PSY 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Experimental Psychology, Rationality, Materialism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Kenneth Campbell

Document Summary

Began in 1920"a with j. watson and his criticism of cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis. B. f skinner (1935-1990) laid out much of the tenets of behaviourism" (behaviourism: psychology as an objective science (all must be directly observable)) Why do we act the way we do? (motivation) All behaviour can be explained by consequences of past behaviour. We learn to repeat behaviour that has been reinforced" (and not repeat behaviour that was not reinforced) A strict environmental (not inner mind") explanation of behaviour. (ex. A criminal is a criminal because past criminal-behaviour has been reinforced) **in this area oh psychology, there is no need to postulate about genetic influence, no inner to infer inner" mental causes and no need to postulate about hidden repressed" motives. Deterministic (all behaviour is determined by consequential events (reinforcement, punishment)) If behaviour is inappropriate, it is because of poor learning (reinforcement was given inappropriately) the behaviour will have to be re-learned or corrected.