by Kerry Hosking

Created on: March 07, 2009   Last Updated: March 26, 2009

The way we learn and behave throughout our lives is determined by many life experiences, the environment we live in, and an abundance of internal variables such as self-efficacy. Therefore, to raise a healthy new generation, it is beneficial for us to fully understand the concepts of behaviorism and the different ways we are able to learn new things.

John B. Watson founded the concept of behaviorism in the early years of the 20th century. The principles of behaviorism have been an influential force on many theories of psychology which were later developed. Behaviorism attempts to explain the influence the environment has in the development of a person's behavior. Many believe that the environment is largely responsible for shaping us into the people we become. An example of this train of thought belonged to B.F. Skinner, when wrote a novel about a civilization of harmonious human beings, who lived and worked peacefully together and had few problems to contend with.

Skinner's novel, Walden Two, presented a theory which Watson strongly believed, that any person could be manipulated to behave in a certain way, if the environment they resided in was conducive to such behavior. Another philosopher before Watson, John Locke (1690) had previously developed the doctrine, known as the tabula rasa.

What is Tabula Rasa?

The tabula rasa refers to the idea that a person is a blank slate, and therefore, is able to be molded into a being with positive purpose and appropriate behaviors, based on their life experiences. In a perfect world, this may be the case, and theorists today do indeed, believe that our environments play a major role in the way we develop; particularly from a social perspective. Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) put it clearly, agreeing that "the good society should make for the greatest happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people"(para.1).

Classical Conditioning

The utilitarians believed that people were able to learn through the process of association. In Pavlov's well known example, the dog learned to salivate when he heard a tone, because he associated that with a piece of meat which it was given shortly after hearing the sound. The tone, a neutral stimulus, the meat was the unconditioned stimulus, and the salivation was the unconditioned response. After a period of repetitions, the tone became a conditioned stimulus, which prompted the conditioned response, salivation, whether the meat (unconditioned stimulus)

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