Behaviourism

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to tbe philosophy of understanding tbe behavior of humans and otber animals. It assumes that behavior is eitber a reflex evoked by tbe pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in tbe environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, togetber with tbe individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept tbe important role of heredity in determining behavior, tbey focus primarily on environmental events. Behaviorism emerged in tbe early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and otber traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally, but derived from earlier research in tbe late nineteenth century, such as when Edward Thorndike pioneered tbe law of effect, a procedure that involved tbe use of consequences to strengtben or weaken behavior.