The Short-Comings of Behaviorism as an Approach to Psychology - Essay Example

?Behaviorism Outline the short-comings of behaviorism as an approach to psychology. One of the key setbacks of behaviorism as an approach to psychology is the fact that the behaviorists tend to perceive or label all aspects of human behavior, strictly as a response to stimuli. The behaviorist approach is entirely deterministic whereby it is essentially assumed that any human reaction is directly dependent on and related to their environment and that their reactions are solely controlled by the environment thus in the process denying any role played by their own choice of actions or free will. The behavioral approach tilts strongly in favor of the nurture side of the nature-nurture scale (Pastorino, Doyle-Portillo, 2008). The behaviorist approach gives much more emphasis on external stimuli and assumes that much of the learned behavior is an outcome of the external factors which can be observed objectively giving little or no significance to internal stimuli. Hence due to such assumption the behaviorist researchers tend to rely mostly on observable behavior which can be negated or dismissed through experiments making it a reductionist perspective. The deliberate ignoring of cognitive processes and role of biological factors in human behavior is also a crucial shortcoming of the behaviorist approach (Bray and Stanton, 2012). Furthermore the behavioral researchers believe that all types of behavior are learned, denying or ignoring the role of cognitive processes entirely. Such an assumption is highly likely to lessen the credibility of experiments particularly those related to the study of critical health problems. For instance, in case of study of depression the behavioral approach presumes that certain types of problems concerning mental human health such as depression cannot be cured through behavioral therapies since this approach does not believe in changing a learnt behavior. It solely focuses on how individuals are likely to react to certain learned behavior but does not give much credence to how the individual thinks and the context and circumstances of the learned behavior (Ttrull and Prinstein, 2012: p. 413). One of the fundamental principles of behaviorism was the fact that it relied on the concept of 'parsimony' alternatively referred to as 'Occam's razor'. According to this concept the researchers are encouraged to seek the simplest possible explanation of any given event. Hence while seeking explanation to a certain behavior of craving sweet by an individual A, the simplest possible explanation to the event i.e. craving of sweets was chosen without giving any thought or credence to the innate concepts such as 'hunger' or 'oral personality' since such explanations were perceived to be too complex, invoking a series of various vague concepts which were difficult to be 'observed' or difficult to be categorized as 'observable behavior' (Glassman, 2009: p.111). 2. Outline it's strengths, especially as they may have been perceived in Watson's time. The term Behaviorism was coined by John Broadus Watson in his article 'Psychology as the behaviorist views it' published in the year 1913. He popularized the concept of behaviorism at a time when the concept of hereditary deterministic perspectives or intelligence was at its peak (Kazazian, Smith, and Gillham, 2012). The key focus of behavioral researchers was on studying the human behavior rather than the mind or intelligence which was relatively more popular focus of researchers during the early 1900s (Watson, 1913). Watson strongly believed that human behavior can be conditioned to generate predefined responses and that it can be studied through observable behavior which is a more scientific approach than those suggested by other researchers prior to the development of the concept of Behaviorism, and which were focused on studying the internal mind and intelligence which in his opinion were not observable. Hence the key strength of behaviorism was the ability to observe human behavior and derive inferences from the same, in a scientific manner. While most of the researchers focused on studying psychology of the mind, the consciousness and introspection, Watson on the other hand stressed on the significance of studying observable human behavior to debate the credibility of those seeking answers for human behavior through introspection and other similar internal processes. The methods used by him were experimental in nature using animals and often at times, humans as subjects of his study which was considered a breakthrough during the early 1900s. Hence the experiments conducted and observations made by behavioral researchers were deemed to be practically relevant, as compared to the prior studies which focused on introspection which did not offer any relevant observation or practical improvement measures (Begley, 2010). The behaviorist approach was divided into two forms - radical behaviorism and methodological behaviorism. While the radical approach denied the significance attributed to the study of mental states and its relationship with human behavior the relatively moderate methodological approach embraced the study of internal processes such as behavior of the mind, mental or psychological responses using a combination of natural sciences - i.e. through observation and experiment. Hence this approach developed by the behaviorist offered greater flexibility in studying the relatively more complex human mind and its psychological state through observable behavior and experiments (Cunningham, 2000: p. 18). According to Weidman (2006) the key strength of behaviorism was the fact that it made psychology “a true science of human conduct” (p. 42). 3. What is the difference between what Watson was studying and Skinner? Both Watson and Skinner were behavioral scientists who believed in publicly observable behavior as the only acceptable form of studying human behavior. Watson rejected the research approach followed by Freud since he believed them to be too theoretical and lacking practical applicability. He also rejected the idea of the role of heredity in explaining certain traits in human behavior. Hence he was more focused on conducting experiments to study the manner in which individuals are likely to behave and react if exposed to certain stimuli and observing what their usual or normal response would be like, in the absence of such stimuli (Harris, 1979). Watson proposed that human behavior can be controlled and conditioned to generate a certain response based on the type of external stimuli. He conducted various experiments during the 1900s depicting the manner in which he humans can be trained to behave or react in a certain way depending on the type of stimuli and they can be taught to respond to certain stimuli to generate a certain type of behavior. Such trained responses in his opinion were likely to be different than their usual behavior which could otherwise be expected in the absence of the external stimuli. In one particular experiment, and one of his most famous ones, concerning an infant named Albert he displayed his hypothesis of the impact of external stimuli on human behavior. Through a series of experiments he conditioned the infant to fear a pet rat which the infant previously liked, but came to fear it post the experiments - a response attributed to the external stimuli. By the end of the experiment, and in accordance with the claims made by Watson, Albert not only came to fear the white pet rat but also similar non-related and inanimate objects from coats to the Santa Claus's beard which resembled a white fuzzy object similar to the white rates which the infant subsequently came to fear (Harris, 1979). Contrary to Watson’s experiments, which focused on observing the behavior of humans post the exposure to external stimuli, Skinner’s studies were focused on Operant Conditioning whereby he focused on the study of human behavior which could be manipulated by the use of external stimulants after a certain behavior. Hence unlike Watson, Skinner proposed that human behavior can be conditioned based on the stimuli that follow a given behavior. He proposed that if a behavior is followed by positive reinforcement such behavior is likely to be repeated by the object under study and vice versa. The fundamental principle of Operant conditioning as proposed by Skinner was that organisms tend to repeat those behavior that generate positive outcomes while not avoiding those that result in a negative outcome. Based on his experiments involving pigeons he displayed the manner in which the behavior of organisms can be controlled based on positive or negative reinforcements (Weiten, 2010). Thus although both Watson conducted different types of experiments and proposed differing opinions on ways in which outcome of human behavior can be controlled, they essentially discredited the role of free will by implying that human behavior is entirely dependent on the type of conditioning received by them or the type of behavior encouraged or discouraged through positive or negative reinforcements. References: Begley, C. E., (2010). Afraid to believe in free will: The human tendency to avoid responsiblity for free choices. Bloomington, IN: West Bow Press. Bray, J. H., Stanton, M., (2012). Family psychology. Oxford, OX: Wiley-Blackwell Publication. Cunningham, S., (2000). What is a mind?: An integrative introduction to the philosophy of mind. Indianopolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Glassman, W. E., Hadad, M., (2009). Approaches to psychology. New York, NY: Open University Press. Harris, B., (1979). Whatever happened to little Albert? American Psychologist, Vol. 34 (2): p. 151-160. Kazazian, H. H., Smith, M., Gilliham, N. W., (2012). Genetic breakthroughs - Their implications for you and your health. FT Press. Pastorino, E. E., Doyle-Portillo, S. M., (2008). What is psychology?: Essentials. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning Publications. Ttrull, T. J., Prinstein, M. J., (2012). Clinical psychology. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning Publishing. Watson, J. B., (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, vol. 20: p. 155-177. Weidman, N. M., (2006). Constructing scientific psychology. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. Weiten, W., (2010). Psychology: Themes and variations. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning Publishing. Read More