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Functionalism And Behaviorism In Psychology

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Functionalism and Behaviorism
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Functionalism And Behaviorism
Introduction
Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. Since people have varied perceptions and thoughts with regards to this definition, scholars in the past and present have come up with various classical theories related to psychology, all of which are geared to helping people to better understand the different perspectives of psychology and how it impacts the daily lives of humans (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). In this paper, I will aim to compare and contrast two major schools of psychology that is functionalism and behaviorism and their impacts in the field of psychology.
Functionalism can be defined as a psychological philosophy, which considers mental life and behavior with regards to active adaptation to the person’s environment. Therefore, it provides people with the general basis on which they can develop psychological theories that are not readable and testable through controlled experiments and applied psychology. The whole idea of functionalism first arose in the United States back in the 19th century. During that time, it was used as an alternative to structuralism (Zhong, 2008).
Behaviorism, on the other hand, is a psychological approach, which combines different elements of psychology, methodologies, and theory. Therefore, this means that behaviorism is mainly concerned with the observable and measurable aspects of human behaviors. That is why in
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