Behaviorism in Psychology

Finished · Cognitive Science

Summary

This is an overview of behaviorism in Psychology. It starts by defining what behaviorism is. Though there are certainly different flavors of the theory, in general, behaviorists argue that all human actions can be broken down to a stimulus-response scenario, in which an individual (usually tested on animals) experiences a stimulus of some kind and it elicits a certain response. The response that is elicited depends on how the behavior was conditioned. With classical conditioning, there is a pairing between some stimulus and a behavior associated with it. For example, if a dog is fed every time a bell sounds, the dog is conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Eventually, the stimulus of the bell will elicit salivation even without the presence of food.

Another type of conditioning is operant conditioning, in which a certain stimulus or behavior is met with a punishment or reward. Over time, the behavior is associated with the punishment/reward that is consistently given with it.

One of the major benefits that behaviorism wrought is rigorous, objective, scientific experimentation to test hypotheses. This legacy seems to be continuing into the cognitive psychology era.