Lesson 1: Psychology – A Look into the Past
6 - Behaviourism
Freud and Jung were two important European psychologists. In America, many scientists were dissatisfied with the general aims and methods of psychology. They had little faith in the methods used by psychoanalytic psychologists involving the gathering of data through hypnosis and dream interpretation, and asking patients to reflect on their early childhood experiences. They believed the importance of the unconscious mind had been greatly exaggerated.
The Behaviourist believes that a person’s inner feelings and attitudes can only be known to the individual in a personal way. They believe the only elements about the individual that can be known by the scientists conducting studies is the person’s outward behaviour that can be accurately measured and observed. Therefore the Behaviourist wants to focus on behaviour and not one’s inner feelings and memories. They believe that is the precise, scientific way of studying psychology.
Investigating an example will distinguish the approaches used by a psychoanalytic or Freudian psychologist and a Behaviourist. The psychologist wants to study the emotion of fear. For example, the Freudian attempts to discover the original childhood experience initiating the fear and how it is associated with present-day experiences. The Behaviourist is concerned with measuring body reactions when the emotion of fear is present, such as increased pulse rate, muscle tension, and extent the person perspires. The Behaviourist does not give a subjective report on how an individual actually feels when afraid. In other words, the Behaviourist studies behaviour in a clinical, scientific way. The Behaviourist avoids the use of the word mind as much as possible.
According to the Behaviourist, a great deal of a youngster’s actions are shaped by the behaviour of those around him. The child often imitates the actions of others. The youngster decides whether these responses will become a permanent part of his or her approach to life depending on whether such behaviour is rewarded or punished. Therefore, a person is programmed by environmental forces. If a reward is offered repeatedly for a behaviour, the individual retains that response. If punishment is used, the person quickly abandons the behaviour that leads to punishment. For example, we often see these Behaviourist principles in use when someone is training an animal by offering a reward or intervening with punishment depending on the behaviour.
Rewards and punishments people give to each other are not always something obvious such as money and gifts or a slap or scolding. A subtle yet powerful reward is a smile or a nod; a frown or complete silence are subtle forms of punishment.
Some critics believed that the methods of the Behaviourist leaned so strongly on physiology that their approach could hardly be classified as psychological. But the Behaviourist has made significant contributions to child psychology and the study of learning.
John Watson was an early leader in Behaviourist movement in psychology. He was an extreme environmentalist, which means he believed that human character, ability, and intelligence are an outcome of our circumstances in life. Human character is not inborn or innate. This notion is linked to the tabula rasa theory that the human being is a blank or clean slate at birth until recording life experiences. Another comparison is that we are like an unused videotape when we are first born until we begin noticing and recording what is happening to us.
Watson stated that human beings have no instincts and no inherited temperaments or talents. Only three innate or inborn emotional responses exist— fear, rage, and love. Other emotions are conditioned responses; that is, these emotions have been learned by programming the individual. Our habits are learned through conditioning, and so is our speech that is the basis of our thinking. The combination all the individual’s habits leads to personality.
One of Watson’s key concepts was that behaviour was formed by the S-R or stimulus response connection. An individual is exposed to a certain stimulus and responds with certain muscular contractions or glandular discharges. For example, when driving a car, you come to an intersection with a red light (stimulus). Your automatic reaction is to take your foot off the gas and put it on the brake (response).
In 1920 John B. Watson conducted an interesting experiment with a little boy named Albert, a white rat, and a loud noise. Albert was a little boy who had no fear of most things in his environment. Watson wanted to determine if fears were learnable instead of being instinctive as was traditionally thought. Albert was allowed to play with a variety of objects and animals (the white rat, a dog, wool, etc), and he had no fear or adverse reactions to any of them. Watson then hit a steel bar whenever Albert would reach out to pet the rat. This startled Albert who began to cry (loud noises are often associated with danger). From then on, the loud noise was paired with the white rat and Albert always had a strong negative response. Eventually, the white rat was able to elicit a negative response from Albert even without the loud noise. Watson then introduced other objects. Albert did not cry when blocks or rubber balls were placed in front of him but Albert did cry when he saw a white rabbit. In fact, Albert generalized his fear to many white furry objects including white fur coats, cotton wool, and even a Santa Claus beard.