Outline Two Advantages and Two Down sides of the Behaviourist Approach (12)
One of the advantages of the behaviourist approach is the fact it only focuses on conduct and behaviours that can be noticed and manipulated. Consequently this approach has proved itself to become useful in experiments where behavior can be seen and altered for ideal effects such as the experiment Burrhus Frederic Skinner conducted upon rats, manipulating them to press buttons and levers until they are provided food as well as the experiment Ivan Petrovich Pavlov conducted upon dogs in which he manipulated these to salivate for the ringing of any bell, instead of to foodstuff.
The behaviourist way also focuses on ‘here and now’ and what is seen, rather than checking out a person’s previous like the psychodynamic approach really does. This is a plus because it is not concerned with what cannot be noticed and so what happened in the past and many people do not know and believe that their past causes actions and personas in their later life, and several people the think eliminating the unwanted behaviour is somewhat more important than understanding the reasons for the actions.
On the other hand, a disadvantage of the behaviourist approach is usually that the theories are too deterministic while behaviourists believe that our behavior is determined only by environmental effects just like classical fitness and operant conditioning which is a disadvantage since behaviour may be indeterministic and there can be zero causes for it. It also undermines the amount of totally free will a person has and won’t consider that ever human being can make options about their behaviours and have meaning responsibility for behaviour which is a deficiency in the approach as being a person can make to change their very own behaviour and personality any kind of time given second and the environment doesn’t have to effect their particular decision.
Also, the behaviourist approach emphasises too much upon nurture. This focuses only on the environment effects on people, so it entirely ignores effects nature may have on a purpose and disregards genes as evidence of conduct which is a disadvantage as behaviour can be modified and altered by nature daily in different techniques like where a personlives, exactly where they visit, even what bus route they take etc . Furthermore, something often offer behaviourists is usually ‘If learning is the just factor which enables us who we are, after that we should become capable to become whatever we would like to be’ and a lot of behaviourists are not able to justify this kind of question correctly, the bottom line is that you have many different elements affecting the abilities other than learning.
In addition , the hypotheses of behaviourism have been primarily tested about animals and so the findings may well not completely apply to human behavior, which is far more a lot more sophisticated.
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