Major Contributors to Behaviorism Behaviorism is a learning theory or developmental theory that measures observable behaviors produced by the learner's response to stimuli. On one end the spectrum of behaviorism is known as an attitude. On the other hand, it is known as a doctrine. According to the behavioral view of human development, behaviorists argued that focusing attention on unobservable constructs, such as emotions, thoughts, or the unconscious, was an unscientific approach. (Craig & Dunn, Ex.: 2010) There are three main behaviorist tendencies that are associated with behaviorism and help us understand human development. These are classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning theory. Not only do they have historical value but they also provide useful concepts for understanding human development. There are three types of behaviorism. The first, methodological, is a normative theory on the scientific conduct of psychology. He argues that psychology should be concerned with the behavior of organisms and not with mental states or events or with constructing accounts of behavior based on internal information processing. ("Behaviorism", 2000) The second is psychological behaviorism. It explains human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and reinforcements. The last type is analytical or logical behaviorism. This theory has a philosophy about the meaning of mental terms and concepts. The idea of ​​mental state is the idea of ​​behavioral tendencies that shows how a person behaves in one situation compared to another. There are five major contributors to behaviorism. They are Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, BF Skinner, Albert Bandura and Joseph Wolpe. The well… middle of the paper… started with cats exposed to mild shocks accompanied by specific sounds and visual stimuli. The cats linked the shocks with the sounds or visual stimuli that produced fear in them. When the cats were exposed to the same sounds or visual stimuli and given food instead of shocks, they eventually unlearned their fears. Eventually this behavioral therapy would be applied to humans. There are many other lesser-known behaviorists in this applied science and psychology, but these five men are major contributors to behaviorism. Works Cited BF Skinner. (n.d.). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._SkinnerCraig, G.J., & Dunn, W.L. (Eds.: 2010). Understanding human development (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2000). Retrieved July 27, 2010, from plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/