Behaviourism

Behaviourism is a school of psychology thats strength lies in its ability to provide empirical explanation (Perry, 1921), leading Harzem (2004) to state that behaviourism has been absorbed by scientific psychology. However, it has major limitations as a psychological theory. It will be shown that behaviourism’s dogmatic stance, as adopted by Watson (1925) and Skinner (1976), has stifled its potential for psychological understanding, dismissing its relevance as a complete theory. Examining behaviourism’s development and methodology, this essay will critically discuss the movement and its failure to explain the human mind.

As a scientific discipline, behaviourism began with the physiologist Pavlov’s discovery that dogs learn through association (Todes, 2014).

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning demonstrated how exposure to a repeated stimuli could elicit a predictable response (Pachauri, 2001). Maintaining a methodological approach to the study of learning, Thorndike demonstrated the influence of reward and punishment (Thorndike, 1911).

With Skinner’s Operant Conditioning extending to humans, behaviourists argued that learned behaviours resulted from previous consequences, producing both repetition and avoidance (McSweeney & Murphy, 2014).

These studies focused exclusively on the stimulus and response, ignoring the mental mechanisms in between.

Excluding conscious and unconscious processes from science (Hatfield, 2003), Watson set out a defiant manifesto (Watson, 1913) that adopted Pillsbury’s view of psychology as the science of behaviour (Pillsbury, 1913). However, Watson disregarded Pillsbury’s reference to the importance of experience, consciousness, and the mind (Pillsbury, 1913).

Excluding the non-observable, behaviourists could conduct simplistic, lab-based experiments, but failed to study the lived experience in its totality. This reductionist, quantitative, deterministic and predictive position excluded many phenomena from investigation (Giorgi, 1970), leaving behaviourists unable to address the complexities of behaviour whilst claiming to predict it (Watson, 1913).  

By the time of the A.P.A. conference of 1911, in an era of scientific advancement, behaviourism dominated Western psychology, offering to ease social and global problems (Harzem, 2004). Watson wanted to predict and control behaviour by means of observable science (Watson, 1913) but his declaration of pure objectivity was unfounded (Foxall, 1987). Many recorded behaviours, such as a muscle twitch, could not accurately be measured, rendering objectivity incompatible with behaviouristic methods. Furthermore, assumptions about human behaviour were being based on animal studies. Watson’s own criticism of psychoanalysis’ use of interpretation (Harzem, 2004) was also undermined with his own subjective interpretation, as in his Little Albert study (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

During the middle of the century, Watson rivalled Freud as psychology’s most significant figure (Bergmann, 1956). Both held deterministic views but, for Watson and the behaviourists, behaviour was exclusively caused by the environment (Rothschild & Gaidis, 1981). There is much opposition to this view, not least because Watson denied the role of genetic influence on behaviour (Plomin, 2019; Watson, 1925), while Allport (1947) criticised behaviourism’s dismissal of individual differences. Despite Fox et al. (2009) arguing that too much emphasis is placed on individual differences, Watson’s statement that he could take any healthy infant and turn them into any type of specialist was erroneous and unachieved.

In the 1930s, Skinner led post-Watson behaviourism. Drawn to Thorndike’s conditioning, Skinner found that the permanence of learning related to the timing of reinforcement (Ferster & Skinner, 1957) and he adopted radical behaviourism (Skinner, 1945), viewing free will as illusionary (Skinner, 1973), a claim supported by Wegner (2002), though Carruthers (2007) described it as non-demonstrative. In assuming that human behaviour lies beyond the individual, Skinner’s determinism (Skinner, 1948), with its inferred predictability of behaviour, offer coercion and compulsion as forms of social control, raising questions of responsibility and ethics.

Skinner’s renaming of mentalistic phenomena as behaviour cannot hide behaviourism’s inability to explain feelings. Its restrictive approach had Titchener (1914) predicting a limited future for a ‘psychobiology’ focusing entirely on the physical, with sensations and emotions considered covert (Ledoux, 2004). In dismissing immeasurable processes, behaviourists took a position from which they could not accept cognitive psychology as valid. Moore (1996) has argued that behaviourism is compatible with cognitive psychology, however, his view pertains only to neo-behaviourism which acknowledges the role of beliefs and emotions. With technology enabling the study of neural activity, neo-behaviourists claim consistency with behaviourism’s original position, with the mind considered in a biological context (Tolman, 1927). However, strict behaviourism’s aggressive and philosophical refusal to acknowledge the mind cannot be ignored. 

Behaviourism’s onus on scientific value continues to appeal to neo-behaviourists, especially given psychology’s replication crisis (Klein et al., 2018). Behaviourists demonstrate modern applications (Johansson et al., 2009) and point to the movement’s contribution to our understanding of learning, such as Skinner’s reinforcement schedules (Ferster, 2002). However, in only seeing humans through their behaviour, behaviourism gradually removed itself from mainstream psychology, with few psychologists regarding themselves as strict behaviourists (Hilgard et al., 2000).

This essay concludes that behaviourism, once the dominant approach, has little to offer modern psychology without abandoning its strict scientism and embracing the mind. As Tulving (2004) wrote, psychology has two different sciences, one concerning behaviour and the other the mind. Therefore, behaviourism fails to offer a full explanation of the causes of behaviour. Psychological interest in genetics, thoughts, feelings, and inferential statements, has left true behaviourism behind, leaving its value in a reductionist environmentalism that, whilst in isolation might support other areas of research, ultimately fails to offer a coherent holistic approach.  

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