To be able to assess all five psychological approaches to study you need to understand what they are and how they work. All five approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses and they all have their own theories which explain human behaviour, the only problem is not all of them agree that their theories and studies are correct.
The Behaviourist approach believe that human beings are able to learn all types of behaviours through the environment they grow up in, its believes that we learn these behaviours through using theories, such as, Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning and Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s Operant Conditioning.
Both of which show that behaviour can be learnt by training the mind of an individual to behave in a certain way, for example, potty training an infant. This approach also believes that human beings have no free will which in turn means that their behaviour is resolute by their surroundings. When a new born baby is born behaviourist believe that their minds are ‘tabula rasa’ which means a blank state.
For example, the little Albert experiment which was carried out by Watson and Rayner, where they conditioned an infant boy, which they called Albert B also known as little Albert, to fear a white rat. This experiment was the first ever study within psychology that proved classical conditioning can transpire within humans not just within animals.
Watson and Rayner made sure their study was strictly carried out within a controlled environment and their findings were carefully documented. Doing this ensured Watson and Rayner study could be proven if this experiment was to occur again. As the experiment was carefully documented and controlled; which meant they were ensuring there were no problems with reliability. This was another way in which Watson and Rayner backed up their evidence.
Nevertheless, nowadays this experiment would not be allowed to be carried out as it is unethical; as you