Behaviorism in Psychology - Term Paper Example

? Behaviorism in Psychology And John B. Watson School This paper is a research study on the principles of behaviorismin psychology as proposed by John B. Watson. He is considered the father of behaviorism although there were others who came after and branched out the principles and concepts to other aspects of behaviorism. Watson presented the principles of his kind of behaviorism, as being based in action and reaction on a learned foundation as provided by external stimuli. It can also be unlearned as well but when this type of behaviorism is moved into a therapeutic program where bad behavior can be changed, then the value of conditioning through behaviorism becomes more fully functional and is a great help to society by changing the perceptions of those who tend to commit criminal acts and, herein lays the implications for such studies. Introduction: An Overview of Behaviorism John B. Watson (1878-1958) was the founder of behaviorism in psychology which he first connected with in his last year of obtaining his doctorate from the University of Chicago. His focus was on the study of behavior exhibited by animals and humans when external stimuli are applied. An example of behaviorism is the research study conducted by Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who trained a dog to salivate when a bell was rung. The bell represented food to the dog and therefore, when the bell was rung, the dog knew it was dinner time and began anticipating getting to the dog food bowl in order to eat. This paper is a study of behaviorism, of the contributions to behaviorism by Watson and others after him, and how it applies in psychology as a process of observation in regards to applied external stimuli, such as a bell. It can also be considered reinforcement or conditioning the psyche of a person or animal. As a compliment to the study of behaviorism, understanding how its concepts can also be applied to help those who tend to commit criminal acts, is important in how therapy in retraining someone’s thinking pattern, can help people move from a negative situation into a more positive situation, simply by changing how one views a situation and has developed the tools, through behavioral therapy, to change to a better response to a negative situation. Literature Review In John Watson’s early years in psychology, he published a book called Animal Education, which was based on his work with rats and learning how to navigate mazes. He also conducted studies on the visual capabilities of rats, monkeys, rabbits and birds as well as behavioral studies on noddy and sooty terns, as regards imprinting. His first research studies began with his dissertation on the psychical development of the white rat in correlation with the growth of its nervous system. After receiving his PhD. In 1903, and the subsequent publishing of his book, Watson then began working on a second book, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, was published in 1913. His work at this time was important in uncovering the manner of rats making associations, aside from those concerning smells. Using puzzle boxes and other contraptions which encouraged problem solving for rats, presented very interesting results. Young rats (23 days old) could figure out puzzles as well as older rats. However, those puzzles which were more complex, were solved better by the more mature rats. Younger rats, however, were noted for their high energy levels up until just after 35 days old, at which time they began to slow down. His work with animals was regarded as ground-breaking in the psychological fields and was instrumental in promoting his version of behaviorism. It should be understood that what Watson proposed in the field of behaviorism was only one branch in the method of studying behaviorism. In fact, there would be more branches developed after him but Watson’s observations in research presented a scenario of objectivism, that which is basic rather than getting involved in more in-depth research of internal feelings at any given time. Yet the internal side and the environmental situation do play parts in the surroundings of any given research project, regardless of objectivity (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006). Watson attempted to bring a similar objectivity to the study of psychology as was being pushed in other traditional sciences, such as physics and chemistry. Unlike these two fields however, psychological data was nearly non-existent in terms of ways to interpret psychological findings. Rather than relying on subjective descriptions and interpretations of experiences and mental processes, he chose to utilize physical stimuli within the confines of psychology and statistical data and observation. It was a process that was logically notated and was easily reviewed in a linear pattern for interpretation. It would also lead to the development of the field of Applied Psychology (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006). Watson’s work was also beneficial to the legal, educational, medical and business areas, thus paving the way for legal and forensic psychology, beneficial for courtroom applications such as eyewitness accounts and fitness to stand trial. Watson’s work in conditioned emotional responses is considered to be his greatest contribution. This work was also a basis for development in the understanding of mental disorders, drug addiction and phobias. His work was also formative in expanding on learning processes and therapeutic interventions relating to emotions, instincts and habit formation (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006). Aside from working with animals, Watson was also instrumental in the development of child psychology in early childhood experiences, trauma and relationships with older maternal figures and how they related within a child’s mind. He also expanded on child rearing philosophies, utilizing many of his research techniques of objective and empirical methods of study. This work has also had great value in the area of habit formation and maintenance and addictions (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006). Consequently, he influenced the development of scientific analysis in an areas that hereto had only grasped psychology in a manner that was more theoretical and subjective (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006). Watson is also famous for conducting a research study (1920) on a young 11-month old boy, Albert B. during which the boy was taught to fear a laboratory rat. As it turned out, the boy also placed his fear onto other furry objects. Sometime shortly after the end of the experiment, the boy and his family moved away from the John Hopkins University campus and, basically, disappeared. Beck, Levinson, & Irons (2009), as part of their research, decided to try and find the boy, or at least find out what happened to him. The case has been famous for this reason for many years and the experiment itself was conducted during a turbulent time in Watson’s life. He had been conducting groundbreaking research on infant development, sex education and the psychology of emotion, edited a journal, and numerous other activities which kept him very busy. It was also a time where he decided to divorce his wife and marry a graduate student of his, Rosalie Rayner. The divorce was highly publicized and he was also dismissed from John Hopkins University (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). The boy was the son of a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children, which was a pediatric facility connected to the John Hopkins campus where Watson worked. Albert was at the facility from birth and had been assessed several times since his birth and deemed a healthy child, suitable for Watson’s experiment. There are no records of why the mother would have allowed her son to be part of the experiment but it is speculated that Watson may have paid the mother (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). Luckily, there is a tape made from an old film which recorded the baby as he was first tested for reflexes before research began. He responded normally to all the subjects presented to him, including a white laboratory rat. At that time, he was 8 months and 26 days old. A little over two months later, Watson and his associate, Rosalie Rayner, later to be his wife, began their experiments by associating the appearance of the white rat along with a loud noise. This created a reaction from the baby which also transferred to the other items first shown to the baby, such as a dog, a fur coat and a Santa Claus mask. The baby showed fear of those too, although not quite as much as with the rat. These findings were record manually and also on film (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). For Beck et al. (2009), there was some detective work done in trying to find the baby, which began with figuring out exactly when the testing was done, based on the original testing dates for confirming for the test research project. Without getting into greater detail about the investigation, which was pretty interesting, the baby was traced to a Douglas Merritte, who died when he was 6 years old, in the state of Maryland (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). In his short life however, Albert (Douglas) made history in behavioral psychology but never got to know about it. His mother may have not understood either what her son had done for psychology either. B.F. Skinner (1976), another well-known proponent of behaviorism, said that behaviorism is not the science of behavior but rather it is a philosophy of that science. Some of the most common misconceptions of behaviorism, right or wrong, are that behaviorism ignores innate endowment and that behavior is acquired during the individual’s lifetime. Another statement is that behavior is that which responds to stimuli, thus reducing animals and human to automatic actions as a result of the stimuli. Nor can it explain creative achievements in art, music, literature, science or mathematics (Skinner, 1976). Skinner felt that these were all wrong. Skinner was initially influenced by the work of Watson and agreed with him, for the most part, that consciousness did not play a part in behaviorism as a general rule. He did change his point of view some years later in an article he wrote, published in Psychological Review in 1945. His focus in the article was on the ability or lack of ability for children to express themselves well enough to the outer world. The difference between Watson and Skinner was determined by the fact that Watson exercised methodology in behavior, while Skinner focused on radical behavior (Gilbert, 2013). For most behaviorists, however, the concept and cause of behavior was based more on the environment. Skinner’s four main contributions to behaviorism was: 1) the study of exquisite control of behavior through reinforcement and reward; 2) the behavioral account of verbal behavior which is what causes someone to speak (child to parent), an environmental aspect; 3) the meaning of meaning by which he meant that the meaning of a word was by how it was used; and 4) the concept of reinforcement and natural selection such as in a living organism’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances (Gilbert, 2013). Social and other environmental issues, that which surrounds the person, are also a key to how a person might respond to behaviorism as a therapeutic method. In the case of educational environments, unless a child is being taught in a singular fashion, as in a tutorial situation, then teaching a whole classroom of children, each of whom potentially comes from a different environment than the person next to him or her, means that being taught is a one-size-fits-all scenario. Some can be taught well, others are not so well taught and others are not taught at all. Indeed, for such students who are not able to learn within the classroom environment, getting tutoring from someone who is able to work with the child on a level that provides unique skills to that child, whereby he can bring those back into the classroom and begin using them there (Skinner, 1976; Rathus, 1996). In this respect, it is behaviorism on a different level that is fine-tuned to assist someone to function correctly in a specific situation. John B. Watson was the founder of behaviorism and his outlook on it was that psychology was purely a study of behavior rather than studying the subjective side of behavior. His focus was on instinctive behavior, what they do, and also he studied what animals and humans could learn to do. To some degree, what Watson proposed may have been oversimplified. Watson, for example, said that thinking was a manifestation of sub-vocal speech. Pavlov, for his part, thought that language was only a second signal system. Their particular version of behaviorism was based more on learned or manipulated controlled stimuli (Skinner, 1976). In studying the concepts of behaviorism, it is clear that there are different principles involved, depending on who one talks to about it. It can be easily said that Watson and Pavlov, as early research doctors of behaviorism, looked at it from only one angle which was conditioned or manipulated responses to stimuli. Skinner looks at it from another angle, as do other psychologists since that time. Yet each has their contribution to the field of research on behaviorism, rather like a jig-saw puzzle, where one must put the pieces (types of behaviorism) together to finally get the whole picture. There are, in fact, a number of different types of behaviorism such as structuralism, methodological behaviorism, radical behaviorism, and philosophy of behaviorism. The difference between a science of behaviorism and a philosophy of behaviorism is that science is an observation of behavior (Watson, Pavlov) whereas, the philosophy of behaviorism is more of a view of assumptions (hidden) which lead to conclusions (visible). Another way to say that would be if one thing were so, then this thing is so, perhaps a cause and affect event (Baum, 2004). Free will is another aspect of behaviorism and this also has two versions of it. Free will after deliberation of potentially doing something, means that someone weighs the cost of the action such deliberating that having an ice cream cone would be wonderful but may require an hour’s worth of walking afterwards to avoid gaining weight. Then there is libertarian free will which bypasses the deliberation and goes for the prize (ice cream cone) without a before-hand deliberation. The choice of free will here would be the goal of enjoyment, attaining satisfaction by eating the ice cream cone, perhaps replicating a previous moment of enjoyment (Baum, 2004). How would one look at the choice of someone who had free will to try cocaine or heroin, assuming he or she was not tied down and had it forcibly administered? The choice to try it was evident but once hooked, free will is no longer a part of the choice, or so the person thinks, based on physical reactions. Much of this can be attributed to genetics and environmental factors that influence such decisions (Baum, 2004). Therefore, choices in free will are based on social and environmental conditions, such as the friends surrounding a person who makes a choice to be like them by trying those drugs. Watson, as a founder of the behaviorism approach in psychology, was successful very early on in his life. He also was more verbal and out front with his envisioning of environmentalism as a major factor for the reasons why certain actions were conducted. It was not so much as what was in someone’s thought process but that it was based on that which was around a person, and stimulated him or her to take certain actions, based on those stimuli. However, he was also careful to differentiate between the same principles when studying humans and separating the environmental aspects of animals as being different from humans and, therefore, promoting different actions. The data statistics do not correlate between humans and animals (Logue, 1978). Summary of Findings Watson believed that behaviorism was based on the observed rather than the consciousness of the organism that was conducting the behavior. He also saw that it was important to be able to measure responses to external stimuli and to also study the conditioning process such as what Pavlov did with the dog and what Watson did with the Little Albert experiment. In reference to free will, Watson’s version was that behavior reflected the summation of the stimuli which was imposed on the subject or person (Rathus, 1996). In respect to child rearing advice that Watson gave in some of his publications, many people criticized his advice, although some of that criticism ay have not been warranted. His viewpoint was that children were made, not just born, and that the upbringing of healthy, happy and fully functional beings, lay squarely on the shoulders of the parents (Bigelow & Morris, 2001). He also believed that children should not be subjected to very loud noises (perhaps a take from his experiment with Little Gilbert?), but that children should be exposed to normal noises as would be commonly heard. He also promoted a disconnection of over affection of hugging and kissing the children and this could certainly cause some controversy in today’s society. His overview was that children would be brought up to not be overly emotional but would have polite manners and habits (Bigelow & Morris, 2001). Implications The implications of this research is to understand the concepts of behaviorism as presented whereas it relates to what actions a human or animal would take, given a certain set of external circumstances. In many respects, research like this, gives an overview of how certain things might happen under various conditions like war or espionage, or some other type of vital emergency. The culmination of research in this area is rather vital when looking at natural reactions to things without having to analyze why someone thought something (Todd & Morris). It is enough that we have a good idea what a large sample group of people might do when presented a certain type of circumstances that require an action in order to solve it and/or eliminate the situation. Removing the component of subjectivity, means that the understanding of action on a behavioral psychological basis, will help to see the puzzle or problem on a basic level and make it easier to solve or eliminate. As a last concept of behaviorism, B.J. Skinner moved from Watson’s stimulus-response principle of behaviorism to an operant conditioning concept whereby satisfying responses are conditioned and unsatisfying responses are not. Operant conditioning is a controlled or manipulated concept which rewards behavior with something nice, thus causing people to expect the same thing over and over again if they do that same action (much like Pavlov’s experiment (Rathus, 1996). This works very much on the level or concept of behavior modification which has six basic components: A specification of the desire outcome Development of positivity in a nurturing environment Using reinforcement as a change tool Reinforcement in behavior until a successful pattern of operation is completed Providing a reduction in rewards as part of a reduction program Evaluation and assessment of the approach and its effectiveness. The value of behaviorism and research in this area is how this can be applied to reducing bad behavior and bad habits by conditioning the mind to accept a new pattern of healthy habits. The mind is a powerful organ and is capable of much more than is even understood. In utilizing it in such a manner as to change bad behavior also changes a person’s life when the intention is reversed to promote good behavior. While this might be contrary to the concept of free will, when free will has been shown to promote bad or even illegal behavior, then changing that person’s mind to release that trend for better habits, can only help the person and everyone else around him or her. Resources Cited Baum, W.M. (2004). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution, (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Beck, H.P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s Infant Laboratory. American Psychologist, 64(7): 605-614. Retrieved from Bigelow, K.M. & Morris, E.K. (2001). John B. Watson’s advice on child rearing. Behavioral Development Bulletin,1. Retrieved from Gilbert, R. (2013). Behaviorism at 100: An American history. Amazon Digital Serivices,Inc.:Kindle Edition. Hart, K. E. & Kritsonis, W.A. (2006). A critical analysis of John B. Watson’s original writing: “Behaviorism as a behaviorist views it.” (1913). National Forum of Applied Educational Research Journal, 19(3). Retrieved from Logue, A.W. (1978). Behaviorist John B. Watson and the continuity of the species. Behaviorism, 6(1): 71-79. Retrieved from Rathus, S.A. (1996). Psychology in the new millennium. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Skinner, B.F. (1976). About Behaviorism. New York, NY: Vintage Press. Todd, J.T. & Morris, E.K. (1986). The early research of John B. Watson: Before the behavioral revolution. The Behavior Analyst, 9(1):71-88. Retrieved from Read More