Science of Behavior & Behaviorism

Toward a Science of Behavior

• Psychology shifted focus to observable phenomena, rejecting the study of consciousness
• John B. Watson's 1913 manifesto advocated for psychology as behaviorists view it
• Watson's behaviorism was a "scientific psychology", focused on observable acts and objective terms like "stimulus" and "response" while rejecting mentalistic concepts
• Behaviorism is positivistic, mechanistic, and materialist

Watson on Consciousness

• Consciousness, according to Watson, is unprovable, like the concept of the soul (Watson & McDougall, 1929)

Influences on Behaviorism

• Philosophical traditions of objectivism and mechanism
• Functional psychology
• Animal psychology

Philosophies of Objectivism and Mechanism

• Objectivism is the belief that objective phenomena exist independently of human knowledge and perception
• Comte's positive psychology emphasized positive knowledge (facts), the truth of which was not debatable
• Mechanism posits that natural processes are mechanically determined and explicable by physics and chemistry
• Descartes used the metaphor of "the person as machine" to describe Mechanism

Functional Psychology & Behaviorism

• Functional psychology moved away from the pure psychology of conscious experience towards a psychology of behavior
• Functionalists believed in an objective psychology focused on behavior instead of consciousness
• The Zeitgeist (overall movement of American psychology) moved away from introspection and conscious experience towards motor and behavioral responses
• Watson sparked a revolution that seemed inevitable and destined for success

Functional Psychology's Contributions

• Functionalists advocated studying animal behavior
• Darwin believed humans and other animals differed only in degree
• Functionalists broadened research methods, incorporating physiological measures, mental tests, and questionnaires
• Key functionalists set the stage for behaviorism
• Cattel was the "grandfather of behaviorism"
• John Dewey stressed studying behavior in context
• Harvey Carr and Watson collaborated on the Kerplunk study

Jacques Loeb and Animal Psychology

• Jacques Loeb rejected the anthropomorphic tradition and introspection by analogy in animal psychology
• Loeb introduced Tropism, describing it as an automatic orienting response, or involuntary movement
• Tropism is an animal's direct and automatic response to a stimulus that requires no explanation around the animal's consciousness
• Loeb did not completely reject the concept of consciousness
• Animals high on the evolutionary scale, such as humans, were seen as having consciousness
• Associative memory involves a mental connection formed when an animal learns to react to certain stimuli in a desirable way
• Associative memory is demonstrated, for example, when an animal responds to its name

Rats, Ants and the Animal Mind

• Willard Small introduced the rat maze in 1900
• Charles Henry Turner studied ant behavior and began using the word "behavior"
• Margaret Washburn wrote The Animal Mind (1908), the first comparative psychology textbook in the U.S.

Margaret Floy Washburn

• Washburn wrote The Animal Mind in 1908, compiling her animal research, including attention, sensation, perception, vision, hearing, and learning across various species
• Her work focused on animal mental processes and was the last mentalistic interpretation before behaviorism dominated
• She combined the study of consciousness with motor movement
• Her motor theory suggests awareness is dependent on motor response, and consciousness is intrinsically a reaction, not just cortical activity

Edward Lee Thorndike

• Thorndike was a major animal psychology researcher
• He developed a mechanistic and objective learning theory
• He thought psychology should study behavior and not mental elements/consciousness
• His work reinforced the movement towards greater objectivity

Thorndike's Connectionism

• Thorndike called his study of association Connectionism
• Connectionism is an approach to learning based on connections between situations and responses
• Thorndike addressed the connections between situations and responses, rather than focusing on the associations between ideas
• Thorndike argued that behavior must be broken down to its simplest elements (stimulus-response units)
• Thorndike was objective and mechanistic but still incorporated subjective judgments and retained some mentalism

The Puzzle Box

• The puzzle box was designed by Thorndike
• In the puzzle box, an animal was placed in a box and had to learn to operate a latch to escape
• Animals use trial and error learning
• Learning involves repetition of response tendencies that lead to success
• "Stamping in" and "stamping out"

Laws of Learning

• Law of effect: Acts that produce satisfaction in a situation become associated with that situation; when the situation recurs, the act is likely to recur
• Law of exercise (or law of use and disuse): the more an act or response is used in a given situation, the more strongly the act becomes associated with that situation

Spencer-Bain Principle

• The frequency/probability of a behavior increases if followed by a pleasurable event and decreases if followed by a painful event

Ivan Pavlov

• Pavlov shifted associationism from subjective ideas to objective and quantifiable physiological events, such as glandular secretions and muscular movements
• Pavlov continued in the tradition of mechanism and atomism
• Pavlov believed all animals (including humans) were complicated machines

Conditioned Reflexes

• Conditioned reflexes are conditional/dependent on forming an association/connection between stimulus and response
• The tower of silence was a three-story building to cut down on distractions
• The tower had extra thick glass, double steel doors, and a straw-filled moat to avoid extraneous environmental stimuli

A Conditioning Experiment

• Unconditioned Stimulus: innate response to an unconditioned stimulus (US)
• Unconditioned Response (UR) is a type of unconditioned reflex in response to a US
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS) is a biologically neutral stimulus
• Conditioned Response (CR) is when a previously neutral stimulus (a CS) elicits some fraction of a UR

Vladimir Bekhterev

• Bekhterev was interested in the motor condition response, also known as the association reflex
• Associated reflexes can be elicited by unconditioned stimuli and by stimuli associated with unconditioned stimuli
• Bekhterev discovered conditioning simultaneously with Pavlov
• Watson discovered Pavlov's salivation research and incorporated it into his theory of Behaviorism
• Even though Watson first discovered Pavlov's research, Bekhterev's work fits more closely with his theory