24th October 2023

Behaviourism

Behaviourism is a school of thought popularised in the 1920s, initially through the work of John Watson. The key idea behind behaviourism is that human behaviour can be explained purely through environmental interactions without any consideration for cognitive factors or internal processes.

Behaviourists employ reductionism in their studies; this is the view that all human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into its component parts, reducing it to the most basic stimulus-response system. These ideas can then be used to make predictions about behaviour.

Classical and operant conditioning, explored over the following pages, are theories born from behaviourism.