Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a theory that looks at the relationship between human beings and the effects of classical conditioning. It uses Pavlovian and operant conditioning to explain what happens in an individual's mind when they experience something new for the first time. For example, if you always do something with a particular end result, then it is easy for you to take action without thinking about how it all came about. In behaviorism, you are able to act reflexively by understanding what reinforcement occurs when people or animals achieve desired results. In a very simplified example, a man who always fed pigeons can quickly learn that pigeons will go up to a feeder after the man puts food in it. If you could stimulate all of the neurons in an individual's brain on the first day of their life, and then do nothing else to them except respond to rewards with no connection to any other stimuli, then one could show that somehow this process took place and it would result in someone having the same mental processes or feelings of something over and over again without any conscious understanding or input. This is called classical conditioning. If they are taught that fed pigeons are good, then they will want to keep doing it because they got what they wanted when they did it.

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