The Origins of Behaviorism: Pavlov, Watson and Skinner (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
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
Behaviorism's Rise and Fall: An Overview
In 1959, psychologist, Noam Chomsky, wrote his review of B.F. Skinner’s “Verbal Behavior, ” rendering a bruising critique against what, until that time, had been a social science which had re-shaped several social scientific disciples. It became known as Behaviorism, and B.F. Skinner was, arguably, its foremost disciple and leader. Remnants of Behaviorism exist today among its practitioners in areas such as drug addiction counseling and in workplace applications – rewards for good productivity and safety habits to encourage them and punishments to discourage them being a few commonplace examples. But where did Behaviorism come from, why did it become the darling of so many social science disciplines, and why, just as intriguingly, was Chomsky’s essay so devastating? Presented in three parts, this essay provides a basic overview and assessment of Behaviorism, its assent and decline, in order to answer the forgoing questions. Part One examines the beginnings of Behaviorism, touching on its major proponents, including J. Walters, I. Pavlov, and particularly, B.F. Skinner. Part Two, looks more closely at the arguments used by Behaviorism’s practitioners with a brief survey of Skinner’s “Operant Conditioning” and how it built upon Pavlov’s “Classical Conditioning.” Part 3 provides an overview of Skinner’s best-known critic, N. Chomsky, and how his critique of Skinner’s best-known work had its well-known and lasting negative impact. This section also provides the conclusion which discusses, briefly, how and why, Behaviorism intersects with other disciplines in the study of Cognitive Anthropology and why, just as importantly, appreciating the intersection matters.
vicnapier.com
The history of behaviorism is marked with changing philosophies and charismatic characters. This paper is a brief introduction to the journey that behaviorism has taken during the 20 th century, and highlights two important personalities, BF Skinner and James Watson.
1999
W. O'Donohue and R.F. Kitchener, Introduction: The Behaviorisms. E.K. Morris and J.T. Todd, Watsonian Behaviorism. L.J. Hays and D.W. Fredericks, Interbehaviorism and Interbehavioral Psychology. N.K. Innis, Edward C. Tolman's Purposive Behaviorism. M.E. Rashotte and A. Amsel, Clark L. Hull's Behaviorism. J. Ringen, Radical Behaviorism: B.F. Skinner's Philosophy of Science. S.W. Bijou, Empirical Behaviorism. H. Rachlin, Teleological Behaviorism. J.E.R. Staddon, Theoretical Behaviorism. W. Timberlake, Biological Behaviorism. E.V. Gifford and S.C. Hayes, Functional Contextualism: A Pragmatic Philosophy for Behavioral Science. D. Bloor, Wittgenstein's Behaviorism. U.T. Place, Ryle's Behaviorism. R.F. Kitchener, Logical Behaviorism. R.E. Gibson, Quine's Behaviorism. Subject Index.
Synthesis Paper Origins of Behaviorism (1)
Grand Canyon University, 2022
Behaviorism originated some time ago and was mostly pioneered by a single man who established behaviorism as a distinct area of psychology. Ledoux (2012) provided a detailed examination of Behaviorism during the previous century and how it developed into a distinct field distinct from psychology. As Moore (2011) stated, behaviorism was founded by John B. Watson in 1913 in response to Watson's dissatisfaction with the way in which psychology was headed. Watson founded behaviorism to transform psychology into a more experimental research-based science. Moore (2011) also discussed how Skinner contributed to the creation of psychology by expanding on Watson's Classical Conditioning and coining the term Operant Conditioning. Clark (2004) examined the scientific origins of classical conditioning. As Moore (2011), Clark (2004), and Ledoux (2012) highlighted, behaviorism originated as a field of study that appeared in the 1950s with an emphasis on accomplishment. The three earlier researchers defined behavior as the result of a potentially important event in an individual's past or a stimulus in the environment; this might include the individual's present motivational state, controlling stimuli, and penalties and rewards.
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.
2017
Behaviorism, both as a psychological research program and a philosophical doctrine, was once a very popular and promising theory, the extension of which had a great impact on various fields such as socio-political theory and education. Both behaviorist movements actually shared something in common, which is to bring the downfall of the Cartesian metaphysics, in which the mental is understood as something essentially private and subjective. In this work, first I will briefly go over the general circumstances before the rise of behaviorism and the challenge of behaviorism to the Cartesian metaphysics. Later on, I will provide some of the technical details of philosophical behaviorism. In the last section, I will summarize some of the famous criticisms of behaviorism. I will argue for the claim that despite what Putnam and others thought, behaviorism does not seem to be a weak theory at all. On the contrary, I think that Putnam's criticisms could only show how badly behaviorism is misunderstood and caricaturized. Finally, I will talk about possible theoretical responses to Putnam's criticisms, responses that could easily be launched from a Rylean or Wittgensteinian perspective.
The Behavior Analyst
Evolutionary theory, comparative psychology, British empiricism, the reflexwe learn in graduate school that all of these had something to do with the origins ofexperimental psychology in general and behaviorism in particular. Somehow Watson got tired of introspection and of inferring mental events in animals and so founded behaviorism with his manifesto of 1913. But is this so, and how did it happen? This book tells the story. It covers a relatively brief period of about 60 or 70 years from the impact ofDarwin's Origin ofthe Species in the 1860's to the establishment of behaviorism in the 1920's, just before Skinner came on the scene. The tale is told with thoroughness, care, good humor, and-best of all-with understanding, because the author is no outsider, no professional philosopher or historian, who might tell it with scorn and the misapprehension that behaviorism is dead, but an experimenter who did his graduate work at Harvard during the 1960's when, under Herrnstein, and with Skinner still present, quantitative studies of behavior and the development of modern behaviorism were in full swing. To anyone interested in behaviorism, pro or con, this book should be required reading. I found it entertaining and provocative from beginning to end. It was many years in the making. I know, be