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Behaviorism

Just as there are many “cognitive psychologies,” there are many varieties of behaviorism. All behaviorisms hold that behavior (activity) is the subject matter of psychology, in contrast with psychology defined solely as the study of conscious experience. Some forms of behaviorism hold that behavior is significant in its own right. Other forms are actually cognitive (mediational) and treat behaviors as mere indicators of underlying processes. Most current applications of psychology are based on some form of behavioral approach.

This entry constitutes a brief overview of behaviorism through a summary of the views of four well-known behaviorists. John B. Watson founded the movement in 1913 and it was extended and further popularized by Edwin Guthrie in the mid-20th century. During the same period, Clark Hull attempted to transform all of psychology into a rigorous science that still exists as theoretical behaviorism. Finally, B. F. Skinner created radical behaviorism as a philosophy of the science of psychology, but he is better known for the application of behavioral methods in education, the treatment of psychological dysfunction, and elsewhere.

John B. Watson

Although Edward Thorndike introduced behaviorism in 1898, when he showed how the use of rewards and punishers (the law of effect) is far more useful than had been suspected, Watson popularized it, beginning with a combative paper published in 1913 and titled “Psychology From the Standpoint of the Behaviorist.” In that paper, Watson expanded the domain of psychology, which, aside from Thorndike's work, had been largely restricted to the analysis of verbal reports of conscious experience by adult human subjects. If psychology is the study of behavior, then it need not involve verbal report, and a variety of populations—including children, people with certain mental disorders, and even animals—could be studied.

Mental Activity and the Goal of Psychology

Watson did not “throw out the mind,” as is commonly assumed. He merely followed Thorndike in treating mental activity as a form of behavior. Thinking, feeling, remembering, imagining, and seeing are not causes for what we say and do—they are part of our behavior. He defined the goal of psychology to be the study of stimulus-response relations, emphasizing that stimulus could be a discrete event, like a light flash or a phobic stimulus, or a molar event, extending over long periods, like a method of teaching reading or the redistribution of wealth. Response was treated the same way: Depending on your purpose, it could be an eyeblink or a decrease in crime.

Pattern Reactions

Although Watson had a master's degree in biology, he believed that behavior was important in its own right and that biological underpinnings were only distractions. Yet, he argued that behavior involves the whole body and we always see pattern reactions, involving the three groups of behavior. Thus, at any moment we are moving, feeling emotion, and communicating, in different degrees (in Watson's words, manual, visceral, and laryngeal habits). For example, while making an important decision, I may pace the floor, feel my heart rate increase, and talk to myself. Watson believed that “thinking” involves all of these behaviors, as does anger and imagination and everything else that we do.

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