Shaping Behaviorist Psychology - Essay Example

Behaviorism is manipulative in that it seeks to control and predict human behavior instead of understanding it (DeMar, 1989).

            Skinner felt that behavior could be shaped by controlling a system of rewards and punishments. Done correctly, an individual could control patients, professors could control students, and an individual could control entire nations (DeMar, 1989). He believed that this would lead to the ability to shape behavior in any way that was necessary.

Skinner's Role in Shaping Behaviorist Psychology

            Skinner did not seem to care what others thought about his work because he was confident about his experiments and his writing. He made "confident assertions" about "economic, social, political and religious issues (Reeve, 2009, p. 343). He made many people angry but they still used his methods to dispute his claims. As an example, Breland's experiments found the concept of "instinctive drift" (Reeve, p. 342). Their experiments included pigs and other animals that were able to use their instincts instead of reinforced behaviors whether they used food to reinforce behavior or they used other types of reinforcement.

            Skinner contributed many things to psychology. Between the 1950s and 1980s, he shaped American Psychology more directly than other psychologists. He received several prestigious medals and recognitions for his work because he was most interested in improving human lives and society as a whole. His only regret was that people did not adopt his methods as easily or quickly as he thought they would.

            Malone (2003) gives many ways in which Skinner's work influenced contemporary psychology. One influence was that behavior is a choice rather than conditioned. In order to understand consequences or behaviors, researchers (and others) had to take into consideration what the behavior was before and after a choice was made (Billington and DiTommasso as cited in Malone, 2003). A relativistic contemporary view states that reinforcers cannot be understood independently but must be based on more than the presenting behavior but it also must take into consideration verbal behavior (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001, as cited in Malone, 2003). In summary, most contemporary psychologists took Skinner's work as a foundation to expand and explore more thoroughly.

Animal Research

            I do not believe that animal research can improve human behavior. However, research does exist that suggests that animal behavior can be used to understand human behavior. Snowden (2011) suggests that animal behavior can be used as a framework in which to understand human behavior since human behavior is often based on how they relate to their environment. As an example, monkeys and chimpanzees have been used in experiments on cooperation and reconciliation. This has given researchers an idea of how people can cooperate inside groups and how they can reconcile situations that may be problematic inside the group. By looking at these examples, it can be argued that human behavior can be improved through what researchers observe using animals.