BEHAVIORISM

Apr 3, 2020 1432 Words   

Behaviorism was the first study of psychology that looked at human behavior and how humans essentially learned (Ormrod, 1995). When describing behaviorism and it’s main ideas, it can be characterized as a type of psychology that examines the overt, observable actions and reactions of an individual. Behaviorists view the mind as a “black box” ignoring the possibility of thought and consciousness. Instead of studying the mind, behaviorists examine the unbiased, environmental conditions that influence a person’s behavior. John B. Watson, to many, is the founder of Behaviorism as a school of experimental psychology. Psychologists that most impacted the development of the behaviorist theory were Ivan Pavlov, who research on classical conditioning, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson, who rejected introspective methods and sought to reduce psychology to experimental