Goal-setting and Self-directed Behavior Change (original) (raw)
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Intentional Behaviorism Revisited
2008
The central fact in the delineation of radical behaviorism is its conceptual avoidance of propositional content. This eschewal of the intentional stance sets it apart not only from cognitivism but from other neo-behaviorisms. Indeed, the defining characteristic of radical behaviorism is not that it avoids mediating processes per se but that it sets out to account for behavior without recourse to propositional attitudes. Based, rather, on the contextual stance, it provides definitions of contingency-shaped, rule-governed verbal and private behaviors which are non-intentional. However, while the account provided by radical behaviorism fulfills the pragmatic criteria of prediction and control of its subject matter, it has problems of explanation that stem from the failure of radical behaviorist interpretation to address the personal level of analysis, to provide for the continuity of behavior, and to show how its accounts can be delimited in the face of causal equifinality. This leaves gaps in its explanation that radical behaviorists choose either to ignore or to fill with the very intentional locutions that they formally abhor but which I argue are essential. As a result, many psychologists who style themselves radical behaviorists have already moved beyond radical behaviorism as a philosophy of science. They have done so primarily as a result of adopting the language of intentional psychology in order to explain behavior; where they have not done this, they have resorted to the unscientific assumption that somewhere there is a learning history that explains their data. While it is indeed the case that a learning history precedes all operant behavior, the explanatory gap that is revealed by the search for this unobtainable information reveals the inescapability of intentionality. Hence, psychologists, including radical behaviorists, are right to employ it. The challenge is to understand why this is so and to celebrate rather than denigrate the resulting extension of behavioral science. In this response, I first raise and seek to answer two questions: what is radical behaviorism, and what is intentional explanation? I go on to discuss the incompleteness of radical behaviorism. There follows a summary of the AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am grateful to the commentators for giving their time and intellectual effort and to the editor, Jack Marr, for his patient, informed, and judicious encouragement. I cannot do full justice to all the points the commentators raise, some of which already fill the annals of philosophical inquiry. It is debate that is important, and I thank them for engaging in this while hoping that I have also made some small contribution to it. I have tried not to repeat material from "Intentional Behaviorism," and where I have covered commentators' points elsewhere in greater detail than I can here I have indicated this in preference to using current space. Otherwise unattributed page references are to the commentators' responses. If I have not explicitly referred to Killeen in the text, it is only because we seem to agree and disagree simultaneously on every single point. Apart from that, I would say that his wife sounds much like mine, as does the postal "system" he has to contend with.
2016
Behaviorism has argued that behavior is the Psyche and the subject matter of psychology. Although, some scientists had done empirical work with objective methods before 1913, the year in which John B. Watson published his manifesto, he was the first one to attempt a sys-tematization of behavior as the Psyche, that is, as psychology’s subject matter. In this text, I out-line Watson’s notion of behavior to compare it with two other forms of behaviorism: Skinner’s radical behaviorism and molar behaviorism. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate how the con-cept of behavior has been and is changing.
The History and Current Applications of Behaviorism
Behaviorism has made a powerful impact upon modern psychology. Examining the history and current applications of behaviorism offers an opportunity to seek an understanding of behaviorism by exploring behaviorist theory, behaviorism’s “premiere theorists” – Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner – and their influence on the development of the behavioral, cognitive, and cognitive/behavior therapies and learning theories used in contemporary psychology. Although behaviorism, in its purest form, did not survive in America, it was, nevertheless, successful in paving the way for potential-based learning, online education, and distance learning.
On the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology
The Pavlovian journal of biological science
This discussion presents the viewpoints of five well-known psychologists on the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology. The article is a condensed version of a symposium presented at the 1978 annual APA convention.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2000
Behaviorists have struggled and continue to struggle with basic questions about behavior, such as how to define behavior, how to talk about behavior in relation to environment, and what constitutes an adequate explanation of behavior. Skinner made huge progress on these questions, because of his emphasis on the generic character of stimuli and responses, his advocacy of rate as a datum, his introduction of stimulus control, and his reliance on selection by consequences as a mode of explanation. By no means, however, did he provide final answers. In particular, Skinner fell short because he never escaped from the limitations imposed by thinking in terms of contiguity and discrete events and because he never specified a useful role for theory. The 14 chapters in this book offer varying degrees of clarity on the ways in which behaviorists and behaviorally oriented philosophers dealt with basic questions in the past and are dealing with them in the present, post-Skinner. They are reviewed individually, because they are uneven in quality. Overall, the book is a useful tool for gaining historical and philosophical background to behaviorism and for getting some idea of behaviorists' current directions. DESCRIPTORS: behaviorism, history of behaviorism, philosophical behaviorism, psychological behaviorism
The support of autonomy and the control of behavior
Journal of personality and social psychology
In this article we suggest that events and contexts relevant to the initiation and regulation of intentional behavior can function either to support autonomy (i.e., to promote choice) or to control behavior (i.e., to pressure one toward specific outcomes). Research herein reviewed indicates that this distinction is relevant to specific external events and to general interpersonal contexts as well as to specific internal events and to general personality orientations. That is, the distinction is relevant whether one's analysis focuses on social psychological variables or on personality variables. The research review details those contextual and person factors that tend to promote autonomy and those that tend to control. Furthermore, it shows that autonomy support has generally been associated with more intrinsic motivation, greater interest, less pressure and tension, more creativity, more cognitive flexibility, better conceptual learning, a more positive emotional tone, higher self-esteem, more trust, greater persistence of behavior change, and better physical and psychological health than has control. Also, these results have converged across different assessment procedures, different research methods, and different subject populations. On the basis of these results, we present an organismic perspective in which we argue that the regulation of intentional behavior varies along a continuum from autonomous (i.e., self-determined) to controlled. The relation of this organismic perspective to historical developments in empirical psychology is discussed, with a particular emphasis on its implications for the study of social psychology and personality.