What is Behaviorism?
Behaviorism is the belief that humans are controlled by their environments. In Behaviorism, Psychologists are concerned with how stimuli affects the behavior of the subject. There are two main processes, Classical, and Operant Conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning through association, One well known example of Classical Conditioning is Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov and his work with dogs.
Classical Conditioning:
Pavlov's Dogs:
During the 1890s Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in response to being fed, when he noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever he entered the room, even when he was not bringing them food. At first this was something of a nuisance (not to mention messy!). As time went on Pavlov got the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. An example would be that dogs don't learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex is 'hard wired' into the dog. In behaviorist terms, it is an unconditional response, or a stimulus-response connection that required no learning. In short, as time and experiments went on Pavlov learned that any object or event that the dogs learned to associate with food, such as the lab assistant, would trigger the same response.
Operant Conditioning:
Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through reinforcements and punishments for behavior. It encourages the subject to associate desirable or undesirable outcomes with certain behaviors. Operant conditioning relies of a fairly simple premise, actions that are followed by reinforcement will be strengthed and more likely to occur again the future. Where as classical conditioning focuses more on internal reward and drives, operant conditioning focuses on external stimuli and actions that are under our conscience control. Operant conditioning operates on the idea that a behavior, and the consequence, whether positive or negative, have a connection that brings about learning. Within this type of conditioning there is what Psychologists call reinforcement. Reinforcement is the process of increasing the frequency or rate of a behavior by means of presenting a stimulus shortly after the display of the behavior. The event that intensifies the likelihood of the behavior to be repeated is called a reinforcer. There are two types of reinforcers. The first type is positive reinforcers. Positive reinforcers are favorable stimuli that are given after the display of behavior. This type of reinforcer strengthens the probability of a behavior by adding something. An example of a positive reinforcer is when someone studies hard, resulting on an A in their Math exam, and their mom rewards them by treating them to their favorite restaurant. Once again, they study hard for their History exam, and get an A. Their mom then takes them to see their favorite movie. For their next exam they once again study hard attempting to get an A. The second type of reinforcers are negative reinforcers. Negative reinforcers is the removal of the unfavorable stimuli after the display of behavior. An example of a negative reinforcer at work is as follows. A person usually leaves their hours at 8 am to drive to work, and always encounters heavy traffic. They decide to leave earlier the next day, causing them to avoid the heavy traffic. They then leave the house early for the next 8 days to avoid the heavy traffic. This means that their behavior of leaving early is intensified by the removal of the heavy traffic. The person has learned to associate leaving earlier with less traffic.