Behaviorism Psychology - An Introduction

Definition: Behaviorism is a school of psychology focused on observable behavior, positing that all behaviors are learned through interactions with the environment via conditioning. Its main principles include a focus on stimulus-response relationships and the use of conditioning (both classical and operant) to explain and modify behavior through reinforcement and punishment. 

For the next few weeks, we will be looking at a very complex school of psychology; Behaviorism. The founder of Behaviorism, John B. Watson (1878–1958), was an American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. While other psychologists were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed. He believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible.

B. F Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, Edward Thorndike, and Clark Hull were influential in its growth. There are several schools within the school of Behaviorism, including:

Types of Behaviorism

Methodological Behaviorism and Radical Behaviorism which explore how human behavior is shaped and influenced.

Classical Conditioning

Learning Through Association and Factors That Impact Conditioning which are used in training human behavior.   

Operant Conditioning

Consequences Affect Learning - the process in which learning can occur through the use of reinforcement and punishment.

Stimulus - Response (S-R) Theory

Learning and behavior can be explained by interactions between stimuli and the responses they evoke.

We will also look at some of the experiments , e,g, Ivan Pavlov with hungry dogs and children with white rats. We will examine the educational concepts of Edward Thorndike and Clark Hull. Finally we will explore the possible uses of Behaviorism in the coaching of various sports.

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,

it's about learning to dance in the rain.

                                              — Vivian Greene