Behaviorism - Softcover

Staddon, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715624881 ISBN 13: 9780715624883

Publisher: Duckbacks, 1993

Synopsis

The book is a short history of behaviorism, a critique of Skinnerian radical behaviorism, and a proposal for a new theoretical behaviorism.

About this title

About the Author

John Staddon is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology at Duke University, North Carolina.

From the Back Cover

Behaviorism was the dominant movement in American psychology in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, the most influential psychologist since Freud. Skinner wrote at length on social engineering, and his views have influenced all psychologists, both behaviorists and others. Recent developments in theory, robotics and artificial intelligence promise to propel behaviorism once more to the forefront of psychology.

In this entertaining book, John Staddon describes the history of the movement from its beginnings in a short polemic by J. B. Watson in 1913, through the US 'rat runners' to exciting modern developments. He argues that the new theoretical behaviorism can tackle even such problems as 'consciousness,' hitherto regarded as the exclusive province of cognitive psychology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the end of Chapter 4: B. F. Skinner was a brilliant experimenter. He invented the Skinner box, which is now the standard way of studying learned behavior in psychology and neurobiology. He reintroduced the psychology of learning to the individual after many years then most psychologists dealt with data only from groups. He showed that behavior can be studied directly, that it need not be viewed through the "dark glass" of inferential statistics. He and his students went on to use the techniques he had invented to study reinforcement schedules, where they discovered a completely unsuspected sensitivity of operant behavior to the pattern and scheduling of intermittent reinforcers. This project revealed surprising similarities in behavior across species and has led directly to an important nexus between psychology, economics and behavioral ecology. Skinner provided a conceptual framework for understanding learning that (I believe) has yet to be fully explored -- even though his strictures against theory prevented him from exploiting it himself and impeded the efforts of others to do so.

Skinner's work continues to have a substantial impact in applied areas, particularly clinical psychology, where it is known as "behavior modification" or "applied behavior analysis". These methods are perhaps the only psychotherapeutic techniques whose efficacy (in a limited domain) has been conclusively proved. Largely through the work of Fred Keller, Skinner's ideas have also had significant effects on education.

No matter what criticisms are legitimately leveled at Skinner, he will always deserve credit for his emphasis on the environment. Much of his hostility to psychological concepts like "feeling," the "inner man," "attitudes" and the like, was because these notions distract attention from the real causes of behavior, which lie in a person's past history. Moreover, these are causes we can actually do something about. Attitude, no matter how precisely measured, predicts actual behavior imperfectly. It is notorious that no man can know if he is capable of heroism until he finds himself in a situation where heroism is required. Who has not changed his voting preference at the last minute? Who has not behaved in a more (or less) prejudiced way than expected in a real-life context. "Attitude" is a snapshot; but behavior is a movie. Most psychologists are happy to deal with "attitudes," rather than historical causes, not just because attitudes are easy to measure (there is a massive industry of test-makers, focus-group organizers and opinion pollsters who make attitude-measurement their business), but because attitudes seem like easy-to-change things. A person's individual history, on the other hand, extends over many years. His behavior and his attitudes develop over time in response to all sorts of social and intellectual influences in ways that depend on his own changing constitution. These complex effects are hardly understood at all. Modifying behavior that grows out of such an environmental history may in fact be very difficult (if you doubt it, just look at "attitudes" in Northern Ireland or the Balkans). Nevertheless, the environment is where psychologists must look if they are to understand normal human behavior. Every area of applied psychology would be farther along if Skinner's admonition to "keep your eye on the environment" had been followed more conscientiously. Skinner spent the last twenty years of his life engaged almost exclusively in writing about radical behaviorism and society. It was perhaps inevitable that these writings should go very far beyond experimental data and theoretical understanding. They reveal a hidden ideology -- his opposition to aversive control -- that forced Skinner to create a number of fallacious arguments. Most significantly, his ideology prevented him from following through on his own behavioristic premises. It is hard to avoid the impression that in Beyond Freedom and Dignity Skinner is "mistaking the finger for the moon" -- attacking conventional views of man when the real problem is the inconsistency between his own unexamined beliefs and the facts of behavior revealed through the methods he had himself invented. A great scientist wrote:

"Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes. Thoughtful men have perhaps always known that we are likely to see things as we want to see them instead of as they are....Scientists have simply found that being honest -- with oneself as much as with others -- is essential to progress...Scientists have also discovered the value of remaining without an answer until a satisfactory one can be found."

Although these words are Skinner's, in his later writings he failed to follow them. It is scant comfort that his sin in this respect is no greater than the sins of all those other over-confident social scientists -- psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, economists -- who continue to go beyond their narrow, particular and often ideologically driven understandings of human nature and society in "expert" testimony of all kinds. They should keep silent, or at least show a decent modesty in the face of our enormous ignorance. Human nature is stranger than we know -- and stranger even than we can imagine. In vital matters like marriage, raising children, and the punishment of crime it will be many, many, years before the one-dimensional pronouncements of "experts" can be reliably trusted over traditional wisdom and personal experience.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duckbacks
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0715624881
• ISBN 13: 9780715624883
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128