Behaviorism and Human Behavior

For this term, I have decided to do an independent study on whatever topic I was interested in. I decided to look into behaviorism and ended up learning things about the people that were a part of what has shaped and evolved what behaviorism today. Pavlov, Skinner, and Watson play the largest roles in the future that behaviorism can share. To show what I have learned from behaviorism, I studied human behavior, but specifically, teenage behavior.

GUIDING QUESTION

Are teenagers aware of their surroundings when in Groups of 3 or more?

HYPOTHESIS

Teenagers in groups of 2 or less, are more likely to be more aware of their surroundings, while larger groups are more likely to be less aware.


DATA




There were very few times that there was a disruptive group of students in the Apple Plaza, but consistently, groups of 5 or more are the groups that are most disruptive.



Most of the teens recorded and observed were found taking up the entire sidewalk. On some occasions, one or more would move out of the way, when people were passing by, and were even reminded by some of their peers to move. Passerbys have not been seen to speak to the groups, and will walk onto the road to walk past them. This is something that probably conditions the same behavior to groups of teens.

VARIABLES

The experiment will be conducted at the apple plaza, at the North and Clybourn station. It will also be noted on any train stations. Ages of the people being observed will be unknown, which is something can be considered.

CONCLUSION

From the Data I collected, my hypothesis was generally correct. Teenagers in larger groups will become less aware of their surroundings. The larger the group the less aware people in the groups become. A simple reason from this behavior could be that the people in the group are generally unaware of their surroundings, or that overtime and through experiences it is more important to teenagers to be aware of the conversation within the group. The more people in the group the more there is to focus, or be distracted by, making it harder to take into consideration of the surrounding people. I hope in my next experiment I can collect more data and confirm the possible reasonings behind these behaviors.

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