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About Behavioural Psychology

What is Behavioural Psychology?


Behavioural psychology (also known as behaviourism) suggests that all behaviours are acquired through interacting with the environment, and conditioning, which is a learning process that is able to modify a response towards a given object or event. Successful conditioning would result in an increased frequency or predictability of a particular response in a given environment as a result of reinforcement.

3 Main Theories:

1. Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning

Proposed by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, in the 1890s. It is a process of learning between two independent stimuli, where an automatic, conditioned response is paired with a specific stimulus.

2. Operant (Instrumental) conditioning

Inspired by Thorndike's Law of Effect, operant conditioning was first proposed by Skinner. It suggests that when a behaviour is followed by reinforcement (reward), it is more likely to occur again in the future, and vice versa if the behaviour is followed by a punishment.

3. Social Learning Theory

Developed by Albert Bandura (1977). This theory suggested that learning and acquiring a new behaviour could be done by observing and imitating others.

4 Famous Experiments:

1. Pavlov's Dog

One famous experiment successfully describes how classical conditioning works by associating the salivation of a dog with a bell.

2. The Little Albert Experiment

An experiment that shows that human's behaviour could be modified through conditioning. This experiment was also known to be unethical due to the experimenters trying to associate a child's (Little Albert's) fear of loud sounds with other objects and has brought irreversible damage to the child. Nevertheless, it remains impactful due to their findings where conditioning could be used on humans, and fear could be learned.

3. Thorndike's Cat/Thorndike's Puzzle Box

This experiment involves observing the amount of time that would be required for a cat to escape from a puzzle box after it was put inside it. The findings found that as the trials increase, the amount of time required to escape decreases, suggesting that the cat is able to learn from trial and error. Thorndike had also coined the term ' Law of Effect', where actions with favourable outcomes would likely reoccur in the future, and actions with unfavourable outcomes would likely be decreased.

4. Bobo Doll Experiment

This experiment by Bandura and colleagues have studied aggression and have found children are able to learn aggressive behaviour by just observing other people's aggressive behaviour.

Resources/References:

  1. History and Key Concepts of Behavioral Psychology
  2. Behaviourism
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