Throughout the entire period of the existence of psychology as a science, its subject has been various processes and mechanisms. In this regard, the main areas of psychology were distinguished : behaviorism, psychoanalysis and the humanistic direction. The most interesting approach seems to be behaviorism, which assumes externally observable behavior as a subject of psychology. Behaviorism is a direction in psychology that does not consider internal processes that are inaccessible to outside observation. Thus, psychology is becoming ever closer to the natural sciences, in which the object of study is accessible not only to its carrier. The researcher can deduce the whole essence of the human psyche, all the causes of certain actions of a person from observed phenomena. In psychology, behaviorism rejected the significance of any internal processes that are not subject to observation, for example, consciousness, feelings, sensations, etc.
The history of the behavioral approach in psychology
Although it is impossible to pinpoint the year the appearance of behaviorism as a direction (after all, this is not an instantaneous event), officially psychology as the science of behavior originated in 1913. The founding father of behaviorist trends is John Watson, who rejected the importance of consciousness in psychology. Only the externally observed patterns of behavior were declared significant in the study of the human psyche. Before Watson spoke at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, behaviorist ideas, as they say, were in the air. The researcher simply made them public and presented his research in this matter.
Behaviorism in psychology reflected the general
revolutionary situation in the society of that time. The general ideas that the human psyche is adaptive and reflexive belong to Rene Descartes, who already in the 17th century formulated the doctrine of reflex. In Russia, representatives of behaviorism include I. Pavlov (with his study of conditioned and
unconditioned reflexes in animals) and V. Bekhterev (reflexology).
Essence of the approach
The main terms of this approach are “stimulus” and “reaction”. As a matter of fact, with their help all human behavior is described. Classic behavior pattern: a stimulus triggers a reaction. If we know which stimuli cause a particular human reaction, we can, roughly speaking, manage and direct human behavior in the right direction. There are other key concepts that behaviorism operates with. Behavioral psychology also uses “encouragement” and “punishment,” through which behavior is directed. Both encouragement and punishment can be positive and negative. If we want to reinforce the desired behavior, we use positive or negative encouragement. If we want to break the chain “stimulus-response”, we will use punishment.
Conclusion
Today, behaviorism in psychology occupies an important place, for example, in building the pedagogical process or in conducting various types of short-term psychotherapy. Of course, there are limitations to this approach, some ethical issues. The irreducibility of the complex human psyche to a single process or mechanism makes scientists increasingly turn to a combination of different methods and approaches.