BEHAVIORISM
Further Readings
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
Beck, H.P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant laboratory. American Psychologist, 64(7), 605-614.
Bouton, M. E. (2014). Why behavior change is difficult to sustain. Preventive Medicine, 68, 29-36. http://dx.doi .org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.06.010
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102(2), 246-268.
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York, NY: Knopf.
Watson, J.B. (1930). Behaviorism. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
BEHAVIORISM
In its most general sense, behaviorism is the point of view that the appropriate subject matter of psy- chology is behavior and that the appropriate methods for studying it are grounded in the stan- dard observational methods of the natural sci- ences. Although this statement appears to be admirably succinct, a review of the history of psychology suggests behaviorism has been inter- preted in several different ways over the years. This entry examines these different interpretations to better understand behaviorism.
Classical S-R Behaviorism
A frequently cited date for the inception of behav- iorism is 1913, when John B. Watson published a controversial article titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” Watson’s version of behav- iorism is called classical S-R behaviorism and asserts that psychology should study the responses (R) that are “called out” by environmental stimuli or situations (S).
For Watson, this relation involves overt, explicit activity such as the movement of arms and legs, as well as covert, implicit activity such as changes in heart rate or other visceral functions. The activity could be either unlearned or learned. Unlearned
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meant that certain responses were called out by certain stimuli right from birth. Learned meant the responses were called out by previously neutral stimuli after those stimuli had been recently or frequently associated with stimuli that originally evoked the response.
Classical behaviorism may be contrasted with the dominant point of view in psychology at the time, according to which the appropriate subject matter of psychology was mental life-for example, the sensations, images, and feelings that contribute to “consciousness.” The appropriate method for studying that subject matter was introspection, understood as the rigorous, contemplative description of one’s own mental phenomena. For his part, Watson zealously sought to reformulate psychology as a natural science concerned with the prediction and control of behavior. He did not see behaviorism as merely a methodological approach but rather as an entire worldview.
For example, in Behaviorism, Watson argued that mental life qua mental was nothing but a fic- tion engendered by cultural forces such as religion. Watson clearly recognized that people do think. However, he argued that thinking could be con- strued as a behavioral rather than a mental process, consisting largely but not exclusively of subvocal speech. His explanations of such traditional con- cerns as thinking and images were not particularly sophisticated by today’s standards. Nevertheless, they can be understood today as honest efforts to formulate an effective science of behavior based on naturalistic principles as he understood them.
Despite Watson’s extensive efforts, many classi- cal behaviorists continued to accept the existence of mental phenomena as distinct from behavioral. However, they interpreted behaviorism as meaning that the mental could be safely ignored. The assumption was that the resulting explanations were just as good as those appealing directly to mental variables. Mental variables could be included in philosophy or religion, but science required observability and measurement that pro- duced agreement about its explanatory concepts. Therefore, if psychology was going to be consid- ered a member in good standing of the scientific community, psychologists should not speak directly about the mental but only about what was observ- able. This approach was later called methodological behaviorism.
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Mediational S-0-R Neobehaviorism
By around 1930, many psychologists began to view the various forms of classical S-R behavior- ism as inadequate. The principal problem was that behavior was richer and more flexible than seemed to be recognized by the S-R formulation, even if unobservables were incorporated in Watson’s terms of 1925. To overcome such apparent limita- tions, psychologists began to argue that by modify- ing the accepted S-R formulation somewhat, they could admit such unobservables as mental after all.
Their first move was to conceive of the mental variables as inside the organism in some sense. There, the mental variables were inferred to medi- ate the relation between S and R. The concept of mediation means that the S was inferred to initiate some state or process inside the organism and the mediating state or process then caused the R. Variations in the mediating state produced variations in response, thereby accommodating the richness and flexibility of behavior. More formally, the mental variables were designated as “organis- mic” variables and symbolically represented as 0, resulting in an S-0-R formulation. Initially, the mediators were designated as theoretical concepts and later as hypothetical constructs.
The mediationists’ second move was to appeal to the principle of operationism, which had been developed by the physicist P. W. Bridgman in 1927. According to operationism, psychologists should appoint some publicly observable measure as evidence or justification for the mental phenomenon in question so that it could be agreed upon. As a result, mental variables could be known by inference, and talk of them was justified by the data from the operations entailed in their supposed measurement. Importantly, an emphasis on publicly observable measures meant that the approach could be considered scientific because psychologists were speaking only indirectly about mental phenomena instead of directly as in introspection, and their inferences about the mental phenomena were supported by data.
This approach is now called mediational S-0-R neobehaviorism, reflecting the new way to deal with the mental. Mediational neobehaviorism is also a version of methodological behaviorism, in the sense that observable behavior is taken as a proxy for unobservable causes inferred to be
operating elsewhere. Thus, neobehaviorists can avoid speaking directly of the mental and defend themselves against charges that they were being mentalistic themselves.
An important feature of mediational neobehav- iorism is antecedent causation. According to this concept, the cause of behavior is to be found and expressed in terms of some antecedent factor, in the tradition of the reflex. If an environmental stimulus could not be found, then some mediating internal or physiological state or process was inferred. If this could not be found, then some mediating mental or cognitive state or process was inferred. In every case, causal processes were inferred to follow a linear chain of events, the last of which was an independent contribution of the organism from a nonenvironmental dimension.
In American psychology, the mediational approach dominated learning theory during the second quarter of the 20th century and into the third quarter-for example, in 1956, in the work of Edward C. Tolman, Clark L. Hull, and Kenneth W. Spence. Tolman’s mediating hypothetical con- structs tended to have a cognitive flavor, Hull’s tended to have a physiological flavor, and Spence’s a strictly logical flavor, although all three disputed that they were mentalists because their mediators were based on operationism rather than introspection.
The mediational approach has remained preva- lent in much of the rest of American psychology, such as in clinical work, social psychology, person- ality theory, and developmental psychology. Different researchers and theorists have different conceptions of the mediators, but the approaches remain mediational nonetheless. Sometimes the term behaviorism is used in the popular literature to indicate a form of psychology that doesn’t speak directly of the mental. However, classical behavior- ism has actually been superseded by the media- tional S-0-R form of methodological behaviorism in which the direct talk concerns observable data, and mental antecedent causes are inferred but spo- ken of only indirectly through operational definitions.
Behavior Analysis
B. F. Skinner developed an entirely different inter- pretation of behaviorism beginning in the 1930s,
or roughly the same time as the mediational approach just described. Skinner’s view is called behavior analysis. A good source is Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior. The philosophy of science that underlies Skinner’s behavior analysis is called radical behaviorism. Radical here means a thoroughgoing or comprehensive behavioral ori- entation rather than an extreme or fanatical com- mitment to observable variables strictly.
Behavior analysis recognizes that some behavior developed during the evolutionary history of the species. Often, this behavior is called innate. Nest building and song learning in birds are examples. Thus, in behavior analysis, not all behavior is learned, although behavior analysis does empha- size that important forms of behavior might depend critically on environmental circumstances during development.
Other behavior occurs according to the tradi- tional reflex model, where an antecedent stimulus elicits behaviors with food-elicited salivation in Pavlov’s dogs, for example. Behavior analysis calls this elicited form of behavior respondent behavior. The process of conditioning is concerned…
