Poi's Psychology Blog

Picture

Information

Hi, this is Poi's blog.
I'm rather interesting, really.
I heart psychology.
I believe in parallel universes.

Links

Glassman

Friends

Yuki's Blog
Paras's Blog
Pox's Blog
Daniel L's Blog
Daniel R's Blog
Pang's Blog
Pun's Blog
Veronica's Blog
Maytee's Blog
Penpisha's Blog
Mint's Blog

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The Historical and Cultural Context of the Learning Perspective

The historical and cultural contexts of the learning perspective allowed it to become prominent in the history of psychology. The learning perspective emphasizes the role of environmental stimuli in determining the way we act, and focuses on learning, or changes in behavior as a result of experience.
Behaviorism emerged in the turn of the 20th century, and became influential in the United States until the 1950’s. It supported the world view of the 20th century when people thought science could solve everything. The guiding principles of the 20th century were “reform, efficiency and progress” and people had great optimism about the future. Americans believed the “can do” idea, that anything was possible. It was believed that individuals could overcome barriers to progress, and the behaviorism appealed to the American mind set.
The main reasons of its popularity is that it promised social change by stating behavior could be changed if the environment was changed. Theories of behaviorism also applied to the business environment, for example, the rise of capitalism rewarded those who adapted to changes in business situations.
Behaviorism emerged because it was scientific, and unlike Freud’s theories that were unreliable and depended too much on case studies, behaviorism was simple and easily understandable. Introspection was considered unreliable, while the unconscious was impossible to study. To the learning perspective, humans are a black box, only the stimuli and responses could be studied. Behavior can be observed, making it entirely scientific.
Influential men who were the “pioneers” of behaviorism include Pavlov, Thorndike and Watson. With skinner, and new insights from the cognitive and biological perspectives, behaviorism was combined to become the learning perspective. The learning perspective emerged in the 1960’s with contributions of more recent influences such as Seligman and Garcia.
In conclusion, with the contributions of the influential men, such as Watson, and its simplistic nature, the Learning persepctive gained rapid popularity in the 20th century before its decline.

poi [ 9:41 AM ]

0 Comments: