Birth of Behaviorism
description
Transcript of Birth of Behaviorism
![Page 1: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Birth of Behaviorism• Behaviorism, as we know it, was first
outlined in paper published 1904 by a Russian researcher …
• “[translated] for psychology to be a science, the research must focus on the observable – the environment [stimulus] and the behavior of an organism [response].”
• … the approach achieved more and more important findings, and behaviorism quickly took over experimental psychology.
![Page 2: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Sechenov (before 1904)• It was Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905), a
Russian physiologist of the mid-1800s, who proposed the main ingredient of behaviorism.
• In 1863, he wrote “Reflexes of the Brain” in which he argued that stimulation causes all behavior, making him the first true behaviorist.
• He also proposed that the central nervous system could inhibit the nerves (as well as excite the nerves).
![Page 3: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Bekhterev (1857-1927)• In a 1904 paper entitled, “Objective
Psychology,” Vladimir Bekhterev outlined the nature of behaviorism.
• He called the objective study of stimulus-response associations “reflexology” .
• He independently discovered the “association reflex,” but Pavlov would make it more widely known as the “conditioned reflex.”
![Page 4: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)• Became the most famous Russian
Behaviorist when he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1904.
• The award was officially for research in the study of digestion in animals. His finding was the ability to train dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell – a “conditioned reflex.”
• The finding, of course, was more relevant to the young field of psychology than to physiology.
![Page 5: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Pavlov’s Behaviorism• Behaviorism was not about mental
activity, but of reflexes – responses to stimuli.
• Pavlov never opposed the idea that experimental psychology could study mental activity, but he never addressed mental activity in his research.
• Pavlov defined the major terms of behaviorism, and they would be the first set of “universal principles” in the field of psychology …
![Page 6: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Birth of Classical Conditioning• At the time, it was not known as
“classical” conditioning, but “classical” distinguishes it from the later “operant” conditioning (Skinner).
• The unconditioned stimulus and the unconditioned response were natural reflexes.– Unconditioned stimulus (environment) – part
of the naturally occurring environment.– Unconditioned response (organism) – an
unlearned response to the natural environment.
![Page 7: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Classical Conditioning• The conditioned stimulus and
conditioned responses depend on the natural “reflexes.”– Conditioned stimulus – paired with the
unconditioned stimulus. E.g. Pavlov paired a bell with the presentation of meat powder.
– Conditioned response – the learned response. The dogs responded to the bell in the same manner as responding to meat powder.
![Page 8: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Classical Conditioning (cont.)• The conditioned response is
strengthened with repeated pairing of the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus.
• Extinction – the conditioned response can be weakened, and even lost, with repeatedly presenting the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus.
![Page 9: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Conditioning and Psychology• Conditioning can be more complex. For
example, dogs can learn one bell means meat, but another bell means NO meat.
• By expanding on the idea of complex conditioning patterns, we can begin to appreciate how behaviorism can explain our human nature.
• Many behaviorists indeed proposed that human nature can be reduced to a complex pattern of learned responses to stimuli.
![Page 10: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
John Watson (1878-1958)• In 1913, nine years after Pavlov and
Bekhterev established behaviorism, Watson’s publication “Psychology as a Behaviorist views it” appeared in Psychological Review.
• Watson presented psychology as a combination of Russian behaviorism and British empiricism. In other words, he believed that the study of the mind was a study of building higher mental capacity through stimulus-response behavior.
![Page 11: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Watson’s Psychology• Established and defined behaviorism in
U.S.A.• He saw the 1904 rise of Russian
behaviorism, but he already had a similar position due to his views of empiricism and functionalism.
• He wanted to go beyond learned behavior. His intentions were to take stimulus-response research and turn it into a study of the mind.
• In 1919, after the end of the first World War, Watson and behaviorism began a take-over of empirical psychology.
![Page 12: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Watson’s Famous Quote:“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-
informed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
![Page 13: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xt0ucxOrPQE
![Page 14: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Watson via Locke• Using Locke’s model of
mental processes, we can view Watson’s behaviorism as abstracted stimulus-response sets. With control over the stimuli, we can decide the abstract response sets.
![Page 15: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Little Albert• “Little Albert” is the public name of
Watson’s most famous experiment – on a real baby!
• He conditioned Albert to be afraid of white rats after seven pairings of the rats with loud noises.
• Little Albert quickly generalized his fears to other white fuzzy things such as cotton.
• Watson repeated the conditioning on a three-year old, then de-conditioned the child.
![Page 16: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Watson’s Psychology:More Advanced Ideas
• Language and thinking – language was learned through social stimulus-response bonds based on trial and error. Thoughts are internalized language.
• Watson endorsed “Radical Environmentalism” and he completely rejected the existence of both instincts and inherited abilities.
• Behavior therapy – his de-conditioning of a conditioned response became a model for behavioral therapy.
![Page 17: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
Watson Mishaps• In 1920, when he was 42, Watson had
an affair with a student.• He was released from his university,
and took on a new career in advertising. Using his behavioral background, he was very successful.
• He never went back to research, but still wrote many more successful books in psychology.
![Page 18: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
Albert Einstein• Einstein is not considered important to
psychology, but he is important to science.• His major ideas were (1905) matter is
condensed energy [E=mc2, i.e., the energy content of a body is equal to the mass of the body times the speed of light squared).and (1915) everything in the universe is relative to the speed of light.
• His theories helped other scientists conclude that the universe began as a point of unity (better known as the “big bang theory”).
![Page 19: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
Einstein’s Science• Einstein’s work led us to see a universe
that started with a “big bang.” This added to Newton’s notion that the universe governed by laws of motion and Darwin’s natural theory of the origin of species.
• Scientists were now able to describe atoms and the universe, seemed ready to explain everything.
• Like Newton, Einstein widened the gap between religion and science.
• Also, just as Newton did, Einstein privately said he saw God in his theories.
![Page 20: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Science Changes(1905-1925)
• Behaviorism was the result of efforts to make psychology as objective as the natural sciences.
• But just as behaviorism was beginning to take hold, the natural sciences were becoming more theoretical and less empirical.– Atoms and atomic activity could be
predicted with theoretical, non-observable “forces.”
– The light from distant galaxies could reveal the history of the universe – by applying a theoretical interaction with gravity.
![Page 21: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
The Paradigm Changes• The natural sciences took on more and
more theoretical (assumed) activity in their research.
• Many researchers and philosophers started to ask what was actually observed and what was merely theory within the natural sciences.
• In 1924, “logical positivism” was proposed by a group of philosophers to explain the increased reliance on theoretical speculation in the natural sciences.
![Page 22: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
Logical Positivism• First, logical positivism separates
observations from theories in scientific inquiry. – Observational terms – empirically observed.– Theoretical terms – unobserved explanations.
• After that, a theoretical term must be logically connected to the empirical observation in a manner that can be supported or rejected by other observations. (this is a precursor to empirical “falsifiability” of theories).
![Page 23: Birth of Behaviorism](https://reader034.fdocuments.in/reader034/viewer/2022050806/56815da6550346895dcbd4cf/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
Neo-behaviorism: A Prelude• Some logical positivists urge psychologists
to use logical positivism in empirical psychology.
• At the same time, physicists start using “operational definitions” – the act of defining a concept with the method of measurement.
• Neo-behaviorists expanded on stimulus-response research to include operational definitions of the unobservable psychological activity – by using the standard of logical positivism (later defined as “falsifiability”).