Social Psychology Individual And Group Behavior
Social Psychology Individual And Group Behavior
In order to answer this question I will have to look at the process of maturation. The course of development in man is shaped by maturation and learning. The issue between inherent growth aspects Maturation, and the influence of experience, as in learning is one that has to be faced in many areas of psychology. Maturation assumes that timing and patterns of change beyond birth are relatively independent of experience and go on beyond despite wide variations in the environment. There are two main theories of child development, no psychologist would argue that any one argument in isolation could contribute wholly to the development process. What is clear is that the interactions between these two main arguments contribute to who we are. The first main argument that I will look at is the empiricists, who believe that the environment that we are brought up in is the main reason that we develop the way that we do, the main arguments are put forward by J.B. Watson who considered “that the child was born as a Tabula Rasa (a blank slate)” (N.Hayes, 1987 Psychology an Introduction pg2) . Watson was a total empiricist who believed that we are a blank slate that experience would write on. The other main view point put forward was the nativists who believed that we are pre-programmed and develop according to our genetic make-up through our genes and chromosomes. This viewpoint was put forward by Gesell who believed “children developed almost entirely as a result of genetic influence with there environment having little effect” (N.Hayes, 1987 Psychology an Introduction pg2) .
Most of the studies that have been carried out about learning have been tested on animals rather than humans and there is many different theories of learning. Learning can be described as “ a change in behaviour brought about as a result of experience” (N. Hayes, 2000, Foundations of Psychology, pg577) .. The first form of learning that is going to be looked at is classical conditioning. Two different investigations were done on this associative learning. American J.B. Watson in 1903 developed a theory called the law of exercise, which stated that “a learned link-an association-between a stimulus and a response could be forged simply by repeating the two together often enough” (N. Hayes, 2000, Foundations of Psychology, pg577)....