Behaviorism

by Emanuel Cruickshank, April 2015

900 words

3 pages

essay

Abstract

Behaviorism is a branch of psychology which was developed from a lot of ideas, put forth by numerous scientists, at times contradicting and denying each other. In the current paper we compare and contrast the perspectives of prominent psychologists - John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner and those of Edward C. Tolman. Watson is known as the originator of behaviorism who claimed that behavior should become the object of studies in psychology. Skinner developed further Watson’s ideas and introduced the notion of operant conditioning and reinforcement. At the same time he disagreed with some of Watson’s ideas, namely, that of denying personal experience. Tolman developed cognitive behaviorism and the theory of cognitive maps and latent learning. Though Tolman started as a behaviorist, later he acquired a different attitude to the idea of reinforcement and the behaviorist model ‘stimulus-response’.

Key words: behaviorism, Watson, Skinner, Tolman, cognitive behaviorism, experience, cognitive map, latent learning. ‘stimulus-response’.

Perspectives Paper

Behaviorism is a branch of psychology which has developed from a number of significant events in psychology and related scientific disciplines. Its progress was conditioned by works of scientists who put forth different ideas, at times contradicting to those of other psychologists. In the present paper we are going to focus on the perspectives of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner and those of Edward C. Tolman. More specifically, we will compare and contrast the perspectives of the above mentioned scientists and we will also analyze how their ideas are related to the modern-day psychology.

Behaviorism is known as a branch in psychology that makes use of experimental procedures to study observable phenomena, namely behavior, or responses, in relation to environment, or stimuli (Velasco, 2000). John B. Watson was the first to lay the foundation and basic principles of behaviorism. In his work, being under the great influence of the works on conditioning animals by Pavlov, he stated that all complex forms of behavior, including emotions and habits, are viewed as composed of simple muscular elements that can be observed and measured (Velasco, 2000). Furthermore, Watson declared that psychologists should abandon consciousness as an object of study and turn to only to publicly open phenomenon, namely behavior, and develop methods of publicly observing behavior (Harzem, 2004).

B. F. Skinner developed further the ideas of Watson, however, disagreeing with some of them. More specifically, Skinner disagreed that such inner processes as feelings should be omitted. Moreover, he insisted that inner processes should be studied by using usual scientific methods. Apart from that, Skinner criticized the so-called methodological behaviorism which supported the distinction between public and private events and as private events are mental, they are out of reach for scientific investigation, so psychology can deal only with public events, and private experience is excluded from observation (Malone, Cruchon, 2001). Skinner, in his turn, did not make distinction between public and private events in psychology and did not deny the importance of personal experience, unlike Watson. What is more, Skinner stated that personal experience is not necessarily private experience (Malone, Cruchon, …

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