Question

Give an analysis of behaviorism and include the theoretical underpinnings of the movement and the primary tenets and concepts of the movement?

Answer 1

• Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. It is a form of materialism, denying any independent significance for mind. Its significance for psychological treatment has been profound, making it one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy.
• The behaviorist school of thought ran concurrent with the psychoanalysis movement in psychology in the 20th century. Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental laboratory methods. B.F. Skinner, sought to give ethical grounding to behaviorism, relating it to pragmatism.
• Classical: The behaviorism of Watson; the objective study of behavior; no mental life, no internal states; thought is covert speech.
• Methodological: The objective study of third-person behavior; the data of psychology must be inter-subjectively verifiable; no theoretical prescriptions. Has been absorbed into general experimental and cognitive psychology. Two popular subtypes are Neo-: Hullian and post-Hullian, theoretical, group data, not dynamic, physiological, and Purposive: Tolman’s behavioristic anticipation of cognitive psychology.
• Radical: Skinnerian behaviorism; includes behavioral approach to ‘mental life;’ not mechanistic; internal states not permitted.
• Teleological: Post-Skinnerian, purposive, close to microeconomics. Theoretical: Post-Skinnerian, accepts internal states (the skin makes a difference); dynamic, but eclectic in choice of theoretical structures, emphasizes parsimony.
  
• Watson's approach was much influenced by the work of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who had stumbled upon the phenomenon of classical conditioning (learned reflexes) in his study of the digestive system of the dog, and subsequently investigated the phenomena in detail. Watson's approach emphasized physiology and the role of stimuli in producing conditioned responses - assimilating most or all function to reflex. For this reason, Watson may be described as an S-R (stimulus-response) psychologist.
• B.F. Skinner, who carried out experimental work mainly in comparative psychology from the 1930s to the 1950s, but remained behaviorism's best known theorist and exponent virtually until his death in 1990, developed a distinct kind of behaviorist philosophy, which came to be called radical behaviorism. He also claimed to have found a new version of psychological science, which he called behavior analysis or the experimental analysis of behavior.
• Behaviorism is both a psychological movement and a philosophy. The basic premise of radical behaviorism is that the study of behavior should be a natural science, such as chemistry or physics, without any reference to hypothetical inner states of organisms. Other varieties, such as theoretical behaviorism, permit internal states, but do not require them to be mental or have any relation to subjective experience. Behaviorism takes a functional view of behavior.