Throughout the whole period of existencepsychology as a science, its subjects were various processes and mechanisms. In this regard, highlighted the main areas of psychology: behaviorism, psychoanalysis and humanistic direction. The most interesting approach seems to be behaviorism, which assumes externally observed behavior as a subject of psychology. Behaviorism is a direction in psychology that does not consider internal processes that are not accessible to outside observation. Thus, psychology is more than ever close to the natural sciences, in which the object of study is accessible not only to its bearer. The whole essence of the human psyche, the researcher can derive all the causes of a person's actions from observable phenomena. Behaviorism in psychology rejected the importance of any internal processes that are not subject to observation, for example, consciousness, feelings, sensations, etc.
The history of the behavioral approach in psychology
Although it is impossible to accurately name the year of appearancebehaviourism as a direction (this is not a one-stage event), officially psychology as a science of behavior originated in 1913. The founding father of behavioral tendencies is John Watson, who rejected the importance of consciousness in psychology. Only outwardly observable patterns of behavior were proclaimed significant in the study of the human psyche. Before Watson's speech at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, behaviorist ideas, as they say, were in the air. The researcher simply gave their publicity and presented his research on this issue.
The essence of the approach
The main terms of this approach are"Stimulus" and "reaction". Strictly speaking, with the help of them all human behavior is described. The classical pattern of behavior: the stimulus causes a reaction. If we know what stimuli cause this or that reaction of a person, we can, roughly speaking, manage and guide the behavior of a person in the right direction. There are other key concepts that operate behaviorism. In the psychology of behavior, "encouragement" and "punishment" are also used, with the help of which behavior is directed. Both encouragement and punishment can be positive and negative. If we wish to consolidate the desired behavior, we use positive or negative encouragement. If we want to destroy the chain "stimulus-reaction", we use punishment.
To date, behaviourism in psychologyoccupies an important place, for example, in the construction of the pedagogical process or in the conduct of various types of short-term psychotherapy. Of course, there are limitations of this approach, some ethical problems. The irreducibility of complex human psyche to any one process or mechanism makes scientists increasingly turn to combining different methods and approaches.
