The
“School of Behaviorism” had developed as a reaction against “Structuralism” and
“Functionalism” in the United States of America (USA). It is a
systematic approach to understand behavior of both human being and
animal. For behaviorists, psychology is the science of behavior; and by behavior
they mean observable and measurable aspects of behavior
only.
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| School of Behaviorism |
According
to the Behavioral Approach, human behavior is learnt; therefore, all
behavior can be unlearnt and in its place new behaviors can be learnt. For them,
only those things which we can see and observe are worth studying. Behaviorists
believe that they cannot see the mind, but they can see how people act, react
and behave. For behaviorists, what people do is the subject of the study, rather than what
they think or feel.
The earliest derivatives of Behaviorism dates back to late 1800s
when Edward Thorndike had introduced for the very first time in the history “the
law of effect”. The law of effect is an exercise to strengthen behavior using
reinforcement.
John B. Watson, an
American psychologist, had started in
1913 the movement of “Behaviourism” in 1913.
For this reason, he is widely considered as the
founder of “Behaviorism” or “Behavioral Psychology”. Opposing the concept of inner experience, Watson stated that observable
behavior was the only dependable source of information. This approach was a
reaction against the “Structuralism” whose emphasis was on introspection.
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| John B. Watson |
According to the Behaviorism, environment plays an important
role in shaping or influencing an individual's behavior. It looks at association
or connection between stimulus and response. It assumes that all behaviors are the
outcomes of a response to certain stimuli in the environment.
The
school of behaviorism was significantly influenced by
the work of Ivan P. Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, who is globally renowned for
his “classical conditioning”. Classical
conditioning is also sometimes labeled as “respondent conditioning” or “Pavlovian
condition”.
In
a famous study, Pavlov rang a bell each time he gave a dog some food. The dog's
mouth would water when the animal smelled the food. After Pavlov repeated the procedure
many times, the dog's saliva began to flow whenever the animal heard the bell,
even if no food appeared. This experiment demonstrated that a reflex--such as
the flow of saliva--can become associated with a stimulus other than the one
that first produced it--in this case, the sound of a bell instead of the smell
of food. The learning process by which a response becomes associated with a new
stimulus is called conditioning.
Watson
and the other behaviorists realized that human behavior could also be changed
by conditioning. In fact, Watson believed he could produce almost any response
by controlling an individual’s environment.
