Introductory Psychology 
Psych 1010
Assignment 2

Please answer the following questions.  The first question will be worth 40 points and the second question will be worth 60 points. Your paper should be no longer than 3 double-spaced typed pages.

1.  Present a Behaviorist account of the behavior you explained with Folk Psychology in Assignment 1.  For many of you, this behavior was raising or not raising your hand in response to a professor’s request for a volunteer. Remember that a Behaviorist explanation makes no references to mental states of the person, only to the learned consequences of the behavior. Identify the behavior you explained in Folk Psychology (section A of assignment 1) and then provide a behavioral explanation of it.  Your behavioral explanation can be based on your judgment (not necessary your observation).  Your answer must identify the stimulus reinforcer (Sr) and whether it was pleasant (Sr+) or noxious (Sr-).  Additionally your answer must specify the mechanism of learning (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, or extinction), which may have affected the behavior you observed. (40 points)

2.    I read a quote from John B. Watson (a founding father of behaviorism). The quote was:

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief, and yes even a beggar-man thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

What was your initial opinion of this quote and why did you hold it?  How has attending the lectures and reading the chapters in the textbook strengthened or weakened your original opinion? Be very specific about what you learned (tell me the fact you learned from text or lecture) and how it affected your opinion (may you believe the position more or less). Remember, you are presenting an argument about how your thinking was influenced by new facts your learned about behaviorism. Just reiterating your opinion is not enough. (60 points)