Behavioral Psychology

Behavioral Psychology

I . Introduction

Sociobiology is a contemporary form of biological determinism in which it is asserted that human behavior is caused or shaped by biological factors like instincts . The opposing theory , behaviorism or behavioral psychology , asserts that individual behavior is not determined by instincts or any other hardware ' in the individual 's bran or glands Rather , all behavior is learned

Behavioral psychology traces its origins to the work of the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov (rev , 1999 . Pavlov 's experiments with dogs and humans revealed that behavior that had been

thought to be entirely instinctual could in fact be shaped or conditioned by learning situations . Pavlov 's dog , one of the most famous subjects in the history of psychology , was conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell . The dog would normally salivate whenever food was presented to him . In his experiment , Pavlov rang a bell whenever the dog was fed . Soon the dog would salivate at the sound of the bell alone , thereby showing the salivation , which had always seemed to be a purely biological reflex could be a conditioned , or learned , response well

The American learning psychologist John B . Watson carried on Pavlov 's work with equally famous series of experiments on little Albert ' an eleven-month-old boy . Watson conditioned Albert to fear baby toys that were thought to be inherently cute and cuddly , such as stuffed white rabbits . By presenting these objects to Albert at the same time that he frightened him (i .e , presented a negative stimulus , Watson showed that the baby could be conditioned to fear any fuzzy white object , including Santa Claus 's beard . He also showed that through the systematic presentation of white objects accompanied by positive stimuli he could extinguish ' Albert 's fear and cause him to like white objects again

On the basis of his findings Watson wrote , The cry of the behaviorist is , `Give me the baby and my world to bring it up in and I 'll make it crawl and walk I 'll make it a thief , a gunman , or a dope fiend ' The possibility of shaping in any direction is almost endless (1999 br

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II . Discussion

A . B .F . Skinner

B .F . Skinner carried behaviorism even further by developing more effective techniques pf shaping behavior using operant conditioning . Any kind of behavior could be an operant , a behavior that is shaped in the conditioning process

For example : An infant is given food it eats . The food is the stimulus eating is the response . But the mother wants the infant to sit up straight while eating . She waits until the baby stops squirming for a moment and assumes the desired position . Then she offers the food Before long the hungry child automatically takes the correct position when seated at the table . The unconditioned response to the food stimulus is eating the conditioned response is the taking of the desired position (Zuriff , 1999 . The baby 's natural squirming is the operant , a feature of behavior that originally had...