everyone welcome back to about in mind this video is going to cover ways to evaluate the behaviourist approach in psychology we'll be having a discussion about the strengths and limitations of the behaviourist approach that will include counter-arguments comparisons and debates to help you write some high quality evaluation in any essay you might get asked about this approach we've covered the ideas of the behaviourist approach in two previous videos that have looked at classical conditioning with the work of ivan pavlov and operant conditioning with the work of b.f skinner so do check them out if you haven't already done so before watching this video there are many ways to evaluate the behaviorist approach but to keep things simple we're going to do so under the following headings research methods supporting evidence application and debates firstly let's discuss the research methods used by behaviourists on the one hand the behaviourist approach to studying human behavior can be praised for its highly scientific research methods this is because they moved away from the subjective methods of introspection proposed by wilhelm vundt and instead behaviorism focused on the measurement of objective behavior within highly controlled laboratory settings for example skinner's research used controlled conditions with the skin of box where he was able to accurately measure the effects of reinforcement and punishment on rat's behavior this allowed him to establish cause and effect between consequences and future behavior therefore this demonstrates the value of the behaviourist approach because by using this scientific process it helps give psychology scientific credibility however one of the main criticisms made against the research of behaviorists is the fact that skinner and pavlov's work were both based on animals this is a problem because animal behavior is rather different to human behavior in several ways some have argued that human behaviour is much more complex and different in areas such as emotion consciousness and in terms of social behavior for example humans have a level of consciousness that might include worries about what others might think of us if we do or say certain things and then it can also involve weighing up the consequences of our behaviors for the future and that's not even to mention how much more complex human language is in comparison other approaches such as social learning theory and the cognitive approach have emphasized the importance of mental processes during learning and as such do not study animal behavior therefore it could be argued that behaviorism is rather limited because of the difficulty in generalizing the findings of the results from animals to humans having said that whilst pavlov and skinner's work was conducted on animals one example of research that has been conducted on humans is the famous study of watson and reiner in 1920. this involved investigating classical conditioning in a young baby called little albert at nine months old little albert was presented with a range of objects to see what his emotional reaction was to them this included various animals one of which was a white rat albert had normal reactions to these objects and didn't display any signs of fear a few months later when albert was 11 months old he was presented with the white rat again and reached out to play with it but this time when he did so watson and rayner struck a steel bar with a hammer to make a loud noise right behind his head no surprises that albert was frightened by the noise to the point that he cried and moved away from the white rat they repeated this pairing again and again eventually albert learned to associate the white rat with the unpleasant noise and would show fear turn away and cry when the white rat was shown to him here we can see the process of classical conditioning at work in how a neutral stimulus a white rat was paired with an unconditioned stimulus a loud noise which eventually led to the white rat becoming a conditioned stimulus when it was presented on its own it led to a fear response in little albert this therefore shows how a new behavior can be learned through the association of one stimulus with another thirdly application how have the ideas of have been applied and used in the real world one of the main strengths of the behaviourist approach is seen in its real world application for example classical conditioning has been successfully used in the treatment of phobias through the process of systematic desensitization this is where a patient is gradually exposed to their feared object and at the same time is engaged in a relaxing activity such as deep breathing or meditation this helps them to associate their fear with a more pleasant stimulus and so counter-conditions their phobia i've made a video on this on treating phobias that goes into this in more detail if you're interested i'll link it in the description below another example is with operant conditioning this has been successfully applied in prisons and also in schools through what is called a token economy this is an example of behavior modification where prisoners or children are rewarded with tokens if they behave in the required way excellent 10 points to griffindorf which they can then exchange for other rewards or treats later on for example you may remember back to your younger school days where you received a shiny gold sticker when you did some good work and once you've earned enough of them you could choose a full activity or treat and you may also remember how you were positively reinforced at the end of the week with a special activity like golden time if you had behaved well as another example prisoners can earn tokens through good behavior which when they have earned enough of them can exchange for rewards such as an extra phone call or more free time the use of token economies has been shown to encourage more positive behaviors and led to children and prisoners improving their behavior because the rewards strengthen the desired behavior and make it more likely to be repeated therefore it can be argued that the behaviourist approach has made a significant contribution to our understanding of human behavior because it can help improve the lives of those with phobias as well as improve the behavior of children and prisoners finally let's consider how we can use the debates to discuss behaviorism one of the ways behaviorism has been criticized is because it is environmentally deterministic this is because it states that all behavior is caused by external forces for example conditioning and as a result this means that we have no free will to choose our behavior it is outside of our control bf skinner himself in fact argued that free will is an illusion by which he meant that we think we're making free choices but actually we are unaware of all the previous reinforcements in the past that have shaped us to behave the way we do some have argued that this is a problem because it removes responsibility for people's actions because if their behavior is caused by some external environmental factor outside of them then this means it's not down to them it's because of the way they've been conditioned it's the environment that is to blame in comparison the humanistic approach would argue that we do have free will to be able to choose our behavior and this is an important point because it means we do have responsibility for our behavior and as a result means we are more active and we can make choices to improve and change a point that is seen in the way the humanistic psychologists like carl rogers conduct their counseling therapy therefore it could be argued that the behaviourist approach is rather limited in this regard because of its deterministic view of behavior in contrast to the other approaches so now that you hopefully understand something of the strengths and limitations of the behaviourist approach bear in mind how you can order and structure your discussion about the approach in an essay notice how we've used a variety of evaluation points that have included supporting evidence counter arguments as well as debates to use our wider understanding of psychology to evaluate this approach for more on the other approaches in psychology check out the link to the playlist in the description below i hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one