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Behaviourism

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Behaviourism is an approach to psychology that studies behaviour that can be observed, rather than thoughts and feelings reported from inside the mind. It was the main approach to the study of learning in the first half of the 20th century, especially in the United States.[1][2]

Origins

The word behaviourism was made famous by John Broadus Watson (1878–1958), a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University who is often called the first behaviourist.[3][4] His influence began with an article in the journal Psychological Review in 1913, although the basic idea had been around for some time.[5] Watson wrote: "Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior."[6]

Watson was reacting against introspection, the method in which psychologists looked into and reported on their own mental processes. He pointed out that it took a lot of practice, and that two experienced psychologists might report different thoughts for the same task.[4] His argument ran in three steps: psychology should be a science; sciences deal only with events everyone can observe; so psychology must deal only with observable events, namely the stimuli a person senses and the responses they make.[4]

Watson went further and treated thinking itself as quiet speech, based on "laryngeal habits", although he admitted the experimental evidence for this was slight.[7] Influenced by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, he stressed learning by links between stimuli and responses, and thought that most human behaviour was learned rather than instinctive.[8] In 1920, after an affair with his research assistant Rosalie Rayner, he was dismissed from Johns Hopkins and moved into advertising.[3]

Later behaviourists

From the 1930s to the 1950s the leading behaviourists included Edwin Guthrie, Clark Hull and Edward Tolman.[9] Watson's "real heir", however, was B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), whose "radical behaviourism" applied behaviourist ideas to every part of human experience.[9][10] At the height of his fame Skinner was better known in the United States than Sigmund Freud.[10]

Skinner's first major work was The Behavior of Organisms (1938). He studied white rats pressing a lever for food in a simple chamber, believing he could find principles that applied to many animals, including humans.[11] This "operant chamber", which Clark Hull nicknamed the "Skinner box", had a lever for rats or a disk for pigeons to peck, a food trough and devices for showing stimuli.[12] Skinner studied how different schedules of reinforcement (patterns of reward) affect behaviour; for example, a reward might come after every 20 responses or after a fixed period of time.[13] He argued that psychology did not need to explain behaviour by unseen inner causes such as "thirst", since behaviour could be predicted from things that could be measured, such as how long an animal had gone without water.[4][13]

Decline and influence

In the 1960s cognitive psychology, which studies mental processes such as memory and thinking, began to develop, partly because its supporters were unhappy with the behavioural approach.[1] Among its landmarks were George Miller's book Psychology: The Science of Mental Life (1962) and Ulric Neisser's textbook Cognitive Psychology (1967). This "cognitive revolution" pushed behaviourism out of the centre of psychology.[14]

Critics say that behaviourism was right to reject introspection as a scientific method but "went too far" in simplifying psychology.[15] Even so, its main ideas have been absorbed into experimental psychology, and it helped to advance understanding of reward and punishment, especially in animals.[2]

See also

== References ==

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mazur, James E. (2017). Learning and Behavior (8th ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-138-68994-7. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Mazur, James E. (2017). Learning and Behavior (8th ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-138-68994-7. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  5. ↑ Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  6. ↑ Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  7. ↑ Goodwin, C. James (2015). A History of Modern Psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 290. ISBN 978-1-118-83375-9. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  8. ↑ Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  11. ↑ Mazur, James E. (2017). Learning and Behavior (8th ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-138-68994-7. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  12. ↑ Goodwin, C. James (2015). A History of Modern Psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 328. ISBN 978-1-118-83375-9. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Goodwin, C. James (2015). A History of Modern Psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 330. ISBN 978-1-118-83375-9. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  14. ↑ Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  15. ↑ Staddon, John (2014). The New Behaviorism (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-84872-688-8. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
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