Case Study - Ross

My son Ross loves animals. It's his birthday in a few weeks time, he wants a terrapin, this doesn't sound much but he has lots of pets. All of them live in his bedroom except his rabbits. He feels his animals are the most important thing in the world to him. He can't understand why everyone doesn't have pets.

A) Ross's desire to have a lot of pets can be explained through the behavioural approach. This is because he could have learned to like animals from a very early age, for example if he stroked a dog when he was young and the dog then rolled over or barked then that positive reinforcement would encourage Ross to do it again. This is operant conditioning where the behaviour is reinforced and encouraged to be repeated. Similarly Ross could desire to have lots of pets because of classical conditioning; this is where two events that repeatedly occur close together in time become fused in a persons mind and before long the person responds in the same way to both events. For example if Ross enjoyed throwing a ball with his friends dog at the local park, Ross may start to believe that his happiness is solely down to being with the dog, so when he is older he may just want a dog because he will want to feel happy, this could be applied to a Terrapin, perhaps he saw one at a zoo and it made him smile or think "that's cool". Also Ross may have learned to desire pets because of role models around him e.g. he may have a wealthy uncle (who can afford lots of pets) who Ross looks up to, he may be influenced by this uncle and believe that he is successful because of the pets around him and that he wants to be like him, this is called modelling and could play a large role in Ross behaviour.

The second approach that could be used is the psychodynamic one. This could explain Ross's behaviour because he may have a substantial amount of anxiety, this could be being resolved by him having lots of pets as a defence mechanism. This would work because it may give him lots of responsibilities for example looking after the pets i.e. feeding them etc. this would take his mind off of what is bothering him and therefore would allow him to live a less anxiety ridden life. Ross may also want to ensure as many pets live as possible because he may have an overwhelming Eros drives (life drives).

B) The behavioural approach has a number of strengths. Behavioural approaches can be tested in the lab, which means they can be scientifically investigated. In these experiments a number of associations have been made, such as Pavlov's dribbling dogs on the sound of a bell. Pavlov investigated this by feeding a dog some food, whilst ringing a bell; this made the dog pair the bell and food together. After this had been done a number of times when Pavlov rang the bell the dog started salivating even when there was no food, this showed that classical conditioning does happen, however it only worked for a number of attempts before the conditioning then seemed to fade, as the dogs stopped salivating on the ringing of the bell. However this approach has some weaknesses, namely it does not take into account anything other than learning theories;