Behaviourism

Question 1

Stanley Hall

Answer 1

1890: founding APA and American Journal of Psychology

Question 2

How did it come that USA was home of the functionalists

Answer 2

• America is a pragmatic bussiness country that mistrusts intellectualism
• strong interest Darwinism

Question 3

Franz Joseph Gall

Answer 3

1850 - 1900 phrenology (and Spurzheim)

Question 4

Why was psychology struggling in the end of the 19th century?

Answer 4

Associated with phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism,

Attempt to better image by informing the public about the new psychology

Question 5

Early animal research 1850-1900

Answer 5

Anecdotal and anthropomorphism

George Romanes

Question 6

Thorndike 1890

Answer 6

Observations in controlled environments
Puzzle boxes
Instrumental conditioning and law of effect
Father of comparative psychology: overcame anecdotalism, anthropomorphism into mechanicotheromorphism: attribution of mechanistic properties to psychological phenomena + generalizing from animals to humans.
After him: increased animal labs, graded theory of intelligence

Question 7

John Watson 1913

Answer 7

1913 behaviourist manifesto in which he said that the method of animal bhvr observation was the way to go for psychology, critized other methods. Within wider positivst movement. Introspection is bad bc no results and not reproducable.
Investigated with ROsalie Rayner that phobias originated in clasiccal conditioning (Little ALberT). Influenced by Freud.

Question 8

Behavourism

Answer 8

Method: experimental, very controlled, stimulus response, observing behaviour.
Introspection evolved into observation.
Denies to various lengths mental processes inside the black box. Heavily influenced by evolution theory and comparative psyhc.
Goal: to predict and control behaviour.
Focus on learning and empiricism.

Question 9

Beviourism and positivistic philosophy of science

Answer 9

1. as much as possible try to involve mathemizable laws. And operational definitons = defining a variable in the way that its measured (operationalized)
   Hull tried to.
2. Distinction IV and DV
3. need for verification

Question 10

Skinner 1930

Answer 10

The radical behaviourist with the black box

Made skinner boxes, spoke of operational conditioning. No free will. All reflexes. Only S-R

Question 11

Clark L. Hull 1940

Answer 11

Tried to use operational definitions and mathematic law to describe learning in animal behaviour. (focussing on stimulus, drive, reward, habit, reponse etc) But could not be extrapolated

Question 12

Edward C. Tolman

Answer 12

doubted Skinner interpretation of instrumental conditioning: S R cant explain everything.
Rats who arent reinforced should then not learn.
Did a maze (Blodgetss Maze) experiment which contradicted this. -> latent learning = learning that is not observable. Rats learned and could use knowledge as soon as motivated. So, like Hull, increasing focus on unobservable processes.

Question 13

Pavlov 1904

Answer 13

Russian school that thought psycholgy could be reduced to reflexes.