Christian Anthropology & Behaviorism

Christian Anthropology
Humans Are . . .

• Spirit and body.


• Free will.


• Made to seek what is true and good.


• Made in the image of God.

Sense Knowledge = Ability to know the physical world through our senses.
Sense Appetites = Ability to recognize and desire what is good for the organism’s physical bodies.
Will - Spiritual Appetite = Ability to recognize and choose what is good for the organism’s spiritual nature.
Intellect - Spiritual Knowledge = Ability to know the truth about spiritual things

Behaviorism: Classical Conditioning
Charles Darwin - Theory of evolution led to new ways of thinking about man and animals.

Ivan Pavlov

• Physiologist (studied physical systems of the body).


• Studying digestive system of dogs.


• Discovered that dogs would salivate at the sound of footsteps as much as they did in the presence of food.


• Taught dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by ringing a bell every time they were in the presence of food. After some time, dogs would salivate at the sound of the bell without the presence of food.


• Stimulus = something that causes a response in an organism


• Response = the reaction to the stimulus


• In nature, there are stimuli that naturally cause a predictable response in an organism.


• Natural Stimulus = something that causes a response in an organism without the need to learn to respond to it


• Natural Response = an unlearned reaction to a stimulus


• Unnatural Stimulus = something that causes a response in an organism only after the response is learned


• Natural Response = a learned reaction to a stimulus that would not normally produce a reaction


• When an unnatural stimulus is associated with a natural stimulus, it can create the same response under artificial circumstances.

Behaviorism: Operant Conditioning
John B. Watson

• Used Pavlov’s findings to determine behavior.


• Boasted that behavior therapy was strong enough to make anyone anything you wanted.


• Baby Albert experiment.

Operant Conditioning

• Unconditioned stimulus & unconditioned response = naturally occurring stimulus-response relationship


• Conditioned stimulus & conditioned response = learned stimulus-response relationship


• Conditioning = the process of learning the relationship between an unconditioned stimulus and an unconditioned response


• Reinforcement = reward or punishment


• A conditioned stimulus – response relationship can be created out of nothing (i.e. no unconditioned stimulus-response nature is necessary) by pairing the relationship with positive reinforcement (reward)


• Any stimulus-response relationship can be destroyed by pairing the relationship with negative reinforcement (punishment)

Albert Bandura

• More faith in human ability to reason (intellect & will)


• We choose associations we want to keep


• Modeling = imitating those around us