6.2 A Short History of Behaviorism

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Trace the chronological development of the psychological school of behaviorism
Develop an understanding of major themes pertaining to behaviorism
Recognize important contributors to behavioral learning theory

Behaviorism dominated experimental psychology for several decades, and its influence can still be felt today. Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation.

Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936). Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was “learned,” the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlov’s “classical conditioning” is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists.

Edward Thorndike’s (1898) work with cats and puzzle boxes illustrates the concept of conditioning. The puzzle boxes were approximately 50 cm long, 38 cm wide, and 30 cm tall (see figure below). Thorndike’s puzzle boxes were built so that the cat, placed inside the box, could escape only if it pressed a bar or pulled a lever, which caused the string attached to the door to lift the weight and open the door. Thorndike measured the time it took the cat to perform the required response (e.g., pulling the lever). Once it had learned the response he gave the cat a reward, usually food.

Thorndike found that once a cat accidentally stepped on the switch, it would then press the switch faster in each succeeding trial inside the puzzle box. By observing and recording how long it took a variety of animals to escape through several trials, Thorndike was able to graph the learning curve (graphed as an S-shape). He observed that most animals had difficulty escaping at first, then began to escape faster and faster with each successive puzzle box trial, and eventually levelled off in their escape times. The learning curve also suggested that different species learned in the same way but at different speeds. His finding was that cats, for instance, consistently showed gradual learning.

From his research with puzzle boxes, Thorndike was able to create his own theory of learning (1932).

“Thorndike’s Puzzle Box” by Jacob Sussman is available through Public Domain“

Of the manifold parts of his theory, Thorndike’s Law of Effect remains one of the theories’ most well-known corollaries.

Law of Effect: If an association is followed by satisfaction, it will be strengthened, and if it is followed by annoyance, it will be weakened.

That is, Thorndike believed that an organism would seek to strengthen the association between a stimulus and response, if that association was perceived to yield satisfaction or pleasure to that organism. Conversely, an organism would seek to weaken an association between a stimulus and response if it brought annoyance. Consider a hungry mouse that is rewarded for pressing a lever with food. The association between the lever press and the food will be strengthened if the reward is perceived to be pleasurable, which to the hungry mouse, is sure to find the reward highly agreeable. However, if the same mouse received an electric shock after pressing the lever, the mouse may choose to avoid the lever in future trials. If the stimulus is not elicited (lever press), there will be no response – the mouse weakens the association between lever press and the electric shock. The law of effect later was replaced by terminology coined by later behaviorists, preferring the terms “reinforcement” and “punishment” over “satisfaction” and “annoyance”.

John B. Watson (1878–1958) was an influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. While Wundt and James were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed. Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control. Watson was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism. A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism. Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior. Indeed, Tolman (1938) stated, “I believe that everything important in psychology (except … such matters as involving society and words) can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice-point in a maze.”

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner (1904–1990) was an American psychologist. Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences. B.F. Skinner called his particular brand of behaviorism radical behaviourism (1974). Radical behaviorism is the philosophy of the science of behaviour. It seeks to understand behaviour as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. This applied behaviourism does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism’s behaviour.

While a researcher at Harvard, Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, popularly referred to as the Skinner box (see figure below), used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment. The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat inside the box could get food delivered to the tray by pressing the lever. Skinner observed that when a rat was first put into the box, it would wander around, sniffing and exploring, and would usually press the bar by accident, at which point a food pellet would drop into the tray. After that happened, the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. The Skinner Box has remained a crucial resource for researchers studying behavior (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Research conducted with the Skinner Box led to the principle of reinforcement, which is the probability of something occurring based on the consequences of a behavior.

A picture of an Operant Conditioning Chamber or Skinner Box. This device allowed experimenters to study conditioning principles and understand reward/punishment mechanisms in psychological research.

“Skinner box” by Bd008 is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0

SUMMARY

The Law of Effect and the Principle of Reinforcement are among the many insights that survive the school of behaviorism today. Nevertheless, we feel the influence of decades of behavioral research in various modern-day settings. For example, behavioral principles are commonly applied in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy to create powerful changes in one’s behavior. Behavior modification is also commonly used in classroom settings to encourage appropriate classroom behaviors and discourage potential disruptions. Overall, behaviorism has led to research on environmental influences on human behavior.

References:

Introduction to Psychology text by [redacted author(s)] is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48

Introduction to Psychology – 1st Canadian Ed. by Jennifer Walinga is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=427

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter is licensed under CC BY v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Introduction to Psychology: The Full Noba Collection by Robert Biswas-Diener and Ed Diener is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=228

Exercises

Review Questions:

1. The results of Thorndike’s Puzzle Box experiments demonstrated that the test animals took ____ time (relative to all attempts) initially when solving puzzle box trials and took ____ time with each subsequent, completed trial.

a. Less; More

b. Less; Less

c. More; Less

d. More; More

2. Thorndike’s Law of Effect is differentiated from the Principle of Reinforcement because the ____ posits that ____.

a. Law of effect; organisms will initiate actions which will yield a pleasurable effect

b. Law of effect; organisms will initiate actions that impede the presence of an non-pleasurable effect

c. Principle of Reinforcement; an organism is more likely to pursue behaviors which are reinforced

d. Principle of Reinforcement; an organism is less likely to pursue behaviors which are not reinforced

e. None of the above.

3. One of the main tenets of Skinner’s radical behaviorism was that___

a. the activities of the mind, apart from the operation of basic life-sustaining functions, had a causal influence on an organisms’ behavior

b. an organism’s perception is integral to guiding that organism’s behaviors

c. an organism’s emotional capacities is among the primary influences for the initiation of behavior

d. a combination of an organism’s thinking, perception and related emotional activities initiate behaviors

e. the private events of the human mind had no causal role pertaining to an organism’s behavior.

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. What are some of the weaknesses of radical behaviorism as it was conceptualized by B.F. Skinner?

Personal Application Question:

1. What are some ways you can potentially see the application of behavioral principles (e.g., the law of effect, principle of reinforcement) in your everyday life?

Glossary:

conditioned reflex: an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus.

classical conditioning: (briefly) a type of conditioning in which a natural, unconditioned stimulus (e.g., food) is paired with a novel stimulus (e.g., a sound, a bell) to create a circumstance in which the novel stimulus can produce a desired response.

law of effect: the precursor to the principle of reinforcement, this law describes the actions of an organism following a satisfying or dissatisfying outcome.

radical behaviorism: a philosophy in the science of behavior. Radical behaviorism seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences while simultaneously rejecting the role of thinking, perception or emotion in the initiation or maintenance of behaviors.

Skinner Box: an apparatus used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment.

Answers to Exercises

Review Questions:

1. C

2. E (The Law of effect was effectively co-opted into the principle of reinforcement for the sake of providing more easily testable experimental conditions)

3. E

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. Answer: (should contain some of the following key points)

*not all human processes characterizing human behaviors have easily recognizable conditioned stimuli, and the behaviors that can be considered conditioned are not easily traceable to a single source

*modern empirical research has mostly refuted the assumption that “private events” do not influence behaviors (e.g., cognitive psychological treatment, phantom limb research)

*private events are constants which underlie ALL behavior, voluntary or involuntary – to rule them out simply because they are not observable is in essence, jumping to conclusions