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behaviorism
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Below is one of our free research papers on behaviorism. If the term paper below is not exactly what you're looking for, you can search our essay database for other topics.
Behaviorism is a psychological theory of human development that shows that humans could be trained to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli given the correct stimuli, personality and behavior of a person. This theory of human development was started by psychologist Edward Thorndike, and then was developed further by John Watson and B.F. Skinner.
Edward Thorndike first proposed that people and animals acquire behaviors through associating it with a stimuli and a response. Edward had two laws of learning to explain how behaviors work. The Law of Effect says that when a behavior is followed by a good outcome, the behavior is likely to happen again. The Law of Exercise states that the more a stimulus is connected to a response, the stronger the bond between the two. (Lieberman) John Watson did not believe in human instinct, thought, or emotion. Watson believed if the data did not come from direct observation then the data was not useful. He thought that most of psychology was not concerned with the mind or human consciousness; instead they were only concerned with behavior. (Hursh) Behavior today is associated with the name B.F. Skinner. Skinner believed that, to experimentally analyze human and animal behavior, each act could be broken down into three key parts. The three parts made up his three-term contingency: discriminative stimulus, operant response, and reinforcer/punisher. This is the study of operant conditioning. (Hursh) A discriminative st...
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