The Behaviourist Approach

The behaviourist approach dominated psychology from the 1910s to the 1950s and remains hugely influential today. It emerged as a direct reaction against Wundt's introspectionist methods, insisting that psychology should be the study of observable behaviour rather than unobservable mental processes.

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Key Assumptions

1. Psychology should be scientific — it should study only observable, measurable behaviour.
2. All behaviour is learned from the environment through conditioning (there is no innate behaviour beyond basic reflexes).
3. Animals and humans learn in the same way — research on animals can be generalised to humans.
4. The mind is irrelevant — internal mental processes (thoughts, feelings) cannot be observed and should not be studied.

Key Definition: Behaviourism — the approach that focuses exclusively on observable behaviour and explains all behaviour in terms of learning through interaction with the environment, primarily through classical and operant conditioning.

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Classical Conditioning: Pavlov (1927)

Ivan Pavlov (1849--1936), a Russian physiologist, discovered classical conditioning through his research on the digestive systems of dogs.

Pavlov's Experiment