The emergence of Classical Behaviorism

1
The emergence of Classical Behaviorism

• Its general claims
• Conditions of emergence
• intellectual, social and institutional
• The promise of behaviorism rise of
  neobehaviorism
• Legacies

2
And so?

• relations between characteristics of discipline
  cultural milieu
• understanding origins of claims to be the
  science of behavior
• and we all study behaviour now - dont we? So
  in what senses are we not behaviorists?

3

• Behaviorism became many things, it was not just a
  monolith
• Koch (1985)
• Classical behaviorism (1913-1930)
• Neobehaviorism (1930-1950)
• Smith (1997)
• Scientific knowledge and practice
• vs
• Social movement and practical expertise

4
Classical behaviorism its claims

• 1913 Psychology as the behaviorist views it
  by John Broadus Watson
• a manifesto for a new psychology
• not entirely new but rhetorically powerful
• effects were delayed but - eventually -
  profound

5
So what did it say?

• Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a
  purely objective branch of natural science. Its
  theoretical goal is the prediction and control of
  behavior. Introspection forms no essential part
  of its methods, nor is the scientific value of
  its data dependent upon the readiness with which
  they lend themselves to interpretation in terms
  of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his
  efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal
  response, recognizes no dividing line between man
  and brute
• (Watson, 1913, p158)

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Watsons claims

• Psychology is (ought to be?)
• objective
• natural science
• Hallmarks prediction and control
• Objects NOT consciousness
• NOT uniqueness of human

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• I do not wish unduly to criticize psychology. It
  has failed signally, I believe, during the
  fifty-odd years of its existence as an
  experimental discipline to make its place in the
  world as an undisputed natural science.
  Psychology, as it is generally thought of, has
  something esoteric in its methods. If you fail to
  reproduce my findings, it is not due to some
  fault in your apparatus or in the control of your
  stimulus, but it is due to the fact that your
  introspection is untrained

8

• Human psychology has failed to make good its
  claim as a natural science. Due to a mistaken
  notion that its fields of facts are conscious
  phenomena and that introspection is the only
  direct method of ascertaining these facts, it has
  enmeshed itself in a series of speculative
  questions which, while fundamental to its present
  tenets, are not open to experimental treatment.
  In the pursuit of answers to these questions, it
  has become further and further divorced from
  contact with problems which vitally concern human
  interest.

9

• What Watson is doing here
• claim and exemplify failure
• then diagnose causes
• wrong object consciousness
• wrong method introspection
• esoteric lacks relevance to world
• subjective no means of resolving
  disagreement

10
Instead he wanted

• Behavior as unifying object for psychology
• NOT the first to claim this
• Prediction and control
• guiding evolution
• Deny mind as object of science behavior also,
  more easily reduces to physico-chemical events

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On Watson

• 1878-1958
• Chicago
• Physiologist Loeb
• Dewey Angell
• 1908 position at Johns Hopkins
• Jennings, Lashley, Pavlov
• 1916 APA President
• 1920 resigned

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Intellectual conditions for Watsons manifesto

• Evolutionary thought
• 2. Behavior already credible unifying concept for
  psychology
• 3. Existing work on behavior
• 4 Philosophies of positivism and pragmatism
• Opponents
• others?? Understanding the above more fully?
  Disputing the above?
• reading

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Evolutionary thought

• 1859, 1871, 1872 Darwins major publications
• Hard to overestimate importance
• Challenging uniqueness of man
• Extending to aspects of behaviour e.g. emotion
• Adaptive and practical value of behaviours
• behaviours as selected
• Laws of behaviour as universal

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Behaviour as a concept

• Importance of unifying concept
• Becomes technical term late C19 biology
• Romanes 1884 Mental Evolution in Animals
• 1894 Lloyd Morgans canon
• Complex mentalistic processes should not be
  inferred in nonhuman species when simpler
  explanations - often not referring to internal
  states at all - will do
• 1906 H.S. Jennings
• Behavior of the Lower Organisms
• shift from psychology of x to behavior of x

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• In biology a legitimate scientific concept
• Into Psychology e.g.
• Pillsbury, 1911, began to define psychology as
  study of behaviour.
• McDougall's 1912 "Psychology The Study of
  Behaviour
• Also presence in writings by William James and
  functionalists e.g. discussions of habit

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Research

• Pavlov (1849-1936)
• Two types of reflex (stimulus-reflex)
• unconditioned
• conditioned
• both actions of the NS
• how one relates to the other

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Pavlov

• Findings temporal displacement of CS and UCS,
  extinction, generalization, discrimination,
  disinhibition
• Interactions of excitation, inhibition and
  temperament
• Mechanistic, reductionist, environmentalist

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H.S. Jennings (1868-1947)

• Biologist at Johns Hopkins when W. arrived
• Work on learning in animals
• protozoa
• 1906 Behavior in Lower Organisms
• withdrawal from talk of animal mind
• observable indicators objective criteria
• Hypothetical constructs rarely needed or
  justifiable
• by 1910 his theories are almost
  indistinguishable from those found in Watsons
  proclamation Logue, 1985

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And others

• Thorndike
• puzzle boxes .. learning positive outcomes
• MacDougall
• The Study of Behaviour, 1912
• but for him essential component in
  understanding behavior is notion of purpose
• Cattell
• behaviour as key object of investigation for
  psychology
• Also functionalists such as Angell

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Positivism Pragmatism

• Caution on making causal links
• Philosophy .
• Pragmatism
• American Charles Peirce William James
• truth as what works efficacy as truth
• meaning in what can be observed
• Positivism
• not directly drawn on by Watson but
• knowledge from what can be observed/experien
  ced

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And something to oppose

• Wundt, Titchener Consciousness dominated
• Behaviour an alternative, unifying object of
  study?

22
Recap

• Evolution
• Behavior as a concept
• Growing body of work reflexes, materialism,
  environmentalism, learning etc.
• Pragmatism postivism
• Opposition
• . Watson and his manifesto

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Further conditions

• Psychology in American universities
• Social change
• urbanization and adaptation (Smith, 1997)
• Utility of knowledge
• philosophical justifications/traditions
• social pressures

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Psychology in American universities

• William James course on Physiological
  psychology at Harvard
• First doctorate (Hall)
• Lab at Johns Hopkins (Hall)
• Psychology degree course at Harvard
• 1893 Research labs at 15 US universities

25

• By 1903
• psychology produced more doctorates in America
  than all other sciences save chemistry, zoology
  and physics ODonnell, 1985 by 1913 more
  American psych research papers than German and
  more American psychologists in Whos WhoSo by
  early twentieth-century, American psychology was
  beginning to dominate
• . A psychology that still saw consciousness as
  a key emtity to be explained

26
Social change

• Industrialisation and urbanisation
• e.g. 1880 25 of US pop in cities 1900 40
• Uprooting of values
• Smith (1997) demanded adaptation and
  adjustment of behaviours to new
  circumstances and highlighted these as
  important themes in modern society

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Utility

• Philosophical
• moral project e.g Porter
• truth as judged through effects on world
  - see Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey)
• Tensions in US academia
• psychology as a separate science?
• pure versus applied science?

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• Examples of pressures to utility in early C20
  (ODonnell, 1985)
• Major figures e.g. James arguing that to prosper
  psy had to speak to educators, alienists, clergy
  etc
• Expansion of education between 1880-1900
• education as a cure for social ills
• idea of a pedagogical science
• APA principled interventions
• rise of psychometrics
• Retaining public and financial support

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Returning to Watson behaviorism

• Emergence
• Existing object behaviour
• Existing method experiment
• Alternative to failing approaches to
  psychology their objects consciousness,
  introspection
• Pressures to utility
• aims of science as prediction and control
• And? E.g. rhetorical force of Watsons
  writings, crises and disputes over introspection
  consciousness (e.g. imageless thought)

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And what happened to classical behaviorism?

• Delay in take-up (Samelson, 1981)
• By 1920s-30s dominating American academic
  psychology but not a monoculture
• Transformation into neobehaviorism
• Tolman, Hull, Skinner

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Three important conclusions

• Smith (1997) on Watson
• Watsons criticism of psychologys failure as a
  science was inseparable from his aspiration for
  it as a human technology (p. 653)
• Danziger (1997)
• Behaviorism had been revolutionary in the sense
  that, although it had sprung out of a discourse
  about the place of mind in nature, it had
  transformed that discourse into one about the
  control of human conduct. (p. 101)
• Psychology
• knowledge of universal aspects of human nature
• better world through the control of individual
  development