Behaviourism

Behaviourism 3 A great mind makes a great statement, a statement so bold and specific that to renege on it would almost certainly discredit his ability to be held as one of the greats in his field. He claimed that he could take healthy infants, put them in a world that he chooses to bring them up in, his ideal world, and then train them to be anything he chooses, regardless of their talent and abilities, even regardless of their hereditary traits. That by manipulating the environment, he could mould them into what he envisioned them to be. An outspoken critic of the psychoanalytic theory and a philosophy to push boundaries that other great minds before him laid a solid foundation upon, and thus began a new way of thinking about how we as humans react and the reasoning behind those actions. But what was this theory really about' And did other scientific minds support it, or even believe it was possible for it to have any impact in anyway to psychology – past, present or future' Behaviourism was initially an American model. A gentleman by the name of J.B Watson is often referred to as the “founder” of behaviourism, but a modest Watson referred to himself as merely an advocate and endorsed the efforts of Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner’s ideas on the subject as the base to which Watson simply expanded and elaborated. behaviourisms view on psychology is purely objective, it makes no reference or relation to mental processes or consciousness. Its position states that in order for psychology to be labelled a “science” as such, it must focus its attentions on what is observable – on what is tangible. In other words, what Watson was trying to achieve was moving psychology in the direction of making it a science of behaviour, not one of consciousness. Although most theories work on the assumption that human beings have a desire for free will and are moral thinkers, behaviourism won’t acknowledge the internal motivations of people. In the mind of the behaviourist thinker, humans are nothing more than the product of their environment. Behaviourism 4 To go one step further then that, the main objective of behaviourism is to predict and control human and non human behaviour, through assessing what factors in their environment makes them react or behave in the way that they do. This had never been discussed before, it was in some way an inexperienced idea amongst some philosophers of the time, but with all great concepts and ideas comes a stage of conception. As one of the oldest theories of personality, behaviourism goes back to Descartes, who introduced the concept of stimulus. During the very early decades of the 20th century its accurate to say that psychology at that time was dominated by behaviourist theories. If we were to break down where behaviourism first came to light, we might look back to a science called empirical observation, simply put it’s about sensory observation, (what we observe visually in our environment). It was a turning point in psychology where it wasn’t purely about consciousness and mental operations. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), a renaissance thinker and a very vocal empiricists, main objectives in his work focused not on making theories, but to observe. As mentioned earlier B K Skinner, impressed by this view, went a step further by implying that nothing can be gained by only studying what’s going on inside the brain. He stated that what happens around us holds much more weight then conscious events as far as psychology is concerned. He also agreed that if we did an analysis of the environment we could then have a more accurate prediction of the behaviour that would then eventuate. Other great thinkers such as I. P. Pavlov (1849 – 1936) and E. L. Thorndike (1874 – 1949) all shared extremely similar views on this theory. Now we are brought back to Watson. He continued on with this idea by concluding that all behaviour is learned in contrast to internal happenings. When Watson denied the existence of consciousness, most of his fellow scientific colleagues at the time were shocked. But what was Watson really questioning' Behaviourism 5 Watson was very aware that if human consciousness continued to dominate psychology it would be extremely damaging to the progress of the science. Perhaps a major principal of behaviourism is if we can discover the reasoning that leads humans and non humans to act as they do, we can then go on to influence and predict their behaviour. Something that Pavlov and Watson had in common was a belief in the Stimulus – Response Theory (S-R Theory) put simply, how the physical stimulus then effects the behavioural response. Given a stimulus, which may be an object or an inner or outer experience, what response might we expect' Watson often used experimental methods in laboratory settings to prove the S-R Theory. Perhaps the most famous was Watsons experiment with Little Albert, an 11 month old infant. Albert was shown a white rat that he initially had no fear of; he was then shown the rat again while a loud, startling noise was made behind him. Albert was instantly frightened and began to cry, the noise was continually made behind him as the rat was in his sights. A week later the same rat was presented again. Albert kept his distance, showing a distinct fear of anything that resembled the rat, such as a white dog, a rabbit, fur, etc. The experiment showed how Albert having the experience with the rat (stimuli) then caused his fear (response). The S-R Theory was the main principal of the behaviourist theory; Watson was only interested in experiments that were significant to the cause. Sceptics tended to scrutinize this approach; firstly they believed it had no resemblance to “real life” experiences and secondly they felt it treated humans as robots and purely mechanical but ironically it is everything behaviourism stood against. Behaviourisms contribution to how psychology was practised upon its conception and even up until today is very significant. B K Skinner was a modern day psychologist (passing away in 1990), who up until his death practiced successful behaviour modification using the principal of Stimulus – Response Psychology. To some degree this method of psychology is Behaviourism 6 used when treating certain disorders, for example, panic attacks. The behavioural side of treating people who suffer from panic attacks includes assessing what in their environment (stimulus) causes the panic (response) and in finding that out, the behaviour can then be some what controlled or at the very least understood. In contradiction to that people often ask; “What has happened to behaviourism today'” Perhaps behaviourism is just less discussed today because it proved its point a long time ago and is no longer a new concept. In one way or another, all psychologists today are behaviourists. Even the most cognitively thinking psychologist’s studies behaviour. They might study the effects of variables, but they almost always study verifiable behaviour. Only in the last ten years or so have we had the applicable tools that have allowed psychologists to observe and explain behaviour in all its forms, some of which do include cognitive explanations. Ironically, the languages that describe this new holistic view of psychology are the same that were invented in the minds of behaviourists, so even today, psychologist cannot deny that some of their work today is thanks to what behaviourism has done for the field all those years ago. All animals, but especially in relation to humans adapt to their environment. Through conditioning, we learn to expect or anticipate events such as pain or experiences that will bring us a sense of joy. We also learn to act in a certain way; a way which we know will bring desired results but also interestingly enough, to avoid events that aren’t as desirable, such as punishment. Through observation we learn from our own experiences but also from the experiences of others around us. The success of laboratory research on non human species taught us a lot about learned behaviours. Our life is a cycle of constant adjustment, we adjust continually from being in the womb until the day we take our last breathe, and that adjustment is due to our inevitable changing environment and what we learn to be true from interacting and learning from our physical experience within that environment. Behaviourism is truly a science that has implanted itself in the field of psychology for many years to come.