforts on two types of learning processes known as classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical Conditioning( Classical conditioning is a form of learning that incorporates the body's natural physical response to stimuli.
Finally it provides examples of the practical use of behaviourism as a clinical intervention. Psychology: History and Perspectives Defining Behaviourism The development of psychological theories throughout history has been based on the efforts of, many individuals. Each unique way of thinking and the ability to synthesize information provided by one researcher to another has been the building blocks to the body of psychological knowledge that is known today. This essay will show how the behaviourism perspective has contributed to this body of knowledge. It will trace its origins showing the principles outlined by the main theoretical proponents.
It is a branch of psychology that analyzes how the brain and neurotransmitters influence our behaviors; this includes our thoughts and feelings. It is a combination of basic psychology and neuroscience. There is an interaction with our emotions, our cognitions and other mental processes. It is also related to other areas in the fiend of psychology. There must be an understanding of the biological process including anatomy and physiology.
Describe and evaluate the reward/need satisfaction theory The Rewards/needs satisfaction theory is based around the idea that we are attracted to people who provide direct reinforcement through operate conditioning. If the stimuli is rewarding then this leads to positive feeling, however if the stimuli is punishing then this leads to negative feels. Therefore, we enter into some relationships because the other person creates positive feelings in us which we find rewarding e.g. happy & secure, but avoid other relationships because that person creates negative feelings for us. Foa and foa suggested that we form relationships for physical and emotional rewards which include sex, status, love and money because these rewards satisfy our social needs for instance improving our self-esteem or indulging our need for dependency and attention.
Thorndike was the first psychologist to research Operant Conditioning. He believed that if something had a pleasant consequence then the action or behaviour is more than likely to be repeated. On the other hand if something has an unpleasant consequence it will not be repeated. Classical conditioning involves learning associating between events that occur in an environment. All learning can be shown and explained via – stimulus – response.
In classical conditioning, an organism learns to associate or connect stimuli so that the neutral stimulus becomes associated with the meaningful stimulus. Additionally, there are two ways that teachers or parents use to decrease or increase behavior, and these are punishing bad behavior and reinforcing the good behavior. Operant conditioning is used to either decrease undesirable behaviors or increase desirable behaviors. For the desirable behaviors, a number of tactics can be used to achieve them. They include choosing effective reinforces, making reinforces timely and contingent, selecting the most appropriate reinforcement schedule and using negative reinforcement appropriately.
P1 Explain the principal psychological perspectives. Behaviourist approach Your behaviour is learned as the individual is the product of there environment because they are born a blank slate. this theory is part of the extreme nature, nurture debate because theorists believe that individuals where nurtured to become what they are and learn there behaviour for example skills and values through their environment another example of behaviourism is that when the phone rings we know that someone is on the other end, we weren't born knowing that. To make this scientific there needs to be observable behaviour that can be measured. where behaviourism is concerned there many different types of conditioning such as classical conditioning which is the stimulus and response theory this backs up the idea that behaviour is taught which Ivan Pavlov demonstrated in different experiments.
The cognitive approach focuses on the importance of internal processes of the mind – such as thinking. They see our behaviour is a mixture of learning (conditioning) and thoughts. When we have psychological distress, it comes from errors in thinking, such as irrational thoughts or mustabatory thinking, e.g. “I must be the best at everything or I am useless”. The aim of RET is to restructure these irrational thoughts into positive and rational ones to make the person feel better about themselves.
It can’t. The writer explains that good alternatives to punishment by humiliation are educative punishments such as, community service. Why sentence a character degrading punishment when other constructive alternatives are available. Through morally sound punishments, criminals are more likely to learn from their mistakes and develop better