Give me a dozen healthy infants wellformed and my own specified world to bring them up in and Ill guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might selectdoctor lawyer artist merchant chief and yes even ID: 224162
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Slide1
What do people mean when they talk about ‘human nature’?Slide2
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant- chief, and yes, even
beggarman
and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors" (Watson, 1924)
What claims is Watson making about human nature?Slide3
Today’s session
We are learning about...
We are learning how to...
The behaviourist approach to psychology
Explanations of behaviourism
Apply psychological ideas to create psychological explanationsSlide4
John B. Watson’s big idea...
There is no such thing as ‘human nature’. We are born as a ‘blank slate’ and shaped by our environments.Slide5
Principles of behaviourism
All behaviour is learned
Learning is a product of experience
with the
environment
Innate characteristics have little impact on behaviour
Do behaviourists take a nature or a nurture view of human behaviour?Slide6
Read and analyse the examples of children learning.
What is each child learning?
How are they learning it?
How do we know they have learned something?Slide7
Behaviourism and learning
Learning is
a change in behaviour caused by experience.
Learning can occur through:
Associating
one thing with another (classical conditioning)
Getting a positive or negative
consequence
for a particular action (operant conditioning)
Observing
the behaviour of someone else (social learning)Slide8
Behaviourism and anxiety disorders
Phobia – people learn an anxiety response to a previously neutral object or situation, through classical conditioning (Peter) or social learning (Mary).
OCD – through operant conditioning, people learn that a particular set of actions (the compulsion) reduces their anxiety levels. This is rewarding, so next time they feel anxious they do it again (Paul). Slide9
Behaviourist explanations of anxiety disorders
Think about the range of symptoms of phobia and OCD.
Does the behaviourism approach explain all, most or only some aspects of the disorders?
How could we do a study to test empirically the idea that anxiety disorders can be learned?Slide10
Homework
Locate, read and summarise the following research studies:
Hodgson &
Rachman
(1972)
Bagby
(1922)
Watson &
R
ayner
(1920)
Collectively, what do these studies tell us about the role of learning in anxiety disorders?Slide11
Behaviourism and animal research
Behaviourists conduct much of their research using animals, whose environments they manipulate in order to shape their behaviour.
How could we justify generalising from other animals to humans?
What advantages might animal research have over research with humans?