Essay about Behaviorism and Stimulus Frederic Skinner

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Behaviourist primarily concern with observable behaviour opposed to internal such as emotions and thoughts. They believe that people have no free will and that an individual’s environment can determines their behaviour. Behaviourists also believe in when born our mind is in a blank state (tabulsa rasa).

Ivan Pavlo, Classical conditioning: Pavlo’s theory began when he noticed his dogs salivating whenever he entered the room, even when he was not bringing them food. He started to come up with the theory that there are some things a dog does not need to learn. For an example the dogs didn’t learn how to salivate whenever they see food. The term for this reflex is called, hard wired. This is an unconditional response in behaviourist terms. This means it is not learnt. The next time Pavlo brought the food in for the dog he would ring a bell to see if the dog would associate the ring with the food. Several feedings later the dog would salivate when the bell was rung even when no food was presented. Thus learning conditioned response, a newly learnt response to a previously neutral stimulus that mimics the response of a unconditional stimulus
Frederic Skinner, Operant conditioning: Skinner was an American psychologist who worked mainly with rats and pigeons to discover some key principals of learning new behaviours. He used the Skinner box; this box contained a lever, when pressed released a food pellet, reinforcing lever pressing behaviour. A rat was tested on after a few minutes it would press the lever releasing a pellet. Soon the rat would repeatedly use the lever for pellets. Because the pellet is experienced as reinforcing the consequence would increase the probability of the behaviour being repeated. There are 2 types of reinforcement positive and negative. Skinner investigated negative by running a low electric current on the floor of the Skinner box. It would de-activate if the rat pressed the lever. The behaviour of lever pressing was thus negative. Skinner began to shock the rat when it pressed the lever, this concluded in the rat to stop pressing the lever as it was unpleasant.

Psychodynamic perspective: This in contrast to behavioural psychology, psychodynamic ignores the science and focuses on inside the head ofindividuals in order to make sense of their relationships, experiences and how they see the world. The psychodynamic approach includes all the theories in psychology that see human functioning based upon the interaction of motivations and forces within the person, particularly unconscious, and between the different structures of the
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