What is the "black box" according to behavioral psychologists?

There are many people who, perhaps because of the influence that the works of Sigmund FreudThey believe that Psychology is in charge of unraveling the secrets of something that we usually call "mind". In fact, many of those who totally reject the psychoanalytic ideas born with Freud in practice continue to believe that the mind is an entity that, Despite remaining hidden inside the human skull, it is the cause of all our behaviors, the helmsman of our movements, thoughts and actions. emotions.

This idea, which may even seem obvious, is not shared by all psychologists. Those who belong to the behaviorist current, famous for researchers such as B. F. Skinner or john b. Watson, made famous the idea that the human mind is a black box, a metaphor that gives the idea of ​​representing something mysterious, impossible to open to be explored. However, this is a myth, and in fact, since behaviorism has understood the black box, it is not that.

The black box metaphor does not mean that the mind cannot be studied.

just as you would study a dead animal. What it means is that the mind does not exist.

• Related article: "Behaviorism: history, concepts and main authors"

What is the black box for behaviorists?

To understand what comes next, one thing must be clear: the psychological current of behaviorism, Appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and dominant in many countries of the world until the 1960s, it is defined by its concern in define human behavior as an operational process, something that with the appropriate instruments can be objectively measured.

That means that behaviorists, unlike other metaphysically based psychologists, began by looking at the observable: the behavior patterns of humans and nonhuman animals. Based on these events, they formulated hypotheses that they tried to use to predict behavior and, as far as possible, influence it.

Mainly, the figure of the black box is used to represent what is between an input (a stimulus that the person or animal receives) and the output (the behavior that the person or animal performs). animal). If we think, for example, of the act of rewarding a dog with a treat, and input is the treat and The output is the propensity to return to carry out the action that has previously served to win that prize.

So that, what is between the stimulus and the reaction is not known, it is only known that there is a mechanic that links input to output. However... does that mean the black box is unfathomable? The answer is no.

• You may be interested in: "The 10 Types of Behaviorism: History, Theories, and Differences"

The black box can be opened

The idea is that the black box is only black as long as a certain level of analysis is maintained between a type of stimuli and a type of response. If we choose to study the relationship between the fact of receiving a candy and the consequence of acting in a certain way as a result of what above, what has happened between these two phases is not known, but neither is it necessary to know it to generate knowledge in that moment. There is nothing to suggest that what has happened "in there" cannot be known later on.

After all, behaviorism is based on the philosophical currents that were born with positivism, and that means that no time is spent discussing the possibility of non-physical elements directing behavior. If something of what happens in our behavior cannot be investigated at a given moment, it is not because it is something "spiritual" and because definition impossible to observe or measure, but because either the means to do so are not available or there is no interest in studying it directly.

As mysterious as the black box is, it is still something material, and therefore participates in the chain of cause and effect of the world in which we live; there is nothing in it that appears out of nowhere, everything has its origin in measurable and observable events that occur around us or within ourselves.

That is why for behaviorism the mind as an entity isolated from the rest and generator of behavior, there is no. In any case, there are mental processes (which occur in the brain) whose existence is totally conditioned by other processes that are not mental and that are as normal and current as a vibrating eardrum or a few drops of water falling on the skin. And that is also why b. F. skinner, shortly before dying, accused the cognitive psychologists of being "creationists of psychology", implying that for them there is a source of behavior without a specific origin.

In short, those who believe that the black box is a metaphor used by behaviorists to admit grudgingly who need a rug under which to pile their incontestable doubts will take a disappointment.