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An overview of the behaviourist approach, focusing on its strengths and weaknesses. Topics include determinism vs free will, reductionism vs holism, applications, and debates on idographic vs nomothetic, nature vs nurture, and scientific vs unscientific perspectives.
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Stance Positive / Negative Determinism / Free Will The behaviourist approach is firmly on the deterministic side of the free will versus determinism debate. We are born as a blank slate and the environment shapes us (en- vironmental determinism). As children, we have little / no control over the environment. The behaviourist approach acknowledges a very small contribution from free will, e.g. we are able to shape / choose our environment at times BUT this is very limited. On the one hand, supporting the concept of environmental determinism undermines the sense of choice or free will that humans have when making decisions. This validates the idea that we have no personal or moral responsibility for our behaviour and leads to a ‘blame culture’, for example aggression – an individual may display aggressive behaviour and blame the environment (aggressive role models, being positively reinforced for aggressive behavior, etc.) rather than seeing the behaviour as something they are responsible for. On the other hand, by recognising the role of determinism in behaviour, we know what factors have pre-determined a behaviour, such as a person’s phobia. This means we can aim to alter these factors in an at- tempt to change the behaviour. In other words, we can replace the ‘faulty’ learnt behaviour/association to the object and replace it with a new, more relaxed response, thus ‘curing’ any phobias. Reductionism / Holism The behaviourist approach is fairly reductionist as it reduces complex human behaviour to simple stimulus-re- sponse relationships. It suggests humans and animals learn in the same way and this is perhaps too simplistic. The behaviourist approach does not consider complex psychological OR biological factors in its explanations for human behaviour. The benefit of adopting a reductionist view is that it can help identify simple causal factors for behaviour and once the cause is identified it is much easier to modify the behaviour through treatments, e.g. systematic desensitisation / aversion therapy see the cause of phobias / addictions as faulty learning and as such change behaviour through counter conditioning. However, it is also a weakness because, by ignoring the interacting factors and the complexities of human behaviour, we are at risk of losing a real understanding of human behavior; for instance, there is evidence to suggest that phobias could symbolise unconscious anxieties. Thus, the real cause of the behaviour is ignored, therefore reducing the effectiveness of treatment. Applications It is clear that the behaviourist approach has been ap- plied successfully to many aspects of society, for example in the home, education and health. The wide use of behaviourist principles in the real world can be considered a strength of the approach. It sup- ports the principles of the approach by showing that they are effective in a real-life setting. It has also benefit- ed society by improving behaviour and encouraging functional, helpful behaviours.
Stance Positive / Negative Idiographic / Nomothetic The behaviourist approach is nomothetic. It develops general laws regarding learning and applies these laws universally to explain behaviour. Being nomothetic and developing theories of human behaviour can be a strength. As it can be applied to everyone (nomothetic), the approach benefits from being more scientific and potentially more useful in applying to more people. However, this could also be a weakness because it ignores individual differences and assumes that everyone responds in the same way. This is problematic for the behavioural approach as what is positively reinforcing may differ for each individual and so perhaps people should be studied ideographically to establish this. Nature / Nurture The behaviourist approach is considered to support the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate. The environment shapes behaviour. The fact that the behaviourist approach only considers the nurture side of this important debate is a weakness because it ignores the nature side of the debate such as the role of genes and thus cannot fully explain all human behaviour. For example, genes have been found to play a role in aggression and shaping the functioning of different areas of the brain, e.g. when the pre-frontal cortex has reduced activity people tend to be more aggressive (Raine et al). However, exploring only one side of the debate does allow behaviourists to conduct focused research with clear parameters. Scientific / Unscientific Behaviourists use scientific methods to investigate ideas, for example forming hypotheses and using methods like experiments; therefore, the approach is considered to be scientific. As a subject, psychology strives towards being scientifically recognised. Approaches that use the scientific method to investigate their ideas tend to be seen as more credible as the quality of their supporting evidence is higher. This also means they are likely to get more funding for research and be adopted more widely in society.