This descriptive ppt on Behaviorism will help to take the knowledge in crux. It includes how the behaviorism came into fame after the fall of Psychology and goals of behaviorism. It includes the brief contribution of Watson and B.F Skinner two leading forces of Behaviorism. It includes classical conditioning, S-R relationship,it also includes operant conditioning. It also states about the criticism of Behaviorism.

2. What is psychology?
It is the scientific study of the mind and behavior.
Psychology is a multifaceted discipline and includes many sub-fields
of study such areas as human development, sports, health, clinical,
social behavior and cognitive processes.

3. When psychology was first established as a science separate from biology and
philosophy, the debate over how to describe and explain the human mind and
behavior began. The different schools of psychology represent the major
theories within psychology.
STRIUCTURALISM &
FUNCTIONSLISM
• STRUCTURALISM -WILHELM WUNDT
• FUNCTIONALISM – WILLIAM JAMES
GESTALT &
PSYCHOLANALYTIC
• GESTALT – WERTHEIMER, KOFFKA
AND KOHLER
• PSYCHOANLYTIC – SIGMUND FREUD
BEHAVIORISM &
HUMANISM
• BEHAVIOURISM – JAMES WATSON,
IVAN PAVLOV AND B.F. SKINNER
• HUMANISM – CARL ROGERS

4. -Introduction
-What is Behaviourism
-Explanation
-John B Watson & Origin of Behaviourism
-Goals of Behaviourism
-Types of Conditioning
-Classical Conditioning
-B.F Skinner
Operant Conditioning
-Pros& Cons
-Refrences

5. • The history of behaviourism can start with describing the FUNCTIONALIST
movement, which came before it.
So What is Functionalism?
• Developer: William James(Early19th Century)
It basically tells the functioning of the mind.
What mind do? How does it do?
Major Concern was to investigate the function, or purpose of consciousness.

6. But it(Functionalism) was not a formal and unified
school of thought and thus rejected and behaviourism
came to play…

7. Term BEHAVIOURISM was coined in 1913.
• It is the theory or doctrine that the human or animal behaviour can be accurately
studied only through the examination and analysis of objectively observable and
quantifiable behavioural events, in contrast with subjective mental states.
• *Behavior = the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards
others.

8. Explanation:
 It’s a systematic approach to the understanding of Human and Animal behavior.
 It assumes “All” behavior are
a) Responses to Stimuli
b) One’s history (Reinforcement and punishment)
c) One present motivational state and controlling stimuli.

9. John Broadcus Watson was born in 1878 in Greenville, South California, to Emma and Pickens
Watson.
He earned his bachelor degree at University of Chicago.
He became an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1913,at Columbia University,Watson delivered a lecture entitled “Psychology as a behaviourist
views it”.
He saw psychology as study of people’s actions with the ability to predict and control those
actions. This idea became the behaviourist theory.
Behaviour theorist define learning as nothing more than acquisition of new behaviour based on
environmental conditions.

10. John B Watson believe about Behavior
In his book, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It Watson (1913) outlines the principles of all
behaviorists: 'Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of
natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.

11.  The goal of behaviourism is to explain relationships between antecedent
conditions(stimuli),behaviour (responses),and consequences(reward,
punishment,or neutral effect).
 Watson was very much influenced by Ivan Pavlov’s animal studies (Classical
conditioning) so he began to give his ideas by observing the behaviour through
that study.

12. Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning

13.  Actually Classical Conditioning was given by Ivan Pavlov and on the basis of
observations made John Watson proposed that classical conditioning was able to
explain all the aspects of psychology.
 Now what is Classical Conditioning?
 It involves learning a new behaviour via a process of association.
 In this two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a
person or animal.

14.  Before Conditioning: In this a person responds to stimuli naturally which is not
taught to him.
 That stimulus is called Unconditioned Stimulus and that response is called
Unconditioned response.
 E.g. : Perfume smell(UCS) could create a response of happiness or desire (UCR)
which a natural response of a individual towards that smell and that is not taught
to him.
 This stage involves one more stimulus i.e. having no effect called Neutral effect. It
can be a person, object, place and it will not produce a effect until it is paired with
(UCS)

15. During Conditioning & after Conditioning:
In this stage a stimulus which produces No Response(NS) is associated with Unconditioned
Stimulus (UCS)and together it forms Conditioned Stimulus(CS)
SO,
(NS)+(UCS)=(CS)
For making learning, we can combine (UCS) with (CS) and we can get a new response.
i.e. (UCS)+(CS)=(CR)
(CR)= conditioned response
E.g. : Stomach Virus(UCS) might be associated with eating a certain food like Chocolate(CS) and
will infect a person is Conditioned Response(CR).

16. EXAMPLES:
Experiment on dog by Ivan Pavlov where dog used to associate the sound
of bell(UCS) with the food(CS) that when the bell will ring he will get food
(CR).
Little Albert Experiment where when little Albert was shown fur objects like
rats or any white objects, he started to cry. He was initially not feared of
white objects(UCS) but when those objects were presented with hammer
sounds (CS) ,he started to associate it with fear and start crying(CR). And
whenever he saw white objects he got afraid.
Even this can happen in school(UCS) when a student is bullied (CS) he will
associate school with bullying and starts fearing (CR)when hears of school.
.

17. B.F. SKINNER
 Born in Pennsylvania in 1904.
• He began to work on ideas of human behaviour after earning his doctorate from
Harvard.
• He developed an operant conditioning apparatus there which became better
known as Skinner Box.
• He used to study behaviour of rats in it initially and then of pigeons and got the
idea that some sort of Reinforcement is needed to see or observe a Behaviour.
• His work involved learned responses to an environment rather than involuntary
responses to a stimuli.

18. • By 1920s John Watson had left academic psychology and other behaviourist
were started to become more influential.
• Most important behaviourist was Burrhus Frederic skinner or B.F. skinner
• He said that classical conditioning was far too simplistic to be a complete
explanation of complex human behaviour.
• What he said was that to understand the behaviour the best way is to
look at the causes of action and its consequences and this is called
Operant Conditioning.

19. OPERANT CONDITIONING

20. What Skinner did?
 Skinner introduced a new term Reinforcement. Behaviour which is reinforced
tends to be repeated ( strengthened) and which is not reinforced tends to die
out(weakened)
 There can be 2 types of reinforcement:
 Positive reinforcement
 Negative reinforcement
 One more type of operant is :
 Punishment

21. Reinforcement:
 Term used in Operant Conditioning.
 Reinforcement refers to anything that increases the likelihood that a response will
occur.
 NOTE : Reinforcement is defined by the affects of it on Behavior- “ It increases or
strengthen the behavior.”
 For example, reinforcement might involve presenting praise (the reinforcer)
immediately after a child puts away her toys (the response). By reinforcing the
desired behavior with praise, the girl will be more likely to perform the same
actions again.

22. Types of reinforcement:
• POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
• It strengthens the behaviour by
providing a consequence an
individual finds rewarding.
• For e.g.: If the teacher praises
you in front of your class for the
homework so you will again
repeat that to get praise from
your teacher.
• NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
• The removal of an unpleasant
reinforce can also strengthen
behaviour.
• For e.g.: You have to give 100
Bucks if you did not complete
your work so you will complete
your work to avoid giving 100
Bucks. Thus, your behaviour gets
strengthened.

23. It is just opposite of Reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or
eliminate a response rather than increasing it.
E.g: If a mother use to scold her child on some bad behaviour the kid will
avoid that sort of behaviour for the next time because he know the
consequence of that behaviour.

24. Strengths
•Scientific
•Highly applicable (e.g. therapy)
•Emphasizes objective measurement
•Many experiments to support theories
•Identified comparisons between animals (Pavlov) and humans (Watson & Rayner - Little Albert)

25. Limitations
•Ignores mediational processes
•Ignores biology (e.g. testosterone)
•Too deterministic (little free-will)
•Experiments – low ecological validity

26. Behaviourism
-Dheeraj
B.sc(Clinical Psychology)