Strengths:

1. The behaviorist approach provides clear predictions that can. This means that explanations can
be scientifically tested and support with evidence.
2. Its results can be reliably reproduced experimentally.
3. Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, behavior analysis,
token economies and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are
often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.
Much has been said about the values of reinforcements like rewards, punishments,
4. Enables us to distinguish facts from beliefs
5. Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes in dogs could be used to create objective and scientific
approach to psychology.

Weaknesses:

1. Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to understanding human

behavior and that behavioral theories do not account for free will and internal influences such
as moods, thoughts and feelings.
2. Behaviorism does not account for other types of learning, especially learning that occurs
without the use of reinforcement and punishment.
3. More relevant to animals than humans. Many more experiments completed using animals. Since
humans are not the same as animals they do not respond the same way as animals do. Humans
have higher cognitive processes than animals.
4. Too deterministic:
a. Suggest we are not making a choice when we behave in a certain way.
b. Undermines free will
c. Implies we have no personal/moral beliefs.