Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Chapter Two Behaviorism

Matt Callegari


                The second chapter was about new ways of thought in life and development through what was called the Grand Theories.  Reading all of them is enlighten due to the fact that it is the backbone of psychology and also study of human development. They all build off each other and expand towards their own definition of human development. The one theory that stuck to me and I remember is from a previous class I took in psychology course on behaviorism and it interested me in it and after reading the chapter this was the section that got my attention.  What I looked at was behaviorism which is by the book (Kathleen Stassen Berger p.39) is “the second grand theory… John B. Watson (1878-1985) argued that, psychology was to be a true science, psychologists should examine only what they could see and measure: behavior, not irrational thought and hidden urges.” This hit me in place of interest in psychology in that I wanted to be able to see more, I wanted to see how people behave on their own, under stress, problematic, and also how they can be addressed in figuring out future behavior.  This theory is based off of people learning and developing in steps not all at once. I noticed as I read it had some connection to Freud’s idea of life stages. I plan to reread the stages of Freud and Erickson, who I especially like his model of life stages, I will also read up on more on John B. Watson.

2 comments:

  1. I can see the value of learning by observation of people's behaviour, but I think its become quite clear, especially with the power of neurological studies today, that much of what is important about the human experience isn't observable or acted out. It is a valid point though, as I find Freud’s theories to be a bit off as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete