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Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors

Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors

March 27, 2024

Currently, Psychology includes a great variety of theoretical orientations. Comparable in some way to political ideologies or religious beliefs, Psychological paradigms assume behavioral guidelines that induce us to practice professional practice in different ways.

Behaviorism is one of the most common orientations among psychologists, although nowadays it is more usual to practice in its cognitive-behavioral side. Next, we review the history of behaviorism and its main characteristics.

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What is behaviorism?

Behaviorism is a current of Psychology that focuses on the study of common laws that determine human and animal behavior. In its origin, traditional behaviorism leaves aside the intrapsychic to focus on observable behavior , that is, prioritizes the objective over the subjective. This opposes behaviorism to previous approaches such as psychodynamics and phenomenology. In fact, from the behavioral perspective, what we usually understand as "mind" or "mental life" is only an abstraction of what psychology should really study: the links between stimuli and response in specific contexts.


Behaviorists tend to think of living beings as "tabulas rasas" whose conduct is determined by reinforcements and punishments that receive more than by internal predispositions. Behavior, therefore, does not depend mainly on internal phenomena, such as instincts or thoughts (which, on the other hand, are hidden behaviors), but rather on the environment, and we can not separate behavior or learning from the environment. context in which they take place.

In fact, those processes that occur in the nervous system and that for many other psychologists are the cause of how we act, for behaviorists are just another type of reactions generated through our interaction with the environment.


The concept of "mental illness" seen by behaviorists

Behaviorists have often been linked to the world of psychiatry by his use of the experimental method to obtain knowledge , but this association is not right, since in many aspects, behaviorists are clearly differentiated from psychiatrists. One of these differences is the opposition of behaviorism to the concept of mental illness.

From this philosophy applied to psychology, there can be no pathological behavior , since these are always judged according to their suitability to a context. While diseases must have relatively well-known and well-known biological causes, behaviourists point out that there is not enough evidence in favor of the existence of these biomarkers in the case of mental disorders. Therefore, they oppose the idea that the treatment of problems such as phobias or OCD should focus on psychotropic drugs.


Basic concepts of behaviorism

Next we define the main terms of the behavioral theory.

1. Stimulus

This term refers to any signal, information or event that produces a reaction (response) of an organism.

2. Answer

Any behavior of an organism that it arises as a reaction to a stimulus .

3. Conditioning

Conditioning is a type of learning derived from the association between stimuli and responses.

4. Reinforcement

A reinforcement is any consequence of a behavior that increases the likelihood that it will occur again.

5. Punishment

Opposed to reinforcement: consequence of a behavior that decreases the likelihood that it will occur again.

Wundt: the birth of Experimental Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), considered by many "the father of Psychology", laid the foundations of what would eventually become behaviorism. He created the first laboratory of scientific psychology and systematically used statistics and the experimental method to extract general rules about the functioning of mental processes and the nature of consciousness.

The Wundt methods they depended to a large extent on introspection or self-observation, a technique in which the experimental subjects provide data about their own experience.

Watson: Psychology seen from behaviorism

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) criticized the use of the introspective methodology of Wundt and his followers. At a conference in 1913 that is considered the birth of behaviorism, Watson claimed that to be truly scientific Psychology should focus on overt behavior instead of mental states and concepts such as "conscience" or "mind", which could not be analyzed objectively.

Watson also rejected the dualistic conception that separated the body and the mind (or the soul) and argued that the behavior of people and of animals should be studied in the same way since, if the introspective method was left aside, it would not There was a real difference between the two.

In a well-known and controversial experiment Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner they got cause a baby phobia to a baby of nine months ("little Albert"). For this they matched the presence of the rat with loud sounds. The case of little Albert showed that human behavior is not only predictable but also modifiable.

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The black box

For Watson, living beings are "black boxes" whose interior is not observable. When external stimuli reach us we respond accordingly. From the point of view of the first behaviorists, although there are intermediate processes within the organism, being unobservable they must be ignored when analyzing the behavior.

However, in the mid-twentieth century, the behaviorists qualified this and, without ignoring the importance of the directly non-sensory processes that occur inside the body, pointed out that psychology does not need to account for them in order to provide explanations about the logics that govern The conduct. B. F. Skinner, for example, was characterized by giving mental processes exactly the same status as observable behavior, and by conceive thinking as verbal behavior . We will talk about this author later.

Some neobehaviorists like Clark Hull and Edward Tolman they did include intermediate processes (or intervening variables) in their models. Hull included internal impulse or motivation and habit, while Tolman claimed that we constructed mental representations of space (cognitive maps).

Watson and behaviorism in general were influenced in a key way by two authors: Ivan Pavlov and Edward Thorndike.

Classical conditioning: Pavlov's dogs

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian physiologist who realized, while performing experiments on secretion of saliva in dogs, that animals they salivated early when they saw or smelled the food, and even simply when the attendants were about to feed them. Later he got them to salivate when he heard the sound of a metronome, a bell, a bell or a light to associate these stimuli with the presence of food.

From these studies Pavlov described classical conditioning, a fundamental concept in behaviorism, thanks to which the first interventions were developed based on the techniques of behavior modification in human beings. Now, to understand how classic conditioning works, you must first know with what stimuli you work on it.

An unconditioned stimulus (that is, it does not require learning to elicit a response) provokes an unconditioned response; In the case of dogs, the food causes salivation spontaneously. If the unconditioned stimulus (food) is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus (for example, the bell), the neutral stimulus will end up producing the unconditional response (salivate) without the need for the unconditioned stimulus to be present.

For Pavlov the concept of mind is not necessary since conceptualize the responses as reflections that occur after the appearance of external stimuli.

The experiment of the little Albert of Watson and Rayner is another example of classical conditioning. In this case the rat is a neutral stimulus that becomes a conditioned stimulus that causes the fear response by association with loud noise (unconditioned stimulus).

The animals in behaviorism

Classical behaviorists often used animals in their studies. The animals are considered equivalent to people in terms of their behavior and the learning principles extracted from these studies are extrapolated in many cases to human beings; Of course, always trying to respect a series of epistemological presuppositions that justify this extrapolation. Do not forget that between species there are many aspects of behavior that vary.

The systematic observation of animal behavior would give way to Ethology and Comparative Psychology. Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen are two of the most important representatives of these currents.

Instrumental conditioning: the Thorndike cats

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949), Pavlov's contemporary, conducted various experiments on animals to study learning. Introduced cats in "problem boxes" to observe if they managed to escape from them and in what way.

In the boxes there were several elements with which the cats could interact, like a button or a ring, and only contact with one of these objects could cause the door of the box to open. At first the cats managed to get out of the box by trial and error, but as the attempts were repeated each time they escaped more easily.

From these results Thorndike formulated the law of effect, which states that If a behavior has a satisfactory result, it is more likely to recur , and that if the result is unsatisfactory, this probability decreases. Later he would formulate the law of the exercise, according to which the learning and habits that are repeated are reinforced and those that are not repeated are weakened.

The studies and works of Thorndike they introduced instrumental conditioning . According to this model, learning is a consequence of the reinforcement or weakening of the association between a behavior and its consequences. This served as the basis for formulating proposals later, in the emergence of true behaviorism, as we shall see.

The radical behaviorism of Skinner

Thorndike's proposals were the antecedent of what we know as operant conditioning, but this paradigm did not develop completely until the appearance of the works of Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990).

Skinner introduced the concepts of positive and negative reinforcement . It is called positive reinforcement to reward a behavior giving something, while negative reinforcement is the withdrawal or avoidance of an unpleasant event. In both cases, the intention is to increase the frequency and intensity of the appearance of a certain behavior.

Skinner defended radical behaviorism, which maintains that all behavior is the result of learned associations between stimuli and responses. The theoretical and methodological approach developed by Skinner is known as experimental behavior analysis and has been especially effective in the education of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

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Development of behaviorism: the cognitive revolution

Behaviorism went into decline from the 50s, coinciding with the rise of cognitive psychology. Cognitivism is a theoretical model that emerged as a reaction to the radical emphasis of behaviorism on overt behavior, leaving aside cognition. The progressive inclusion of intervening variables in behavioral models greatly favored this change of paradigm, known as "cognitive revolution".

In psychosocial practice, the contributions and principles of behaviorism and cognitivism would end up coming together in what we know as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which focuses on finding the treatment programs most supported by scientific evidence.

The third-generation therapies developed in recent years recover part of the principles of radical behaviorism, reducing the influence of cognitivism. Some examples are Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Behavioral Activation Therapy for depression or Dialectic Behavior Therapy for borderline personality disorder.

  • Related article: "Behavioral Therapies: first, second and third wave"

Bibliographic references:

  • Baum, W.M. (2005) Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, Culture and Evolution. Blackwell.
  • Kantor, J. (1963/1991). The scientific evolution of psychology. Mexico: Trillas.
  • Mills, J. A. (2000). Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology. New York University Press.
  • Rachlin, H. (1991) Introduction to modern behaviorism. (3rd edition.) New York: Freeman.
  • Skinner, B. F. (1976). About Behaviorism. New York: Random House, Inc.
  • Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.

How to Train a Brain - Crash Course Psychology #11 (March 2024).


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