what are the basic principles of behaviorism essay

Behaviorism In Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

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Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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Behaviorism, also known as behavioral learning theory, is a theoretical perspective in psychology that emphasizes the role of learning and observable behaviors in understanding human and animal actions. Behaviorism is a theory of learning that states all behaviors are learned through conditioned interaction with the environment. Thus, behavior is simply a response to environmental stimuli. The behaviorist theory is only concerned with observable stimulus-response behaviors, as they can be studied in a systematic and observable manner. Some of the key figures of the behaviorist approach include B.F. Skinner, known for his work on operant conditioning, and John B. Watson, who established the psychological school of behaviorism.

Principles of Behaviorism

The behaviorist movement began in 1913 when John B. Watson wrote an article entitled Psychology as the behaviorist views it , which set out several underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioral analysis:

All behavior is learned from the environment:

One assumption of the learning approach is that all behaviors are learned from the environment. They can be learned through classical conditioning, learning by association, or through operant conditioning, learning by consequences.

Behaviorism emphasizes the role of environmental factors in influencing behavior to the near exclusion of innate or inherited factors. This amounts essentially to a focus on learning. Therefore, when born, our mind is “tabula rasa” (a blank slate).

Classical conditioning refers to learning by association, and involves the conditioning of innate bodily reflexes with new stimuli.

Pavlov’s Experiment

Ivan Pavlov showed that dogs could be classically conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented while they were given food.

He first presented the dogs with the sound of a bell; they did not salivate so this was a neutral stimulus. Then he presented them with food, they salivated.

The food was an unconditioned stimulus and salivation was an unconditioned (innate) response.

Pavlov then repeatedly presented the dogs with the sound of the bell first and then the food (pairing) after a few repetitions, the dogs salivated when they heard the sound of the bell.

The bell had become the conditioned stimulus and salivation had become the conditioned response.

Examples of classical conditioning applied to real life include:

• taste aversion – using derivations of classical conditioning, it is possible to explain how people develop aversions to particular foods
• learned emotions – such as love for parents, were explained as paired associations with the stimulation they provide
• advertising – we readily associate attractive images with the products they are selling
• phobias – classical conditioning is seen as the mechanism by which – we acquire many of these irrational fears.

Skinner argued that learning is an active process and occurs through operant conditioning . When humans and animals act on and in their environmental consequences, follow these behaviors. 

If the consequences are pleasant, they repeat the behavior, but if the consequences are unpleasant, they do not.

Behavior is the result of stimulus-response:

Reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts.

Reductionists say that the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to look closely at the very simplest parts that make up our systems, and use the simplest explanations to understand how they work.

Psychology should be seen as a science:

Theories need to be supported by empirical data obtained through careful and controlled observation and measurement of behavior. Watson (1913) stated:

“Psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control.” (p. 158).

The components of a theory should be as simple as possible. Behaviorists propose using operational definitions (defining variables in terms of observable, measurable events).

Behaviorism introduced scientific methods to psychology. Laboratory experiments were used with high control of extraneous variables.

These experiments were replicable, and the data obtained was objective (not influenced by an individual’s judgment or opinion) and measurable. This gave psychology more credibility.

Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion:

The starting point for many behaviorists is a rejection of the introspection (the attempts to “get inside people’s heads”) of the majority of mainstream psychology.

While modern behaviorists often accept the existence of cognitions and emotions, they prefer not to study them as only observable (i.e., external) behavior can be objectively and scientifically measured.

Although theorists of this perspective accept that people have “minds”, they argue that it is never possible to objectively observe people’s thoughts, motives, and meanings – let alone their unconscious yearnings and desires.

Therefore, internal events, such as thinking, should be explained through behavioral terms (or eliminated altogether).

There is little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals:

There’s no fundamental (qualitative) distinction between human and animal behavior. Therefore, research can be carried out on animals and humans.

The underlying assumption is that to some degree the laws of behavior are the same for all species and that therefore knowledge gained by studying rats, dogs, cats and other animals can be generalized to humans.

Consequently, rats and pigeons became the primary data source for behaviorists, as their environments could be easily controlled.

Types of Behaviorist Theory

Historically, the most significant distinction between versions of behaviorism is that between Watson’s original methodological behaviorism, and forms of behaviorism later inspired by his work, known collectively as neobehaviorism (e.g., radical behaviorism).

John B Watson: Methodological Behaviorism

As proposed by John B. Watson, methodological behaviorism is a school of thought in psychology that maintains that psychologists should study only observable, measurable behaviors and not internal mental processes.

According to Watson, since thoughts, feelings, and desires can’t be observed directly, they should not be part of psychological study.

Watson proposed that behaviors can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states.

He argued that all behaviors in animals or humans are learned, and the environment shapes behavior.

Watson’s article “Psychology as the behaviorist views it” is often referred to as the “behaviorist manifesto,” in which Watson (1913, p. 158) outlines the principles of all behaviorists:

“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental 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.”

In his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, the behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute.

Man’s behavior, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist’s total scheme of investigation.

This behavioral perspective laid the groundwork for further behavioral studies like B.F’s. Skinner who introduced the concept of operant conditioning.

Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviorism was founded by B.F Skinner , who agreed with the assumption of methodological behaviorism that the goal of psychology should be to predict and control behavior.

Radical Behaviorism expands upon earlier forms of behaviorism by incorporating internal events such as thoughts, emotions, and feelings as part of the behavioral process.

Unlike methodological behaviorism, which asserts that only observable behaviors should be studied, radical behaviorism accepts that these internal events occur and influence behavior.

However, it maintains that they should be considered part of the environmental context and are subject to the same laws of learning and adaptation as overt behaviors.

Another important distinction between methodological and radical behaviorism concerns the extent to which environmental factors influence behavior. Watson’s (1913) methodological behaviorism asserts the mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate) at birth.

In contrast, radical behaviorism accepts the view that organisms are born with innate behaviors and thus recognizes the role of genes and biological components in behavior.

Social Learning

Behaviorism has undergone many transformations since John Watson developed it in the early part of the twentieth century.

One more recent extension of this approach has been the development of social learning theory, which emphasizes the role of plans and expectations in people’s behavior.

Under social learning theory , people were no longer seen as passive victims of the environment, but rather they were seen as self-reflecting and thoughtful.

The theory is often called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

Historical Timeline

• Pavlov (1897) published the results of an experiment on conditioning after originally studying digestion in dogs.
• Watson (1913) launches the behavioral school of psychology, publishing an article, Psychology as the behaviorist views it .
• Watson and Rayner (1920) conditioned an orphan called Albert B (aka Little Albert) to fear a white rat.
• Thorndike (1905) formalized the Law of Effect .
• Skinner (1938) wrote The Behavior of Organisms and introduced the concepts of operant conditioning and shaping.
• Clark Hull’s (1943) Principles of Behavior was published.
• B.F. Skinner (1948) published Walden Two , describing a utopian society founded upon behaviorist principles.
• Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior began in 1958.
• Chomsky (1959) published his criticism of Skinner’s behaviorism, “ Review of Verbal Behavior .”
• Bandura (1963) published a book called the Social Leaning Theory and Personality development which combines both cognitive and behavioral frameworks.
• B.F. Skinner (1971) published his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity , where he argues that free will is an illusion.

Applications

Mental health.

Behaviorism theorized that abnormal behavior and mental illness stem from faulty learning processes rather than internal conflicts or unconscious forces, as psychoanalysis claimed.

Based on behaviorism, behavior therapy aims to replace maladaptive behaviors with more constructive ones through techniques like systematic desensitization, aversion therapy, and token economies. Systematic desensitization helps phobia patients gradually confront feared objects.

The behaviorist approach has been used in treating phobias. The individual with the phobia is taught relaxation techniques and then makes a hierarchy of fear from the least frightening to the most frightening features of the phobic object.

He then is presented with the stimuli in that order and learns to associate (classical conditioning) the stimuli with a relaxation response. This is counter-conditioning.

Aversion therapy associates unpleasant stimuli with unwanted habits to discourage them. Token economies reinforce desired actions by providing tokens redeemable for rewards.

The implications of classical conditioning in the classroom are less important than those of  operant conditioning , but there is still a need for teachers to try to make sure that students associate positive emotional experiences with learning.

If a student associates negative emotional experiences with school, then this can obviously have bad results, such as creating a school phobia.

For example, if a student is bullied at school, they may learn to associate the school with fear. It could also explain why some students show a particular dislike of certain subjects that continue throughout their academic career. This could happen if a teacher humiliates or punishes a student in class.

Cue reactivity is the theory that people associate situations (e.g., meeting with friends)/ places (e.g., pub) with the rewarding effects of nicotine, and these cues can trigger a feeling of craving (Carter & Tiffany, 1999).

These factors become smoking-related cues. Prolonged use of nicotine creates an association between these factors and smoking based on classical conditioning.

Nicotine is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), and the pleasure caused by the sudden increase in dopamine levels is the unconditioned response (UCR). Following this increase, the brain tries to lower the dopamine back to a normal level.

The stimuli that have become associated with nicotine were neutral stimuli (NS) before “learning” took place but they became conditioned stimuli (CS), with repeated pairings. They can produce the conditioned response (CR).

However, if the brain has not received nicotine, the levels of dopamine drop and the individual experiences withdrawal symptoms, therefore, is more likely to feel the need to smoke in the presence of the cues that have become associated with the use of nicotine.

Issues & Debates

Free will vs. determinism.

Strong determinism of the behavioral approach as all behavior is learned from our environment through classical and operant conditioning. We are the total sum of our previous conditioning.

Softer determinism of the social learning approach theory recognizes an element of choice as to whether we imitate a behavior or not.

Nature vs. Nurture

Behaviorism is very much on the nurture side of the debate as it argues that our behavior is learned from the environment.

The social learning theory is also on the nurture side because it argues that we learn behavior from role models in our environment.

The behaviorist approach proposes that apart from a few innate reflexes and the capacity for learning, all complex behavior is learned from the environment.

Holism vs. Reductionism

The behaviorist approach and social learning are reductionist ; they isolate parts of complex behaviors to study.

Behaviorists believe that all behavior, no matter how complex, can be broken down into the fundamental processes of conditioning.

Idiographic vs. Nomothetic

It is a nomothetic approach as it views all behavior governed by the same laws of conditioning.

However, it does account for individual differences and explains them in terms of differences in the history of conditioning.

Critical Evaluation

Behaviorism has experimental support: Pavlov showed that classical conditioning leads to learning by association. Watson and Rayner showed that phobias could be learned through classical conditioning in the “Little Albert” experiment.

An obvious advantage of behaviorism is its ability to define behavior clearly and measure behavior changes. According to the law of parsimony, the fewer assumptions a theory makes, the better and the more credible it is. Therefore, behaviorism looks for simple explanations of human behavior from a scientific standpoint.

Many of the experiments carried out were done on animals; we are different cognitively and physiologically. Humans have different social norms and moral values that mediate the effects of the environment.

Therefore people might behave differently from animals, so the laws and principles derived from these experiments, might apply more to animals than to humans.

Humanism rejects the nomothetic approach of behaviorism as they view humans as being unique and believe humans cannot be compared with animals (who aren’t susceptible to demand characteristics). This is known as an idiographic approach.

In addition, humanism (e.g., Carl Rogers) rejects the scientific method of using experiments to measure and control variables because it creates an artificial environment and has low ecological validity.

Humanistic psychology also assumes that humans have free will (personal agency) to make their own decisions in life and do not follow the deterministic laws of science . 

The behaviorist approach emphasis on single influences on behavior is a simplification of circumstances where behavior is influenced by many factors. When this is acknowledged, it becomes almost impossible to judge the action of any single one.

This over-simplified view of the world has led to the development of ‘pop behaviorism, the view that rewards and punishments can change almost anything. 

Therefore, behaviorism only provides a partial account of human behavior, that which can be objectively viewed. Essential factors like emotions, expectations, and higher-level motivation are not considered or explained. Accepting a behaviorist explanation could prevent further research from other perspectives that could uncover important factors.

For example, the psychodynamic approach (Freud) criticizes behaviorism as it does not consider the unconscious mind’s influence on behavior and instead focuses on externally observable behavior. Freud also rejects the idea that people are born a blank slate (tabula rasa) and states that people are born with instincts (e.g., eros and Thanatos).

Biological psychology states that all behavior has a physical/organic cause. They emphasize the role of nature over nurture. For example, chromosomes and hormones (testosterone) influence our behavior, too, in addition to the environment.

Behaviorism might be seen as underestimating the importance of inborn tendencies. It is clear from research on biological preparedness that the ease with which something is learned is partly due to its links with an organism’s potential survival.

Cognitive psychology states that mediational processes occur between stimulus and response, such as memory , thinking, problem-solving, etc.

Despite these criticisms, behaviorism has made significant contributions to psychology. These include insights into learning, language development, and moral and gender development, which have all been explained in terms of conditioning.

The contribution of behaviorism can be seen in some of its practical applications. Behavior therapy and behavior modification represent one of the major approaches to the treatment of abnormal behavior and are readily used in clinical psychology.

The behaviorist approach has been used in the treatment of phobias, and systematic desensitization .

Many textbooks depict behaviorism as dominating and defining psychology in the mid-20th century, before declining from the late 1950s with the “cognitive revolution.”

However, the empirical basis for claims about behaviorism’s prominence and decline has been limited. Wide-scope claims about behaviorism are often based on small, unrepresentative samples of historical data. This raises the question – to what extent was behaviorism actually dominant in American psychology?

To address this question, Braat et al. (2020) conducted a quantitative bibliometric analysis of 119,278 articles published in American psychology journals from 1920-1970.

They generated cocitation networks, mapping similarities between frequently cited authors, and co-occurrence networks of frequently used title terms, for each decade. This allowed them to examine the structure and development of psychology fields without relying on predefined behavioral/non-behavioral categories.

Key findings:

• In no decade did behaviorist authors belong to the most prominent citation clusters. Even a combined “behaviorist” cluster accounted for max. 28% of highly cited authors.
• The main focus was measuring personality/mental abilities – those clusters were consistently larger than behaviorist ones.
• Between 1920 and 1930, Watson was a prominent author, but behaviorism was a small (19%) slice of psychology. Larger clusters were mental testing and Gestalt psychology.
• From the 1930s, behaviorism split into two clusters, possibly reflecting “classical” vs. “neobehaviorist” approaches. However, the combined behaviorist cluster was still smaller than mental testing and Gestalt clusters.
• The influence of behaviorism did not dramatically decline after 1950. The behaviorist cluster was stable at 28% during the 1940s-60s, and its citation count quadrupled.
• Contrary to narratives, Skinner was not highly cited in the 1950s-60s – he did not dominate behaviorism after WWII.
• Analyses challenge assumptions that behaviorism was the single dominant force in mid-20th-century psychology. The story was more diverse.

However, behaviorist vocabulary became more prominent over time in title term analyses. This suggests behaviorists were influential in shaping psychological research agendas, if not fully dominating the field.

Overall, quantitative analyses provide a richer perspective on the development of behaviorism and 20th-century psychology. Claims that behaviorism “rose and fell” as psychology’s single dominant school appear too simplistic.

Psychology was more multifaceted, with behaviorism as one of several influential but not controlling approaches. The narrative requires reappraisal.

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Braat, M., Engelen, J., van Gemert, T., & Verhaegh, S. (2020). The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers. History of Psychology, 23 (3), 252-280.

Carter, B. L., & Tiffany, S. T. (1999). Meta‐analysis of cue‐reactivity in addiction research.  Addiction ,  94 (3), 327-340.

Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of BF Skinner’s Verbal Behavior . Language, 35(1) , 26-58.

Holland, J. G. (1978). BEHAVIORISM: PART OF THE PROBLEM OR PART OF THE SOLUTION?  Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis ,  11 (1), 163-174.

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Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden two. New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity . New York: Knopf.

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Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it . Psychological Review, 20 , 158-178.

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Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3 , 1, pp. 1–14.

What is the theory of behaviorism?

What is behaviorism with an example.

An example of behaviorism is using systematic desensitization in the treatment of phobias. The individual with the phobia is taught relaxation techniques and then makes a hierarchy of fear from the least frightening to the most frightening features of the phobic object.

How behaviorism is used in the classroom?

In the conventional learning situation, behaviorist pedagogy applies largely to issues of class and student management, rather than to learning content.

It is very relevant to shaping skill performance. For example, unwanted behaviors, such as tardiness and dominating class discussions, can be extinguished by being ignored by the teacher (rather than being reinforced by having attention drawn to them).

Who founded behaviorism?

John B. Watson founded behaviorism. Watson proposed that psychology should abandon its focus on mental processes, which he believed were impossible to observe and measure objectively, and focus solely on observable behaviors.

His ideas, published in a famous article “ Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It ” in 1913, marked the formal start of behaviorism as a major school of psychological thought.

Is behavior analysis the same as behaviorism?

No, behavior analysis and behaviorism are not the same. Behaviorism is a broader philosophical approach to psychology emphasizing observable behaviors over internal events like thoughts and emotions.

Behavior analysis , specifically applied behavior analysis (ABA), is a scientific discipline and set of methods derived from behaviorist principles, used to understand and change specific behaviors, often employed in therapeutic contexts, such as with autism treatment.

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What Is Behaviorism?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning, frequently asked questions.

Behaviorism is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, and conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment . Behaviorists believe that our actions are shaped by environmental stimuli.

In simple terms, according to this school of thought, also known as behavioral psychology, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states. Behavioral theory also says that only observable behavior should be studied, as cognition , emotions , and mood are far too subjective.

Strict behaviorists believe that any person—regardless of genetic background, personality traits , and internal thoughts— can be trained to perform any task, within the limits of their physical capabilities. It only requires the right conditioning.

Verywell / Jiaqi Zhou

History of Behaviorism

Behaviorism was formally established with the 1913 publication of John B. Watson 's classic paper, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." It is best summed up by the following quote from Watson, who is often considered the father of behaviorism:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Simply put, strict behaviorists believe that all behaviors are the result of experience. Any person, regardless of their background, can be trained to act in a particular manner given the right conditioning.

From about 1920 through the mid-1950s, behaviorism became the dominant school of thought in psychology . Some suggest that the popularity of behavioral psychology grew out of the desire to establish psychology as an objective and measurable science.

During that time, researchers were interested in creating theories that could be clearly described and empirically measured, but also used to make contributions that might have an influence on the fabric of everyday human lives.

Types of Behaviorism

There are two main types of behaviorism used to describe how behavior is formed.

Methodological Behaviorism

Methodological behaviorism states that observable behavior should be studied scientifically and that mental states and cognitive processes don't add to the understanding of behavior. Methodological behaviorism aligns with Watson's ideologies and approach.

Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviorism is rooted in the theory that behavior can be understood by looking at one's past and present environment and the reinforcements within it, thereby influencing behavior either positively or negatively. This behavioral approach was created by the psychologist B.F. Skinner .

Classical conditioning is a technique frequently used in behavioral training in which a neutral stimulus is paired with a naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus comes to evoke the same response as the naturally occurring stimulus, even without the naturally occurring stimulus presenting itself.

Throughout the course of three distinct phases of classical conditioning, the associated stimulus becomes known as the conditioned stimulus and the learned behavior is known as the conditioned response .

Learning Through Association

The classical conditioning process works by developing an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.

In physiologist Ivan Pavlov 's classic experiments, dogs associated the presentation of food (something that naturally and automatically triggers a salivation response) at first with the sound of a bell, then with the sight of a lab assistant's white coat. Eventually, the lab coat alone elicited a salivation response from the dogs.

Factors That Impact Conditioning

During the first part of the classical conditioning process, known as acquisition , a response is established and strengthened. Factors such as the prominence of the stimuli and the timing of the presentation can play an important role in how quickly an association is formed.

When an association disappears, this is known as extinction . It causes the behavior to weaken gradually or vanish. Factors such as the strength of the original response can play a role in how quickly extinction occurs. The longer a response has been conditioned, for example, the longer it may take for it to become extinct.

Operant conditioning, sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning that occurs through reinforcement and punishment . Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

This behavioral approach says that when a desirable result follows an action, the behavior becomes more likely to happen again in the future. Conversely, responses followed by adverse outcomes become less likely to reoccur.

Consequences Affect Learning

Behaviorist B.F. Skinner described operant conditioning as the process in which learning can occur through reinforcement and punishment. More specifically: By forming an association between a certain behavior and the consequences of that behavior, you learn.

For example, if a parent rewards their child with praise every time they pick up their toys, the desired behavior is consistently reinforced and the child will become more likely to clean up messes.

Timing Plays a Role

The process of operant conditioning seems fairly straightforward—simply observe a behavior, then offer a reward or punishment. However, Skinner discovered that the timing of these rewards and punishments has an important influence on how quickly a new behavior is acquired and the strength of the corresponding response.

This makes reinforcement schedules important in operant conditioning. These can involve either continuous or partial reinforcement.

• Continuous reinforcement involves rewarding every single instance of a behavior. It is often used at the beginning of the operant conditioning process. Then, as the behavior is learned, the schedule might switch to one of partial reinforcement.
• Partial reinforcement involves offering a reward after a number of responses or after a period of time has elapsed. Sometimes, partial reinforcement occurs on a consistent or fixed schedule. In other instances, a variable and unpredictable number of responses or amount of time must occur before the reinforcement is delivered.

Uses for Behaviorism

The behaviorist perspective has a few different uses, including some related to education and mental health.

Behaviorism can be used to help students learn, such as by influencing lesson design. For instance, some teachers use consistent encouragement to help students learn (operant conditioning) while others focus more on creating a stimulating environment to increase engagement (classical conditioning).

One of the greatest strengths of behavioral psychology is the ability to clearly observe and measure behaviors. Because behaviorism is based on observable behaviors, it is often easier to quantify and collect data when conducting research.

Mental Health

Behavioral therapy was born from behaviorism and originally used in the treatment of autism and schizophrenia. This type of therapy involves helping people change problematic thoughts and behaviors, thereby improving mental health.

Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, behavior analysis, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.

Impact of Behaviorism

Several thinkers influenced behavioral psychology. Among these are Edward Thorndike , a pioneering psychologist who described the law of effect, and Clark Hull , who proposed the drive theory of learning.

There are a number of therapeutic techniques rooted in behavioral psychology. Though behavioral psychology assumed more of a background position after 1950, its principles still remain important.

Even today, behavior analysis is often used as a therapeutic technique to help children with autism and developmental delays acquire new skills. It frequently involves processes such as shaping (rewarding closer approximations to the desired behavior) and chaining (breaking a task down into smaller parts, then teaching and chaining the subsequent steps together).

Other behavioral therapy techniques include aversion therapy , systematic desensitization , token economies, behavior modeling , and contingency management.

Criticisms of Behaviorism

Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to understanding human behavior. They suggest that behavioral theories do not account for free will or internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings.

Freud, for example, felt that behaviorism failed by not accounting for the unconscious mind's thoughts, feelings, and desires, which influence people's actions. Other thinkers, such as Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists , believed that behaviorism was too rigid and limited, failing to take into consideration personal agency.

More recently, biological psychology has emphasized the role the brain and genetics play in determining and influencing human actions. The cognitive approach to psychology focuses on mental processes such as thinking, decision-making, language, and problem-solving. In both cases, behaviorism neglects these processes and influences in favor of studying only observable behaviors.

Behavioral psychology also does not account for other types of learning that occur without the use of reinforcement and punishment. Moreover, people and animals can adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even if that behavior was established through reinforcement.

A Word From Verywell

While the behavioral approach might not be the dominant force that it once was, it has still had a major impact on our understanding of human psychology . The conditioning process alone has been used to understand many different types of behaviors, ranging from how people learn to how language develops.

But perhaps the greatest contributions of behavioral psychology lie in its practical applications. Its techniques can play a powerful role in modifying problematic behavior and encouraging more positive, helpful responses. Outside of psychology, parents, teachers, animal trainers, and many others make use of basic behavioral principles to help teach new behaviors and discourage unwanted ones.

John B. Watson is known as the founder of behaviorism. Though others had similar ideas in the early 1900s, when behavioral theory began, some suggest that Watson is credited as behavioral psychology's founder due to being "an attractive, strong, scientifically accomplished, and forceful speaker and an engaging writer" who was willing to share this behavioral approach when other psychologists were less likely to speak up.

Behaviorism can be used to help elicit positive behaviors or responses in students, such as by using reinforcement. Teachers with a behavioral approach often use "skill and drill" exercises to reinforce correct responses through consistent repetition, for instance.

Other ways reinforcement-based behaviorism can be used in education include praising students for getting the right answer and providing prizes for those who do well. Using tests to measure performance enables teachers to measure observable behaviors and is, therefore, another behavioral approach.

Behaviorism says that behavior is a result of environment, the environment being an external stimulus. Psychoanalysis is the opposite of this, in that it is rooted in the belief that behavior is a result of an internal stimulus. Psychoanalytic theory is based on behaviors being motivated by one's unconscious mind, thus resulting in actions that are consistent with their unknown wishes and desires.

Whereas strict behaviorism has no room for cognitive influences, cognitive behaviorism operates on the assumption that behavior is impacted by thoughts and emotions. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), for instance, attempts to change negative behaviors by changing the destructive thought patterns behind them.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Behaviorism

It has sometimes been said that “behave is what organisms do.” Behaviorism is built on this assumption, and its goal is to promote the scientific study of behavior. The behavior, in particular, of individual organisms. Not of social groups. Not of cultures. But of persons and animals.

This entry considers different types of behaviorism and outlines reasons for and against being a behaviorist. It consider contributions of behaviorism to the study of behavior. Special attention is given to the so-called “radical behaviorism” of B. F. Skinner (1904–90). Skinner is given special (not exclusive) attention because he is the behaviorist who has received the most attention from philosophers, fellow scientists and the public at large. General lessons can also be learned from Skinner about the conduct of behavioral science in general. The entry describes those lessons.

1. What is Behaviorism?

2. three types of behaviorism, 3. roots of behaviorism, 4. popularity of behaviorism, 5. why be a behaviorist, 6. skinner’s social worldview, 7. why be anti-behaviorist, 8. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

One has to be careful with “ism” words. They often have both loose and strict meanings. And sometimes multiple meanings of each type. ‘Behaviorism’ is no exception. Loosely speaking, behaviorism is an attitude – a way of conceiving of empirical constraints on psychological state attribution. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine – a way of doing psychological or behavioral science itself.

Wilfred Sellars (1912–89), the distinguished philosopher, noted that a person may qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral criteria” (1963, p. 22). A behaviorist, so understood, is someone who demands behavioral evidence for any psychological hypothesis. For such a person, there is no knowable difference between two states of mind (beliefs, desires, etc.) unless there is a demonstrable difference in the behavior associated with each state. Consider the current belief of a person that it is raining. If there is no difference in his or her behavior between believing that it is raining and believing that it is not raining, there is no grounds for attributing the one belief rather than the other. The attribution is empirically empty or unconstrained.

Arguably, there is nothing truly exciting about behaviorism loosely understood. It enthrones behavioral evidence, an arguably inescapable premise not just in psychological science but in ordinary discourse about mind and behavior. Just how behavioral evidence should be ‘enthroned’ (especially in science) may be debated. But enthronement itself is not in question.

Not so behaviorism the doctrine. It has been widely and vigorously debated. This entry is about the doctrine, not the attitude. Behaviorism, the doctrine, has caused considerable excitation among both advocates and critics. In a manner of speaking, it is a doctrine, or family of doctrines, about how to enthrone behavior not just in the science of psychology but in the metaphysics of human and animal behavior.

Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.

• Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
• Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
• In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.

The three sets of claims are logically distinct. Moreover, taken independently, each helps to form a type of behaviorism. “Methodological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (1). “Psychological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (2). “Analytical” behaviorism (also known as “philosophical” or “logical” behaviorism) is committed to the truth of the sub-statement in (3) that mental terms or concepts can and should be translated into behavioral concepts.

Other nomenclature is sometimes used to classify behaviorisms. Georges Rey (1997, p. 96), for example, classifies behaviorisms as methodological, analytical, and radical, where “radical” is Rey’s term for what is here classified as psychological behaviorism. The term “radical” is instead reserved for the psychological behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. Skinner employs the expression “radical behaviorism” to describe his brand of behaviorism or his philosophy of behaviorism (see Skinner 1974, p. 18). In the classification scheme used in this entry, radical behaviorism is a sub-type of psychological behaviorism, primarily, although it combines all three types of behaviorism (methodological, analytical, and psychological).

Methodological behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology. It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms (human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts of behavior. According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental states, such as an animal’s beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychology can and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mental states are private entities which, given the necessary publicity of science, do not form proper objects of empirical study. Methodological behaviorism is a dominant theme in the writings of John Watson (1878–1958).

Psychological behaviorism is a research program within psychology. It purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. Psychological behaviorism is present in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Edward Thorndike (1874–1949), as well as Watson. Its fullest and most influential expression is B. F. Skinner’s work on schedules of reinforcement.

To illustrate, consider a hungry rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat’s pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories.

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–51) (if perhaps not without controversy in interpretation, in Wittgenstein’s case). More recently, the philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place (1924–2000) advocated a brand of analytical behaviorism restricted to intentional or representational states of mind, such as beliefs, which Place took to constitute a type, although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). Arguably, a version of analytical or logical behaviorism may also be found in the work of Daniel Dennett on the ascription of states of consciousness via a method he calls ‘heterophenomenology’ (Dennett 2005, pp. 25–56). (See also Melser 2004.)

Each of methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorism has historical foundations. Analytical behaviorism traces its historical roots to the philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism (see Smith 1986). Logical positivism proposes that the meaning of statements used in science must be understood in terms of experimental conditions or observations that verify their truth. This positivist doctrine is known as “verificationism.” In psychology, verificationism underpins or grounds analytical behaviorism, namely, the claim that mental concepts refer to behavioral tendencies and so must be translated into behavioral terms.

Analytical behaviorism helps to avoid a metaphysical position known as substance dualism. Substance dualism is the doctrine that mental states take place in a special, non-physical mental substance (the immaterial mind). By contrast, for analytical behaviorism, the belief that I have as I arrive on time for a 2pm dental appointment, namely, that I have a 2pm appointment, is not the property of a mental substance. Believing is a family of tendencies of my body. In addition, for an analytical behaviorist, we cannot identify the belief about my arrival independently of that arrival or other members of this family of tendencies. So, we also cannot treat it as the cause of the arrival. Cause and effect are, as Hume taught, conceptually distinct existences. Believing that I have a 2pm appointment is not distinct from my arrival and so cannot be part of the causal foundations of arrival.

Psychological behaviorism’s historical roots consist, in part, in the classical associationism of the British Empiricists, foremost John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume (1711–76). According to classical associationism, intelligent behavior is the product of associative learning. As a result of associations or pairings between perceptual experiences or stimulations on the one hand, and ideas or thoughts on the other, persons and animals acquire knowledge of their environment and how to act. Associations enable creatures to discover the causal structure of the world. Association is most helpfully viewed as the acquisition of knowledge about relations between events. Intelligence in behavior is a mark of such knowledge.

Classical associationism relied on introspectible entities, such as perceptual experiences or stimulations as the first links in associations, and thoughts or ideas as the second links. Psychological behaviorism, motivated by experimental interests, claims that to understand the origins of behavior, reference to stimulations (experiences) should be replaced by reference to stimuli (physical events in the environment), and that reference to thoughts or ideas should be eliminated or displaced in favor of reference to responses (overt behavior, motor movement). Psychological behaviorism is associationism without appeal to inner mental events.

Don’t human beings talk of introspectible entities, thoughts, feelings, and so on, even if these are not recognized by behaviorism or best understood as behavioral tendencies? Psychological behaviorists regard the practice of talking about one’s own states of mind, and of introspectively reporting those states, as potentially useful data in psychological experiments, but as not presupposing the metaphysical subjectivity or non-physical presence of those states. There are different sorts of causes behind introspective reports, and psychological behaviorists take these and other elements of introspection to be amenable to behavioral analysis. (For additional discussion, see Section 5 of this entry). (See, for comparison, Dennett’s method of heterophenomenology; Dennett 1991, pp. 72–81)

The task of psychological behaviorism is to specify types of association, understand how environmental events control behavior, discover and elucidate causal regularities or laws or functional relations which govern the formation of associations, and predict how behavior will change as the environment changes. The word “conditioning” is commonly used to specify the process involved in acquiring new associations. Animals in so-called “operant” conditioning experiments are not learning to, for example, press levers. Instead, they are learning about the relationship between events in their environment, for example, that a particular behavior, pressing the lever in the presences of a light, causes food to appear.

In its historical foundations, methodological behaviorism shares with analytical behaviorism the influence of positivism. One of the main goals of positivism was to unify psychology with natural science. Watson wrote that “psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control” (1913, p. 158). Watson also wrote of the purpose of psychology as follows: “To predict, given the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).

Though logically distinct, methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorisms are sometimes found in one behaviorism. Skinner’s radical behaviorism combines all three forms of behaviorism. It follows analytical strictures (at least loosely) in paraphrasing mental terms behaviorally, when or if they cannot be eliminated from explanatory discourse. In Verbal Behavior (1957) and elsewhere, Skinner tries to show how mental terms can be given behavioral interpretations. In About Behaviorism (1974) he says that when mental terminology cannot be eliminated it can be “translated into behavior” (p. 18, Skinner brackets the expression with his own double quotes).

Radical behaviorism is concerned with the behavior of organisms, not with internal processing (if treated or described differently from overt behavior). So, it is a form of methodological behaviorism. Finally, radical behaviorism understands behavior as a reflection of frequency effects among stimuli, which means that it is a form of psychological behaviorism.

Behaviorism of one sort or another was an immensely popular research program or methodological commitment among students of behavior from about the third decade of the twentieth century through its middle decades, at least until the beginnings of the cognitive science revolution. Cognitive science began to mature roughly from 1960 until 1985 (see Bechtel, Abrahamsen, and Graham 1998, pp. 15–17). In addition to Ryle and Wittgenstein, philosophers with sympathies for behaviorism included Carnap (1932–33), Hempel (1949), and Quine (1960). Quine, for example, took a behaviorist approach to the study of language. Quine claimed that the notion of psychological or mental activity has no place in a scientific account of either the origins or the meaning of speech. To talk in a scientifically disciplined manner about the meaning of an utterance is to talk about stimuli for the utterance, its so-called “stimulus meaning”. Hempel (1949) claimed that “all psychological statements that are meaningful … are translatable into statements that do not involve psychological concepts,” but only concepts for physical behavior (p. 18).

Among psychologists behaviorism was even more popular than among philosophers. In addition to Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, and Watson, the list of behaviorists among psychologists included, among others, E. C. Tolman (1886–1959), C. L. Hull (1884–52), and E. R. Guthrie (1886–1959). Tolman, for example, wrote that “everything important in psychology … can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze” (1938, p. 34).

Behaviorists created journals, organized societies, and founded psychology graduate programs reflective of behaviorism. Behaviorists organized themselves into different types of research clusters, whose differences stemmed from such factors as varying approaches to conditioning and experimentation. Some clusters were named as follows: “the experimental analysis of behavior”, “behavior analysis”, “functional analysis”, and, of course, “radical behaviorism”. These labels sometimes were responsible for the titles of behaviorism’s leading societies and journals, including the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis (SABA), and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (begun in 1958) as well as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (begun in 1968).

Behaviorism generated a type of therapy, known as behavior therapy (see Rimm and Masters 1974; Erwin 1978). It developed behavior management techniques for autistic children (see Lovaas and Newsom 1976) and token economies for the management of chronic schizophrenics (see Stahl and Leitenberg 1976). It fueled discussions of how best to understand the behavior of nonhuman animals and of the relevance of laboratory study to the natural environmental occurrence of animal behavior (see Schwartz and Lacey 1982).

Behaviorism stumbled upon various critical difficulties with some of its commitments. One difficulty is confusion about the effects of reinforcement on behavior (see Gallistel 1990). In its original sense, a stimulus such as food is a reinforcer only if its presentation increases the frequency of a response in a type of associative conditioning known as operant conditioning. A problem with this definition is that it defines reinforcers as stimuli that change behavior. The presentation of food, however, may have no observable effect on response frequency with respect to food even in cases in which an animal is food deprived or hungry. Rather, response frequency can be associated with an animal’s ability to identify and remember temporal or spatial properties of the circumstances in which a stimulus (say, food) is presented. This and other difficulties prompted changes in behaviorism’s commitments and new directions of research. One alternative direction has been the study of the role of short term memory in contributing to reinforcement effects on the so-called trajectory of behavior (see Killeen 1994).

Another stumbling block, in the case of analytical behaviorism, is the fact that the behavioral sentences that are intended to offer the behavioral paraphrases of mental terms almost always use mental terms themselves (see Chisholm 1957). In the example of my belief that I have a 2pm dental appointment, one must also speak of my desire to arrive at 2pm, otherwise the behavior of arriving at 2pm could not count as believing that I have a 2pm appointment. The term “desire” is a mental term. Critics of analytical behaviorism have charged that we can never escape from using mental terms in the characterization of the meaning of mental terms. This suggests that mental discourse cannot be displaced by behavioral discourse. At least it cannot be displaced term-by-term. Perhaps analytical behaviorists need to paraphrase a whole swarm of mental terms at once so as to recognize the presumption that the attribution of any one such mental term presupposes the application of others (see Rey 1997, p. 154–5).

Why would anyone be a behaviorist? There are three main reasons (see also Zuriff 1985).

The first reason is epistemic or evidential. Warrant or evidence for saying, at least in the third person case, that an animal or person is in a certain mental state, for example, possesses a certain belief, is grounded in behavior, understood as observable behavior. Moreover, the conceptual space or step between the claim that behavior warrants the attribution of belief and the claim that believing consists in behavior itself is a short and in some ways appealing step. If we look, for example, at how people are taught to use mental concepts and terms—terms like “believe”, “desire”, and so on—conditions of use appear inseparably connected with behavioral tendencies in certain circumstances. If mental state attribution bears a special connection with behavior, it is tempting to say that mentality just consists in behavioral tendencies.

The second reason can be expressed as follows: One major difference between mentalistic (mental states in-the-head) and associationist or conditioning accounts of behavior is that mentalistic accounts tend to have a strong nativist bent. This is true even though there may be nothing inherently nativist about mentalistic accounts (see Cowie 1998).

Mentalistic accounts tend to assume, and sometimes even explicitly to embrace (see Fodor 1981), the hypothesis that the mind possesses at birth or innately a set of procedures or internally represented processing rules which are deployed when learning or acquiring new responses. Behaviorism, by contrast, is anti-nativist. Behaviorism, therefore, appeals to theorists who deny that there are innate rules by which organisms learn. To Skinner and Watson organisms learn without being innately or pre-experientially provided with implicit procedures by which to learn. Learning does not consist, at least initially, in rule-governed behavior. Learning is what organisms do in response to stimuli. For a behaviorist an organism learns, as it were, from its successes and mistakes. “Rules,” says Skinner (1984a), “are derived from contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences” (p. 583). (See also Dennett 1978).

Much contemporary work in cognitive science on the set of models known as connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models seems to share behaviorism’s anti-nativism about learning. PDP model building takes an approach to learning which is response oriented rather than rule-governed and this is because, like behaviorism, it has roots in associationism (see Bechtel 1985; compare Graham 1991 with Maloney 1991). Whether PDP models ultimately are or must be anti-nativist depends upon what counts as native or innate rules (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 1991, pp. 103–105).

The third reason for behaviorism’s appeal, popular at least historically, is related to its disdain for reference to inner mental or mentalistic information processing as explanatory causes of behavior. The disdain is most vigorously exemplified in the work of Skinner. Skinner’s skepticism about explanatory references to mental innerness may be described as follows.

Suppose we try to explain the public behavior of a person by describing how they represent,conceptualize or think about their situation. Suppose they conceive or think of their situation in a certain way, not as bare, as filled with items without attributes, but as things, as trees, as people, as walruses, walls, and wallets. Suppose, we also say, a person never merely interacts with their environment; but rather interacts with their environment as they perceive, see, or represent it. So, for example, thinking of something as a wallet, a person reaches for it. Perceiving something as a walrus, they back away from it. Classifying something as a wall, they don’t bump into it. So understood, behavior is endogenously produced movement, viz. behavior that has its causal origin within the person who thinks of or represents their situation in a certain way.

Skinner would object to such claims. He would object not because he believes that the eye is innocent or that inner or endogenous activity does not occur. He would object because he believes that behavior must be explained in terms that do not themselves presuppose the very thing that is explained. The outside (public) behavior of a person is not accounted for by referring to the inside (inner processing, cognitive activity) behavior of the person (say, his or her classifying or analyzing their environment) if, therein, the behavior of the person ultimately is unexplained. “The objection,” wrote Skinner, “to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis” (Skinner 1953, p. 35). ‘Not relevant’ means, for Skinner, explanatorily circular or regressive.

Skinner charges that since mental activity is a form of behavior (albeit inner), the only non-regressive, non-circular way to explain behavior is to appeal to something non-behavioral. This non-behavioral something is environmental stimuli and an organism’s interactions with, and reinforcement from, the environment.

So, the third reason for behaviorism’s appeal is that it tries to avoid (what it claims is) circular, regressive explanations of behavior. It aims to refrain from accounting for one type of behavior (overt) in terms of another type of behavior (covert), all the while, in some sense, leaving behavior unexplained.

It should be noted that Skinner’s views about explanation and the purported circularity of explanation by reference to inner processing are both extreme and scientifically contestable, and that many who have self-identified as behaviorists including Guthrie, Tolman, and Hull, or continue to work within the tradition, broadly understood, including Killeen (1987) and Rescorla (1990), take exception to much that Skinner has said about explanatory references to innerness. Also Skinner himself is not always clear about his aversion to innerness. Skinner’s derisive attitude towards explanatory references to mental innerness stems, in part, not just from fears of explanatory circularity but from his conviction that if the language of psychology is permitted to refer to internal processing, this goes some way towards permitting talk of immaterial mental substances, agents endowed with contra-causal free will, and little persons (homunculi) within bodies. Each of these Skinner takes to be incompatible with a scientific worldview (see Skinner 1971; see also Day 1976). Finally, it must be noted that Skinner’s aversion to explanatory references to innerness is not an aversion to inner mental states or processes per se. He readily admits that private thoughts and so on exist. Skinner countenances talk of inner events but only provided that their innerness is treated in the same manner as public behavior or overt responses. An adequate science of behavior, he claims, must describe events taking place within the skin of the organism as part of behavior itself (see Skinner 1976). “So far as I am concerned,” he wrote in 1984 in a special issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted to his work, “whatever happens when we inspect a public stimulus is in every respect similar to what happens when we introspect a private one” (Skinner 1984b, p. 575; compare Graham 1984, pp. 558–9).

Skinner does not have much to say about just how inner (covert, private) behavior (like thinking, classifying, and analyzing) can be described in the same manner as public or overt behavior. But his idea is roughly as follows. Just as we may describe overt behavior or motor movement in terms of concepts like stimulus, response, conditioning, reinforcement, and so on, so we may deploy the very same terms in describing inner or covert behavior. One thought or line of thought may reinforce another thought. An act of analysis may serve as a stimulus for an effort at classification. And so on. Purely ‘mentalistic’ activities may be at least roughly parsed in terms of behavioral concepts — a topic to be revisited later in the entry (in the 7th Section).

Skinner is the only major figure in the history of behaviorism to offer a socio-political world view based on his commitment to behaviorism. Skinner constructed a theory as well as narrative picture in Walden Two (1948) of what an ideal human society would be like if designed according to behaviorist principles (see also Skinner 1971). Skinner’s social worldview illustrates his aversions to free will, to homunculi, and to dualism as well as his positive reasons for claiming that a person’s history of environmental interactions controls his or her behavior.

One possible feature of human behavior which Skinner deliberately rejects is that people freely or creatively make their own environments (see Chomsky 1971, Black 1973). Skinner protests that “it is in the nature of an experimental analysis of human behavior that it should strip away the functions previously assigned to a free or autonomous person and transfer them one by one to the controlling environment” (1971, p. 198).

Critics have raised several objections to the Skinnerian social picture. One of the most persuasive, and certainly one of the most frequent, adverts to Skinner’s vision of the ideal human society. It is a question asked of the fictional founder of Walden Two, Frazier, by the philosopher Castle. It is the question of what is the best social or communal mode of existence for a human being. Frazier’s, and therein Skinner’s, response to this question is both too general and incomplete. Frazier/Skinner praises the values of health, friendship, relaxation, rest, and so forth. However, these values are hardly the detailed basis of a social system.

There is a notorious difficulty in social theory of specifying the appropriate level of detail at which a blueprint for a new and ideal society must be presented (see Arnold 1990, pp. 4–10). Skinner identifies the behavioristic principles and learning incentives that he hopes will reduce systematic injustices in social systems. He also describes a few practices (concerning child rearing and the like) that are intended to contribute to human happiness. However, he offers only the haziest descriptions of the daily lives of Walden Two citizens and no suggestions for how best to resolve disputes about alternative ways of life that are prima facie consistent with behaviorist principles (see Kane 1996, p. 203). He gives little or no serious attention to the crucial general problem of inter-personal conflict resolution and to the role of institutional arrangements in resolving conflicts.

In an essay which appeared in The Behavior Analyst (1985), nearly forty years after the publication of Walden Two, Skinner, in the guise of Frazier, tried to clarify his characterization of ideal human circumstances. He wrote that in the ideal human society “people just naturally do the things they need to do to maintain themselves … and treat each other well, and they just naturally do a hundred other things they enjoy doing because they do not have to do them” (p. 9). However, of course, doing a hundred things humans enjoy doing means only that Walden Two is vaguely defined, not that its culturally instituted habits and the character of its institutions merit emulation.

The incompleteness of Skinner’s description of the ideal human society or life is so widely acknowledged that one might wonder if actual experiments in Walden Two living could lend useful detail to his blueprint. More than one such social experiment has been conducted. Perhaps the most interesting (in part because the community has evolved away from its Skinnerian roots) is the Twin Oaks Community in Virginia in the U.S.A., which can be indirectly explored via the Internet (see Other Internet Resources).

Behaviorism is dismissed by cognitive scientists developing intricate internal information processing models of cognition. Its laboratory routines or experimental regimens are neglected by cognitive ethologists and ecological psychologists convinced that its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural and social environment. Its traditional relative indifference towards neuroscience and deference to environmental contingencies is rejected by neuroscientists sure that direct study of the brain is the only way to understand the truly proximate causes of behavior.

But by no means has behaviorism disappeared. Robust elements of behaviorism survive in both behavior therapy and laboratory-based animal learning theory (of which more below). In the metaphysics of mind, too, behavioristic themes survive in the approach to mind known as Functionalism. Functionalism defines states of mind as states that play causal-functional roles in animals or systems in which they occur. Paul Churchland writes of Functionalism as follows: “The essential or defining feature of any type of mental states is the set of causal relations it bears to … bodily behavior” (1984, p. 36). This functionalist notion is similar to the behaviorist idea that reference to behavior and to stimulus/response relations enters centrally and essentially into any account of what it means for a creature to behave or to be subject, in the scheme of analytical or logical behaviorism, to the attribution of mental states.

Fans of the so-called and now widely discussed Extended Mind Hypothesis (EMH) also share a kinship with behaviorism or at least with Skinner. The defining hypothesis of EMH is that “mental” representation is a matter that spills out from the brain or head into the world and cultural environment (Levy 2007). Representations are things external to the head or which bear special individuating relationships with external devices or forms of cultural activity. Skinner’s misgivings about depicting the power of mental representation as something confined to the head (brain, inner mind) are at least loosely akin to EMH’s shift to depict representationality as environmentally extended.

Elements, however, are elements. Behaviorism is no longer a dominating research program.

Why has the influence of behaviorism declined? The deepest and most complex reason for behaviorism’s decline in influence is its commitment to the thesis that behavior can be explained without reference to non-behavioral and inner mental (cognitive, representational, or interpretative) activity. Behavior, for Skinner, can be explained just by reference to its “functional” (Skinner’s term) relation to or co-variation with the environment and to the animal’s history of environmental interaction. Neurophysiological and neurobiological conditions, for Skinner, sustain or implement these functional or causal relations. But they do not serve as ultimate or independent sources or explanations of behavior. Behavior, Skinner (1953) wrote, cannot be accounted for “while staying wholly inside [an animal]; eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the organism from without.” “Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second [neurological] link is not lawfully determined by the first [environmental stimuli], or the third [behavior] by the second, the first and third links must be lawfully related.” (p. 35) “Valid information about the second link may throw light on this relationship but can in no way alter it.” (ibid.) It is “external variables of which behavior is a function.” (ibid.)

Skinner was no triumphalist about neuroscience. Neuroscience, for him, more or less just identifies organismic physical processes that underlie animal/environment interactions. Therein, it rides evidential or epistemic piggyback on radical behaviorism’s prior description of those interactions. “The organism”, he says, “is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box” (1976, p. 233). “Something is done today which affects the behavior of the organism tomorrow” (p. 233). Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior. The neural box is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to disengage the animal from past patterns of behavior that have been reinforced. It cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over behavior.

For many critics of behaviorism it seems obvious that, at a minimum, the occurrence and character of behavior (especially human behavior) does not depend primarily upon an individual’s reinforcement history, although that is a factor, but on the fact that the environment or learning history is represented by an individual and how (the manner in which) it is represented. The fact that the environment is represented by me constrains or informs the functional or causal relations that hold between my behavior and the environment and may, from an anti-behaviorist perspective, partially disengage my behavior from its conditioning or reinforcement history. No matter, for example, how tirelessly and repeatedly I have been reinforced for pointing to or eating ice cream, such a history is impotent if I just don’t see a potential stimulus as ice cream or represent it to myself as ice cream or if I desire to hide the fact that something is ice cream from others. My conditioning history, narrowly understood as unrepresented by me, is behaviorally less important than the environment or my learning history as represented or interpreted by me.

Similarly, for many critics of behaviorism, if representationality comes between environment and behavior, this implies that Skinner is too restrictive or limited in his attitude towards the role of brain mechanisms in producing or controlling behavior. The brain is no mere passive memory bank of behavior/environment interactions (see Roediger and Goff 1998). The central nervous system, which otherwise sustains my reinforcement history, contains systems or neurocomputational sub-systems that implement or encode whatever representational content or meaning the environment has for me. It is also an active interpretation machine or semantic engine, often critically performing environmentally untethered and behavior controlling tasks. Such talk of representation or interpretation, however, is a perspective from which behaviorism—most certainly in Skinner— wishes and tries to depart.

One defining aspiration of traditional behaviorism is that it tried to free psychology from having to theorize about how animals and persons represent (internally, in the head) their environment. This effort at freedom was important, historically, because it seemed that behavior/environment connections are a lot clearer and more manageable experimentally than internal representations. Unfortunately, for behaviorism, it’s hard to imagine a more restrictive rule for psychology than one which prohibits hypotheses about representational storage and processing. Stephen Stich, for example, complains against Skinner that “we now have an enormous collection of experimental data which, it would seem, simply cannot be made sense of unless we postulate something like” information processing mechanisms in the heads of organisms (1998, p. 649).

A second reason for rejecting behaviorism is that some features of mentality—some elements, in particular, of the conscious mental life of persons—have characteristic ‘qualia’ or presentationally immediate or phenomenal qualities. To be in pain, for example, is not merely to produce appropriate pain behavior under the right environmental circumstances, but it is to experience a ‘like-thisness’ to the pain (as something dull or sharp, perhaps). A purely behaviorist creature, a ‘zombie’, as it were, may engage in pain behavior, including beneath the skin pain responses, yet completely lack whatever is qualitatively distinctive of and proper to pain (its painfulness). (See also Graham 1998, pp. 47–51 and Graham and Horgan 2000. On the scope of the phenomenal in human mentality, see Graham, Horgan, and Tienson 2009).

The philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place, although otherwise sympathetic to the application of behaviorist ideas to matters of mind, argued that phenomenal qualia cannot be analyzed in behaviorist terms. He claimed that qualia are neither behavior nor dispositions to behave. “They make themselves felt,” he said, “from the very moment that the experience of whose qualia they are” comes into existence (2000, p. 191; reprinted in Graham and Valentine 2004). They are instantaneous features of processes or events rather than dispositions manifested over time. Qualitative mental events (such as sensations, perceptual experiences, and so on), for Place, undergird dispositions to behave rather than count as dispositions. Indeed, it is tempting to postulate that the qualitative aspects of mentality affect non-qualitative elements of internal processing, and that they, for example, contribute to arousal, attention, and receptivity to associative conditioning.

The third reason for rejecting behaviorism is connected with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has been one of behaviorism’s most successful and damaging critics. In a review of Skinner’s book on verbal behavior (see above), Chomsky (1959) charged that behaviorist models of language learning cannot explain various facts about language acquisition, such as the rapid acquisition of language by young children, which is sometimes referred to as the phenomenon of “lexical explosion.” A child’s linguistic abilities appear to be radically underdetermined by the evidence of verbal behavior offered to the child in the short period in which he or she expresses those abilities. By the age of four or five (normal) children have an almost limitless capacity to understand and produce sentences which they have never heard before. Chomsky also argued that it seems plainly untrue that language learning depends on the application of detailed reinforcement. A child does not, as an English speaker in the presence of a house, utter “house” repeatedly in the presence of reinforcing elders. Language as such seems to be learned without, in a sense, being explicitly taught or taught in detail, and behaviorism doesn’t offer an account of how this could be so. Chomsky’s own speculations about the psychological realities underlying language development include the hypothesis that the rules or principles underlying linguistic behavior are abstract (applying to all human languages) and innate (part of our native psychological endowment as human beings). When put to the test of uttering a grammatical sentence, a person, for Chomsky, has a virtually infinite number of possible responses available, and the only way in which to understand this virtually infinite generative capacity is to suppose that a person possesses a powerful and abstract innate grammar (underlying whatever competence he or she may have in one or more particular natural languages).

The problem to which Chomsky refers, which is the problem of behavioral competence and thus performance outstripping individual learning histories, goes beyond merely the issue of linguistic behavior in young children. It appears to be a fundamental fact about human beings that our behavior and behavioral capacities often surpass the limitations of individual reinforcement histories. Our history of reinforcement is often too impoverished to determine uniquely what we do or how we do it. Much learning, therefore, seems to require pre-existing or innate representational structures or principled constraints within which learning occurs. (See also Brewer 1974, but compare with Bates et al. 1998 and Cowie 1998).

Is the case against behaviorism definitive? Decisive? Paul Meehl noted decades ago that theories in psychology seem to disappear not under the force of decisive refutation but rather because researchers lose interest in their theoretical orientations (Meehl 1978). One implication of Meehl’s thesis is that a once popular “Ism”, not having been decisively refuted, may restore some of its former prominence if it mutates or transforms itself so as to incorporate responses to criticisms. What may this mean for behaviorism? It may mean that some version of the doctrine might rebound.

Skinner claimed that neural activities subserve or underlie behavior/environment relations and that the organism’s contribution to these relations does not reduce to neurophysiological properties. But this does not mean that behaviorism cannot gain useful alliance with neuroscience. Reference to brain structures (neurobiology, neurochemistry, and so on) may help in explaining behavior even if such references do not ultimately displace reference to environmental contingencies in a behaviorist account.

Such is a lesson of animal modeling in which behaviorist themes still enjoy currency. Animal models of addiction, habit and instrumental learning are particularly noteworthy because they bring behavioral research into closer contact than did traditional psychological behaviorism with research on the brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement, especially positive reinforcement (West 2006, pp. 91–108). One result of this contact is the discovery that sensitized neural systems responsible for heightened reinforcement value or strength can be dissociated from the hedonic utility or pleasurable quality of reinforcement (see Robinson and Berridge 2003). The power of a stimulus to reinforce behavior may be independent of whether it is a source or cause of pleasure. Focus on brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement also forms the centerpiece of one of the most active research programs in current neuroscience, so-called neuroeconomics, which weds study of the brain’s reward systems with models of valuation and economic decision making (see Montague and Berns 2002; Nestler and Malenka 2004; Ross et al 2008). Behaviorism may do well to purchase some of neuroeconomic’s conceptual currency, especially since some advocates of the program see themselves as behaviorists in spirit if not stereotypical letter and honor the work of a number of theorists in the behavioristic tradition of the experimental analysis of behavior, such as George Ainslie, Richard Herrnstein and Howard Rachlin, on how patterns of behavior relate to patterns of reward or reinforcement (see Ross et al. 2008, especially p. 10). One important assumption in neuroeconomics is that full explanations of organism/environmental interactions will combine facts about such things as reinforcement schedules with appeal to neurocomputational modeling and to the neurochemistry and neurobiology of reinforcement.

Other potential sources of utility or renewal? The continued popularity of so-called economic behavior therapy is noteworthy because it offers a potential domain of testing application for the regimen of behaviorism. Early versions of behavior therapy sought to apply restricted results from Skinnerian or Pavlovian conditioning paradigms to human behavior problems. No minds should be spoken of; just behavior—stimuli, responses, and reinforcement. Therapy shapes behavior not thought. Successive generations of behavior therapy relax those conceptual restrictions. Advocates refer to themselves as cognitive behavior therapists (e.g. Mahoney 1974; Meichenbaum 1977). Clients’ behavior problems are described by referring to their beliefs, desires, intentions, memories, and so on. Even the language of self-reflexive thought and belief (so-called ‘meta-cognition’) figures in some accounts of behavioral difficulties and interventions (Wells 2000). One goal of such language is to encourage clients to monitor and self-reinforce their own behavior. Self-reinforcement is an essential feature of behavioral self-control (Rachlin 2000; Ainslie 2001). The monitoring process may include a number of checking and error detection processes and correction of behavior in a client’s current life circumstances (West 2006).

It may be wondered whether cognitive behavior therapy is aptly consistent with behaviorist doctrine. Much depends on how beliefs and desires are understood. If beliefs and desires are understood as states that somehow spill out into the environment and are individuated in terms of their non-mentalistic, behavior-like role in organism/environment interactions, this would be consistent with traditional behaviorist doctrine. It would reflect the principle of logical or analytical behaviorism that if mental terms are to be used in the description and explanation of behavior, they must be defined or paraphrased in non-mental behavioral terms. Prospects for belief/desire individuation in non-mental, environmentally externalist terms may look doubtful however, especially in cases of conscious attitudes(see Horgan, Tienson and Graham 2006). But the topic of the forms and limits of behavior therapy and the range of its plausible application is open for continued further exploration.

In 1977 Willard Day, a behavioral psychologist and founding editor of the journal Behaviorism (later known as Behavior and Philosophy), published Skinner’s “Why I am not a cognitive psychologist” (Skinner 1977). Skinner began the paper by stating that “the variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment” (p. 1). Skinner ended by remarking that “cognitive constructs give … a misleading account of what” is inside a human being (p. 10)

More than a decade earlier, in 1966 Carl Hempel had announced his defection from behaviorism:

In order to characterize … behavioral patterns, propensities, or capacities … we need not only a suitable behavioristic vocabulary, but psychological terms as well. (p. 110)

Hempel had come to believe that it is a mistake to imagine that human behavior can be understood exclusively in non-mental, behavioristic terms.

Contemporary psychology and philosophy largely share Hempel’s conviction that the explanation of behavior cannot omit invoking a creature’s representation of its world. Psychology must use psychological terms. Behavior without cognition is blind. Psychological theorizing without reference to internal cognitive processing is explanatorily impaired. To say this, of course, is not to a priori preclude that behaviorism will recover some of its prominence. Just how to conceive of cognitive processing (even where to locate it) remains a heated subject of debate (see Melser 2004; see also Levy 2007, pp. 29–64). But if behaviorism is to recover some of its prominence, this recovery may require a reformulation of its doctrines that is attune to developments (like that of neuroeconomics) in neuroscience as well as in novel therapeutic orientations.

Skinner’s vantage point on or special contribution to behaviorism mates the science of behavior with the language of organism/environment interactions. But we humans don’t just run and mate and walk and eat in this or that environment. We think, classify, analyze, imagine, and theorize. In addition to our outer behavior, we have highly complex inner lives, wherein we are active, often imaginatively, in our heads, all the while often remaining as stuck as posts, as still as stones. Call our inner life ‘behavior’ if one wants, but this piece of linguistic stipulation does not mean that the probability or occurrence of inner events is shaped by the same environmental contingencies as overt behavior or bodily movements. It does not mean that understanding a sentence or composing an entry for this encyclopedia consist of the same general modes of discriminatory responses as learning how to move one’s body in pursuit of a food source. How the Inner Representational World of mind maps into the Country of Behaviorism remains the “ism’s” still incompletely charted territory.

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Understanding Behaviorism

Behaviorism is the key to understanding human behavior. By understanding the principles of behaviorism, we can explain why people behave the way they do and better manage our behavior and the behavior of others.

What is a Behavioral Psychologist?

The basic principles of behaviorism, the role of learning in behavior, the role of cognition in behavior, the role of motivation in behavior, the role of emotion in behavior, additional resources on behavior therapy.

Psychology has its roots in behaviorism . Behaviorism began with the work of Ivan Pavlov, who discovered classical conditioning, and B. F. Skinner, who developed operant conditioning.

Behaviorism is based on the idea that environmental factors determine all behavior, not internal mental states. This means that all behavior can be explained by how we have been conditioned to respond to our environment. Behaviorism has been very influential in the development of psychology as a science. However, it has also been criticized for its lack of focus on mental states and its emphasis on external factors as the cause of all behavior.

Behaviorism is the study of observable behavior. The basic principle of behaviorism is that behavior is a function of the environment. It focuses on the principle that behavior is learned through conditioning. There are two types of conditioning: classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

• Classical conditioning is when a behavior is learned in response to a stimulus that is not naturally associated with that behavior. There are lots of examples of classical conditioning in everyday life, such as if a person is exposed to loud noise (the conditioned stimulus) and then feels fear (the unconditioned response), they may learn to fear loud noises (the conditioned response).
• Operant conditioning is when a behavior is learned in response to the consequences of that behavior. Operant conditioning examples in everyday life include if a person gets a reward (the reinforcer) for completing a task (the operant behavior), they are more likely to complete that task in the future.

Behaviorism is all about learning . Specifically, it concerns how organisms learn from their environment and how this learning changes behavior. There are three main approaches within behaviorism – classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. All three methods involve the process of conditioning, whereby an animal or person learns to associate a particular stimulus with a particular response.

• Classical conditioning is when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a particular response. For example, if a rat is given a food pellet every time it hears a click, it will eventually learn to associate the click with the food. It will start to salivate in anticipation of the food whenever it hears the click.
• Operant conditioning is a type of learning that occurs as a result of the consequences of a behavior. If a behavior is followed by a positive consequence (such as a reward), then that behavior is more likely to be repeated in the future; if a behavior is followed by a negative consequence (such as punishment), then that behavior is less likely to be repeated in the future .
• Observational learning is a type of learning that occurs as a result of observing the behavior of others. An example of observational learning includes if a child sees another child being rewarded for picking up a set of toy blocks, the child is likely to pick them up the next time they are available.

Cognition is just another word for thinking or knowing. We’re aware of pretty much anything that goes on in our heads. That includes things like remembering, imagining, planning, and paying attention. Our behavior is mostly just a reaction to the things happening around us and the things we’re thinking about.

Behaviorism is the idea that our behavior is mainly a result of our environment and learning. 

Cognition plays a significant role in our behavior. Our thoughts and memories can influence what we do in the present moment. For example, if we’re thinking about a scary movie we saw, we might start to feel afraid.

Motivation is a crucial factor in behavior. A motivated individual is likelier to engage in behavior than those who are not motivated. Internal factors include things like need, want, or desire. External factors include things like rewards or punishments.

Behaviors that are reinforced (rewarded) are more likely to be repeated than behaviors that are not reinforced. Behaviors that are punished are less likely to be repeated than behaviors that are not punished.

People often talk about motivation in terms of positive and negative reinforcement . Positive reinforcement occurs when a behavior is followed by a positive consequence (reward). Negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior is followed by removing a negative consequence (punishment). Positive and negative reinforcement can increase the likelihood of repeated behavior. 

All three behavior theories suggest that emotion plays a role in behavior.

• Classical conditioning is based on the idea that emotions are learned through association. For example, if a person has a positive experience with a certain stimulus (e.g., eating a delicious meal), they are likely to associate positive emotions (e.g., happiness) with that stimulus. On the other hand, if a person has a negative experience with a stimulus (e.g., being bitten by a dog), they are likely to associate negative emotions (e.g., fear) with that stimulus.
• Operant conditioning is based on the idea that emotions can influence behavior. For example, if people feel happy, they are likelier to behave positively (e.g., being friendly to others). On the other hand, if a person feels angry, they are more likely to behave negatively (e.g., being aggressive).
• Social learning theory suggests that emotions play a role in behavior because we learn by observing the feelings of others. For example, we might become angry if we see someone getting angry. Similarly, if we see someone happy, we might become happy ourselves.

By understanding how we behave, we can change our behavior to get the desired outcomes. We can use this knowledge to improve our relationships, health, and well-being.

• Behavioral Principles in Dialectical Behavior Therapy
• Using Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapies as an Adjunct to Forensic Treatment
• Skills, Coaching, Crisis Calls, and Putting it All Together
• Reinforcement and Punishment
• Interventions Based on Operant Conditioning
• Getting Rid of a Behavior You Don’t Like
• Unraveling Behavior: The Power of Behavioral Chain Analysis
• Effective or Not Effective? Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Skills in a Correctional Facility
• It’s difficult, but you are doing a great job: The effect of interviewer’s support on child abuse victim’s reluctance in interviews
• Getting a second chance: Public support for reintegrative and disintegrative shaming for ex-offenders

Amanda Beltrani

Amanda Beltrani, Ph.D., is a licensed forensic and clinical psychologist. She obtained a master’s degree in forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She then earned a doctoral degree in clinical psychology with an emphasis in forensic psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She completed an APA-accredited internship on the forensic psychology track at New York University-Bellevue Hospital. Dr. Beltrani has published over 15 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on competency to stand trial, clinical assessment and decision making, serious mental illness, and barriers to implementing evidence-based practices. Currently, she is a staff psychologist at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York City. She works on a secure ward, conducting forensic psychological evaluations for the Courts as well as treatment and intervention programs for patients with various psychological and legal issues. In addition, Dr. Beltrani works part-time for CONCEPT Continuing & Professional Studies, providing new or aspiring mental health professionals with information about various aspects of practice to elevate their career and professional fulfillment.

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6.2 A Short History of Behaviorism

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Trace the chronological development of the psychological school of behaviorism
• Develop an understanding of major themes pertaining to behaviorism
• Recognize important contributors to behavioral learning theory

   Behaviorism dominated experimental psychology for several decades, and its influence can still be felt today. Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation.

Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936). Pavlov studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was “learned,” the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlov’s “classical conditioning” is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists.

  Edward Thorndike’s (1898) work with cats and puzzle boxes illustrates the concept of conditioning. The puzzle boxes were approximately 50 cm long, 38 cm wide, and 30 cm tall (see figure below). Thorndike’s puzzle boxes were built so that the cat, placed inside the box, could escape only if it pressed a bar or pulled a lever, which caused the string attached to the door to lift the weight and open the door. Thorndike measured the time it took the cat to perform the required response (e.g., pulling the lever). Once it had learned the response he gave the cat a reward, usually food.

Thorndike found that once a cat accidentally stepped on the switch, it would then press the switch faster in each succeeding trial inside the puzzle box. By observing and recording how long it took a variety of animals to escape through several trials, Thorndike was able to graph the learning curve (graphed as an S-shape). He observed that most animals had difficulty escaping at first, then began to escape faster and faster with each successive puzzle box trial, and eventually levelled off in their escape times. The learning curve also suggested that different species learned in the same way but at different speeds. His finding was that cats, for instance, consistently showed gradual learning.

From his research with puzzle boxes, Thorndike was able to create his own theory of learning (1932).

“ Thorndike’s Puzzle Box ” by Jacob Sussman is available through Public Domain “

Of the manifold parts of his theory, Thorndike’s Law of Effect remains one of the theories’ most well-known corollaries.

Law of Effect: If an association is followed by satisfaction, it will be strengthened, and if it is followed by annoyance, it will be weakened.

That is, Thorndike believed that an organism would seek to strengthen the association between a stimulus and response, if that association was perceived to yield satisfaction or pleasure to that organism. Conversely, an organism would seek to weaken an association between a stimulus and response if it brought annoyance. Consider a hungry mouse that is rewarded for pressing a lever with food. The association between the lever press and the food will be strengthened if the reward is perceived to be pleasurable, which to the hungry mouse, is sure to find the reward highly agreeable. However, if the same mouse received an electric shock after pressing the lever, the mouse may choose to avoid the lever in future trials. If the stimulus is not elicited (lever press), there will be no response – the mouse weakens the association between lever press and the electric shock. The law of effect later was replaced by terminology coined by later behaviorists, preferring the terms “reinforcement” and “punishment” over “satisfaction” and “annoyance”.

John B. Watson (1878–1958) was an influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. While Wundt and James were concerned with understanding conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of consciousness was flawed. Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control. Watson was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism. A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with inborn qualities of the organism. Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior. Indeed, Tolman (1938) stated, “I believe that everything important in psychology (except … such matters as involving society and words) can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice-point in a maze.”

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner (1904–1990) was an American psychologist. Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences. B.F. Skinner called his particular brand of behaviorism radical behaviourism (1974). Radical behaviorism is the philosophy of the science of behaviour. It seeks to understand behaviour as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. This applied behaviourism does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism’s behaviour.

While a researcher at Harvard, Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, popularly referred to as the Skinner box (see figure below), used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment. The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat inside the box could get food delivered to the tray by pressing the lever. Skinner observed that when a rat was first put into the box, it would wander around, sniffing and exploring, and would usually press the bar by accident, at which point a food pellet would drop into the tray. After that happened, the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. The Skinner Box has remained a crucial resource for researchers studying behavior (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Research conducted with the Skinner Box led to the principle of reinforcement, which is the probability of something occurring based on the consequences of a behavior.

A picture of an Operant Conditioning Chamber or Skinner Box. This device allowed experimenters to study conditioning principles and understand reward/punishment mechanisms in psychological research.

“ Skinner box ” by Bd008 is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0

The Law of Effect and the Principle of Reinforcement are among the many insights that survive the school of behaviorism today. Nevertheless, we feel the influence of decades of behavioral research in various modern-day settings. For example, behavioral principles are commonly applied in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy to create powerful changes in one’s behavior. Behavior modification is also commonly used in classroom settings to encourage appropriate classroom behaviors and discourage potential disruptions. Overall, behaviorism has led to research on environmental influences on human behavior.

References:

Introduction to Psychology text by [redacted author(s)] is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48

Introduction to Psychology – 1st Canadian Ed. by Jennifer Walinga is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=427

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter is licensed under CC BY v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Introduction to Psychology: The Full Noba Collection by Robert Biswas-Diener and Ed Diener is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=228

Review Questions:

1. The results of Thorndike’s Puzzle Box experiments demonstrated that the test animals took ____ time (relative to all attempts) initially when solving puzzle box trials and took ____ time with each subsequent, completed trial.

a. Less; More

b. Less; Less

c. More; Less

d. More; More

2. Thorndike’s Law of Effect is differentiated from the Principle of Reinforcement because the ____ posits that ____.

a. Law of effect; organisms will initiate actions which will yield a pleasurable effect

b. Law of effect; organisms will initiate actions that impede the presence of an non-pleasurable effect

c. Principle of Reinforcement; an organism is more likely to pursue behaviors which are reinforced

d. Principle of Reinforcement; an organism is less likely to pursue behaviors which are not reinforced

e. None of the above.

3. One of the main tenets of Skinner’s radical behaviorism was that___

a. the activities of the mind, apart from the operation of basic life-sustaining functions, had a causal influence on an organisms’ behavior

b. an organism’s perception is integral to guiding that organism’s behaviors

c. an organism’s emotional capacities is among the primary influences for the initiation of behavior

d. a combination of an organism’s thinking, perception and related emotional activities initiate behaviors

e. the private events of the human mind had no causal role pertaining to an organism’s behavior.

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. W hat are some of the weaknesses of radical behaviorism as it was conceptualized by B.F. Skinner?

Personal Application Question : 

1. What are some ways you can potentially see the application of behavioral principles (e.g., the law of effect, principle of reinforcement) in your everyday life?

conditioned reflex:  an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus.

classical conditioning: (briefly) a type of conditioning in which a natural, unconditioned stimulus (e.g., food) is paired with a novel stimulus (e.g., a sound, a bell) to create a circumstance in which the novel stimulus can produce a desired response.

law of effect: the precursor to the principle of reinforcement, this law describes the actions of an organism following a satisfying or dissatisfying outcome.

radical behaviorism: a philosophy in the science of behavior. Radical behaviorism seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences while simultaneously rejecting the role of thinking, perception or emotion in the initiation or maintenance of behaviors.

Skinner Box: an apparatus used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment.

Answers to Exercises

2. E (The Law of effect was effectively co-opted into the principle of reinforcement for the sake of providing more easily testable experimental conditions)

1. Answer: (should contain some of the following key points)

*not all human processes characterizing human behaviors have easily recognizable conditioned stimuli, and the behaviors that can be considered conditioned are not easily traceable to a single source

*modern empirical research has mostly refuted the assumption that “private events” do not influence behaviors (e.g., cognitive psychological treatment, phantom limb research)

*private events are constants which underlie ALL behavior, voluntary or involuntary – to rule them out simply because they are not observable is in essence, jumping to conclusions

Glossary:  

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Behaviorism and Behaviorist Learning Theories

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Behaviorism ; Science of behavior

Behaviorism is the name given to several approaches to psychology, especially to the study of both animal and human learning, which arose in – and flourished during – the twentieth century. These approaches rejected the use of introspective methods (wherein individuals reported on their subjective experiences), and instead were based upon the study of behavior, its modification, and its observable antecedents and consequences – which were taken to be the only scientifically objective, publicly observable, sources of data. Consequently, behaviorists rejected characterizations of psychology that were given in terms of the study of mental events or of consciousness or “mind,” and instead defined psychology as the study of behavior and its modification. This focus, the behaviorists felt, brought unity to the psychological study of animals and humans.

Theoretical Background

The emergence of behaviorism as a broad movement can be traced...

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Chomsky, N. (1959/1980). A review of B. F. Skinner’s verbal behavior. In N. Block (Ed.), Readings in philosophy of psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 48–63). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Skinner, B. F. (1961). Cumulative record (Enlargedth ed.). New York: Appleton.

Thorndike, E. L. (1898/1948). Animal intelligence. In W. Dennis (Ed.), Readings in the history of psychology (pp. 377–387). New York: Appleton.

Watson, J. B. (1913/1948). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. In W. Dennis (Ed.), Readings in the history of psychology (pp. 457–471). New York: Appleton.

Watson, J. B. (1924/1966). Behaviorism . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive behavior in animals and men . New York: Century.

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Denis C. Phillips ( Professor )

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7 Chapter 7: Behaviorism

The focus of this chapter is Behaviorism. This educational philosophy is based on the belief that human behavior can be explained based on response to external stimuli. When translated into a classroom setting, Behaviorists believe that the best educational environment can be obtained when student behavior is shaped by arranging specific conditions for learning.

To better understand Behaviorism, this chapter will provide an overview of the key characteristics of Behaviorism. Information related to how this philosophy of education is reflected in the curriculum and its instructional methods will also be presented. Within this presentation, a discussion of the role of the teacher and role of the learner will be discussed. Finally, key proponents of Behaviorism and their contributions to this philosophy of education will be presented.

Characteristics of Behaviorism

7.1 Essential Questions

By the end of this section, the following Essential Questions will be answered:

• What are the philosophical foundations of Behaviorism?
• What are some of the educational implications of Behaviorism?
• What are some examples of Behaviorism in 
 the classroom?

When you hear the term “Behaviorism,” what comes to mind? For many people, the first thing that comes to mind is shaping behavior in response to a specific stimuli. In the classroom, Behaviorism is often linked to “rewards” or positive reinforcement.

According to Zirpoli (2005), the 
 basic principles or philosophical foundations of behaviorism are as follows:

• Most behaviors are learned.
• Most behaviors are stimulus specific.
• Most behaviors can be taught, changed, or modified.
• Behavior change goals should be specific and clearly defined.
• Behavior change programs should be individualized.
• Behavior change programs should focus on the here and now.
• Behavior change programs should focus on the child’s environment (p. 13).

As demonstrated by these philosophical foundations, Behaviorism is focused on the study of observable behaviors.

7.2 A Closer Look

For a brief overview of the foundations of Behaviorism and its current impact on educational practices, please watch the attached “Behaviorism” video. While watching the video, think about the Questions to Consider to enhance your understanding of the video.

• How was behaviorism a change from other theoretical perspectives?
• Who were two key researchers in behaviorism and what specifically did they contribute?
• What is the application of Behaviorist instruction in the classroom referred to?
• What are some examples of direct instruction in the classroom?
• In a classroom using behaviorism, is instruction student-centered or teacher-centered? Why?

7.3 Learning Objectives

• What is the focus of the curriculum in a Behaviorist classroom?
• What are the key elements of the curriculum in a Behavioristic approach to instruction?
• Do you think the focus of this curriculum is beneficial for students? Why or why not?

The focus of the curriculum in a Behaviorist classroom is not the curriculum itself. Rather, it is on the environmental variables within the classroom (i.e., the teaching materials, instructional methods, and teacher- classroom behaviors), as each of these variables directly influence the learner’s behavior (Witrock, 1987). An example of an environmental variable would be the disciple plan. As demonstrated in the picture below, this behavior chart outlines what the behavioral expectations are for the students in the classroom. In order to stay “blue,” the students need to be following all the rules of the classroom and be behaving in an amazing manor. “Green” indicates that students are following the rules of the classroom as expected and doing a great job . “Yellow” shows that the student gets a warning for not following one or more of the classroom rules and needs to get back on track. “Orange” means that the student gets a time out . Finally, “red” means that the student looses a privilege .

Curriculum design

In a Behaviorist classroom, curriculum is designed in a very prescriptive manner. The reason for this is that students are expected to master the curriculum being presented. To help students achieve mastery, instruction is presented in a step-by-step approach.

Step One: A stimulus is provided by the teacher.

Step Two: The learner responds to the stimulus.

Step Three: Reinforcement is provided by the 
 teacher.

As demonstrated in the steps above, curriculum is defined by learning and behavior change in a behaviorist classroom. When creating curriculum, the teachers focus is on results. To see if results are met, the teacher carefully analyzes student outcomes. If outcomes are not met, more programed instruction is implemented to achieve desired behaviors.

7.4 A Closer Look

For a more in-depth look at behaviorism in the classroom, please read the following article titled: Behaviorism . As you are reading, consider the following questions:

• What was one researcher discussed in the article? What was the name of his experiement? In what ways did his experiment contribute to Behaviorism?
• How does Behaviorism impact classroom management? Have you seen an example of this in real classrooms? Please provide a brief overview from your own experience.
• What is PBIS? Do you think this would be effective in the classroom? Why or why. not?
• What is one insight you gained about Behaviorism from the article?
• Do you agree with the “cons” outlined about Behaviorism? Why of why not?

Behaviorism

Instruction in the Classroom

7.5 Essential Questions

• What are the main methods of instruction in a Behaviorist classroom?
• What is the teachers 
role in the classroom?
• What is the students 
role in the classroom?
• What strategies do students use in Behaviorist classrooms?

As previously stated, the Behaviorist theory of instruction is focused on providing reinforcement for behaviors that have been identified as appropriate for the learning environment. To achieve these behaviors, a variety of instructional methods can be applied. The key is to make sure that any instructional method that is implemented can be observed and measured. For example, students might work on the computer so that they receive immediate feedback and reinforcement.

7.6 A Closer Look

• In Figure 1 . Assumption of Teacher and Student Roles and Responsibilities, the authors identified four main categories to consider. Do you think one of these is more important than the other? Why of why not?
• What is one of the roles that teachers take on as described in the article? What is the main focus of this role?
• What is one of the roles the students take on as described in the article? What is the main focus of this role?
• What is one thing teachers should consider about classroom environment? Have you see this in classrooms you have been in? If so, please elaborate. If not, please come up with an example for your future classroom.

Standridge (2002) identified the following behaviorist techniques which have long been employed in classrooms across the country to promote positive behavior and discourage behavior that is undesirable:

• Behavioral Contracts: Simple contracts can be effective in helping children focus on behavior change.
• Consequences: They can occur immediately after a behavior and may be positive or negative, expected or unexpected, immediate or long-term, extrinsic or intrinsic, material or symbolic (a failing grade), emotional/interpersonal or even unconscious.
• Positive reinforcement: The presentation of a stimulus that increases the probability of a response (i.e., smiling at students after a correct response).
• Negative reinforcement: Increased probability of a response that removes or prevents an adverse condition (i.e., perfect attendance is rewarded with a “homework pass”).
• Punishment: Involves presenting a strong stimulus that decreases the frequency of a particular response (i.e., students who fight are immediately sent to the principal).
• Extinction: Decreases the probability of a response by contingent withdrawal of a previously reinforced stimulus (i.e., a teacher gives partial credit for late assignments; other teachers think this is unfair so the teacher decides to then give zeros for the late work).

Teachers Role

The teacher is the center of instruction in the Behaviorist classroom. It is his or her role to ensure that the classroom is properly managed in order to ensure that student learning can take place. According to research by Emmer (1987), there are two general management principles that a Behaviorist teachers must follow in the classroom:

• Identify expected student behavior so that behaviors that are appropriate and inappropriate are identified before instruction begins.
• Translate expectations into procedures and routines by creating basic rules of conduct for the classroom.

In addition to these two general management principles, other roles of the teacher include: monitoring classroom events, timely and accurate addressing of inappropriate behavior, apply a reward and accountability system, creating a checklist for completed assignments, and monitoring class participation/engagement (Emmer, 1987).

All of these roles require skill on the part of the Behaviorist teacher in order to implement successfully. For example, the teacher needs to know about educational psychology in order to establish an appropriate behavioral reward system in the classroom (Webb et. al., 2010). This includes knowing what would be appropriate reinforcers and how best to set up a proper schedule of reinforcement. Since Behaviorism also emphasizes empirical verification, teachers must also be trained in the scientific method (Webb et. al., 2010).

These systems of student monitoring and tracking are used in many classrooms across the country today. Particularly for students on Instructional Education Plans (IEPs) who many need more one-on-one monitoring and feedback. Which is why behaviorist teachers are sometimes referred to as “the controllers of behavior” and the “arrangers of contingencies” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 80). No matter what name they are assigned, teachers applying this philosophy of education have a very big responsibility when it comes to classroom and student management.

• Do you think the level of classroom management outlined by Behaviorists is really necessary? Why or why not?
• If you had to set up a Behaviorist classroom, 
 what type of reinforcements would you use? 
 Why?

Students Role

According to research by Webb et. al. (2010), the behaviorist philosophy assumes the following two things about students:

• First, every student is capable of, and predisposed 
 too, modifying or changing his or her behavior.
• Second, every student is capable of learning new 
 behavior.

Based on these two assumptions, the students role is to learn to modify or change a learned behavior based on the introduction of specific stimuli from the teacher.

The students success is measured via specified “behavioral objectives (e.g., the behaviors of knowledge that students are expected to demonstrate or learn) that are observable and preferably measurable” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 79). For students, better classroom performance is achieved through behavior modification when the following six basic components are in place:

• Clear articulation of the desired outcome including stating what students must changed and how behavior will be evaluated. For example, increased student participation in class discussions as measured by tally marks teacher notes each time a student participates in class.
• Development of a positive and nurturing environment where students feel safe and comfortable. For example, calling on a student to share an answer when you know they can successfully provide the correct answer.
• Identification and application of appropriate intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Note – each student may require a different type of reward.
• Reinforcement of desired behavior until the student is able to independently apply behaviors in class.
• Gradual reduction of rewards so the student does not require them to display desired behaviors.
• Evaluation and assessment of behavior modification techniques to ensure teacher expectations and student results are what are desired (Brewer, Campbell, & Petty, 2000).

• Do you believe every students is capable of, 
and predisposed to, modifying of changing his or her behavior? Why or why not?
• How important do you think it is to have behavioral objectives?

Key Proponents

7.7 Essential Questions

• Who were 
 the key proponents of Behaviorism?
• What impact did each of the key proponents of Behaviorism have on this philosophy of education?

The roots of Behaviorism can be traced back to the early 20th century. Among the key philosophers who influenced the development of Behaviorism were Ivan Pavlov, John W. Watson, and B.F. Skinner. In this section, a brief overview of each of these philosophers and their contributions to the philosophy of behaviorism will be presented. As you read about each one and watch the video clips providing additional information for many of the researchers presented here, critically reflect on the similarities and differences among them. Specifi cally, see if you can identify any overarching themes between them.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849 – 1936)

Russian physiologist and psychologist, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, is best known for his experiment in which he trained a hungry dog to drool at the sound of a bell.

However, an interesting fact about his research is that Pavlov’s initial study was only focused on the interaction between the amount of saliva dogs produced and their digestive process (Standridge, 2002). It was only when he was conducting his study that he found the dogs began to salivate before they received their food. Finding this to be very interesting, Pavlov decided he to determine if an external stimuli such as a bell being sounded would also cause the dogs to salivate. Training the dogs to respond to the bell resulted in what Pavlov called a “conditioned stimulus,” and the dogs salivation was the “conditioned response” (Standridge, 2002).

7.8 A Closer Look

For more information on Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and his groundbreaking research, please watch the following video clip. As you watch, use the Questions to Consider that have been posed about his work and the implications of his research on the field of behaviorism.

• How did Pavlov determine that the dogs were responding to the stimulus before it was being introduced?
• What did Pavlov do to test his hypothesis?
• What did Pavlov do after introducing the bell? How can Pavlov’s work be applied to the classroom?
• In what ways do you think Pavlov’s work 
 shaped the philosophy of Behaviorism?

As shared in the video, Pavlov’s  experiments demonstrate three major tenets of the field of behaviorism:

• Behavior is learned from the environment: The dogs only learned to salivate when they heard a specific stimulus and then were presented the same stimulus along with food multiple times.
• Behavior must be observable. Pavlov was able to demonstrate his findings because he was able to observe the dogs salivating in response to a specific stimulus.
• All behaviors are a result of both stimulus and response. The stimulus would cause no response in the dogs until it was associated with the presentation of food, to which the dogs naturally responded with increased saliva production ( Brau,   Fox , &  Robinson, 2022, p. 1).

As a result of his research, Pavlov won the 1904 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)

Building on the work of Pavlov, Watson argued that the process of classical conditioning was able to explain all aspects of human psychology. In fact, he argued that individual differences in behavior were simply due to different learning experiences (McLeod, 2014). Based on this belief, he was once quoted as saying:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well- formed, and my own specified world to 
 bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take 
 any one at random and train him to 
 become any type of specialist I might 
 select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-
 chief and, yes, even beggar-man and 
 thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race 
 of his ancestors” (Watson, 1924, p. 104).

Perhaps best known for his “Little Albert experiment,” Watson set out to demonstrate how specific learning experiences could shape an individuals behavior in 1920. This experiment involved testing baby Albert, a 9-month-old infant, and his reactions to various stimuli. Working with his partner, Watson and Rayner observed little Albert’s reactions and noticed that he was not adversely affected to different stimuli. However, when the a specific stimuli (a white rat) was paired with a sudden loud noise, little Albert got startled and began to cry. By conditioning little Albert to fear the white rat through repeated pairing of the rat with the noise, Watson and his partner were able to demonstrate classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia (McLeod, 2014).

7.9 A Closer Look

Please watch the following video clip which presents an overview of the experiment. As you watch the video, use the Questions to Consider as a guide.

• How ethical do you think this experiment was?
• What did you learn about classical conditioning 
as a result of this experiment?
• Do you think an experiment this would be 
allowed today?
• What are the implications of Watson’s research 
on Behaviorism?

The Little Albert experiment would not be considered ethical today. However,  the experiment did demonstrate that by controlling Albert’s environment his behavior changed. Thus demonstrating that learning had occurred.

B. F. Skinner

Skinner is best known for the concept of operant conditioning. Based on his experiment with the Skinner box, Skinner was able to determine the following:

• Operant conditioning is the rewarding of part of a desired behavior or a random act that approaches it.
• An operant response would be pressing a bar to receive a food pellet.
• A reinforcer is the food pellet itself.
• A punisher is the consequence that suppresses a response and decreases the likelihood that it will occur in the future (i.e., receiving an electric shock for pressing the bar to receive a food pellet).

Skinner is quoted as saying: “the things we call pleasant have an energizing or strengthening effect on our behavior” (Skinner, 1972, p. 74). Through Skinner’s research on animals, he concluded that both animals and humans would repeat acts that led to favorable outcomes, and suppress those that produced unfavorable results (Shaffer, 2000). The following visual, buy Standridge (2002), demonstrates the concept of operant conditioning.

In other words, we are who we are based on the operant conditioning we have received. Consequently, Skinner believed that an individual persons behavior could be shaped or conditioned if the right operant responses and reinforcements were utilized.

Reflect on your learnings about Behaviorism! Write down three things you learned about this 
 philosophy of education, two things you found 
 surprising, and one professional connection you 
 can make to your future professional practice.

Brau, B. ,  Fox, N. , &  Robinson, E.  (2022). Behaviorism. In  R. Kimmons  (Ed.),  Education Research . EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/education_research/behaviorismt

McLeod, S. (2014). Classical Conditioning. Common Lit. https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/classical-conditioning

Standridge, M.. (2002). Behaviorism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved March, 2022, from http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/

Media Attributions

• Ch 6 Intro Quote © Mocah HD Wallpapers
• Behaviorism Characteristics Pic © Chia Yee Yong
• Behavior Chart © MainlyCharts
• Stop and Think © DWRose
• Classical Conditioning © dreamstime
• Screen Shot 2022-04-26 at 11.11.39 PM

To the extent possible under law, Della Perez has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Social Foundations of K-12 Education , except where otherwise noted.

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Behaviorism is an area of psychological study that focuses on observing and analyzing how controlled environmental changes affect behavior. The goal of behavioristic teaching methods is to manipulate the environment of a subject — a human or an animal — in an effort to change the subject’s observable behavior. From a behaviorist perspective, learning is defined entirely by this change in the subject’s observable behavior. The role of the subject in the learning process is to be acted upon by the environment; the subject forms associations between stimuli and changes behavior based on those associations. The role of the teacher is to manipulate the environment in an effort to encourage the desired behavioral changes. The principles of behaviorism were not formed overnight but evolved over time from the work of multiple psychologists. As psychologists’ understanding of learning has evolved over time, some principles of behaviorism have been discarded or replaced, while others continue to be accepted and practiced.

History of Behaviorism

A basic understanding of behaviorism can be gained by examining the history of four of the most influential psychologists who contributed to the behaviorism: Ivan Pavlov, Edward Thorndike, John B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner. These four did not each develop principles of behaviorism in isolation, but rather built upon each other’s work.

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov is perhaps most well-known for his work in conditioning dogs to salivate at the sound of a tone after pairing food with the sound over time. Pavlov’s research is regarded as the first to explore the theory of classical conditioning: that stimuli cause responses and that the brain can associate stimuli together to learn new responses. His research also studied how certain parameters — such as the time between two stimuli being presented — affected these associations in the brain. His exploration of the stimulus-response model, the associations formed in the brain, and the effects of certain parameters on developing new behaviors became a foundation of future experiments in the study of human and animal behavior (Hauser, 1997).

In his most famous experiment, Pavlov started out studying how much saliva different breeds of dogs produced for digestion. However, he soon noticed that the dogs would start salivating even before the food was provided. Subsequently he realized that the dogs associated the sound of him walking down the stairs with the arrival of food. He went on to test this theory by playing a tone when feeding the dogs, and over time the dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a tone even if there was no food present. The dogs learned a new response to a familiar stimulus via stimulus association. Pavlov called this learned response a conditional reflex. Pavlov performed several variations of this experiment, looking at how far apart he could play the tone before the dogs no longer associated the sound with food; or if applying randomization — playing the tone sometimes when feeding the dogs but not others — had any effect on the end results (Pavlov, 1927).

Pavlov’s work with conditional reflexes was extremely influential in the field of behaviorism. His experiments demonstrate three major tenets of the field of behaviorism:

• Behavior is learned from the environment. The dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a tone after their environment presented the tone along with food multiple times.
• Behavior must be observable. Pavlov concluded that learning was taking place because he observed the dogs salivating in response to the sound of a tone.
• All behaviors are a product of the formula stimulus-response. The sound of a tone caused no response until it was associated with the presentation of food, to which the dogs naturally responded with increased saliva production.

These principles formed a foundation of behaviorism on which future scientists would build.

Edward Thorndike

Edward Lee Thorndike is regarded as the first to study operant conditioning, or learning from consequences of behaviors. He demonstrated this principle by studying how long it took different animals to push a lever in order to receive food as a reward for solving a puzzle. He also pioneered the law of effect, which presents a theory about how behavior is learned and reinforced.

Oneexperiment Thorndike conducted was called the puzzle box experiment, which is similar to the classic “rat in the maze” experiment. For this experiment, Thorndike placed a cat in a box with a piece of food on the outside of the box and timed how long it took the cat to push the lever to open the box and to get the food. The first two or three times each cat was placed in the box there was little difference in how long it took to open the box, but subsequent experiments showed a marked decrease in time as each cat learned that the same lever would consistently open the box.

A second major contribution Thorndike made to the field is his work in pioneering the law of effect. This law states that behavior followed by positive results is likely to be repeated and that any behavior with negative results will slowly cease over time. Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments supported this belief: animals were conditioned to frequently perform tasks that led to rewards.

Thorndike’s two major theories are the basis for much of the field of behaviorism and psychology studies of animals to this day. His results that animals can learn to press levers and buttons to receive food underpin many different types of animal studies exploring other behaviors and created the modern framework for the assumed similarities between animal responses and human responses (Engelhart, 1970).

In addition to his work with animals, Thorndike founded the field of educational psychology and wrote one of the first books on the subject, Educational Psychology, in 1903. Much of his later career was spent overhauling the field of teaching by applying his ideas about the law of effect and challenging former theories on generalized learning and punishment in the classroom. His theories and work have been taught in teaching colleges across the world.

John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson was a pioneering psychologist who is generally considered to be the first to combine the multiple facets of the field under the umbrella of behaviorism. The foundation of Watson’s behaviorism is that consciousness — introspective thoughts and feelings — can neither be observed nor controlled via scientific methods and therefore should be ignored when analyzing behavior. He asserted that psychology should be purely objective, focusing solely on predicting and controlling observable behavior, thus removing any interpretation of conscious experience. Thus, according to Watson, learning is a change in observable behavior. In his 1913 article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”, Watson defined behaviorism as “a purely objective experimental branch of natural science” that “recognizes no dividing line between man and brute.” The sole focus of Watson’s behaviorism is observing and predicting how subjects outwardly respond to external stimuli.

John Watson is remembered as the first psychologist to use human test subjects in experiments on classical conditioning. He is famous for the Little Albert experiment, in which he applied Pavlov’s ideas of classical conditioning to teach an infant to be afraid of a rat. Prior to the experiment, the nine-month-old infant Albert was exposed to several unfamiliar stimuli: a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. He showed no fear in response. Through some further experimentation, researchers discovered that Albert responded with fear when they struck a steel bar with a hammer to produce a shap noise.

During the experiment, Albert was presented with the white rat that had previously produced no fear response. Whenever Albert touched the rat, the steel bar was struck, and Albert fell forward and began to whimper. Albert learned to become hesitant around the rat and was afraid to touch it. Eventually, the sight of the rat caused Albert to whimper and crawl away. Watson concluded that Albert had learned to be afraid of the rat (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

By today’s standards, the Little Albert experiment is considered both unethical and scientifically inconclusive. Critics have said that the experiment “reveals little evidence either that Albert developed a rat phobia or even that animals consistently evoked his fear (or anxiety) during Watson’s experiment” (Harris, 1997). However, the experiment provides insight into Watson’s definition of behaviorism — he taught Albert by controlling Albert’s environment, and the change in Albert’s behavior led researchers to conclude that learning had occurred.

B. F. Skinner

Skinner was a psychologist who continued to influence the development of behaviorism. His most important contributions were introducing the idea of radical behaviorism and defining operant conditioning.

Unlike Watson, Skinner believed that internal processes such as thoughts and emotions should be considered when analyzing behavior. The inclusion of thoughts and actions with behaviors is radical behaviorism. He believed that internal processes, like observable behavior, can be controlled by environmental variables and thus can be analyzed scientifically. The application of the principles of radical behaviorism is known as applied behavior analysis.

In 1938, Skinner published The Behavior of Organisms, a book that introduces the principles of operant conditioning and their application to human and animal behavior. The core concept of operant conditioning is the relationship between reinforcement and punishment, similar to Thorndike’s law of effect: Rewarded behaviors are more likely to be repeated, while punished behaviors are less likely to be repeated. Skinner expounded on Thorndike’s law of effect by breaking down reinforcement and punishment into five discrete categories (cf. Fig. 1):

• Positive reinforcement is adding a positive stimulus to encourage behavior.
• Escape is removing a negative stimulus to encourage behavior.
• Active avoidance is preventing a negative stimulus to encourage behavior.
• Positive punishment is adding a negative stimulus to discourage behavior.
• Negative punishment is removing a positive stimulus to discourage behavior.

Reinforcement encourages behavior, while punishment discourages behavior. Those who use operant conditioning use reinforcement and punishment in an effort to modify the subject’s behavior.

An Overview of the Five Categories of Operant Conditioning

Positive and negative reinforcements can be given according to different types of schedules. Skinner developed five schedules of reinforcement:

• Continuous reinforcement is applied when the learner receives reinforcement after every specific action performed. For example, a teacher may reward a student with a sticker for each meaningful comment the student makes.
• Fixed interval reinforcement is applied when the learner receives reinforcement after a fixed amount of time has passed. For example, a teacher may give out stickers each Friday to students who made comments throughout the week.
• Variable interval reinforcement is applied when the learner receives reinforcement after a random amount of time has passed. For example, a teacher may give out stickers on a random day each week to students who have actively participated in classroom discussion.
• Fixed ratio reinforcement is applied when the learner receives reinforcement after the behavior occurs a set number of times. For example, a teacher may reward a student with a sticker after the student contributes five meaningful comments.
• Variable ratio reinforcement is applied when the learner receives reinforcement after the behavior occurs a random number of times. For example, a teacher may reward a student with a sticker after the student contributes three to ten meaningful comments.

Skinner experimented using different reinforcement schedules in order to analyze which schedules were most effective in various situations. In general, he found that ratio schedules are more resistant to extinction than interval schedules, and variable schedules are more resistant than fixed schedules, making the variable ratio reinforcement schedule the most effective.

Skinner was a strong supporter of education and influenced various principles on the manners of educating. He believed there were two reasons for education: to teach both verbal and nonverbal behavior and to interest students in continually acquiring more knowledge. Based on his concept of reinforcement, Skinner taught that students learn best when taught by positive reinforcement and that students should be engaged in the process, not simply passive listeners. He hypothesized that students who are taught via punishment learn only how to avoid punishment. Although Skinner’s doubtful view on punishment is important to the discipline in education, finding other ways to discipline are very difficult, so punishment is still a big part in the education system.

Skinner points out that teachers need to be better educated in teaching and learning strategies (Skinner, 1968). He addresses the main reasons why learning is not successful. This biggest reasons teachers fail to educate their students are because they are only teaching through showing and they are not reinforcing their students enough. Skinner gave examples of steps teachers should take to teach properly. A few of these steps include the following:

• Ensure the learner clearly understands the action or performance.
• Separate the task into small steps starting at simple and working up to complex.
• Let the learner perform each step, reinforcing correct actions.
• Regulate so that the learner is always successful until finally the goal is reached.
• Change to random reinforcement to maintain the learner’s performance (Skinner, 1968).

Criticisms and Limitations

While there are elements of behaviorism that are still accepted and practiced, there are criticisms and limitations of behaviorism. Principles of behaviorism can help us to understand how humans are affected by associated stimuli, rewards, and punishments, but behaviorism may oversimplify the complexity of human learning. Behaviorism assumes humans are like animals, ignores the internal cognitive processes that underlie behavior, and focuses solely on changes in observable behavior.

From a behaviorist perspective, the role of the learner is to be acted upon by the teacher-controlled environment. The teacher’s role is to manipulate the environment to shape behavior. Thus, the student is not an agent in the learning process, but rather an animal that instinctively reacts to the environment. The teacher provides input (stimuli) and expects predictable output (the desired change in behavior). More recent learning theories, such as constructivism, focus much more on the role of the student in actively constructing knowledge.

Behaviorism also ignores internal cognitive processes, such as thoughts and feelings. Skinner’s radical behaviorism takes some of these processes into account insofar as they can be measured but does not really try to understand or explain the depth of human emotion. Without the desire to understand the reason behind the behavior, the behavior is not understood in a deeper context and reduces learning to the stimulus-response model. The behavior is observed, but the underlying cognitive processes that cause the behavior are not understood. The thoughts, emotions, conscious state, social interactions, prior knowledge, past experiences, and moral code of the student are not taken into account. In reality, these elements are all variables that need to be accounted for if human behavior is to be predicted and understood accurately. Newer learning theories, such as cognitivism, focus more on the roles of emotion, social interaction, prior knowledge, and personal experience in the learning process.

Another limitation to behaviorism is that learning is only defined as a change in observable behavior. Behaviorism operates on the premise that knowledge is only valuable if it results in modified behavior. Many believe that the purpose of learning and education is much more than teaching everyone to conform to a specific set of behaviors. For instance, Foshay (1991) argues that “the one continuing purpose of education, since ancient times, has been to bring people to as full as realization as possible of what it is to be a human being” (p. 277). Behaviorism’s focus on behavior alone may not achieve the purpose of education, because humans are more than just their behavior.

Behaviorism is a study of how controlled changes to a subject’s environment affect the subject’s observable behavior. Teachers control the environment and use a system of rewards and punishments in an effort to encourage the desired behaviors in the subject. Learners are acted upon by their environment, forming associations between stimuli and changing behavior based on those associations.

There are principles of behaviorism that are still accepted and practiced today, such as the use of rewards and punishments to shape behavior. However, behaviorism may oversimplify the complexity of human learning; downplay the role of the student in the learning process; disregard emotion, thoughts, and inner processes; and view humans as being as simple as animals.

Engelhart, M. D. (1970). [Review of Measurement and evaluation in psychology and education]. Journal of Educational Measurement, 7(1), 53–55. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1433880

Foshay, A. W. (1991). The curriculum matrix: Transcendence and mathematics. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 6(4), 277-293. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/jcs/jcs_1991summer_foshay.pdf

Harris, B. (1979). Whatever happened to Little Albert? American Psychologist, 34(2), 151-160. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/8144115/Whatever_happened_to_Little_Albert

Hauser, L. (1997). Behaviorism. In J. Fieser & D. Bradley (Eds.), Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/behavior/

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex (G. V. Anrep, Trans.). London, England: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Pavlov/

Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York, NY: Appleton-Century. Retrieved from http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/The%20Behavior%20of%20Organisms%20-%20BF%20Skinner.pdf

Skinner, B. F. (1968). The technology of teaching. East Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Thorndike/Animal/chap5.htm

Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158-177. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/views.htm

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1-14. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm

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Examples of Behaviorism in Psychology

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Behaviorism is a theory of human psychology that suggests that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. According to this approach to psychology, it is our interactions with our environments that shape what we learn, who we are, and how we act.

Examples of behaviorism include theories such as classical conditioning and operant conditioning, as well as techniques like token economies and behavior modeling.

Behaviorists believe that people are shaped by their interactions with their environment. They emphasize the importance of observable behaviors and believe changing a person’s environment will change how they act, think, and feel.

Behaviorism rose to prominence early in the 20th century. During that time, psychologists strove to make psychology a more scientific and empirical science.

This article covers examples of behaviorism, how it works, and how it is still used today. It also discusses the history of behaviorism and its contributions to psychology.

Table of Contents

What Is Behaviorism?

At its most basic, behaviorism can be defined as the study of observable behavior. The central idea of behaviorism is that all actions are acquired through conditioning processes.

• Behaviorism suggests that psychology should be the science of observable behavior . Instead of focusing on what goes on inside the mind, the behaviorists suggested that psychology should focus on the environmental influences that cause behaviors.
• Behaviorism suggests that learning and behavior are the result of stimulus-response associations . Behaviors can be explained by looking at these learned associations rather than focusing on internal events inside the human mind.

The behaviorist influence was stronger during the middle half of the 20th century than it is today. However, behavioral concepts and theories remain important in fields such as education and psychotherapy.

The History of Behaviorism

Earlier schools of thought in psychology focused on either identifying the structures of the human mind (structuralism) or understanding how the mind functioned (functionalism). The behaviorists, however, felt that psychology needed to focus only on what could be observed to become a more scientific discipline.

Influenced by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, psychologist John B. Watson began using the concept of classical conditioning to describe how and why people learn. Watson felt that this conditioning process could explain much of human behavior.

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own special world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, beggarman and thief.” John B. Watson

While most experts would disagree with Watson’s statement, many of the early, staunch behaviorists believed that conditioning could explain all learning and behavioral responses.

Modern behaviorists recognize that not all human thought, learning, and behaviors can be accounted for by the conditioning process, yet Watson’s approach had a significant impact on the field of psychology.

Behaviorism helped establish psychology as a more experimental and scientific discipline.

Types of Behaviorism

Behaviorism can be divided into two main types: methodological behaviorism and radical behaviorism.

• Methodological behaviorism is focused on studying and measuring observable behavior. This type of behaviorism suggests that you don’t need to look at the internal mental states or processes in order to understand behaviors. Instead, you simply need to scientifically study the behavior itself.
• Radical behaviorism suggests that all behavior is the result of conditioning. This includes behaviors that are influenced by external stimuli as well as internal ones. This approach incorporates the role of mental events and treats them the same as behaviors that can be observed and understood.

Examples of Behaviorism

Two of the most important concepts to emerge from behaviorism were classical conditioning and operant conditioning .

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a learning process in which an association is formed between a naturally occurring unconditioned stimulus and a previously neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response . Once this association has been made, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of invoking a conditioned response .

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a learning process that involves reinforcing or punishing a behavior. Reinforcement makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future, whereas punishment makes it less likely that the behavior will be repeated.

There are two types of reinforcement that can be used to increase the likelihood of a behavior:

• Positive reinforcement involves introducing a positive outcome that increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again in the future.
• Negative reinforcement involves removing an unpleasant outcome in order to increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur again.

There are also two different types of punishment that can be used to decrease or weaken responses:

• Positive punishment involves adding an aversive stimulus to decrease a behavior.
• Negative punishment involves taking away a desirable stimulus to decrease a behavior.

To distinguish between reinforcement and punishment , remember that reinforcement increases a behavior while punishment decreases it. You can also distinguish between negative reinforcement and punishment by remembering that negative reinforcement removes an unpleasant outcome, while punishment adds an aversive outcome or takes something pleasant away.

Examples of Behaviorism Concepts

Other key concepts in behaviorism include:

• Shaping : Shaping is an example of behaviorism that involves rewarding progressively closer approximations toward a goal until the target behavior is acquired.
• Stimulus generalization : Stimulus generalization happens when a learner applies what they have learned with regard to one stimulus to a similar stimulus.
• Acquisition : Acquisition is an early part of the learning process when a response is first acquired.
• Extinction : Extinction involves removing the reinforcement or consequences for a behavior, which then causes a response to weaken and eventually be eliminated.

Important Thinkers in Behaviorism

There were a number of key people who shaped the history and practice of behaviorism. Some of these thinkers include:

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who first discovered and described the conditioning reflex.

John B. Watson

John B. Watson is often described as the “father of behaviorism.” While influential, his work was controversial and posed numerous ethical issues. He conducted the Little Albert experiment, a classic psychological experiment .

B.F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner was an influential thinker responsible for introducing operant conditioning and schedules of reinforcement .

Edward Thorndike

Edward Thorndike introduced a psychological principle known as the law of effect . According to this principle, responses that produce a satisfying effect are more likely to occur again in the future. Conversely, responses that produce undesirable effects become less likely to occur again in the future.

Clark Hull was a psychologist who utilized drive theory to explain learning and motivation. According to this theory, deprivation creates needs and drives, which then lead to behavior. Because this behavior is goal-oriented, the behavior itself is important for survival.

Important Events in Behaviorism

• 1863 – Ivan Sechenov’s Reflexes of the Brain was published. Sechenov introduced the concept of inhibitory responses in the central nervous system.
• 1900 – Ivan Pavlov began studying the salivary response and other reflexes.
• 1913 – John Watson’s Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It was published. The article outlined the many of the main points of behaviorism.
• 1920 – Watson and assistant Rosalie Rayner conducted the famous “Little Albert” experiment.
• 1943 – Clark Hull’s Principles of Behavior was published.
• 1948 – B.F. Skinner published Walden II in which he described a utopian society founded upon behaviorist principles.
• 1959 – Noam Chomsky published his criticism of Skinner’s behaviorism, “Review of Verbal Behavior.”
• 1971 – B.F. Skinner published his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity , in which he argued that free will is an illusion.

What Impact Did Behaviorism Have?

Behaviorism was a major force in psychology during the first half of the 20th century and played an important role in establishing psychology as a science rather than a philosophical pursuit.

While behaviorism is not the dominating force that it once was, it still plays an important role in contemporary psychology.

Examples of Behaviorism in Therapy

A number of important therapeutic techniques have been derived from behavioral principles. Some examples of behaviorism in therapy include:

• Token economies
• Aversion therapy
• Behavior analysis
• Systematic desensitization

Behaviorism’s greatest contributions to the field of psychology may be these many practical applications. Such techniques help people learn new behaviors and eliminate unwanted or unhealthy behaviors.

Limitations of Behaviorism

However, it is important to note that the behavioral school of thought does have some weaknesses.

It ignores internal states : Behaviorism can be helpful in understanding certain types of learning, but it leaves out important elements such as emotions, moods, and thoughts.

It doesn’t explain all types of learning : It also does not explain learning that take place without association, reinforcement, or punishment.

Behaviorism is not as dominant today as it was during the middle of the 20th-century. However, it still remains an influential force in psychology.

Outside of psychology, animal trainers, parents, teachers, and many others make use of basic behavioral principles to help teach new behaviors and discourage unwanted ones.

Behaviorism Study Questions

Who was the founder of behaviorism.

John B. Watson is generally regarded as the founder of behaviorism. Although he made no claims to be the founder of this school of thought and his academic career was relatively short-lived, he made important contributions to behaviorism that helped establish behaviorist positions and theories.

“Watson deserves the fame he has received, since he first made a strong case for a natural science (behaviorist) approach and, importantly, he made people pay attention to it,” suggested John C. Malone in an article published in the journal The Behavior Analyst.

What is radical behaviorism?

Radical behaviorism was the perspective that behavior should be the sole focus of psychological science. B.F. Skinner, the best-known behaviorist along with Watson, was a proponent of radical behaviorism.

He acknowledged the existence of internal mental events such as thoughts and feelings but believed that it was better to study only behaviors that could be observed.

What was the Little Albert experiment?

The so-called “Little Albert” experiment was a study conducted by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. In the experiment, they used classical conditioning to teach an infant (the eponymous Albert) to fear a white rat by pairing the sight of the animal with a loud, scary sound.

The child not only learned to fear the white rat; he also generalized the fear and was afraid of similar white objects.

Malone J. C. (2014). Did John B. Watson really “found” behaviorism?.  The Behavior Analyst ,  37 (1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-014-0004-3

Molteni, J. (2013). Behaviorism. In: Volkmar, F.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders . Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_1021

Pavlov IP. The Work of the Digestive Glands. London: Griffin; 1897.

Phillips, D.C. (2012). Behaviorism and Behaviorist Learning Theories. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning . Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_750

Skinner BF.  Beyond Freedom and Dignity . New York: Knopf; 1971,

Watson JB. Behaviorism . New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers; 1930.

Watson JB. Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review . 1913;20:158-178.

Behaviorism, Key Terms, History, Theorists, Criticisms and Implications for Teaching

Behaviorism is a psychological theory based around understanding observable behavior. The theory posits that adjusting or manipulating the environment of the subject will cause them to react in observable ways. Behaviorists consider the subject to be passive, and learning being something that happens to them, rather than an active participant in learning. Behaviorism has a role in teaching in aiding teachers to understand how the environment affects learners’ behavior as well as a behavior management tool ( 1 ).

Key terms and definitions

• Classical conditioning : Learning through associating environmental stimuli with a particular behavior. This type of conditioning causes behavior to occur when the associated stimulus is present, regardless of if the original stimulus is or not. For example, a child might associate the word test with an unpleasant experience and exhibit avoidance behavior. Or the word chocolate with excited behavior like smiling and bouncing. In these cases, the word is the associated stimulus that produces an observable behavioral response, not the actual stimulus itself. Classical conditioning associates an undesired or desired outcome with a particular stimulus, which is usually neutral.
• Operant conditioning : Learning from the consequences of behavior. The addition or removal of stimuli will result in either a desired or undesired outcome for the subject. The outcome for the subject is called reinforcement or punishment, which can happen through either positive or negative means. The subject adjusts their behavior to either avoid the undesired outcome or bring about the desired outcome. Operant conditioning needs to be repetitive to be effective, as without reminders of the consequences for behavior, the behavior and related associations will go extinct. There are several examples of this in the next few sections.
• Punishment vs Reinforcement : These two terms are part of operant conditioning. They refer to the outcome for the subject of the process of conditioning. Reinforcement is a desired outcome for the subject, while punishment is an undesired outcome. Subsequently, reinforcement will usually encourage behavior by providing the desired outcome, while punishment will usually discourage behavior by providing an undesired outcome. For example, reinforcement can encourage behavior such as sitting nicely, because you will get told “well done” (desired outcome) while punishment might discourage behavior such as playing up because you will get told to sit at the teacher’s feet (undesired outcome).
• Negative vs Positive : In the context of behaviorism, negative means the removal of stimuli, and positive means the addition of stimuli. Because negative is often associated with “bad” and positive is often associated with “good” these terms are frequently misunderstood when used for behaviorist principles. Thinking of the terms as addition (positive) and subtraction (negative) symbols can help.
• Positive Reinforcement : Taking into account the previous discussion of these terms, positive reinforcement is the addition of stimuli to create a desired outcome for the subject. An example of positive reinforcement is praise or stickers. The stimuli of praise or stickers are introduced producing a desired outcome for the subject (they feel good). The result is that the behavior that caused the desired outcome of the introduction of stimulus increases.
• Positive Punishment : This refers to the addition of stimuli to create an undesired outcome for the subject. An example might be to write lines, the introduction of the stimuli of writing lines creates an undesired outcome of boredom and annoyance. The result might be that the learner no longer engages in the behavior that resulted in the undesired outcome.
• Negative reinforcement : The most frequently misunderstood concept in behaviorist theory, negative reinforcement does not refer to undesirable stimuli, but rather the removal of stimuli. Stimuli may be viewed as either good or bad by the subject. Negative reinforcement often comes as a response to undesired behavior in a subject, that inadvertently reinforces the behavior. An example might be the child throws the chair across the room and is sent to the principal’s office. Being removed from the classroom means the student does not have to complete a test. This is a desired outcome for the student, resulting in them repeating the behavior of chair-throwing next time there is work they do not wish to do. In this example, the stimulus is undesired work, and being sent to the principal removed that stimulus, creating negative reinforcement( 6 ).
• Negative Punishment : The term negative, as mentioned, refers to the subtraction or removal of stimuli, while punishment refers to an undesired outcome. Therefore negative punishment refers to the subtraction of stimuli to create an undesired outcome. An example might be being kept in at recess, the removal of the stimuli of playing outside with friends creates an undesired outcome. This should discourage the behavior that caused them to be kept inside such as not completing work or disrupting other class members.
• Radical Behaviorism : A development of behaviorism created by Skinner to attempt to bring the concept of internal processes to the theory. Early psychologists did not believe that internal processes influenced learning and that all learning occurred because of how the environment around the subject was controlled, which could be measured in observable behavior. However, radical behaviorism suggests that internal processes are important and can also be measured by observable behavior.
• Continuous Reinforcement : Earning the same reinforcement after every same action performed, such as a sticker on every correct answer.
• Fixed Interval Reinforcement : Receiving the reinforcement at the same time, every time. This might be a game every Friday for the learners who have consistently completed a particular task all week.
• Variable Interval Reinforcement : Reinforcement occurs at intermittent times at random. Such as praise and a sticker when a student sits quietly every 3-7 days, and at least once every week.
• Fixed Ratio Reinforcement : Learners get reinforcement when they engage in the behavior a set number of times. Such as when a learner receives a sticker for behaving a particular way during each learning session of the day.
• Variable Ratio Reinforcement : Learners receive reinforcement occurs when the learner engages in behavior a random number of times. For example, a learner may get the answer correct and receive a sticker every 3-7 times.

Skinner’s work can help educators to know the best times to give reinforcement to best avoid extinction. His experiments have revealed which of the reinforcement schedules are most effective. Continuousness is good when setting up habits, then retreating to other schedules is best. Both variable and ratio were revealed to be stronger than fixed or continuous, with variable ratio reinforcement being the least likely to result in the extinction of the desired behavior.

History and key psychologists in the evolution of behaviorism

Behaviorism as a fledgling concept first appeared in 1887, when Ivan Pavlov performed his famous experiment with dogs. The actual term Behaviorism was coined by John Watson in 1913 when he presented a paper that combined his own work with that of other psychologists to create a cohesive theory. There have been four major psychologists who were fundamental in the development of the theory, each building on each other’s work. Behaviorism dominated psychological thinking for several decades. While behaviorism is no longer as widely cited and used, it remains a dominant theory that underpins much of psychological thinking.

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ’s work was concerned with understanding classical conditioning. He completed a series of experiments to understand how environmental stimuli could be manipulated to adjust behavior. He came to conclusions about how the brain learns in relation to his observations.

In his most famous experiments, he used a bell to let dogs know they were about to receive a treat. His research was originally concerned with the production of saliva to aid digestion, but he noticed the dogs salivating in anticipation of their feeding schedule and became interested in what was happening. He began to measure the volume of saliva the dogs produced when an aural stimulus – a bell – was presented. He then measured the saliva produced with the addition of food. Within a few repetitions, the dogs associated the bell with the expectation of food and would produce saliva whether the food was present or not. Pavlov concluded that you could pair neutral stimuli with desired stimuli to create a particular outcome of observable behavior. Pavlov called this association of stimuli to a particular behavior conditional reflexes. He created the stimulus-response model, concluding that the brain learned in response to stimuli, by creating associations between those stimuli and particular behaviors.

Pavlov went on to see how adjusting the parameters of the study, such as length of time between the bell and the treat, or how randomization of whether the food was offered, affected the response to stimuli.

Pavlov’s work contributed the following influences to the theory of behaviorism:

• Behavior change stems from environmental influence
• Learning will be exhibited in an observable behavior change.
• All behavior comes from the formula stimulus-response.

Edward Thorndike

Edward Lee Thorndike was another important part of the development of this theory. His research formed the basis of understanding operant conditioning. He also created a learning model called the Law of Effect.

Thorndike performed experiments on animals to measure how long it took them to learn to solve a puzzle ie: press a button or pull a lever, to produce the desired outcome – getting to food. Thorndike observed that through practice the animal learned which behavior caused the desired outcome and so performed such behaviors more quickly.

From his experiments, he concluded that behavior that produces desired outcomes is likely to be repeated, while behavior that produces undesired outcomes will decrease over time and even go extinct. Thorndike called this the Law of Effect. His work is still influential in understanding behavior and learning today.

Thorndike also founded the field of Educational Psychology, publishing a book on it in 1903. He worked to apply his research to the field of teaching and was influential in reexamining the way that learning and punishment were viewed in the classroom setting.

Thorndike’s work contributed the following influences to the theory of behaviorism:

• Specific behavior will form as a result of consistent reinforcement.
• Both negative and positive outcomes can be influenced by changes in the environment.
• Behavior that consistently results in an undesired outcome for the subject will go extinct, while behavior that consistently results in the desired outcome will increase.

John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson is credited with collecting the work of other psychologists and creating the term behaviorism. Watson was focused on applying scientific foundations to the field of psychology, stating that behavior had to be both observable and measurable. The internal world of humans cannot be observed or measured, and therefore must not be used to understand behavior. He believed that psychology should focus on controllable and observable behavior to be taken seriously as a scientific field. While Watson’s conclusions about internal processes being irrelevant are now widely disregarded, his efforts are considered to be instrumental in the movement towards psychology being taken seriously within scientific academia.

Watson was the first psychologist to use a human subject to test ideas of classical conditioning. Little Albert, a 9 month old infant, was subjected to loud noises in association with animal stimuli until he produced a fear response to the animal whether the loud noise was present or not. His work with Little Albert is ethically questionable by today’s standards. The work would also not be considered scientifically viable as the conditions of the experiment did not meet modern expectations of a laboratory setting.

Watson contributed the following to the theory of behaviorism:

• Brought the work of other important psychologists together under an umbrella theory of Behaviorism.
• Further understanding on how the theory would bring psychology closer to being a scientific field.
• Learning must be observable and measurable, internal processes were irrelevant as they are impossible to measure or observe.

B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner ’s work continued to develop the field of behaviorism and attempted to broaden the definition of the theory. He created the concept of radical behaviorism and defined reinforcement principles, creating the model reinforcement schedules.

B.F. Skinner is considered the father of Radical Behaviorism. According to Skinner radical behaviorism is “the philosophy of a science of behavior treated as a subject matter in its own right apart from internal explanations, mental or physiological” (1989, p. 122 2 ).

Skinner rejected the notion that internal processes were irrelevant to learning, and examined how thoughts and feelings might be analyzed scientifically. His conclusions were that behavior was a reflection of internal processes and therefore could be analyzed. The effort to consider internal thoughts and feelings became known as radical behaviorism, and the application of these ideas is widely used today in applied behavior analysis.

Skinner worked to understand better the underlying reinforcement patterns that influenced behavior. He identified different kinds of reinforcement as mentioned in the definitions section of this essay.

Skinner was also passionate about education and believed that teachers needed to have a good understanding of how learning works. He believed learners needed to be viewed as active participants in learning instead of passive.

Skinner’s contributions to behaviorism continue to be the most widely used today:

• A better understanding of how internal processes contributed to the theory.
• Greater understanding of operant conditioning, including reinforcement schedules.
• Practical application of behaviorist theory to classroom and education settings.

Criticisms of behaviorism

There are several criticisms and observed limitations of behaviorism theory. While these concepts and principles predict observable behavioral responses in humans, internal cognitive processes are largely discounted. Further, behaviorism defines learning as observable behavior and only values learning resulting in modified behavior, which is only one aspect of learning. Learning takes place within a complex set of criteria and behaviorism reduces these processes to observable cause and effect.

Behaviorists theorize that learners are passive and that the teacher is in total control of the learning that occurs based on the environment they create, however, this removes the agency of the learner to engage meaningfully in their own learning. The expectation is that the learner will behave in an expected way in response to particular stimuli created by the teacher, and they are simply vessels into which learning is poured ( 4 ).

While Skinner attempted to remedy some of the issues above with his radical behaviorism theory, his attempts to place concepts like emotion, thoughts and conscious state into measurable criteria falls woefully short. The lack of account for internal processes means that reasons behind particular behavior are at best oversimplified and at worst overlooked. Unfortunately, trying to measure behavior without accounting for underlying reasons will not adequately aid the understanding of human behavior.

However, while behaviorism is now considered to be largely outdated, many aspects of the theory are still in active use or underpin current psychological concepts and beliefs.

Motivation, learning, and other implications for teaching

Behaviorism believes providing the correct environment, coupled with repetition of skills and knowledge tasks will cause learning to happen, and this is how education was managed for decades. While this is now less prevalent in the classroom setting, applying behaviorism in the classroom is still relevant from several perspectives. The teacher has the role of filling the learner with knowledge, behaviorism helps with this in different ways.

Creating an environment that has the correct stimuli to condition a state of learning is the behaviorist’s goal. Positive reinforcement is useful to modify behavior, and becoming familiar with Skinner’s reinforcement schedules so you can utilize the best methods in any given scenario is useful. Teachers can use this understanding to create an environment in which reinforcement works to the teacher’s and learner’s best advantage ( 7 ).

Educators can use behaviorist theory to improve student motivation. All learners want to feel good, and so using reinforcement schedules to provide those experiences will motivate students to adjust their behavior. As a behavioral management tool, behaviorism is still very relevant. Using positive reinforcement and reinforcement schedules to motivate children to try hard and do their best is one of the most useful concepts from the theory.

Using the methods outlined by behaviorists tends to be more useful for learning that can be easily assessed or monitored through observing learner behavior. Route learning or “skill and drill” memorisation style learning is a common learning style best suited to this theory. The emphasis on prizes, good grades and praise are useful for these units of learning. Using behaviorism in the classroom as a learning tool is good for scientific or formulaic learning such as times tables and languages that rely on being able to memorize a lot of information ( 3 ).

Useful tools and systems outlined by skinner include:

• Provide opportunities for students to understand the task expected of them
• Start at the bottom of the ladder – break the learning into easily achievable stages that learners can achieve more easily.
• Use repetition to help the learner build on previous learning and scaffold them to the next level.
• Use reinforcement schedules to help learners know they are on the right path.
• Start with continuous reinforcement, then as learner mastery improves, move towards other schedules to help the learner maintain the learning.

It is worth noting that the lessons that need more comprehension and deeper learning are less suited to these methods. For this kind of learning, behaviorism theory is best for use in motivating students to engage with their learning, rather than as a learning method, for which other learning theories such as social cognitive theory and constructionism are worth exploring ( 5 ).

Teaching Strategies that support Behaviorist Learning Theory:

• Gang-based learning.
• Question and answer.
• Positive reinforcement.
• Competency-based instruction.
• Gamification.
• Direct instruction.

While many aspects of behaviorism are now widely discredited, the underlying principles and observations of learning are still in wide use today. The concept of reinforcement schedules are used in many learning and teaching models , and understanding how students react and respond to environmental stimuli and how that might impact future learning and behavior is still valuable. Understanding the development of the theory and how thinking around these ideas evolved is useful to understanding the theory’s usefulness in a classroom setting, but it must be remembered that as a learning system, the theory is best suited to learning that requires memorization of facts rather than deep comprehension learning. As a behavior management technique, much of the theory is still useful to educators in the modern classroom.

References:

• Watson, J. B., & Kimble, G. A. (2017). Behaviorism. Routledge.
• Skinner, B. F. (1989). Recent issues in the analysis of behavior. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
• Moore, J. (2011). Behaviorism. The Psychological Record, 61(3), 449-463.
• Staddon, J. (2014). The new behaviorism. Psychology Press.
• Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. J. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: on the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological bulletin, 126(6), 925.
• Baum, W. M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. John Wiley & Sons.
• Holland, J. G. (1978). BEHAVIORISM: PART OF THE PROBLEM OR PART OF THE SOLUTION? 1. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11(1), 163-174.
• Constructivist Learning Theory
• Theory of Moral Development – Piaget
• Social Learning Theory: Albert Bandura

I am a professor of Educational Technology. I have worked at several elite universities. I hold a PhD degree from the University of Illinois and a master's degree from Purdue University.

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17 Behaviorism Examples

Behaviorism is a psychological theory of learning based on the idea that learning occurs through a process of conditioning of behaviors.

This approach focuses on the role of environmental factors in learning, rather than the role of internal cognition (thinking and contemplating – see: constructivist theory ).

There are two main types of conditioning associated with behaviorism

• Classical Conditioning: This is where an association is made between two stimuli, such as associating a bell with lunch time.
• Operant Conditioning: Developed by B.F. Skinner, this theory argues that we can change students’ behaviors through consequences, such as rewards, or punishments. For example, if a student gives a correct response, they get a reward, which will increase their likelihood of giving that response next time.

Behaviorism Examples

1. Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning involves teaching a student to associate two stimuli with one another. It does not require rewards and punishments, but rather repetition of an association.

This was famously demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in his Pavlov’s dog experiment, where he taught dogs to salivate in response to the sound of a bell. In the classroom, we might see it when the teacher walks into the classroom and the students instinctively go silent.

Through this experiment, Pavlov demonstrated that the dog had learned to associate the bell with food, causing a physical reaction in the dog.

There are several terms here to help explain what happened:

• Unconditioned stimulus : Food naturally causes salivation
• Conditioned stimulus : The bell, being associated with food, now also causes salivation
• Unconditioned response : Salivation in response to food
• Conditioned response : Salivation in response to a bell

Classical Conditioning Example

You may notice that a particularly scary teacher – say, the principal – will cause the whole class to go dead silent when they walk into the classroom. There’s no reward or punishment involved in this process, but rather, an association is developed between the principal and the need to be silent, because we learn over time that whenever we see the school principal, it’s usually time to be quiet and listen for an important announcement.

2. Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning, developed by B.F. Skinner, is about learning through rewards ( positive reinforcement ) and punishments ( negative reinforcement ).

For instance, if a student is rewarded with praise or a good grade for studying hard (behavior), they are likely to repeat that behavior in the future.

Conversely, if a child touches a hot stove (behavior) and gets burned (negative consequence), they learn not to touch the stove again.

Operant conditioning is very useful for teachers because it demonstrates that reward and punishments lead to rapid acquisition of the desired behaviors, such as the correct answer to a question.

Example of Operant Conditioning

Operant can be very useful in teaching times tables through rote learning – 5 x 5 = 25 leads to a reward! However, the weakness is that the student may not actually mean that 5 x 5 means “five groups of five objects”, meaning learning has been rather shallow and the child hasn’t obtained true comprehension.

Shaping involves slowly changing behavior over time by reinforcing behaviors that are closer and closer to the target behavior. This is also known as successive approximation.

We might, for example, celebrate a language learner’s success in using simple past tense before moving onto more complex, but often more natural, past continuous tense.

Successive approximations are also often used in the process of treating phobias. If a person has fear of heights, we wouldn’t take them to the roof of the nearest skyscraper. Rather, we might start them on a 2nd story building, then a 3rd, and so on, until they finally reach those higher heights.

Example of Shaping

If you’re training a dog to roll over, you might start by rewarding the dog for lying down, then for rolling onto its side, and finally for completing a full roll. Each step is an approximation towards the final desired behavior.

4. Extinction

Extinction refers to the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of a learned behavior. In other words, the response has ‘gone extinct’.

This tends to happen when a reward or punishment that was previously associated with a behavior is no longer provided. Over time, the association between the behavior and the reward or punishment breaks.

Example of Extinction

A child used to throw a tantrum in a store because they knew it would get them a toy. But the parent finally grew a spine and stopped buying the toy, despite the tantrums. After a while, the tantrum behavior eventually stopped, because the child stopped associating tantrums with getting their own way.

5. Observational Learning (Social Learning)

Observational learning is a progression of behaviorism that introduces the idea we learn not only through direct reward and punishment, but also by observing others.

For example, if a child watches a sibling receive praise for doing chores, the child may also start doing chores in the hope of receiving similar praise.

Developed by Albert Bandura, this type of learning is considered to be partly behaviorism, but also partly its own theory. It does involve a form of conditioning – the behavior is learned (conditioned) through observation of consequences. However, it also introduces the idea that learning can occur vicariously .

Observational Learning Example

In the famous Bobo doll experiment, Bandura split children into two groups. One group observed an adult acting lovingly toward a doll. The other group observed an adult acting aggressively toward a doll. Then, when the children were allowed to play with the doll, Bandura observed that the children mimicked the adults they observed. This demonstrated that the children had learned behaviors through observation alone, with no direct instruction.

6. Token Economies

A token economy is a behavior modification technique that uses rewards (tokens) as reinforcers to shape behavior. The tokens can be exchanged later for other reinforcers that are highly appealing to the recipients.

By reinforcing desired behaviors with tokens, the student is more likely to exhibit that behavior again. This is based on the principles of operant conditioning and has many uses in an educational setting.

Token Economy Example

An example might be a classroom management system where students earn tokens for positive behavior (like completing homework or helping classmates) and can trade them for privileges or treats.

7. Aversion Therapy

This therapeutic method involves pairing an unwanted behavior with discomfort in order to reduce the occurrence of the behavior.

The unpleasant stimulus serves as a deterrent, essentially associating a stimulus with a learned negative consequence, which deters us from going down that path again.

Aversion Therapy Example

A person trying to overcome procrastination might wear a rubber band around their wrist and snap it causing a mild pain each time they catch themselves being unproductive.

8. Habituation

Habituation occurs when a stimulus ceases to provide the same strong response as it once did, due to decreasing sensitivity to the stimulus.

It differs from extinction because the stimulus doesn’t disappear. The stimulus remains, but we become so used to it that our response weakens.

Habituation may happen in the classroom, for example, when a teacher’s teaching style becomes boring to students – the teach will need to mix things up to revive students’ enthusiasm for learning

Habituation Example

People who live under flight paths often don’t even hear planes flying overhead, but their visitors sure do. The sound planes in their environment initially may have distracted the homeowners, but over time they have become so used to the sound that it ceases to distract them anymore.

9. Systematic Desensitization

This is a therapy method used to overcome phobias and other anxiety disorders.

Systematic desensitization involves gradually exposing a person to the feared object or situation in a controlled and safe way, until the fear response is extinguished.

For example, a person with a fear of spiders might first think about spiders, then look at pictures of spiders, then look at a spider in a jar, and finally hold a spider.

Systematic Desensitization Example

Mary Cover Jones famously helped a child named Peter overcome his fear of white rabbits with systematic desensitization. She did this by exposing Peter to the animal while he ate meals. She then slowly brought it closer in each session until it sat in his lap while he ate.

10. Conditioned Emotional Response

This is an emotional response that has been linked to a previously neutral stimulus by association.

It often occurs during traumatic events and is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

For example, if you have had a traumatic experience with a dog in the past, you may become anxious or fearful (emotional response) whenever you see a dog (now a conditioned stimulus).

Conditioned Emotional Response Example

A soldier goes to war and, in the heat of battle, at the scariest moment of his life, he hears loud bangs all around him from bombs. After returning to civilian life, every time he hears fireworks, he has a heightened panic response.

11. Positive Punishment

Positive punishment is an important term in behaviorism but is a bit of a misnomer. The punishment isn’t actually “positive” per se. The word positive in this case means “to add”. We might call this an “added punishment”.

So, positive punishment involves adding an unpleasant consequence after an undesired behavior is exhibited to decrease future responses.

Positive Punishment Example

An example of positive punishment may be giving a class of students an extra 2 minutes of lunchtime detention each time they misbehave, which can decrease the likelihood of misbehavior.

12. Negative Punishment

Negative punishment is the opposite of the above. It’s about removing something pleasurable or desirable as a form of punishment.

So, while positive punishment is about adding something undesirable, negative punishment is about removing something desirable, in order to shape behavior.

Negative Punishment Example

If a teenager comes home after curfew, removing their privilege to use the family car can reduce the likelihood of them breaking curfew again.

13. Discrimination Learning

This concept refers to learning to differentiate between stimuli, such as a dog being able to learn the difference between different commands.

In behaviorism, this will involve reinforcing a behavior in the presence of a certain stimulus, but not others.

This concept also exists in constructivist classrooms , where it’s believed that discrimination occurs through experience and development of conceptualizations – or cognitive schema – in order to establish cognitive equilibrium.

Stimulus Discrimination Example

A dog may learn to sit on command (in response to the word “sit”) but not in response to any other spoken words.

14. Stimulus Generalization

Stimulus generalization occurs when a person or animal starts responding to one stimulus, then multiple stimuli, in a similar manner. They have ‘generalized‘ their response to stimuli.

Scholars have shown that stimuli that are similar to the initial stimulus will evoke a response similar to the original stimulus.

Here, we’re experiencing the opposite of stimulus discrimination, and in fact, it represents the absence of the ability to discriminate between different stimuli.

Stimulus Generalization Example

If a child has been conditioned to fear white dogs, the child might also exhibit fear in the presence of all white animals.

15. Escape Learning

Escape learning is when a person or animal learns to terminate an aversive stimulus by engaging in a specific behavior.

Escape learning was originally demonstrated by B. F. Skinner, using an apparatus known as the Skinner Box, which is essentially a metal cage.

Skinner placed a rat in the Skinner Box. When the floor was electrified, the rat experienced the aversive stimulus. But the rat eventually learned that pressing a lever on the side of the cage would end the electric shock.

Once the rat learned this association, the rat quickly pulled the lever as soon as the shock occurred. In other words, it learned engage in behaviors that help it to escape an aversive sitautions.

Escape Learning Example

A person with social anxiety feels a negative sensation in social situations – generally, heightened stress. They have learned that by feigning sickness, they can get out of the situation. So, whenever they are caught in a social event, they pretend to be sick to quickly escape the aversive stimulus.

16. Premack Principle

Also known as “Grandma’s rule,” this principle states that a more desirable activity can be used effectively as a reinforcer for a less desirable one.

Essentially, the principle involves offering an incentive that will be received once an unpleasurable task is completed.

Students often use this themselves when studying, such as in the pomodoro technique. They promise themselves a break or a treat if they study for a certain amount of time.

Premack Principle Example

Telling a child “If you finish your homework, you can play video games” uses the desirable activity (playing video games) to reinforce the less desirable one (completing homework).

17. Avoidance Learning

This occurs when actions are taken to prevent an aversive stimulus from occurring.

For example, someone might study hard to avoid getting a poor grade, or consistently pay their bills to avoid late fees.

Note that avoidance learning differs from escape learning because avoidance learning pre-emptively avoids a situation before it even comes about, whereas escape learning is about ending an unpleasant experience that is currently occurring.

We can split it into active avoidance learning, where we do something to avoid a situation; and passive avoidance learning, where we actively fail to do something to prevent an eventuality.

Avoidance Learning Example

When a person has learned that they are allergic to soy (aversive stimulus), they will not eat (avoidant behavior) tofu or drink soy milk. This is passive avoidance learning. 

Behaviorism is a central theory in educational psychology. It demonstrates some key drivers in shaping thoughts and behaviors. It can be very powerful and lead to fast behavioral acquisition, but it is often critiqued for its lack of acknowledgement of the role of internal cognitive processes in learning, and often leads to shallow learning where people only learn behaviors rather than the reasoning behind certain concepts, such as knowing that 5 x 5 = 25, but having no idea what it actually means.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Concept of the Theory of Behaviorism in Psychology Analytical Essay

Rationale of why the topic was selected, why this topic is important in the study of psychology of criminal behavior.

The theory of behaviorism tries to explain how human behaviors are molded and the effects that the inborn and social environments have on once behavior; behavior can be defined as a systematic and observable manner of doing things without much of internal mental state consideration, a person’s behavior becomes his habit (Staddon & Cerutti, 2003). According to the theory; there are two main conditioning of human life depending with the situation the person is under, they are:

• Classical conditioning

Under this condition it involves molding of human behavior through naturally occurring stimulus that Is pared to a certain response: with time the neutral stimulus is able to command some response. For example a person who has lived in a place that has war, may have experienced some attacks made by war planes; after the war is over, by hearing the sound of a passing plane, the persons mind has been conditioned to attach the sound with some attacks, he then becomes frightened.

• Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a term used to refer to behavior modification that is attained trough a response-reward system. The major assumption (which happens to be true) is that human beings behavior can be conditioned through a reward system. The reward may be positive, which reinforces a positive behavior, may be negative which discourages a certain negative behavior.

The underlying philosophy of the theory is that animals, human beings included, respond to stimuli. Thus if they can associate a specific stimulate with a certain behavior, and then they are likely to avoid or repeat the behavior in future.

In social and political theory the trends and systems of human behavior is an important element that cannot be ignored, the way human being behave and what motivates them behave the way they do are important areas of intervention for social scientists.

The topic of behaviorism becomes important as the policy makers seek to learn societal dynamics as well as how people behave and how the behavior can be molded for the benefit of the parties involved. In social movements, people’s behavior can be conditioned to give a certain impression or express their views in a particular manner; other than on public level, the topic is important to understand the behavior of others as well as behavior changes (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009).

Some psychologists have argued that criminology is a behavior learnt, reinforced and developed like any other behavior; with the study of behaviorism, policy makers and criminologists are able to understand why there exists a certain trend in the community, it is an important topic to understand crime and how it is developed as a behavior in people’s life.

The idea of behaviorism is the approach taken by crime fighters and punishers of offenders; it assists them know the right intervention and the best punishments that can be given to offenders to deter them from committing crime. The thought of the suffering that is likely to come give result to a certain behavior that is mostly keeping away from crime.

Using the theory of behaviorism, psychologists are able to learn different method through which they can understand the world and different segments of society; they can have answers why crime is more predominant to a certain area, thus they are able to offer sound recommendations on the best crime prevention methods to the authority’s concerned (Feud & Strachey, 1976).

Feud, S., & Strachey, J. (1976). The complete psychological work of Sigmund freud . New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Olson, M. ,& Hergenhahn, B.R. (2009). An Introduction to Theories of Learning, Eighth Edition . New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Staddon, J., & Cerutti, D. (2003). OPERANT CONDITIONING. Annual Review of Psychology, 54 (1), 115. Retrieved from Business Source Complete

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• Towards Understanding Behaviorism School of Psychology
• Behaviorism Definition
• Behaviorism in Development of Psychology
• Behaviorism and Its Impact on Psychology
• Classical and Operant Conditioning
• Phobia in Operant and Classical Conditioning
• Impact of Operant Conditioning on Child Development
• Perspectives of Behaviorism by Watson, Skinner, and Tolman
• Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning
• Behaviorism as Theory of Character
• Re-entry collateral consequences on education and housing
• Concept of the Assessing the Competency in Trial
• Battered Women Syndrome
• The Phenomenon of Knowledge Acquisition
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment

Introduction to Behaviorism

Presented by Joe Tise, PhD, Educational Psychology & Senior Education Researcher at CSEdResearch.org

At least surface-level familiarity with Pavlov’s experiments and principles of classical and operant conditioning have become almost ubiquitous among the general public. What many may not know, however, is that classical and operant conditioning are the two primary Behaviorist theories of learning. To a behaviorist, only observable behavior is worthy (or even possible) of scientific study. From this philosophy stems the behaviorist definition of learning: a relatively permanent change in behavior that is caused by experience. Behaviorist theories of learning exclude any attempts to examine cognition or cognitive processes because they are not directly observable.

Operant conditioning still relies on the mechanism of association, but accounts for novel (i.e., not innate) behavior. Indeed, operant conditioning is at the heart of nearly all animal training (e.g., dogs, show animals) and has real-world applications for classroom management. For example, a teacher may reward students with a small toy if they participate in class and may punish students (e.g., by issuing a demerit) for acting out. If this reinforcement and/or punishment is successful and the student’s behavior changes, the behaviorist would say the behavior change is evidence of learning. Although purely Behaviorist research studies are less common today than they were 60-70 years ago, elements of Behaviorism are still prevalent in some fields and sub-disciplines, including game-based learning (e.g., though badges, scoring) (Coskun, 2019; Hulsbosch et al., 2023; Leeder, 2022)

There are several strengths of behaviorist theories of learning.

• First, research has shown that behaviorist conceptions of learning are generalizable to not just multiple cultures, but indeed a wide variety of animals. That is, learning by association and reinforcement/punishment is not uniquely human, and therefore behaviorist theories of learning are by far the most generalizable.
• And since behaviorists study only what can be observed directly (i.e., behavior), behaviorist theories are arguably the best-positioned to achieve replicability—a known problem in the psychology fields (Open Science Collaboration, 2015).
• Behaviorist principles are directly applicable to the classroom via classroom management techniques. Any experienced K-12 teacher will tell you that classroom management is a top priority, and there is ample opportunity to apply behaviorism throughout the instructional process.
• Behaviorism arose as a direct counter to eugenic philosophies, and therefore was one of the first DEI-minded approaches to psychological/educational research. To this effect, John Watson (1930) famously said: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief…”

Limitations

Noteworthy limitations to behaviorism also exist. For example:

• Behaviorist theories cannot account for cognitive processing—and explicitly exclude study of cognition. Cognitive/educational research, and even simple experience, tells us that human learning is much more complex than involuntary associations and reinforcement/punishment schedules.
• The notion of observational learning (i.e., learning by watching someone else) is a prime example of the shortcomings of behaviorism. Behaviorism cannot explain observational learning.
• Finally, experienced students and teachers understand many tasks require complex problem solving, learning strategies, and metacognition to complete. Behaviorism falls short of even conceptualizing these constructs, let alone explaining them.

Potential Use Cases in Computing Education

• Research: An intervention based in classical conditioning designed to reduce negative physiological responses (anxiety) to computers/computer science. These negative physiological responses would also influence students’ self-efficacy, so a link could be made to social-cognitive theory as well.
• Practice: A teacher could begin each class with a pleasant story, song, comment, snack, or even scent to elicit a positive emotional response from their students. After repeated exposure (i.e. conditioning), the students should associate positive feelings with the classroom/subject/teacher.

Influential theorists

• John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)
• B.F. Skinner (1904 – 1990)
• Edward L. Thorndike (1874 – 1949)

Recommended seminal works

• Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158–177. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0074428
• Skinner, B. F. (1965). Science and human behavior. Simon and Schuster.
• Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals. The Psychological Review: Monograph Supplements, 2(4), i–109. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092987

Coşkun, K. (2019). Conditioning Tendency Among Preschool and Primary School Children: Cross-Sectional Research. Interchange, 50(4), 517–536. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-019-09373-1

Hulsbosch, A., Beckers, T., De Meyer, H., Danckaerts, M., Van Liefferinge, D., Tripp, G., & Van Der Oord, S. (2023). Instrumental learning and behavioral persistence in children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity‐disorder: Does reinforcement frequency matter? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 64(11), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13805

Leeder, T. M. (2022). Behaviorism, Skinner, and Operant Conditioning: Considerations for Sport Coaching Practice. Strategies, 35(3), 27–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2022.2052776 Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251), aac4716. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716

Skinner, B. F. (2019). The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. B. F. Skinner Foundation. https://books.google.com/books?id=S9WNCwAAQBAJ

Watson, J. B. (1930). Behaviorism (Revised edition). University of Chicago Press.

• Information Processing Theory
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Constructivism/Sociocultural Theory

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The Learning Process

Behaviorism in the Classroom

“What does a classroom teacher need to know about learning?” According to the behavioral science approach, the teacher must be able to:

• Focus instruction on observable learner performance.
• Assure that learners can perform the skills that are prerequisites to that performance.
• Elicit a rapidly paced, correct performance.
• Use appropriate consequences following performance.

Focus on Learner Performance

Behavioral scientists have traditionally defined learning as a stable change in behavior brought about by the environment. Cognitive theorists have expanded this traditional definition of learning to include such topics as cognitive changes in memory capacity, thinking, and mental processing. Behavioral scientists are opposed to this definition. Their opposition stems less from a denial that changes in cognitive (mental) activity occur than from a concern about the difficulty of measuring them.

Behaviorists believe that in order to establish a true science of instruction we must be able to explain how what teachers do affects what learners do—not what or how they think. Cognitive activity is something we cannot measure directly. We can only infer it from observing performance—and inferences about cognitive activity can be wrong. Behaviorists believe that a focus on observable performance avoids incorrect inferences about learning and allows us to build a science of instruction on a firm foundation.

Distinctions between learning and performance and between cognitive and observable changes are important for teaching. By their strong advocacy of observable outcomes and performance objectives, behavioral scientists challenge teachers not to take learning for granted. This means that you should plan lessons with a clear vision of the important outcomes you want learners to achieve, and end your instruction with an assessment of those outcomes. Both of these recommendations are consistent with the behavioral science approach to learning. This premise of behavioral science—that the only valid measure of learning is observable performance—has been criticized by some educators and psychologists (Pasch, Sparks-Langer, Gardner, Starks, & Moody, 1991), who believe that this emphasis encourages teachers to write only those objectives that are easy to measure and thus to ignore educational outcomes involving complex intellectual skills.

Behavioral scientists, on the other hand, believe that a concern for performance will have the opposite effect—that it will persuade teachers to give more serious thought to what they want their learners to accomplish. This, in turn, will help teachers devise authentic ways to assess learning in terms of performance and thinking skills, not just the acquisition of facts. As we will discuss in later chapters, you can write clear, detailed instructional goals and objectives that can be measured reliably in the context of classroom performance and performance on real-world assessment tasks.

Ensure the Learning of Prerequisite Skills

You may be wondering how someone’s intelligence, abilities, aptitudes, or learning style enters into a behavioral scientist’s theory of learning. After all, if someone lacks an aptitude for math or writing, or possesses little musical or painting ability, doesn’t that affect his or her learning?

What characteristics of learners should classroom teachers be concerned about when planning their lessons? Behavioral scientists have a straightforward and (given their concern for observable performance) predictable answer to these questions: Other than a learner’s physical capabilities to perform the learning task, the only characteristic that is relevant to a student’s learning a skill is whether the learner possesses the prerequisites for it. In other words, if you expect your students to learn how to write a paragraph, you must first ask yourself whether they can write a complete sentence, a topic sentence, and transitions between sentences. At an even more basic level, can they spell words and form letters correctly? If some of your learners cannot learn to write a paragraph skillfully and effortlessly, behavioral scientists would attribute this to a lack of prerequisite skills (or poorly designed instruction)—not to a lack of ability, aptitude, or intelligence.

Behavioral scientists believe that the source of almost all learning failures can be identified if teachers analyze both the internal conditions (prerequisite skills) and the external conditions (instructional events) of learning. For example, if one of your learners can’t seem to master long division, is it because he hasn’t learned how to subtract? If he is having difficulty learning subtraction skills, has he learned how to regroup? If he hasn’t learned to regroup, can he identify which of two numbers is larger? At no point would the behavioral scientist conclude that the learner lacks ability or intelligence. If the teacher analyzes and probes deeply enough, eventually she can identify the source of the problem and teach or reteach the skills necessary for learning to continue.

The idea of breaking complex behaviors into smaller component behaviors originated with Skinner (1954). As we saw earlier, Skinner’s experiments on shaping the behavior of rats demonstrated the usefulness of this method. Gagné (1970), however, more so than any other behavioral scientist, demonstrated the importance of classroom learning of such an analysis.

Task Analysis

The process of analyzing the internal conditions necessary for learning is called task analysis. The outcome of a task analysis is an arrangement of prerequisite skills into a learning hierarchy . You begin a task analysis by identifying what task you want your learners to perform at the end of a lesson or unit of instruction. Then ask, “In order to perform this task, what prerequisite skills must my learners already have mastered?” The answer should be the most complex, highest-level prerequisite skills.

Next, for each of these skills, identify further prerequisites. Eventually, a learning hierarchy emerges. The questioning process you might follow for an individual learner is illustrated in this figure.

If you have trouble conducting a task analysis using the logical questioning process described above, do the task yourself and write down what you did, or observe someone doing the task and write down what you saw. Some curriculum guides are sufficiently detailed to provide a task analysis for you.

Constructing a learning hierarchy is dependent on identifying the prerequisite skills in the correct sequence: you can’t teach subtraction with regrouping before you teach place value. Behavioral scientists consider the sequence in which skills are taught to be especially important. They place a premium on correct responses, rapid responding, and efficiency. Therefore, incorrectly sequenced instruction results in errors, frustration, and inefficiency. Englemann (1991) cautions that the sequence of skills presented in the published curriculum you use may create problems for your learners. Thus, it will be worth your while to examine this sequence and adjust it when necessary.

Also, solving complex problems in math, writing compositions, and interpreting difficult reading passages are all tasks that require learners to perform prerequisite skills automatically and effortlessly (Mayer, 1987). Imagine the difficulty your learners would have writing an essay if they could not form letters, spell, punctuate, and construct grammatical sentences. Learners who cannot perform prerequisite skills effortlessly and with minimal errors find it difficult to transfer new learning to unfamiliar problem contexts. One of the key ingredients for transfer of new learning is the mastery of prerequisite skills.

Elicit Rapidly Paced, Correct Performance

As we saw in our study of operant conditioning, Skinner was able to elicit rapid correct performance by the skilled use of reinforcement and stimulus control. As you will recall, the basic elements of operant conditioning are (a) a response or behavior that you want to teach or shape, (b) an effective reinforcer, and (c) the delivery of that reinforcer immediately after the performance of the desired response. The challenge—both to psychologists in the lab and to teachers in the classroom—is to elicit a correct response. Let’s analyze this challenge and explore further the topic of rapidly-paced, correct performance.

The skilled teacher gets learners to respond correctly by bringing correct responses under stimulus control. Exactly how is this done? How does a teacher deliver instruction in a manner that minimizes the likelihood that learners will make mistakes? Four important factors are involved.

• Assure the learning of prerequisite skills.
• Present instructional material effectively.
• Use prompts.
• Use reinforcement.

We have already discussed the first of these factors. In this section, we explain the remaining three.

Effective Presentation

Behavioral scientists point out three areas for you to consider as you decide how to present instructional material: specific directions, opportunities for learner responses, and the pacing of response opportunities (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 1987; Englemann, 1991).

Specific Directions

Let’s say that you want to teach some sight words to your learners. You want them to look at a word and pronounce it correctly. Here are two examples of possible directions:

• Example 1: This is the word “rabbit.” Say “rabbit” and point to the word.
• Example 2: This is the word “rabbit.” A rabbit is a small, furry animal with big ears. It likes to eat carrots. Point to the word “rabbit” and say it.

Example 1 is a better set of directions if your objective is to bring the response “saying and pointing to the word ‘rabbit’” under the stimulus control of the word “rabbit.” Example 2 contains information that may distract the learner from making the correct response.

Whether you are teaching word recognition to first-graders, subtraction to second-graders, paragraph construction to sixth-graders, or problem-solving in physics to eleventh-graders, instructional directions should be specific to the behavior you want your learners to acquire. So think carefully about what you want learners to do and how you will direct them to do it. Discard information and explanations that are extraneous and serve only to distract the learner.

Opportunities for Learner Response

Behavioral scientists have conducted extensive research on the idea of the opportunity to respond (Delguardi, Greenwood, & Hall, 1979; Hall, Delguardi, Greenwood, & Thurston, 1982; Lindsley, 1992b). They make a useful distinction between active and passive responding. Active  responding requires the learner to do something: write sentences, calculate answers, focus a microscope, balance a scale, weigh rocks, and record observations. Passive responding , on the other hand, includes such activities as listening to lectures, paying attention to peers while they are reading, watching television, and waiting for teacher assistance.

Greenwood, Delguardi, and Hall (1984) report that nearly half of a learner’s day is involved in passive responding. This is unfortunate because their research also demonstrates a strong relationship between learner achievement and active responding. Behavioral scientists, therefore, urge you to plan your lessons so that learners spend at least 75 percent of their time engaged in active responding.

Research on the opportunity to respond has also found that correct responses are more likely to come under stimulus control when you design your practice material (worksheets, seatwork drills, homework assignments, and so forth) to elicit correct responses 70 to 90 percent of the time (Borich, 1996; Stephens, 1976). Many teachers purposely design materials for learner practice to be challenging—in other words, they design it so there is a strong likelihood that the learners will make mistakes. Behavioral scientists have demonstrated that learners acquire basic facts and skills faster when their opportunities for practice result in success most of the time.

The Pacing of Response Opportunities

Recall Ogden Lindsley’s description of the ideal classroom from the beginning of this chapter. In it, Lindsley drew our attention to the rapidity with which the learners were responding—they were “shouting correct answers as fast as they can at 200 words per minute.” It is a cardinal principle of behavioral science that when instruction is focused on basic academic skills, stimulus control of correct responses is more likely to occur when learners are encouraged to respond rapidly.

Although you might predict that more errors would result from fast-paced lessons, research indicates just the opposite for the acquisition of facts and action sequences. In a series of studies on the pace of reading instruction, Carnine found that rapid presentations by teachers produced greater achievement, fewer errors, and more sustained attention by learners during letter and word identification tasks than did slower presentations (Carnine, 1976; Carnine & Fink, 1978).

In summary, the behavioral science approach to learning suggests that you deliver instruction in the following ways:

• Give directions that focus only on the response you want learners to make.
• Allow learners to engage in active responding during the majority of class time.
• Design instructional material for both initial learning and practice so that learners can produce correct answers 70 to 90 percent of the time.

Use of Prompts

During instruction teachers often provide prompts —hints and other types of supplementary instructional stimuli to help learners make the correct responses. Because, as we have seen, the behavioral science approach is concerned with minimizing mistakes, it places a high value on the use of prompts that increase the likelihood that learners will respond correctly.

Behavioral scientists identify three categories of prompts used by teachers to shape the correct performance of their learners: verbal prompts, gestural prompts, and physical prompts. We will discuss the use of all three kinds in the following sections.

Verbal Prompts

Verbal prompts can be cues, reminders, or instructions to learners that help them perform correctly the skill you are teaching. For example, saying “Leave a space between words” to a first-grader as he is writing reminds him of what you previously said about neat handwriting. Or saying “First adjust the object lens” to a learner as she is looking at a microscope slide prompts her as she is learning how to use a microscope. Verbal prompts help guide the learner to correct performance and prevent mistakes and frustration.

Gestural Prompts

Gestural prompts model or demonstrate for learners a particular skill you want them to perform. For example, if you were to point to the fine adjustment knob on the microscope and make a turning gesture with your hand, you would be prompting the student to perform this step of the process. Gestural prompts are particularly helpful when you anticipate that the learner may make a mistake. Teachers use gestural prompts routinely to remind learners how to fold a piece of paper, grasp a pair of scissors, raise a hand before asking a question, or hold a pen properly when writing.

Physical Prompts

Some learners lack the fine muscle control needed to follow a demonstration and imitate the action that is being modeled. For example, the teacher might verbally describe how to form the letter “A” and demonstrate this to the learner, and the learner may still be unable to write “A” correctly. In such a case, the teacher might use her hand to guide the learner’s hand as he writes. This is called a physical prompt. With a physical prompt, you use hand-over-hand assistance to guide the learner to the correct performance. Teachers routinely use physical prompts to assist learners with handwriting, cutting out shapes, tying shoelaces, correctly holding a dissecting tool, or performing a complex dance routine.

Least-to-Most Prompting

Behavioral scientists generally recommend that you use the least intrusive prompt first when guiding a learner’s performance. This is referred to as least-to-most prompting. Verbal prompts are considered the least intrusive, while physical prompts are considered the most intrusive (Cooper et al., 1987). Thus it would be more appropriate to first say to a learner “Don’t forget the fine adjustment!” when guiding her in the use of a microscope than to take her hand and physically assist her. The reasoning behind using a least-to-most order of prompts to assist learners is that verbal prompts are easier to remove or fade than physical prompts. Learners who are dependent on physical prompts to perform correctly will find it more difficult to demonstrate a skill independently of the teacher.

At this point, let’s summarize what we’ve learned about stimulus control and its relationship to correct responses. So far, we have learned that behavioral scientists view the eliciting of a correct response as one of the four basic elements of learning. Correct responses followed by reinforcement result in more permanent learning than correct responses intermixed with incorrect responses. Mistakes slow down the learning process and often lead to frustration and attempts by learners to avoid, or passively respond to, a learning activity.

Establishing stimulus control over learner performance is the key to errorless learning. In order to elicit rapidly paced, correct performance, you must pay particular attention to four important factors when planning your lessons:

• Make sure your learners have mastered prerequisite skills.
• Present your lessons in a way that will give learners frequent opportunities to make correct responses.
• Use prompts to ensure a correct response.
• Reinforce correct responses immediately.

Let’s turn now to the fourth basic element of the behavioral science approach, which tells us how to deliver consequences to learners following their performance.

Use Appropriate Consequences Following Performance

Picture the following situation: You have just begun a unit on converting fractions to decimals with your fifth-graders. After demonstrating how to perform this skill, you pass out a worksheet with 20 problems. You give your learners 10 minutes to complete the task. As the students work, you move from desk to desk checking on their answers. You notice several students getting answers wrong. What should you do? Here are some alternatives.

• Circle the incorrect answers, show them what they did wrong, and encourage them to do better.
• Circle just the correct answers, point out what they did right, and encourage them to do better.
• Circle the correct answers, and praise the students for their good work.
• Circle the incorrect answers, admonish the students, and have them do the problems again.
• All of the above.

Educational psychologists using the behavioral science approach have researched the issue of how best to respond to the correct and incorrect responses of learners. They have arranged the possible consequences into three general categories: (1) informational feedback, (2) positive consequences, and (3) negative consequences. Let’s examine each and see what behavioral scientists have learned about their effectiveness in promoting learning.

Informational Feedback

Correct responses.

If a learner correctly recalls the major historical events leading up to the Civil War, legibly forms a lowercase cursive letter, or accurately solves an algebra equation with two unknowns showing her work, you should do two things immediately: (1) tell the learner the answer is correct, and (2) briefly describe what she did to obtain the correct answer. For example:

• “That’s right. You listed the five major events.”
• “Those letters are slanted correctly and you wrote them on the line.”
• “The answer is right and you showed all the required steps.”

Behavioral scientists remind us that better learning results when you tell learners not only what they got right, but also why they got it right (Cooper et al., 1987).

Incorrect Answers

Learners give incorrect answers for several different reasons: carelessness, lack of knowledge, or lack of understanding. In the first case, some teachers scold or use some form of verbal punishment. Behavioral scientists and many educators strongly advise against these consequences for careless performance. Instead, they recommend that you use the following types of feedback whenever students give incorrect answers, regardless of the reason:

• If the problem involves only knowledge of factual information, simply give the correct response.
• If the problem involves more complex intellectual skills, point out the rules, procedures, or steps to follow.
•  Ask the learner to correct the answer.
• Ask the learner to practice some extra problems.

Here is an example of each:

• “The correct spelling is t-h-e-i-r.”
• “End every sentence with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.”
• “First draw the base. Then, draw the altitude. Now, retrace your steps.”
• “Ask yourself: ‘Who are the more talked-about people in this story?’ Then answer the next set of questions.”

Note that these examples do not include preaching, scolding, or focusing extensively on the student’s error—even if the learner was being careless. Such responses often create feelings of anxiety and distaste for schoolwork, which encourage disengagement from the learning activity. Learning will occur more quickly if you simply tell your students what to do, have them try again, and provide practice with additional problems when an incorrect response is given (Rodgers & Iwata, 1991).

Cautions for Correcting Mistakes

Research on feedback and error correction has shown that the recommendations given above improve learning for most students. However, there are two groups of learners for whom these procedures may not be beneficial: (1) those who make a lot of mistakes and (2) those who are excessively dependent on adult guidance.

When given material that is too difficult, low-achieving learners make many errors. Such learners experience low rates of positive consequences and high rates of negative ones. Consequently, they are likely to ignore corrective feedback and simply stop working. Research on low achievers affirms that when error rates are high, little is learned from informational feedback (Kulik & Kulik, 1988; McKeachie, 1990). This finding underscores the importance of designing your instruction to produce as few errors as possible in all learners.

In the second case, learners who depend greatly on adult guidance may involve attention-seeking behavior. In other words, some learners may persist in making mistakes because of the attention they receive after doing so. Hasazi and Hasazi (1972) and Stromer (1975) speculated that when a teacher’s response focuses on the mistake itself rather than on the correct answer (for example, circling reversals of letters when the learner writes b for d, or circling digits when the learner writes 32 for 23), it may inadvertently reinforce incorrect responses.

These researchers carried out experiments in which teachers circled only correct responses and drew no attention to those that were incorrect. They found dramatic improvements in the learners’ ability to write digits and letters correctly after teachers made this change alone. This surprising finding reminds us that focusing on mistakes may actually reinforce the wrong response. This may be especially true in classrooms where teachers pay more attention to children who are misbehaving (talking out of turn, not following instructions) than to those who routinely follow class rules.

Positive Consequences Following Performance

Behavioral scientists have conclusively demonstrated the crucial role played by positive consequences in promoting and strengthening learning in animals. They have shown that positive consequences play an equally critical part in the classroom learning of children (Sulzer-Azaroff & Mayer, 1986). Thus, for the classroom teacher today, the important question is not whether to use positive consequences in the classroom, but what type of consequence to use and how.

Behavioral scientists make a distinction between positive consequences and positive reinforcers. Positive consequences, such as smiles, praise, happy faces, “happy-grams,” and prizes are enjoyable or pleasurable things that teachers (or parents) do for children to encourage their good efforts and motivate them to do better. They may or may not serve as positive reinforcers.

Something can be called a positive reinforcer only when it can be conclusively shown that it increases the frequency of a target behavior. When you praise a learner’s correct punctuation with the intention of increasing the likelihood that she will continue her progress, you are using a positive consequence. In order to classify this consequence as a positive reinforcer, you must show that the learner continues to make progress and that your praise was the causal factor. Some teachers develop elaborate systems of positive rewards, hoping that they will energize their learners to achieve increasingly higher levels of both social and academic skills (Canter, 1989). However, the teachers believe they are using positive reinforcers when they are simply using positive consequences.

We will now extend our discussion of positive consequences following learning to address two additional issues: (1) how to use positive consequences to promote and maintain learning and (2) how to establish natural reinforcers (i.e., intrinsic motivators) for learners who require extrinsic ones.

The Expert Practice of Positive Reinforcement

Recall from our discussion of operant conditioning that positive reinforcement is the process of strengthening behavior by the presentation of a desired stimulus or reward. While this definition appears simple, reinforcement is nevertheless easily misunderstood and misused. Before we expand on the use of positive reinforcement in the classroom, let’s see some examples of what it is not. These will help you grasp the complexity of positive reinforcement.

• Mr. Russo has snack time at 10:15 and 10:30 for his first-grade class. He gives his learners juice, cookies, fruit bits, and other types of reinforcers.
• Mr. Baker, the principal, decided to start a positive reinforcement program. At the end of the week, each teacher would nominate his or her “best student” to receive the “Principal’s Pride Award” at a ceremony each Monday morning. Parents would be invited to attend.
• Mrs. Knipper allows students who finish assignments early to use the computer in the back of the room.
• Mr. French has a popcorn party every Friday if the class has not broken more than five major rules the entire week.
• Mrs. Reimer has a basketful of inexpensive trinkets and school supplies. She lets learners who have been particularly helpful on a given day select a prize from the basket.

Learners who read more than five books a year are treated to a special roller skating party at the end of the school year, hosted by the principal.

There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about these activities. Learners, their teachers, and parents generally like and support them. They even may have some beneficial outcomes on learning, but they are not necessarily examples of positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is a complex process that demands a substantial commitment of the teacher’s time and effort, as we will now see.

The Process of Positive Reinforcement

When behavioral scientists speak of positive reinforcement they refer to a sequence of actions by a teacher, trainer, or behavioral specialist that has a beginning, middle, and end. When you decide to use positive reinforcement you commit yourself to this specific sequence of steps. Note that very few of these steps were followed in the examples given earlier. Reread the examples now, and ask yourself how many included: baseline measurement of specific behaviors; assessment of reinforcer preferences; immediate, continuous reinforcement for the performance of specific behaviors; and a gradual fading of the use of extrinsic reinforcers to natural reinforcers.

The point is that the expert practice of positive reinforcement is a demanding intellectual and physical challenge. When you decide to use it, you are committing yourself to a process that involves measurement, consistent delivery of reinforcers, and the responsibility to fade them. Because of this commitment, there may be few examples in regular school classrooms today where the science of reinforcement, as developed by behavioral scientists, is consistently and appropriately applied.

Therefore, it is important to recognize that most reward, recognition, and incentive systems used in today’s schools do not constitute positive reinforcement as behavioral scientists use the term. In either case, users of positive reinforcement should be aware of the ethical issues involved in the use of extrinsic rewards, such as paying students for reading books or for staying off drugs.

Natural Reinforcers: Alternatives to Extrinsic Reinforcers

Behavioral scientists have often been criticized for creating a generation of learners who are hooked on artificial or extrinsic consequences in order to learn and behave in the classroom (see, for example, de Charms, 1968, 1976). However, an analysis of the writings of early behaviorists like B. F. Skinner (1953, 1974), or other behavioral scientists like Ogden Lindsley (1991, 1992a, 1992b) and Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968), challenges this criticism. Such behavioral scientists have advocated the use of natural reinforcers , those that are naturally present in the setting where the behavior occurs. Thus, there are natural reinforcers for classrooms (grades), ballfields (the applause of fans), the workplace (money), and the home (story hour, parent attention). Examples of unnatural reinforcers are paying children or giving them treats for achievement in schools, or buying toys for children who behave well at home.

Skinner makes a further distinction in his definition of a natural reinforcer: he sees it as a change in stimulation resulting from the behavior itself. In other words, natural reinforcers occur when the behavior itself produces an environmental change that gives the person pleasure. For example, the natural reinforcer for hitting the correct keys on a piano is the pleasurable sound that the behavior brings. Similarly, the natural reinforcer for writing correct letters is the satisfaction the first-grader experiences when she sees the letters forming on the page. Thus to Skinner, a natural reinforcer is a consequence that results from the very performance of the behavior we want the child to learn; that consequence, in turn, motivates the child to want to perform these behaviors again.

Children who enjoy solving puzzles are receiving natural reinforcement for doing so. Likewise, learners who write poetry, play the guitar, study history, read novels, or compete in gymnastics are receiving natural reinforcement. What these examples have in common is that children are engaging in the behaviors again and again without the need for external praise or other reinforcers delivered by another person.

Some learners are naturally reinforced by learning to write, read, color, answer questions, play sports, solve equations, answer textbook questions, and write essays, but others are not. Many learners require external reinforcers to engage in certain classroom activities that they do not find naturally reinforcing. For such children, external reinforcers have an important role to play. They can accomplish two things. They enable you to (1) shape and improve the behaviors you desire through the use of positive reinforcement and (2) transfer their control over the learner’s behavior to natural reinforcers. Behavioral scientists refer to this process as conditioning (Horcones, 1992).

Conditioning a Natural Reinforcer. Over the past decade, the Communidad Los Horcones (Horcones, 1985, 1987, 1991, 1992) has developed a strategy for transferring the control of extrinsic reinforcers to that of natural, or intrinsic  reinforcers . This process as a whole is referred to as intrinsic reinforcement. Note how the use of natural reinforcers relies on the learner’s intrinsic motivation and thus allows you to transfer control of the behavior to the learner herself.

Positive Consequences: A Final Comment. Behavioral scientists emphasize that there is nothing wrong with extrinsic reinforcers, particularly when they are used as a means to get learning started and to condition natural reinforcers. But there are drawbacks to their use. Some learners stop studying when they are removed (Emmer, Evertson, Clements, & Worsham, 1994). They are not always available for all learners at the same time nor available for individual learners when they are needed. This is not the case with natural reinforcers.

Moreover, extrinsic reinforcers can be effective only when they are consistently delivered by another person. It is impractical to expect teachers to reinforce the most important behaviors of all learners at the right moment. Natural reinforcers allow for this possibility.

We will return to the subject of reinforcement when we study motivational theories in future chapters. Let’s turn now to a discussion of the third type of consequence that teachers can use following learner performance: negative consequences.

The Use of Negative Consequences

We will end our discussion of the use of the behavioral science approach with the final type of consequence teachers can use negative consequences. Here are some examples of negative consequences:

• Mr. Holt’s fourth-period math class was just before lunch. His students often failed to complete their seatwork during this period. He decided to delay the lunch period for any learners who did not finish their work.
• Ms. Tolbert wanted to help her learners spell more accurately. She made them write each misspelled word 25 times in their notebooks.
• Mr. Blandon was a stickler for correct punctuation. Any student who failed to capitalize a sentence or place a period at the end received a firm lecture on carelessness.
• Mr. Thomas decided to do something about students who weren’t doing homework—students who didn’t turn in homework assignments were required to do them after school.
• Mr. Altman sent “sad-grams” home to the parents of students who were doing poorly in his math class.

These are all examples of negative consequences, things that teachers (or other adults) do to learners after inappropriate behaviors in the hope that such behaviors will not occur again. Types of negative consequences typically used in schools are these:

Verbal reprimands: Speaking harshly to the student: “That work is sloppy and careless, and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing it.”

Overcorrection: The learner not only corrects what he did wrong but engages in repetitive, boring practice on the same skill: “After you correct all the spelling mistakes, write each misspelled word correctly 50 times.”

Response cost: The teacher takes away some right or privilege: “Whoever fails to complete the assignment loses the first 15 minutes of recess.”

Exclusion: The learner is removed from one setting and placed in another, often called “time out”: “If you don’t cooperate in your groups, you will be removed and put in the back of the room for the rest of the period.”

Negative Consequences Versus Punishers

Negative consequences may or may not be punishers. As we have seen, to a behavioral scientist, a punisher is something you do following a behavior to reduce the frequency of that behavior for as long as the punisher is used. In other words, your overcorrection of spelling mistakes is a punisher only if you keep good records that show that spelling mistakes have been substantially reduced. If not, then overcorrection is not a punisher—it is simply a negative consequence, which has no real effect on mistakes and may or may not cause the learner discomfort.

Behavioral scientists are very particular about what they call a punisher (just as they are very particular about what they call a reinforcer). Something is a punisher only if you have demonstrated that it reduces the behavior you targeted. Scolding, overcorrection, sending someone to the principal’s office (exclusion), taking away recess (response cost), and even corporal punishment are all negative consequences, but they may not be punishers.

The distinction between a negative consequence and a punisher is significant for two reasons. First, some teachers persist in the use of negative consequences in the belief that they are helping their learners in some way. However, after a scolding, a learner may appear chastened and remorseful. He may even stop the inappropriate behavior for the next hour or day. But the same behavior soon reappears; the teacher, in frustration, scolds or reprimands again; and the cycle repeats itself.

Scolding, in this case, does not reduce the target behavior. It is not a punisher. It is simply a negative consequence, which the teacher uses to relieve frustration with the learner and which gives the illusion of effectiveness. By distinguishing between negative consequences and punishers, behavioral scientists remind us of the importance of gathering evidence that behavior is changing before we persist in the use of any technique. They highlight an important ethical question: What is the justification for the continued use of negative consequences in the absence of proof of their effectiveness?

Second, the distinction between negative consequences and punishers is also significant because it raises the question of what is required to turn a negative consequence into an effective punisher.

The Use of Punishment

As often as you hear the lament “I tried positive reinforcement and it didn’t work,” you will hear the assertion “Punishment isn’t effective.” And just as we can attribute the failure of positive reinforcement to ineffective practice, so we can attribute the failure of punishment to ineffective application.

Many myths have arisen over the past two decades concerning the use of punishment in schools. These myths pertain to both the effectiveness and the ineffectiveness of punishment in reducing undesirable behavior. In the former case, we often hear statements like these: Punishment stops unwanted behavior. When all else fails, use punishment! Children must experience negative consequences for misbehavior! Spare the rod and spoil the child! In the latter case, punishment is frequently criticized because it makes children hate school or teachers create emotional problems, only temporarily suppresses behavior, or deals only with the symptom of the problem and not the cause.

In response to these beliefs, behavioral scientists cite hundreds of studies, carried out with both animal and human subjects over the past half-century, that have led to a set of tested conclusions about punishment and its use (Cooper et al., 1987; Sulzer-Azaroff et al., 1988). Here is what these studies tell us about the use of punishment:

• Punishment can result in the long-term elimination of undesirable behavior, but so can techniques that involve the exclusive use of positive reinforcement to strengthen appropriate behavior.
• Some individuals engage in severe, chronic, life-threatening behaviors that cannot be eliminated by positive reinforcement alone.
• When punishment to eliminate inappropriate behaviors is used in conjunction with positive reinforcement to teach alternative behaviors, emotional side effects such as fear and dislike of teachers’ attempt to escape or avoid school or schoolwork, or anxiety are less likely to occur.
• The failure of some nonaversive and positive reinforcement techniques to suppress undesirable behavior does not automatically justify the use of punishment. Usually, this failure is due to the ineffective use of positive reinforcement.
• The failure of less intense punishment to suppress behavior does not necessarily justify the use of more intense punishment. In fact, increasing the ratio of positive reinforcement to create a contrast with punishment usually precludes the need for increased punishment.

From their studies on the effective use of punishment, behavioral scientists have identified several conditions as essential for the suppression and eventual elimination of undesirable behavior. Not surprisingly, these conditions are similar to those we identified for the successful use of positive reinforcement earlier in this chapter. They include the following:

• Precise identification and baseline measurement of the target behavior.
• Precise identification of an alternative, positive behavior.
• An assessment of the most effective potential punisher for the target behavior prior to its use.
• Consistent, immediate reinforcement and punishment on a continuous schedule until changes in both the target behavior and the alternative behavior are evident.
• Fading of both reinforcers and punishers.

PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND MODIFICATION

For a more detailed review of behavior analysis and modification, the OER book

Principles of Behavior Analysis and Modification  provides more information.

Candela Citations

• Authored by : Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose. Provided by : Hudson Valley Community College. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Educational Psychology. Authored by : Gary D. Borich and Martin L. Tombari. License : CC BY: Attribution

Educational Psychology Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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