Behaviorism and Psychology
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In direct opposition to the prevalent beliefs of the psychologists who held that consciousness is the subject matter of psychology, behaviorists asserted that behavior of the human being should be the subject matter.1 To behaviorists, the focus on the inner life of human beings detracts from the importance of the revealing aspects of behavior.2 Therefore, behaviorists restrict themselves only to things that can be observed in order to establish patterns of behavior.3 Very often, the close observation of what the subject does in a variety of situations can produce revealing information not only about the diversity of behavior, but also consciousness.4 Ultimately, the knowledge of human behavior is significant because the externalization of the human being's consciousness has an effect on the rest of humanity. Consciousness, by itself, without the consequent behavior, does not have any bearings on society.5 The fundamental notion of Skinner's operant behaviorism is that all human beings are affected by the consequences of their own behavior. Thus, the behavior of human beings is continually influenced by the consequences of the previous acts that trigger changes to the outer environment.6 Therefore, the main focus of behaviorism is to study the interaction between the behavior and the environment--how the behavior is altered in response to environmental changes.7 In Skinner's model for learning, learning does not occur without the existence of the conditions of re
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he progress of the courses and the behavior of the children within the classrooms.
In the behaviorist world, human behavior is shaped by rewards, threats, and punishments. Because a person's behavior triggers changes within the environment, the environment can control changes in subsequent behavior.22 Educational behaviorism is used in the way that students are taught by establishing objectives and controlling the environment by managing reinforcements.23
Behaviorists teach primarily by altering external behavior without considering the workings of the consciousness. Therefore, they focus only on changing verbal behavior through reinforcements, thus implying that internal thoughts can be altered via the external behavior.24 Although such a learning system can work in establishing simple relationships and associations, it would be difficult to transmit higher-order mathematical relationship in the same manner. The fact that there are people who grasp such principles illustrates the reality that human beings do not operate in the "behavoristic" fashion.25
Therefore, this perspective seems to oversimplify the behavior of human beings. Although behaviorists emphasize the importance of demonstrating the validity of their work
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Approximate Word count = 2591
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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