Chapter 8: Behaviourism Flashcards
what did Watson give a talk about at Columbia
- dissatisfied with progress in psychology
- conceptual and methodological complaints
- didn’t like continued focus on mental states –> thought they were elusive to study
- disagreed with method of introspection
- thought science of psychology had failed –> initiated the behaviourism revolution
why was animal research not an option in structuralism
- structuralism relied on introspection
- only used in functional psychology (e.g. adapting to changing environments)
- also good to use in behaviourism
what is comparative psychology
subfield of animal psychology –> study nonhuman animal behaviour to generalize the findings to human behaviour
what were the conditions for comparative psychology
- only possible if there is some tie between humans and these other animals
- need some evidence of common ancestry
- most views beforehand had tried to keep humans separate from other animals
- Darwinian theory demonstrated morphological and behavioural ties between humans and rest of animal kingdom –> made humans seem somewhat less significant
describe Romanes’s “introspection by analogy”
- started from what was known subjectively of the operations of his own mind and activities which are prompted by these
- infer observable activities of other organisms the mental operations that underlie them
- more danger in the analogy between humans and lower species (but mammals are closer to humans)
describe Morgan’s response to Romanes’s work
- thought attributing human mental processes (e.g. reasoning) to animals lower in phylogenetic scale was unwarranted
- Morgan’s canon –> higher mental processes should not be invoked if the beahviour can be explained adequately by a lower mental process
- Watson & other behaviourists used Watson’s canon as a basis for rejecting psychological explanations that appealed to mental states like consciousness
what kind of methods did Morgan use
- did not rule out introspection by analogy
- limited use of introspection to only mammals
- stressed importance of empirical observations (under controlled conditions)
- simple experiments with animals in natural setting (i.e. manipulated environment to see how animals responded)
describe the work of Thorndike
- animal research in baby chicks and cats
- e.g. tested cat’s problem solving abilities
- found animals learn in a trial-and-error fashion –> rejected idea of reasoning being involved
- successful responses learned gradually, unsuccessful responses eliminated
law of effect/law of reinforcement
- Thorndike
- any act which produces satisfaction becomes associated with that situation
- when the situation recurs, the act is more likely than before to recur also
- also called “instrumental learning”
classical/Pavlovian conditioning
dogs start salivating before food is present –> elicited by stimuli that had been paired with food previously
what are the 8 parts of Pavlovian conditioning
- acquisition
- extinction
- spontaneous recovery
- generalization
- discrimination
- conditioned inhibition
- conditioned emotional reactions
- higher-order conditioning
what did Watson think the goal of psychology was
prediction and control of behaviour
why did Watson oppose the study of consciousness through introspection
thought introspection allowed so much personal bias into the observational process –> thought we had to measure physiological manifestations to get objective truth
what were some methods that Watson approved of
reaction time, experimental studies on memory, some psychological tests (but not mental tests), puzzle boxes by Thorndike
what was Watson’s most famous study
- conditioned emotions study (little albert)
- made him fear a white rat and any other qualities that resembled it (i.e. white fur) by pairing it with an aversive sound
- was never deconditioned
what three emotions did Watson think humans were born with
- fear
- rage
- love
to what fields did Watson try to apply his behaviourist psychology to
- advertising
- child psychology –> thought it was good to raise children by displaying minimal affection (induced self-reliance and independence)
why was Watson’s contribution to behaviourism important
- he crystallized scattered ideas of his predecessors into systematic formulation
- had drive and personality to sell the idea
- slowly spread and dominated American psychology
- called for science capable of prediction and control
what is neobehaviourism
- 1930s-70s
- interested in theory, focused on learning and motivation
- argued over role of reinforcement on learning
- used animals (rats)
who were the three most influential neobehaviourists
Tolman, Hull and Skinner
describe Tolman’s theory on behaviourism
- behaviour is purposive –> directed towards some goal
- purpose is determined by cognitions
- objected to Hull that cognitive processes could not explain behaviour –> thought rats had cognitive maps
describe Tolman’s idea of cognitive maps
spatial representations of the world that allow them to function effectively –> with experience, animal builds up expectancies about environment
intervening variables (Tolman)
- processes within the organism that intervened between stimulus and response
- similar to Woodworth’s S-O-R formulation
- cognitions were examples of these variables
describe some of Tolman’s most important contributions to psychology
- distinction between learning and performance
- demonstration of latent learning
- distinction between response and place learners
- cognitive maps
describe Tolman’s research on the learning-performance distinction
- learning could not be observed but could be inferred from measures of performance
- learning sets upper limit on performance
- performance = behaviour
- learning = internal state
- had to measure learning under conditions where maximal performance could be achieved
describe Tolman’s beliefs about the role of reinforcement in learning
- did not believe reinforcement was necessary to learn
- latent learning supported this position
- e.g. rats would learn something about the maze even without a food reward being given
describe Tolman’s study with rats showing evidence for cognitive maps
- plus shaped maze
- one group always turned right to get food (response learners), other group was always fed in the same place (place learners)
- place learners learned the maze faster than response learners
why were Tolman’s theories initially rejected and overruled
the movement was to completely remove the idea of cognition from behaviourism –> theories would re-emerge when ideas of consciousness were renewed
what was Hull’s work on
- early work on aptitude testing and hypnosis
- theory of behaviour made him most cited psychologist of all time
Hypothetico-deductive method (Hull)
- began by stating a series of postulates from which one could derive testable hypotheses
- hypotheses would be tested
- support of hypothesis = support of postulate
law of primary reinforcement (Hull)
- any act which in a given situation produces satisfaction becomes associated with that situation
- recurrence of this situation = act is more likely to recur also
what made Hull’s system different from Tolman’s
- reinforcement was a key concept of Hull’s theory
- learning does not occur without reinforcement
- reinforcement operates by means of drive reduction (drives such as hunger, sex and sleep)
- reduction of drives is reinforcing –> actions lead to drive reduction are likely to be repeated
habit strength (Hull)
- strength of association between stimulus and response (which reinforcement is key to)
- strength of learning
what were the strengths of Hull’s theory
- theory that generates testable hypotheses
- created industry of experimental psychology
describe the nature of Skinner’s theory
- used deductive methods to build mathematical science of psychology
- carried Watson’s goals of prediction and control to higher levels
- called psychology “experimental analysis of behaviour”
- emphasized study of learning in animals
operant conditioning (Skinner)
- form of instrumental learning
- proposed an R-S psychology (rather than S-R)
- focused on how consequences affect behaviour
- interested in stimulus events that followed a behaviour
- reinforcers = more behaviour
- punishers = less behaviour
why didn’t Skinners work fit the dominant paradigm for psychological science at the time
- did many studies with one single animal
- no statistical analyses
- difficult to get work published for this
continuous reinforcement (Skinner)
- every response that was supposed to be reinforced was reinforced
- this rarely happens in the real world
partial reinforcement (Skinner)
- reinforcement occurring on an intermittent basis
- produced behaviour that was more resistant to extinction than those that had been continuously reinforced –> “partial reinforcement effect”
what were some of the partial reinforcement patterns Skinner found
ratio schedules, interval schedules –> number of responses and intervals could be fixed or variable
what was the main aim of Skinner’s work
to change behaviour –> advocated for minimal use of punishment because of its undesirable effects
what were some of the phenomena Skinner studied
shaping, acquisition, extinction, discrimination, generalization, schedules of reinforcement, reinforcement delay, punishment, negative versus positive reinforcement, partial reinforcement effect, persistence
how did Skinner apply his work to behavioural technology
- missile guidance system using pigeons in WWII
- designed crib for infants (baby tender)
- teaching machines & programmed learning
- designing classrooms, working with people with intellectual disabilities, designing prison systems, treating psychological disorders, use of punishment in society, etc.
what did Skinner write about freedom
- much of people’s lives are controlled by other forces not of their own choosing
- freedom was largely an illusion
- not well received
- people cannot gain control of lives until they pay attention to the controls in place and decide what to do about them
what were the main critiques of Skinner’s work
- unwillingness to look inside the animal (“black box”)
- found system was too narrow –> avoided mental processes
what was Behaviourism’s contribution to psychology
- some argue it limited the development of psychology and closed off important areas for research
- others say it propagated psychology’s success as a science –> broke it off from philosophy
- strengthened role of physiological processes in psychological explanations
- expanded psychological methods
- made ties between human & animal behaviour more evident
- tried to improve humanity and make a better world
- cognitive psychology used many tenets of behaviourism in establishing its science
