Behaviorism: John B. Skinner's Approach To Psychology

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Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. It is a form of materialism, denying any independent significance for mind. Its significance for psychological treatment has been profound, making it one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy. One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory, and that all behavior is determined by the environment either through association or reinforcement. The behaviorist school of thought ran concurrent with the psychoanalysis movement in psychology in the 20th century. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, John B. Watson (1878-1958) …show more content…

Punishment is effective in quickly eliminating undesirable behaviors. Examples of punishment include: Failure to do homework results in after-school detention (privilege of going home is in choice of theoretical structures, emphasizes parsimony. Psychologist B F Skinner was interested in learning and behavior. Like teachers who have depended on behaviors to tell them what’s going on inside a person , Skinner believed that observing people’s behavior was the best way to figure them out.in skinners branch of psychology, learning is about changing behavior and begins to listen, he has learned to listen. Likewise, if you are explaining to students how to add numbers and the students consistently answers with the wrong answers but then begins to answer with the right ones, his behavior shows you that he has learned how to add. Skinner believed that people learn two different ways: they learn to avoid negative things and strive for positive things. So according to B F Skinner , if you give a child a piece of candy each time he gets an answer right, he will learn to figure out the right answer in order to get the candy because he is striving for positive things. On the other hand, if you give a child detention every time he gets the answer wrong, he will also learn to figure out how to get the right answer, this time in order to avoid negative things

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