Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors

Currently, Psychology includes a great variety of theoretical orientations. Comparable in a way to political ideologies or religious beliefs, psychological paradigms suppose guidelines for conduct that induce us to practice professional practice in different ways.

Behaviorism is one of the most common orientations among psychologists, although today it is more common for it to be practiced in its cognitive-behavioral. Next we review the history of behaviorism and its main characteristics.

• Related article: "Types of psychological therapies”

What is behaviorism?

Behaviorism is a stream of Psychology that focuses on the study of the common laws that determine human and animal behavior. Originally, traditional behaviorism leaves the intrapsychic aside to focus on observable behavior, that is, it prioritizes the objective over the subjective. This opposes behaviorism to previous approaches such as psychodynamic and the phenomenological ones. In fact, from the behavioral perspective, what we usually understand as "mind" or "mental life" is just one abstraction of what psychology should really study: the links between stimuli and response in contexts determined.

Behaviorists tend to conceive of living beings as "clean sheets" whose behavior is determined by reinforcements and punishments that they receive more than by internal predispositions. Behavior, therefore, does not depend mainly on internal phenomena, such as instincts or thoughts (which do not cease to be, for on the other hand, covert behaviors) but rather from the environment, and we cannot separate the behavior or learning from the context in which they have 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 they are nothing more than 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 their use of the experimental method to obtain knowledgeBut this association is not correct, since in many respects, behaviorists clearly differ from psychiatrists. One of these differences is behaviorism's opposition to the concept of mental illness.

From this philosophy applied to psychology, there can be no pathological behaviors, since these are always judged according to their suitability to a context. Whereas diseases must have relatively well-isolated and known biological causes, behaviorists point out that there is insufficient evidence in favor of the existence of these biomarkers in the case of disorders mental. Consequently, they oppose the idea that the treatment of problems such as phobias or OCD should focus on psychotropic drugs.

Behaviorism basics

Next we define the main terms of the behaviorist theory.

1. Stimulus

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

2. Answer

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

3. Conditioning

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

4. Reinforcement

A reinforcement is any consequence of a behavior that increases the probability that it will happen again.

5. Punishment

Opposed to reinforcement: consequence of a behavior that decreases the probability 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 end up being behaviorism. He created the first scientific psychology laboratory and systematically used the statistics and the experimental method to extract general rules about the functioning of mental processes and the nature of consciousness.

Wundt's methods relied heavily on introspection or self-observation, a technique in which experimental subjects provide data on their own experience.

Watson: Psychology seen from behaviorism

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

Watson also rejected the conception dualist that separated the body and the mind (or the soul) and stated that the behavior of people and that of animals should be studied in the same way since, if the introspective method was left aside, there was no real difference between both.

In a well-known and controversial experiment, Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner managed to provoke a rat phobia to a baby nine-month-old ("little Albert"). To do this, they paired the presence of the rat with loud sounds. The case of little Albert showed that human behavior is not only predictable but also modifiable.

• Related article: "The 10 Most Disturbing Psychological Experiments Ever”

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, since they are unobservable, they should be ignored when analyzing behavior.

However, in the mid-twentieth century, behaviorists qualified this and, without disregarding the importance of non-directly observable processes that occur inside the body, they pointed out that psychology does not need to account for them 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 of thought as verbal behavior. We will talk about this author later.

Some neo-behaviorists like Clark Hull and Edward Tolman they did include intermediate processes (or intervening variables) in their models. Hull included internal drive or motivation and habit, while Tolman claimed that we construct 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.

Classic conditioning: Pavlov's dogs

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian physiologist who realized, while conducting experiments on saliva secretion in dogs, that animals they salivated in advancewhen they saw or smelled the food, and even simply when those in charge of feeding them approached. Later he got them to salivate when they heard the sound of a metronome, a bell, a bell or a light by associating these stimuli with the presence of food.

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

An unconditioned stimulus (that is, one that does not require learning to elicit a response) elicits an unconditioned response; in the case of dogs, 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 unconditioned response (salivate) without the need for the unconditioned stimulus to also be present.

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

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

Animals in behaviorism

Classical behaviorists frequently used animals in their studies. The animals are considerateequivalent to people in their behavior and the learning principles drawn from these studies are in many cases extrapolated to humans; yes, 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: Thorndike's Cats

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

In the boxes there were various elements with which the cats could interact, such as a button or a ring, and only contact with one of these objects could make the door of the box open. At first the cats managed to get out of the box by trial and error, but as the attempts were repeated they escaped more and 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 be repeated, and that if the result is unsatisfactory this probability decreases. Later he would formulate the law of exercise, according to which the learning and habits that are repeated are reinforced and those that are not repeated are weakened.

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

Skinner's radical behaviorism

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

Skinner introduced thepositive and negative reinforcement concepts. Positive reinforcement is the act of rewarding a behavior by giving something, while negative reinforcement consists of withdrawing or avoiding an unpleasant event. In both cases, the intention is to increase the frequency and intensity of the appearance of a certain behavior.

Skinner advocated radical behaviorism, which he maintains 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 disabilities. intellectual and developmental disabilities.

• Related article: "The 37 best phrases of B. F. Skinner and behaviorism”

Development of behaviorism: the cognitive revolution

Behaviorism went into decline in the 1950s, coinciding with the rise of the cognitive psychology. Cognitivism is a theoretical model that emerged in reaction to behaviorism's radical emphasis on overt behavior, neglecting cognition. The progressive inclusion of intervening variables in behaviorist models greatly favored this paradigm shift, known as the “cognitive revolution”.

In psychosocial practice, the contributions and principles of behaviorism and cognitivism would eventually converge in what We know as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which focuses on finding the most evidence-supported treatment programs scientific

The third generation therapiesdeveloped in recent years they recover part of the principles of radical behaviorism, reducing the influence of cognitivism. Some examples are the Acceptance and commitment therapy, Behavioral Activation Therapy for depression or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for the 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: Threshing.
• Mills, J. TO. (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.