Theoretical Perspective: Psychological Behaviourism

Introduction

Behaviourism, with its goal of establishing the general theory of conditioning, has never had much of a connection to the traditional field of psychological measurement. Psychological measurement has a contrasting goal, that of dealing with individual differences. Furthermore, as Spence (1944) pointed out, behaviourism deals with stimulus-response laws, where the independent variables are the stimulus manipulations that affect the dependent variable, behaviour. Predictive tests, in contrast, deal with response-response laws where the first response (a test result) is related to the second response (the individual's predicted performance). These R-R laws are not causal as S-R laws are. Skinner's radical behaviourism has added to the reasons for ignoring the field of psychological measurement by taking the position that the individual's performance on tests can give no ...