Schools of Thought. (Behaviorism) by Cody Stacks

In psychology there are seven schools of thought: Behaviorism, psychoanalytical psychology, humanistic psychology, cognative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and the sociocultural approach. I have an appreciation for all of the schools of thought and I believe that they all have their place in psychology. However, my favorite school of thought is behaviorism. The school of psychology that views observable, measurable behavior as the appropriatesubject matter for psychology and emphasizes the key role of environment as a determinate of behavior. I like it because its plain and simple, you can see it, you can measure it.

Ivan Pavlov was one of my main reasons for choosing this school of thought, his experiments were so shocking. He used very extreme measures to achieve his goals. Reading about his research held my attention completely. He removed the cheeks of dogs so that he could observe their involuntary response by collecting saliva friom the dogs when food was placed in their mouth. This is known as an unconditioned response. He also noticed that the dogs would salivate before food was presented. They would salivate when tyhey heard their food dishes ratteling, or when they saw the actual food. This is known as a conditioned response. The type of learning he studied is known today as classical conditioning.

One of the assumptions of behaviorist thought is that free will is illusory, and that all behavior is determined by the environment either through association or reinforcement. For example, I have a dog named Cindy. She loves to play ball, but not with just any ball. She has a pink squeaky ball,when she was a puppy we would squeak the ball and she would get excited and we would take her outside to play. Now when the ball makes the slightest noise, she is at the backl door ready to go outside. Not every dog that hears the ball is going to react in the same manner unless they have been conditioned as she has.