bit and play with it. After conditioning, the sight of the rabbit made Albert scream -- then what Watson found was that Albert began to show similar terrified behaviours to Watson's face. What Watson realized was that Albert was responding to the white beard Watson had at the time. So, the fear evoked by the white, furry, rabbit had generalized to other white, furry things, like Watson's beard.Behaviourism overall is a good scientific theory. It is simple and parsimonious, with the approach of cause-and-effect idea. Therefore, it is not necessary to invent hidden processes of learning (e.g.. Freud) to explain why behaviour happensThe behaviourists believed that behaviour is caused by environmental events (stimuli, reinforcers). With this idea, it cannot be controlled. Behaviourism is deterministic, as we do not control our own actions, and so therefore cannot be responsible for them. However, it becomes possible for others to control our behaviour by manipulation of environmental events.Behaviourism assumes that human behaviour should be studied using the same methods applied in the physical sciences - that assuming psychology should restrict itself to studying only those things that can be studied directly. In this way, it means that anything that cant be observed cannot be studied and that w cannot fully explain human behaviour and the complications behind it. Silfe and Williams 1995 added that although stimuli, response and reinforcement are essential in behaviourist explanation of behaviour, they are never observed directly. Although we can readily observe events in the environment, we have no way of knowing if they act as the stimulus for given response nor indeed whether they are acting as a reinforcer. Similarly, we have no way of knowing whether a particular response has been caused by a given stimulus. The notion of reinforcement poses considerable conceptual problems when we apply it to an explanation of human behaviour.If rei...
