Discuss The Primary Premise Of Behaviorism

The primary premise of behaviorism is to approach the study of psychology through the direct observation of stimulus-response behavior in order to collect and report objective empirical evidence in a scientific research study. Although there are a few different theoretical models of behaviorism in modern psychology, one of the first behaviorist approaches was that of J. Watson’s (1913) methodological behaviorism or the “behaviorist manifesto” (McLeod, 2017). The basic premise of this method was to develop a method of research that would allow for some control over operational definitions (e.g., observable variable and measurable events) in order to record empirical data according to a more traditional scientific method. Therefore, the target

Although both the methodological approach and the radical approach to behaviorism are consistent with one another in their belief that the primary goal of psychology should involve predicting and control behavior, as well as acknowledging that external events concerning environmental stimuli are also important factors necessary for explaining behavior, the biggest difference between the two methods in terms of observation and study is the fact that radical behaviorism suggests that internal events like cognition and mentality may have an important role in explaining behavior along with external factors and environmental stimuli (McLeod, 2017). In addition to the argument as to whether internal events have any true significance in psychology, methodological behaviorism and radical behaviorism are further differentiated by each of their unique views regarding the extent to which external factors may have a role in altering or changing behavior (McLeod,