Skinner vs. Bandura

Behaviorism has been a major school of thought in psychology since 1913, when John B. Watson published an influential article. Watson argued that psychology should abandon its earlier focus on mind and mental processes and focus exclusively on overt behavior. He contended that psychology could not study mental processes in a scientific manner because they are private and not accessible to outside observation. In completely rejecting mental processes as a suitable subject for scientific study, Watson took an extreme position that is no longer dominant among modern behaviorists. Thus, most behaviorists view an individual’s personality as a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations. A specific situation may be associated with a number of response tendencies that vary in strength, depending on an individual’s past experience. Nonetheless, his influence was enormous, as psychology did shift its primary focus from the study of the mind to the study of behavior. Although behaviorists have shown relatively little interest in personality structure, they have focused extensively on personality development. They explain development the same way they explain everything else – through learning. Specifically, they focus on how children’s response tendencies are shaped through for example operant conditioning and observational learning. Let us look at these processes. In this essay I am going to compare Skinner’s operant conditioning and Bandura’s observational learning theory, point out similarities and differences and include personal experiences. Considering the response I am engaging in right now – studying. It is definitely not a reflex as it would be in classical conditioning; life might be easier if it were. Instead, my studying response is mainly influenced by events that follow it like grades – specifically, its consequences. This kind of learning in called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in