1. Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences
Chapter 9
Ms. Wilson, MS, LPC

2. Topics The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism
Edward Lee Thorndike ( )
Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov ( )
The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism

3. Toward a Science of Behavior
Evolution of psychology from Wundt to functionalism
Functionalism movement was more evolutionary than revolutionary
Watson promotes another change: the philosophical tradition of objectivism and mechanism, animal psychology, and functional psychology
Zeitgeist dominated by the objectivistic, mechanistic, and materialistic influences
New psychology: focused on only what could be seen, heard, or touched
John Watson

4. The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism
Animal psychology: antecedent to Watson’s psychology
Jacques Loeb ( ): German physiologist and zoologist
Animal Tropism: which is an involuntary forced movement
Argued that animal consciousness was revealed by associative memory
Animals had learned to react to certain stimuli in a desirable way
Jacques Loeb ( )

5. Tools for the behaviorists: Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
Robert Yerkes: strengthened comparative psychology in the US.
Willard Small (1900): the rat maze is introduced as a standard method for the study of learning
Charles Henry Turner
A Preliminary Note on Ant Behavior (1906)
Watson later adopted the term
1910: eight comparative psychology laboratories had been established
The animal mind analogous to the human mind
Margaret Washburn published The Animal Mind (1908).
The Hampton Court

6. On Becoming an Animal Psychologist
Animal psychology was a difficult profession
Not well respected in academia
Always concerned with funding
Poor career prospects
Revival of animal psychology:
1909: Publication of detail account of Pavlov's work by Yerkes and Morgulis in Psychological Bulletin.
Clever Hans case showed animals are capable of learning

7. Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949)
Created a mechanistic, objective learning theory that focused on overt behavior
Believed that psychology must study behavior, not mental elements or conscious experiences
Finished Ph.D. with Cattell
Animal Intelligence (1898)
Connectionism: Thorndike’s approach to learning that was based on connections between situations and responses
Argued that behavior must be reduced to its simplest elements: the stimulus–response units (S-R)
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949)

8. The Puzzle Box
Thorndike built crude puzzle boxes out of crates and sticks to use on animals
Example: Thorndike placed a food- deprived cat in a box to test how long it would take for the cat to activate the lever to be fed
Responses were random at first
On subsequent trials, random behaviors were less frequent until learning was complete
Trial-and-error learning: learning based on the repetition of response tendencies that lead to success

9. Laws of Learning
Law of effect: acts that produce satisfaction in a given situation become associated with that situation; when the situation recurs, the act is likely to recur
Law of exercise: the more an act or response is used in a given situation, the more strongly the act becomes associated with that situation

10. Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849–1936)
Worked on learning
Helped shift associationism from its emphasis on subjective ideas to objective and quantifiable physiological events
Example of topic: glandular secretions and muscular movements
Provided Watson with a method for studying behavior and for attempting to control and modify it
Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov

11. Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849–1936)
Won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work in physiology.
During his work on the physiology of the digestive system Pavlov discovered the conditioned reflex.
Conditioned reflexes: reflexes that are conditional or dependent on the formation of an association or connection between stimulus and response
Noted that objects or events associated with presentation of food also produced gastric secretions.
Referred to these as “conditional” because they depended on something else.
An early translation of his work mistranslated conditional as conditioned.

12. Ivan Pavlov (continued)
Developed classical (Pavlovian) conditioning
In classical conditioning:
An unconditioned response, is triggered by an unconditioned stimulus.
For example, food elicits salivation out of an organism.
The conditioned reflex is developed by the laws of contiguity and frequency.
A biologically neutral stimulus is associated, through contiguity, with the unconditioned stimulus and develops the capacity to elicit some fraction of the unconditioned response
At this point the neutral stimulus has become the conditioned stimulus and the response to the conditioned stimulus is the conditioned response.
Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery

13. Classical Conditioning
Step 1: Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) > Unconditioned response (UCR)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS) No response
Step 2: Pairing UCS and CS > Conditioned Response (CR) +
Step 3: Conditioned Stimulus (CS) > Conditioned Response (CR)

14. The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism
Before Watson: functional psychologists moved away from Wundt’s and Titchener’s pure psychology of conscious experience
Need for an objective psychology that would focus on behavior instead of consciousness
Zeitgeist: overall movement of American psychology was in a behavioristic direction
Missing link: the agent of a revolution whose inevitability and success were assured (Watson)