Question

Identify which of the perspectives you believe is the BEST for accurately explaining human behavior and which of the perspectives is the WORST for accurately explaining human behavior. Explain WHY you have chosen these theories compared to the others. (500 words each)

Answer 1

Psychology has varied school of thought to explain human behaviour. Each of it is unique and has it's own impat in the fiels and certain drawbacks.

The worst or to say not so effective perspective would be "Behavioural perspective" in my view. Behavioural approach was initiated by Watson. He said that it is direct Stimulus- response relationship. There is an outside event which occurs and trigger the person/subject which results in a response. Few famous research in this field is of Pavlov, the dog experiment where it is proposed about conditioning, if a behaviour happens over and over again, the subject/person is so tuned in that behaviour that it makes them elicit a natural response. Yet another good theory in this approach is Skinner. He proposed the concept of reinforcement, the behaviour is affected by what happens after the response. Though the approach is effective and has set a new base for the field, it has comtributions which is very helpful to psychologist even today but the only reason to list this approach as not effective is that it doesn't consider the important aspect "organism". It shows direct Stimulus-response relation which is proved today to not be true. There is a very impurole of organism is determining his/her behaviour.

The best approach in the field of psychology of to state the mkst effective one today is "Humanistic Approach". This came up in late 1950s. The approach says that human beings consciously choose their behaviour, they are not only limited to fulfillment of their needs but there is more in them.They have a zeal. Famous humanist, Maslow gave a very popular theory of self-actualisation where he states that humans have 5 stages, 1- level is where individual looks for basic needs(good, shelter), 2- safety needs, 3- where a greater level of need to love and be loved comes in, 4- self esteem and the 5- is the self actualisation needs. Another famous humanist is Rogers. He gave the field a concept of ideal and real self. He tells how by thought humans are able to grow. Carls also talked about unconditional love and support. In short, the humanitarian approach is centred to humans, it explains how humans are subjective and the growth of each depends on number of factors around them.