Wellness Calendar: Saturday 25 October

Behaviourist learning theory

Behaviourist learning theory isn’t an approach that we at Self Detective use or promote, as it goes directly against our core values, but it’s still worth highlighting as it exists widely within authoritarian/educational circles. It sees the behaviour of people as a mixture of automatic reflex actions and hereditary factors. It doesn’t believe that humans consciously make free choices – instead they react to their environment and conditioning (à la Pavlov’s dog experiment). Learning is undertaken by repetition and enforcement. Teachers control the learning of others, and what they say goes. Behaviourism uses a system of reward and punishment to shape people’s actions.

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