Historical and Cultural Context of the Learning Perspective

The learning perspective emerged in the early 20th century. During that time period, people believed that science will solve everything, and society can progress and develop. They also believed that individuals need to adapt to the environment, similar to Darwin’s theory. Also, the learning perspective was very popular in America until the 1950s. During that time, people in America believed that individuals can overcom barriers to progess and had great optimism about the future since America was still a new country. The learning perpective originated from behavoralism. Because people during that time started to believe in science more, the psychodynamic approach was rejected since introspection was unreliable, and the unconscious was impossible to be studied and tested scientifically. Instead, behavoiralism focuses on observable behavior that could be studied through experiments. This new science, behavioralism, was particularly appealing to the USA, American, which liked to see itself as a new nation. It offered simple explanation of behavior by focusing on how stimuli in the environment effect the responses of people. For instance, Watson’s study of Little Albert offered a simple explanation of a phobia that challenged Freud’s complex explantion that focuesed on the unconscious. Behavioralism was popular because it promised social change by arguing that behavior could be changed if environment was change. Behavioralism was modified by Skinner and changed to the learning perspective. The learning perspective is different from behavioralism because new insights from cognitive and biological perspectives were added to it.