Question

What are the four methods of Behaviorism?

Why was verbal report controversial?

Answer 1

Behaviorism says that science of psychology must restrict itself to mesuring that is observed i.e obejctive study of behaviour. It should ignore what is not observed.

Methods of Behaviourism includes

1 . Observation ( with or without instruments )

2 . verbal reports

3 . Conditiones reflexes testing

4. Testing methods

Verbal reports was controversial since verbal reporting may not be sufficient to measure a behavior and person may not be able to quantify it accurately and individual perceptions may vary.

An individual may overestimate or underestimate the significance of it and can be biased or based on socially acceptable responses.

For example in a questionnaire if it asked that do you feel your smoking is a problem? With options yes/no.

The responder may answer no because he feels that majority of the people are smokers, or he mighy answer yes because he feels majority must have answered the same instead of actually realizing the problem with smoking.