Approaches to Psychology Homework Help

The behavioural approach is the idea that people learn from their environment and the environment is what causes us to behave differently or suffer illnesses. Behaviourism is concerned with how the environmental factors called stimuli affect observable behaviour called the response. There are 2 processes to behaviourism where people learn from their environments; classical condition and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning studied by Ivan Pavlov is an experiment where he observed how when a conditional stimulus and an unconditional stimulus are paired together and then removing the unconditional stimulus u can create a conditional response. This behavioural method has been used in systematic desensitization where the therapy of classical conditioning aims to remove the fear of a phobia. Operant conditioning of voluntary and involuntary behaviour was investigated by B.F Skinner. He introduced reinforcement and the 3 main behaviour shaping techniques are positive reinforcement which strengthens behaviour by rewarding, negative reinforcement which strengths a behaviour by removing the reward and punishment which weakens or eliminates behaviour.

The biological approach consists of many aspects. Some theorists in the biological perspective study behavioural genetics. This is the field of study where the roles of genetics and DNA in animals are examined to give an insight into how it affects their behaviour. Also the biological approach believes that human genes have evolved to adapt behaviour to the environment they are in. This means that behaviour will have an adaptive or evolutionary purpose. The biological approach to psychology explains behaviour in terms of the physiology which is how the nervous system, hormones, the brains functions and how the changes in these areas can affect behaviour. An example is that biological psychologists…