Mariana Bitsiou

Psychology
28/04/05
Explain how cultural and methodological considerations affect the
interpretation of behaviour from the learning perspective.
The learning perspective was founded in the beginning of the 20
th
century
with the beginning of the behaviouristic approach to psychology. Its founder was
Watson who was influenced very much by the British tradition and by Skinner.
Those days of the industrial revolution the pace o life was very uick.
!reud"s approach on behaviour and his long lasting sessions for treatment did not
meet the societies needs at that time. So the world needed a psychological
theory where behaviour would be e#plained very simply and also due to the rise of
industry they needed a way to be able to create workers.
So the behaviouristic approach was created. It is a very simple theory that
is based on learned patterns of behaviour. Behaviourists believe that all behaviour
is learned through the stimulus and response relationship through direct
e#perience and that what a person"s personality can be manipulated. This
approach in contrast to !reud"s theory claimed that people can be treated and
gave a more optimistic view in psychology. The behaviouristic approach was a
view to human psychology that was created and matched perfectly this period
where everything had to be done uickly and efficiently.
$astly% at those days there was anti&intellectualism. 'eople believed only
what was logical and the learning perspective% which provided evidence for all its
assumptions had a better chance over the psychodynamic% which was all theory.
The methodologies that learning perspective psychologists use are mainly
e#periments. (ll of the theory was created after several e#periments. $earning
psychologists and more specifically behaviourists believe that psychology should
study only what is observable and measurable.
!or e#ample% classical conditioning begun from an e#periment done by
'avlov. )e presented a dog meat and the dog salivated. *very time the meat was
presented the dog would also hear a bell. (fter some time the dog would salivate
without the meat being presented by only hearing the bell. This e#periment was
what let him to the conclusion that there is an association between the stimulus
and the response and different stimuli.
+ot only in behaviourism but also in the other learning theories ,cognitive%
biological% social learning- all theory rises from e#periments. (lthough this way of
research is more scientific than for e#ample !reud"s methods there has been
several criticism. In the e#ample I presented above% skinner has been critici.ed
of interpreting the results of the e#periment in a sub/ective way and it has been
said that probably it was not association between stimuli but e#pectancy effect%
which means that the dog did not salivate due to the bell but due to the thought
of the food.