Behaviorism

Psychology has many different models and approaches, one of them being behaviorism. Behaviorism began in the early 20th century by John B. Watson. Watson was a driving force for the school of behaviorism, and his approach can be seen in a popular quote: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant- chief, and yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors" (1924).

Watson's work was inspired by Ivan Pavlov which was a famous Russian physiologist that won a Nobel prize for digestion but the one thing that Pavlov accomplished during his experiments is what we call conditioning. The way he came to realization with "conditioning" is through his experiment of feeding the dogs and the sound of a buzzer. He started noticing that after many repetitions of the buzzer, the dogs were salivating before the meat was even introduced. This shows that this automatic reflex can be learned and shaped. Throughout Watson's studying he tried to demonstrate that conditioning is a result of all psychological phenomena's.

Watson also showed us how to create a conditioned fear. The way he established that was when he used Little Albert which was a 11month old boy. Little Albert liked the white furry rat in the laboratory but once he saw Watson hitting it with a steal bar he cried, since Albert saw this numerous of times he developed a fear. So from that day on Little Albert every time he was introduced to a white rat or anything white and furry he would cry.

As this behavior was conditioned it can also be "revised", that was believed by B.F. Skinner. He believed that all but a few emotions were conditioned by habit, and could be learned