HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Human Behaviour

Human Behaviour

Human behaviour is a complex phenomenon and is studied by scientists and experts world over. This field is considered to be one of the most important areas of social sciences. The psychology of learning goes back to the late 18th century when number of experts started studying the subject to analyze humans in a much better way. Behaviourists believe in the significance of environmental stimuli and its effect on our actions, this means that behaviourists focus on learning and the how peoples experiences effect our actions. Human behaviour can only be studied in ways that are considered ethical which causes a lot of the research done to be based on rats and other laboratory animals. Behaviourists such as Skinner, Pavlov and Watson have all influenced the research conducted in helping to explain human behaviour and their contribution has helped to advance other behaviourists and their theories on behaviour.

The origins of behaviourism were founded by John Watson and his paper "Psychology as the Behaviourist views it"(1913), he believed that self analysis produced findings that could never be proved right or wrong, he believed that people should study what can be accurately measured without dispute. He was so confident that his theory was right that in he also stated:

"Give me a dozen wholesome infants, well formed, and in my own particular world to convey them up, and I will guarantee to take any one at random and train him to be any type of specialist. I might select doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant and yes even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors" John Watson 1930.

Ian Pavlov was a biologist at the turn of the century and noticed that putting meat into the mouths of dogs caused them to salivate. Pavlov repeated this many times he noticed an unexpected Behavioural change in his dogs, they were beginning to salivate before the food entered their mouths and any stimulus that came before the food. Soon the dogs became conditioned to the point where it was possible to make them salivate without even having to present food and such stimuli as the sound of a bell caused the dogs to salivate. It was found that these dogs had been classically conditioned because they had learnt from their experiences and the results of these actions could be accurately noted down by measuring the amount of saliva that was produced from the dogs at the presentation of the stimuli. This basic theory of the dogs reflex to the stimuli was believed to work on humans and further work shows us that such experiences affect us in the same way.

Watson (and Rayner) used Pavlov's theory to improve his work with the dogs and relate it to human experiences, they took a young boy, Albert, and conditioned him to the point where he became afraid of rats, they did this by making a loud unpleasant noise whenever the rat was around, they went on to ...