Behaviorism is a direction in psychology that was founded by D.B. Watson with the advent of his publication in 1913. At the same time, the first program formulated by an American psychologist took shape. Watson's paper was entitled "Psychology from a Behaviorist's Point of View." This direction occupied a dominant position until the mid-1950s.
Its essence lies in the fact that, as a subject of scientific research, behaviorism rejected both consciousness and the unconscious and reduced the psyche to various forms of behavior, as a set of reactions of the body to environmental stimuli. A person can be taught anything, Watson suggested, of course, within the limits of his physical capabilities, and factors such as genetic background, personality traits, thoughts do not play any role.
Among the representatives of this direction we can name such scientists as E. Thorndike, I.P. Pavlov, F. Skinner, K. Hull, who left a big mark in the history of behaviorism.
Watson saw the task of psychology as studying the behavior of living beings as they adapt to their physical and social environments, and its goal as creating means to control behavior. The role of consciousness as a real regulator of human activity is rejected by behaviorism on the basis that it is inaccessible to objective study. Behaviorists accept the connection between stimulus and response as the basic mechanisms of behavior.
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Their main method is observation and experimental study of the body's reactions to environmental influences. Experiments were carried out mainly on animals, and the established patterns at this level were then transferred to people.
Behaviorism ignores the social nature of man, the activity of the body and the role of its mental organization in transforming the environment.
The original concept of behaviorism was fraught with many methodological flaws, so already in the 1920s it began to disintegrate into a number of directions - Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, neobehaviorism.
But, nevertheless, behaviorism expanded the field of psychology, including external and bodily reactions, influenced linguistics, anthropology, sociology, etc. Its representatives made a significant contribution to the development of empirical and mathematical methods for studying behavior.
In practical psychology, behaviorism became the founder of the behavioral approach. In it, the focus of the psychologist is human behavior, and more specifically, “what is in behavior that we want to change” and what needs to be done specifically for this.
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Behaviorism in psychology. What is it ↑
The study of the reasons that motivate a person to act in one way or another led to the emergence of a new direction in social psychology - behaviorism. The name of the theory comes from the English word behavior, which means behavior.
It is based on the assertion that the mental process is not something abstract, and mental phenomena are reduced to the reactions of the body. In other words, behaviorism in psychology is the science of behavior.
Personality, according to behaviorists, is a set of behavioral reactions. And only that which can be measured objectively has practical value for psychology.
Everything that lies beyond the material: thoughts, feelings, consciousness - may exist, but cannot be studied and cannot be used to correct human behavior. Only human reactions to the influence of specific stimuli and situations are real.
The main provisions of the theory of behaviorism are based on the “stimulus-response” formula.
A stimulus is any environmental influence on the body or life situation. Reaction - human actions taken to avoid or adapt to a particular stimulus.
The connection between stimulus and response is strengthened if there is reinforcement between them. It can be positive (praise, material reward, getting a result), then the person remembers the strategy for achieving the goal and subsequently repeats it in practice. Or it can be negative (criticism, pain, failure, punishment), then this behavior strategy is rejected and a new, more effective one is sought.
Thus, in behaviorism, a person is considered as an individual who is predisposed to one or another reaction, that is, he is a stable system of certain skills.
You can influence his behavior by changing incentives and reinforcements.
Motives for occurrence
The theory of behaviorism as a science of behavior was formed against the background of criticism of the most common method of introspection that preceded it in the 19th century, based on self-diagnosis and introspection. Doubts about the accuracy of such science were raised by the low level of objectivity of measurements and the strong disparity in the information received. J. Watson wanted to create a branch of psychology in which data could be accurately measured and objectively studied. The philosophical basis of behaviorism was the theory of J. Locke, who believed that a person is born with pure consciousness, and during his life he receives all the necessary experience that determines his state.
History and tasks ↑
Until the beginning of the 20th century, psychology as a science studied and operated only with subjective concepts such as feelings and emotions, which were not amenable to material analysis. As a result, the data that were obtained by different authors were very different from each other and could not be linked into a single concept.
On this basis, behaviorism arose, which unequivocally swept aside everything subjective and subjected a person to purely mathematical analysis. The founder of this theory was the American psychologist John Watson.
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He proposed a scheme that explains human behavior by the interaction of two material components: stimulus and reaction. Because they were objective, they could be easily measured and described.
Watson believed that by studying a person’s reaction to various stimuli, one can easily predict expected behavior, and also, with the help of influences and changes in environmental conditions, form in a person certain qualities, skills, and aptitudes for a profession.
In Russia, the main provisions of behaviorism found theoretical justification in the works of the great Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov, who studied the formation of conditioned reflexes in dogs. The scientist’s research has proven that by changing the stimulus and reinforcement, it is possible to achieve a certain behavior in an animal.
Watson's work was further developed in the works of another American psychologist and educator, Edward Thorndike. He viewed human behavior as the result of “trial, error, and accidental success.”
Thorndike understood a stimulus not just as a separate environmental influence, but as a specific problem situation that a person must solve.
A continuation of classical behaviorism was neobehaviorism, which added a new component to the “stimulus-response” scheme - an intermediate factor. The idea was that human behavior is formed not directly under the influence of a stimulus, but in a more complex way - through goals, intentions, hypotheses. The founder of neobehaviorism was E.T. Tolman.
Directions of behaviorism
Initially, there was only classical behaviorism, which viewed behavior as a set of stimuli and reactions. But over time, it became clear that this was not enough to create a full-fledged branch of psychology. As a result, different directions emerged that refined and supplemented the basic scheme of behaviorism. The main theories can be considered in the table.
| Direction | Description |
| Target behaviorism | Its representative is E. Tolman, who included the missing link in the diagram, resulting in the following expression: stimulus - mental activity - reaction. Thus, in mazes, mice did not get to the goal in the way they were taught, but simply ran towards it along arbitrary paths. This means that the goal for them was a higher priority than the learned path; they ran the road that seemed most convenient to them to achieve the goal, which means that before acting, they had time to think about their trajectory at a primitive level. |
| Social behaviorism | The most famous person in this direction of behaviorism is A. Bandura. Here, in the “stimulus-response” formula, social experience and individual psychological characteristics that react to a stimulus began to be taken into account. A. Bandura conducted experiments with three groups of children who, under different conditions, were shown a video recording of another child “bullying” a rag doll. As a result, those who were shown subsequent punishment for aggression did not touch the doll. And those who saw that such actions were not condemned or encouraged showed aggression towards her in the same way as the child in the video presented to him. |
| Neobehaviorism (Radical behaviorism) | The founders of this direction were B. Skinner, the author of the concept of operational behaviorism, and K. Hull. Here the stimulus-response framework is expanded to include various intervening variables that have a significant influence on the formation of behavior. For example, such variables can be considered encouragement, ignoring and punishment for a particular reaction. |
Approaches ↑
In the 20th century, physics had a great influence on psychology. Like physicists, psychologists sought to use the methods of the natural sciences in their research.
Representatives of behaviorism used 2 methodological approaches in their research:
- observation in natural habitat;
- observation in a laboratory setting.
Most experiments were carried out on animals, and then the resulting patterns of reactions to various stimuli were transferred to humans.
Experiments with animals were devoid of the main disadvantage of working with people - the presence of emotional and psychological components that interfere with objective assessment.
In addition, such work was no less limited by ethical frameworks, which made it possible to study responsive behavior to negative stimuli (pain).
Pros and cons of behaviorism
The advantages of the behavioristic approach are that for its time it was a new and very progressive movement in psychology. During his era, a large number of new discoveries were made and many experiments significant for the development of science were carried out. On the basis of behaviorism and using some of its ideas, other areas of psychology and psychotherapy arose, and some theses of behaviorism are used in pedagogy.
At the same time, the consideration of man in behaviorism was one-sided: it focuses only on the study of external manifestations. Representatives of this direction denied the influence of subjective data on behavior - characteristics of the psyche, emotional state, their own desires and aspirations, as well as the influence of society and social attitudes. They also claimed that they could influence the behavior of any person; they just needed to find suitable stimuli and reinforce the reaction. In addition, a criticism of behaviorism was that it did not see much difference between human and animal behavior.
Methods ↑
For its purposes, behaviorism uses several natural scientific methods for studying behavior.
The founder of the theory, Watson, resorts to the following methods in his research:
- observation of the experimental subject without the use of instruments;
- active surveillance using instruments;
- testing;
- verbatim recording;
- methods of conditioned reflexes.
Observation of experimental subjects without the use of instruments consisted of a visual assessment of certain responses that arose in the experimental animal when exposed to certain stimuli.
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Active observation with the help of devices was carried out using technology that recorded changes in body parameters (heart rate, respiratory movements) under the influence of environmental factors or special stimuli. The following indicators: time to solve assigned problems and reaction speed were also studied.
During testing, it was not the mental qualities of a person that were analyzed, but his behavior, that is, a certain choice of response method was analyzed.
The essence of the verbatim recording method was based on introspection, or self-observation. When one person acted as the tester and the subject. In this case, it was not feelings and emotions that were analyzed, but thoughts that had verbal expression.
The method of conditioned reflexes was based on the classical works of physiologists. In this case, the desired reaction was developed in an animal or person through positive or negative reinforcement of the stimulus.
Despite its ambiguity, behaviorism played an important role in the development of psychology as a science. He expanded its scope to include bodily reactions, initiated the development of mathematical methods for studying humans, and became one of the origins of cybernetics.
In modern psychotherapy, there are a number of techniques that, based on it, make it possible to combat obsessive fears (phobias).
