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If, during a quarrel with an opponent, there is some argument ad hominem and the phrase “you are just an animal” sounds, then we traditionally regard it as an attempt to humiliate and insult. However, rude words are a person’s response to the impact of external circumstances.
The biologization of man is the key basis of this approach in psychology, as behaviorism. His followers deliberately denied the burning feelings of man in favor of a cold-blooded analysis of the stimuli of the environment and the reaction to it. That is, analyzing the behavior of the opponent, the behaviorist would not take into account his emotions.
Behaviorism is in the history of psychology a direction that is designed to “dip” a person into his biological essence and not let his feelings get out. His followers perceived Homo Sapiens as an animal whose behavior is manageable and predictable.
What is behaviorism?
For those, who know English well, is familiar with the essence of behaviorism from the title. This approach calls for a deep and detailed study of behavior and behavioral responses. From 1913 until the mid-1950s, this approach dominated and ruled in psychology. Behaviorism as an approach has a clear thought at its basis. It is convinced that human behavior can be measured almost as easily as the length of a stick. Both the views and the practical activities of behaviorists had one global goal – to “give birth” to a new theory that would help predict people’s behavior and benefit society.
What is the essence of this psychology approach? Researchers believed that our reaction to phenomena predetermines behavior. Mental state and emotions – behaviorism refused to take note of this in psychology.
In order to know everything about a person and to mold anyone of him as out of clay, it is enough to observe his behavior systematically and predict the reactions to different impulses. Worshiping the biological nature of man and trying to forget that emotions drive him are behaviorism in psychology.
In fact, the followers of this trend believed that man’s actions do not differ too much from the reaction of the animal to association reflexes (Mr. Pavlov, we send you warmest greetings). The attempt to prove this in practice, of course, left its imprint on the further development of what constituted the deciphering of the concept of behaviorism in psychology. In addition, it is still subject to devastating criticism. First of all, for reasons of ethics.
Behaviorism is in psychology …
In the distant 1913 John Watson agitated New York with a lecture-manifesto, which tells about psychology from the standpoint of a follower of behaviorism. A young and promising researcher actually identified the behavior of animals and humans.
The direction of behaviorism is what pushed psychology to the rapid development of the hypostasis of experimental science. Watson almost shouted: forget about consciousness, blind fools, let’s study human behavior.
The essence of behaviorism according to Watson can be characterized by a stimulus-response bond. First you need to study the cause of the pulse, and then – to predict the consequences.
Watson spoke of four classes of reactions:
- Explicit reactions. When you unlock the door, play the violin and generally do something that is noticeable to the eye, here is an obvious example of a visible reaction. Just like two and two.
- Hidden reactions. Do you conduct an internal dialogue in any incomprehensible situation? Then here’s an example of a hidden reaction from Uncle John Walter..
- Yawning, coughing and other impulses are also behaviorism in psychology. Innovator Walter called it all clear hereditary reactions.
- Concealed hereditary reactions – all that occurs in the system of internal secretion, while you do not suspect about it.
From the point of view of behaviorism, psychology is 100% objective sphere of natural science, which can predict behavior and control it.
The stimuli of the external environment and your actions in response to them – that’s what really shapes the behavior. And all these things like emotions and mood are so subjective that they are not worthy of attention. Behaviorism in psychology claimed this. What is more, very eloquently.
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Behaviorism and the role of conditioning in it
Watson suggested that within the capabilities of his body a person can learn anything. This is how the method is directed, such as conditioning. From the standpoint of modern science, it is classical and operant.
Classical conditioning assumes that the unconditional stimulus begins to be associated with the unconditional stimulus, since they initially go in pairs. It sounds confusing, but Pavlov’s experiment shows everything and tells in an illustrative example.
Operational conditioning is reduced to a system of “encouragement-punishment”. First, a person is given a series of stimuli that support the desired reaction, and then punished for an undesirable.
So, in general terms, ideal conditions for creating a specialist of any profile. Components:
- Healthy, cultured infants – 12 individuals.
- Special world – 1 item.
- American John Broades Watson in a single original.
At the same time, it’s necessary to do nothing: just grow healthy babies in a special world (the information is taken from Watson’s quotation).
According to the father of behaviorism, this is enough to make any person turn anyone from a lawyer to a beggar. And, most importantly, this trick can be done regardless of the talent, inclinations, heredity and race of the baby.
However, John Watson would not have been a researcher of the 20th century, if he had not tried to apply the theory into practice. In the history of this trend, his experiment was recorded under the name “Little Albert”.
Impact experiment
Despite the recognition of the theory, the revolutionary psychologist was very anxious to draw to success and master the practice. At the end of 1919, a married researcher decided to experiment in the company of his assistant mistress with a child who was not even a year old. According to them, a healthy, harmoniously developed baby was called Albert. He had to prove that reactions to stimuli are possible in animals and humans. This would allow the experimentalists to make a revolution in psychology.
Later, however, Albert turned out to be called Douglas. But this is not the only inaccuracy that the experimenters allowed in an attempt to breathe life into a new approach of science. In fact, the baby was not a healthy child – he suffered from hydrocephalus. This terrible disease comes down to the fact that the mysterious thing the brain does not work as it should – there is too much fluid in the ventricle compartment. The disease is caused by a genetic anomaly or infectious diseases of the mother during the child bearing.
Let’s get closer to the essence of the experiment. At first the boy was shown a live white rat and all sorts of things that only reminded it partly: beard, fur, cotton yarn. Of course, the child was not scared.
In the second stage of the study, the kid played with the rat, and during this the psychologist struck the steel band over his head with a hammer. Albert could not see what was happening, so he was afraid of sound. Just a few repetitions – and the fear factor moved to an innocent little rat. In addition, such a reaction was awarded and the items that the baby associated with a rat. Thus, the child was afraid of yarn, rabbit or gray beard.
Watson claimed that the reaction was fixed for a month, but he can stop everything at any moment. However, the kid was taken to the hospital – and John Rosalie did not know anything about his future.
It would seem that a successful experiment. However, soon the critics seriously doubted both the methodology and the results of its implementations to prove the viability of this direction. It turned out that the psychologist often repeated his “shock experience”, fixing the effect, so the statement about the duration of the phobia was pull out of a hat. In addition, the experimenters knew exactly when the child would leave the medical facility.
In general, the experiment revealed such disadvantages:
- absence of a specific plan and correct structure;
- the authors relied not on objective research results, but on personal subjective interpretations;
- the ethics of the experiment are called into question.
Just a juggling of facts and subjectivity would have cost the researcher a career in the 21st century. But a century ago the key problem was still the presence of a female-assistant with privileges around a married man. This affair cost him a post at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. However, a couple of years later, John married Rosalie and lived they lived together for 15 years, until the death of the wife separated them.
None of the higher educational institutions agreed to make Watson their employee. Later in New York, he found himself to be useful in the advertising sphere, while visiting the New School of Social Studies simultaneously as a lecturer.
The fate of the baby from this experiment was traced only five years ago. To the disappointment of the skeptics, because of the attempt to present the new scientific approach to the world, he did not develop the strange phobia of small white fluffy objects. The fate of the boy was tragic – a small Douglas died at the age of 6. News was published in the “American Psychologist” in 2012. In addition, according to the authors of the article, Watson knew about the condition of the boy and studied information about his health.
Whatever it was, the approach of behaviorism remained in the history of science. But in Watson’s understanding, it does not exist. Modern psychologists do not consider behavior the only criterion for formulating conclusions about a person.
The approach of behaviorism and its second wind
John Watson was not the only one willing to explore only the “naked” biological nature of man. Another biologist, Burrens Frederick Skinner, had the biological world of menacing dimensions. Everything that affects behavior, he called reinforcements. Accordingly, cultural phenomena did not become exceptions.
The study of animal behavior became the basis of the biological model of Skinner. Its default can be called limited. According to the researcher, training is not connected with the internal cognitive activity of a person. Getting new knowledge in the treatment of Skinner is just a reinforcement of the right reactions.
Roughly speaking, training is not a conscious process, but only a result of training. All mental processes (thinking, memory, motives) are divided into two categories. What cannot be called a reaction, Skinner called reinforcements, and vice versa.
However, there is also a rational kernel in Skinner’s theory. He suggested not to control the behavior of punishment. In his understanding, the threat would have such results:
- Negative emotional phenomena. Remember yourself when you were a teenager. If your mother forbade you to communicate with a suspicious company, then you lied to her not to get a punishment. Returning home when the clock was far past midnight, you were worried that you would face the music. In total, we have three side effects of punishment – lie, anxiety and fear.
- Social side effects. Public reprimand of a child by a teacher could later turn into a loss of confidence and self-esteem.
- Temporary appearance of undesirable behavior. If the risk of punishment decreases, then the desire to commit undesirable action outweighs. And again, we return to the problems of adolescents: if mother has gone somewhere and does not find out about the innocent pranks with the bad company, what prevents to pass the evening the way you want?
Speaking of reinforcements, Skinner divided them into two types: primary and secondary. Our basic needs can be referred to the primary ones. So, a person needs food, water, physical comfort and the ability to reproduce, that is, sex. To the list of secondary (conditional) such reinforcements are listed as: attachment of money, attention and so on. In addition, sex for money, from the position of Skinner, could be called a combination of secondary reinforcement with the primary.
A stronger consequence of generalization is social approval. It is this that forces a person to get good grades in childhood, to behave diligently and adhere to social norms in adolescence, and after reaching adulthood – to receive a prestigious education and to pursue a career with the magnificent diligence.
And here there is an interesting picture: John Walter presented to the court of fellow psychologists an experiment that is based on speculation, and his follower, Beres Skinner, called the theory of psychoanalysis an assumption. He was sure that motive, emotion and attraction are nothing, and it is impossible to check it out, therefore, such categories are not worthy of study.
Human behavior is clay, and the surrounding situation is a potter’s wheel, which allows you to create a new product. That is, behaviourism is a special approach in psychology, which has facts that can be measured correctly and objectively. To study the behavior, it is enough just to skillfully manipulate the environment, in which the person is located. But there is no need to include the mechanisms that operate within a person in the analysis.
As a result, we have the following: two researchers, one approach and slightly different ways. It was their experience that provided behaviorism with a place of honor in the list of factors affecting the development of science.
The role of behaviorism in psychology is something that can easily be overestimated and underestimated. It’s simpler, of course, to say that this approach was simple, and his followers considered people to be animals. However, behaviourism had a concrete result – turned psychology into an experimental science.
