1. Behaviourism
Psychology 4006

2. Ivan Pavlov ( )
In training for ministry, but decided on science after reading Darwin and Sechenov
1883 degree in medicine
1891 director of Institute of Experimental Medicine (St. Petersburg)
Research on digestion
Research on salivary reflex leads to conditioning work
Nobel Prize for physiology 1904

3. Ivan Petrovich knew his stuff
Replication strategy
Acquisition of a CR
Extinction of a CR
Generalization and discrimination
Experimental neurosis
Breakdown in discrimination

4. Commies Loved him… Pavlov and Soviets
Conditioning work consistent with Soviet mission
Condition people to share Communist ideals
Hence, Pavlov’s work favored and well funded
Pavlov initially critical
But accommodated in face of Nazi threat in 1930s

5. The Founding of Behaviourism
John Watson ( )
Trained at functionalist University of Chicago
Ph.D correlated brain development and improved learning ability in rats
on the faculty at Chicago
Maze studies with Carr

6. A Radical New Idea Watson at Johns Hopkins 1908-1920
Continued animal studies
Both lab and field
1913 Behaviorist Manifesto paper
Introspection and consciousness out
Thinking is just sub-vocal speech
Study of overt behavior in
Goal given S, predict R; given R, predict S
Promise of applications
1915 APA presidential address
Demonstrated effects of conditioning procedures

7. Watson was ‘asked to resign’
Watson after Johns Hopkins (after 1920)
Applying science to a new life in advertising
Marketing research
Advertising campaigns based on emotions
Popularizing behaviorism
Behaviorism (1924)
Importance of the environment
Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928)
Rational rather than emotional parenting strategy

8. Watson left, but behaviourism continued
Events in the 1920s leading to neobehaviorism ( )
Operationism
Operational definitions
Enables replication
Converging operations
Increased confidence when the same outcomes result from multiple operational definitions of the same construct
Consensus on
Evolutionary continuum (human to animal links)
Learning/conditioning (nurture focus)

9. Skinner, the father of Radical Behaviourism
B. F. Skinner ( )
Ph.D. from Harvard (1931),
then University Fellow (until 1938)
The Behavior of Organisms (1938)
Type S conditioning Pavlovian
Two stimuli paired, producing same response
Type R conditioning operant
Behavior produces predictable consequences
Minnesota for 9 years, then 4 years as department head at Indiana
1948 returns to Harvard to stay

10. Radical Behaviourism Operant conditioning
Controlled environment (operant chamber)
Experimental analysis of behavior
Stimulus control
Opposed formal theory
Preferred an inductive strategy
The problem of explanatory fictions
Dangers of labels becoming explanations

11. Radical Behaviourism The technological ideal
Goal not just to predict and understand behavior, but also to control it
Project Pigeon
WWII guided missile system using pigeons
Applications to child rearing and teaching
Walden Two (1948)
Utopian community built on operant principles
Became widely read in the 1960s

12. Conclusions Huge in North America, not as huge in Europe
Probably saved psychology
Probably went too far
What’s on your behaviour?
Methods are still used today.