Outline and Evaluate the Behavioural Approach to Psychology

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This approach emphasises the role of learning and experience in causing psychological disorders. Behaviourists look at 3 main types of learning: classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning. Classical conditioning is known as one of the more simple forms of learning studied primarily by Pavlov. He used dogs and their salivation response to the presence of food; he then paired a bell with the presentation of food and then managed to stimulate salivation from just the sound of the bell. He had managed to associate (conditioned) the stimulus of the bell to the dog salivating. Watson and Rayner did a very unethical study on an 11 month old baby (Little Albert); they classical conditioned him to fear fluffy animals. They did this through showing the child a rat paired with a sudden loud noise, this noise caused fear which is the unconditioned response. This then caused and association between rats and fear. This study was unethical as it involved psychological harm and the psychologists didn’t decondition the mother who then removed Little Albert from the study. This study can be used to show the development of phobias. An explanation for phobias is through traumatic experiences, especially early in life, and an association between fear and a particular object or situation is made, this can then generalise to a person developing a general phobia. Operant conditioning is another part of the behavioural approach and Skinner was the main figure in this approach. Though sounding simple Skinner managed to show how complex patterns of behaviour could be learned through schedules of reinforcement. He used rats and pigeons and put them in box and found that they would explore their surroundings. The animal would accidently press a lever which supplied food, so the animal learnt to repeat this behaviour to gain the reward which was the food. The
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