BEHAVIORISM

BEHAVIORISM

Behaviourism is a School of Psychology that confines it self to the study of observable and quantifiable aspects of behavior. It elucidates that human and animal behaviours can be explained in terms of conditioning, without any appeal to thoughts and feeling. It came into existence as a protest against Structuralism and functionalism. Behavioural psychology was developed by J.B Watson relying on the work of Pavlov. B.F Skinner strengthened its foundation further.

  

            Behaviourism focuses its attention totally on the observable behaviour that can be measured scientifically. Behaviourists view that behaviour is merely an individual’s response to his environmental stimulus. It can be measured  explained in terms of stimulus and response. Behaviourists maintain that environmental focuses are more important in shaping the personality of an individual. It further points out that all behaviour is learned in terms of its interaction with the environment.

              John B. Watson (1878-1950) put forward an entirely new doctrine, named behaviorism which was contrary to structuralism and  functionalism. He concluded that whole idea consciousness is absurd. Consciousness cannot be proved by any scientific test, for consciousness cannot be seen, touched, or exhibited in a test tube. Even if exists it cannot be studied scientifically , because admittedly it is subjected only to private inspection. Therefore, if we intend to make psychology a science of behaviour, we should concentrate only on the observable and measurable behavior. We have to discard altogether not only the concept of consciousness but  also all mentalist notions like soul, mind, mental life, images and ideas, etc.

          Consequently, behaviorism as a method of studying behavior focused its attention totally on the overt or observable behavior . A behaviourist is not interested in the feeling of  fear (because it is not measurable) but pays attention to the changes in heart rate and blood pressure which are the effects of fear and can be objectively measured. The theory of behaviourism as propagated by Watson was in fact based on the finding o f the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) , the propagator of the theory of classical conditioning.

                In his classic experiment, Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell by substituting that sound for the sight and small of meat and concluded that all behavior is a response to same stimulus in the environment. Watson tried to apply this approach in the field of human behaviour. In the famous experiment with an 11-month old baby named Albert, he conditioned the baby’s behavior to fear a rat by substitution the rat with a sudden loud noise. He conclude that behavior is merely the response to same environmental stimulus. How we behave and why we behave in a particular way can be successfully demonstrated and explained through habit formation or conditioning. Thus conditioning through environmental influences and not hereditary endowments or innate differences is responsible for shaping the behaviour of child.

¢    The behavior of an individual may, thus, be  supposed to be controlled by environmental forces, and=d not by hereditary endowments or innate differences.

¢    His strong convictions about the stimulus response automatization and environmental influences made Watson assert boldly in 1926:

¢    The doctrine of behaviourism propounded by Watson and his disciples, thus, ushered a new era in the field of psychology by making it somewhat materialistic, mechanistic, deterministic and objective like most of the physical and natural sciences. However, it suffered from a number of drawbacks, limitations and shortcomings.

         For this reason it has been subjected to criticism and has been modified and refined in a number of ways by contemporary psychologists like Lashley, Tolman, Hull and Skinner. While Lashley devoted himself to neurophysiology and Tolman believed in purposive behaviourism, B.F. Skinner, a leading American behaviourist of the present age emphasized a system of learning  known as operant conditioning, quite different from the type of conditioning advocated by Pavlov and Watson. The task of behaviour modification he advocated and the teaching machines he popularized by using the principles of reward, wield significance in the fields of psychology , education and medicine.

PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOURISM

Ø    Behaviour is both conditioned and determined by its own outcomes or consequences.

Ø    Human behaviour can be understood by  investigating animal behaviour .

Ø     Only the observable and measurable aspects of a behaviour are worth investigating.

Ø    Repetition alone brings mastery which is the same as understanding.

Ø     Knowledge is something given by a teacher and taken by a learner.

Ø     A teacher should focus on changing the learner's behaviour and not his thinking patterns.

MERITS OF BEHAVIOURISM AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION

1.                Behaviourists in the study of behaviour rejected the notions of structuralists for figuring out what people were feeling or seeing or the functionalists notion of how and why they were thinking. Instead, they focused on what was actually being done by the people and observed by the observer or investigator. In this way, they introduced the scientific method for studying behaviour, which is essentially based on the objective observation of the behaviour and the events. Behaviourism thus helped in replacing introspective measures with the scientific and objective measures.

 2.  behaviourists, while giving second place to hereditary characteristics, highlighted of role of environment in shaping and modifying the behaviour of children. It helped in revolutionizing all the programmes and methods related to education, traning and rehabilitation by emphasizing a greater need to provide the best possibe learning situations and environment for better growth and development of the child.

3.  The approach to dealing with abnormal and mentally sick persons as well as delinquent, maladjusted, backward and problem children was also drastically changed on account of the experimental findings of the behaviourists. In particular, the techniques of shaping behaviour and the behaviour modification programmes advocated by the behaviourists ushered a new era into this field

4.                Since behaviourists did not believe in entities like the ‘mind’, and the mind-body problem, the mental approach to human behaviour was altogether discarded. As a result all concepts related to the doctrine of mentalism like sensation, emotion perception were dropped from psychology and education texts, giving way to new concepts like stimulus, response, habits, learning, and conditioning.

5.                 Behaviourism helped in extending the scope of educational psychology to include the study of animals as a way to learn more about human nature.

6.                Behaviourism advocated the use of reinforcement, and rewards (in place of punishment and unpleasant experinces) as inducement for the acquistion of desirable behaviour and for giving up the undesirable.

7.                 Behaviourism highlighted the role of motivation and definition  of the aims and purposes in learning and shaping of behaviour.

8.                Behaviourism gave rise to new ideas and innovations in the field of learning and instruction like programmed learning and individualized self instructional programmes involving teaching machines and computer-assisted instruction.

Aiswarya.B

                                                              Social science