Judging from its name, Behaviourism sounds like it must represent the ultimate science theory from which we can draw all the relevant knowledge and insights about behaviours, so it looks like the right place to begin our exploration.
In the early nineteenth century, the later Nobel prize winner, Ivan Pavlov, was doing experiments with dogs in his Russian laboratory, and as expected, the dogs would salivate when presented with food. A completely natural reaction caused by the dogs’ physiology preparing their stomachs to digest the food. In fact, we do it too. If you think about your favourite food right now, after a while, you should be able to detect your mouth watering. Pavlov called it an ‘unconditional reflex’. But it was another finding which imprinted Pavlov, and his dogs, in the memory of future generations. Pavlov discovered that the dogs would begin drooling when they heard the sound of a metronome even though they were not presented with any food. The ticking of the metronome had been played in the background during earlier feeding sessions and had over time become associated with feeding. This unusual effect became known as Pavlovian or classical conditioning.
You may have come across the saying: ‘just like Pavlov’s dogs’, when someone is pointing out what someone else is doing is a mere reflex to a situation or a cue. Not as a conscious response, but as an automatic reaction to a specific stimulus. A sign that conditioning has formed an association between a stimulus and a reaction, similar to experiencing a sudden memory triggered by a song you know from the past.
In the decades following Pavlov’s discovery, two scientists in particular took part in forming the movement behind behaviourism. One was psychologist John Watson, who in 1913 set out his direction for the science of psychology by stating that the research of behaviour should be purely experimental, aimed at prediction and control. Later, another famous scientist, the American B F Skinner, became so intrigued by Pavlov’s findings that he took the idea of conditioning much further, and subsequently helped to secure the legacy for the School of Behaviourism in the 1950s.
This new science voiced a cleaner approach to psychology by avoiding all the messy mental aspects of human behaviours such as thinking and emotions, by only focussing on what is measurable and observable. The Behaviourism scientists argued that the study of human behaviour could be reduced to the simple analysis of perceptible and quantifiable events and actions, completely ignoring other psychological factors. All behaviours, they argued, are learnt through interaction with the environment through the process of conditioning, and behaviours are therefore the result of responses to the stimuli from the environment. Hence, there are two major ways new behaviour is learnt: classical conditioning, which is the one Pavlov discovered, and operant conditioning, which is a learning process where the behaviour is modified by either reinforcement or punishment. These views were also anchored in a strong determinism, because if all behaviour is learnt through conditioning, then we are the sum of all our earlier conditioning, leaving little or no room for free will.
One peculiar aspect of behaviourism is that it continued Pavlov’s practice of mainly using animal experiments by claiming humans learn in the same way as animals. Obviously, human beings are different from animals in how we process cognition, and we are heavily influenced by our social fabric, such as norms, values, etc., so the principles derived from animal experiments seem far too narrow as a foundation from which to fully describe human behaviours.
Behaviourism had a sweeping influence on psychology and the way experiments were conducted. By ignoring what was going on in the human brain, the ‘science of mind’ became the ‘science of behaviour’, where behaviour could be observed with certainty, while the mind was left as a black box. Behaviourism was hugely influential up until the 1970s, when critical voices began to make their punches felt. The critique came from many angles, including linguists who could not accept the notion that language was void of thought. However, the main adversary to behaviourism was the burgeoning science of cognitive psychology as this became the study of our internal mental processes, such as thinking, memory, attention, and learning.
By the end of the twentieth century, traditional behaviourism no longer represented mainstream behavioural thinking, and cognitive psychology had become one of the dominant studies of why we do what we do by focusing on what is actually going on inside our brains. Cognitive psychology continues to play a key part amongst the core branches of psychology, and its theories have been reinforced by recent insights primarily from neuroscience and neuropsychology.
Even though behaviourism is no longer dominant in today’s psychology, there are still areas where the contribution of behaviourism can be seen in application. For instance, in behaviour therapy, also called aversion therapy (though controversy exist due to the pairing of an unwanted behaviour with discomfort), or behaviour modifications, using positive and negative reinforcement, exemplified by praise, approval, shaping and consequences.
The topic of conditioning also influenced early management thinking and theories, joining forces with Frederick Taylor’s scientific management, and its view on workers and motivation. The most pertinent of these views is that human beings are influenced by reward or fear of punishment, promoting the narrow view that only carrots or sticks will get us to behave, produce or conform. These narrow perspectives were prevalent at a time when ideas of management were established, and even though these now seem outdated, they still rear their heads now and then in traditional management practices. Something we shall explore separately in future posts.
Behaviourism had an enormous influence on the early development of psychology, especially its research and experimentation techniques, but the practice of behaviourism to ignore thinking, attention, and emotion plus a range of other influences on human behaviours, quite frankly reduces its applicability and usefulness significantly.
Despite its alluring name, behaviourism does not materialise as the grand all-encompassing theory about behaviours that its name suggests, so our search continues to gain a fuller and better understanding of why we do what we do, and what influences us to do so.