Burress Frederick Skinner was one of the most famous psychologists of his time. It was he who stood at the origins of the direction that today in science is called behaviorism. Even today, his learning theory plays an important role in psychology, pedagogy, and management.
Scientist's experiments
Skinner's theory is described in detail in one of his main works, which is called “The Behavior of Organisms.” In it, the scientist outlines the principles of so-called operant conditioning. The easiest way to understand these principles is to consider one of the most typical experiments of a scientist. The rat's weight was reduced to 80-90% of normal. It is placed in a special device called a Skinner box. It provides the opportunity to perform only those actions that the observing experimenter can see and control.
The box has a hole through which food is supplied to the animal. To get food, the rat must press a lever. This pressing in Skinner's theory is called an operant response. How the rat manages to press this lever - through its paw, nose, or perhaps tail - does not matter. The operational reaction in the experiment remains the same, since it causes only one consequence: the rat receives food. By rewarding the animal with food for a certain number of clicks, the researcher forms stable ways of responding in the animal.
Formation of behavior according to Skinner
A prompt reaction in Skinner's theory is a voluntary and purposeful action. But Skinner defines this goal-directedness in terms of feedback. In other words, behavior is influenced by certain consequences of the animal.
Skinner agreed with the views of scientists Watson and Thornadike on the dual nature of mental development. They believed that the formation of the psyche is influenced by two types of factors - social and genetic. In operant learning, specific operations performed by the subject are reinforced. In other words, genetic data act as the basis on which socially conditioned behavior is built. Therefore, development, Skinner believed, is learning conditioned by certain environmental stimuli.
Skinner also believed that operant conditioning could be used not only to control the behavior of others, but also to control one's own behavior. Self-control can be achieved by creating special conditions in which desired behavior will be reinforced.
Positive reinforcement
Operant learning in Skinner's theory of reinforcement is based on the active actions of the subject (“operations”) carried out in a certain environment. If some spontaneous action becomes useful to meet a certain need or achieve a goal, it is reinforced by a positive result. For example, a pigeon can learn a complex action - playing ping-pong. But only if this game becomes a means of getting food. In Skinner's theory, reward is called reinforcement because it reinforces the most desirable behavior.
Sequential and proportional reinforcement
But a pigeon cannot learn to play ping-pong unless the experimenter shapes this behavior in it through discriminative learning. This means that the individual actions of the pigeon are reinforced by the scientist consistently, selectively. In B.F. Skinner's theory, reinforcement can either be distributed randomly, occurring at certain time intervals, or occur in certain proportions. Reward distributed randomly in the form of periodic cash wins provokes the development of gambling addiction in people. Reinforcement that occurs at certain intervals - salary - contributes to the fact that a person remains in a certain service.
Proportional reinforcement in Skinner's theory is such a powerful reinforcement that the animals in his experiments practically worked themselves to death in an attempt to earn more tasty food. Unlike behavior reinforcement, punishment is negative reinforcement. Punishment cannot teach a new behavioral model. It only forces the subject to constantly avoid certain operations followed by punishment.
Punishment
The use of punishment tends to have negative side effects. Skinner's learning theory identifies the following consequences of punishment: high levels of anxiety, hostility and aggressiveness, and withdrawal. Sometimes punishment forces an individual to stop behaving in a certain way. But its disadvantage is that it does not promote positive behavior.
Punishment often forces the subject not to abandon an undesirable model of behavior, but only to transform it into a hidden form that is not punished (for example, this could be drinking alcohol at work). Of course, there are many cases when punishment seems to be the only method of suppressing socially dangerous behavior that threatens the life or health of other people. But in ordinary situations, punishment is an ineffective means of influence and should be avoided whenever possible.
Pros and cons of Skinner's operant learning theory
Let's consider the main advantages and disadvantages of Skinner's concept. Its advantages are as follows:
- Rigorous testing of hypotheses, control of additional factors influencing the experiment.
- Recognition of the importance of situational factors and environmental parameters.
- A pragmatic approach that has led to the creation of effective psychotherapeutic procedures for behavior transformation.
Disadvantages of Skinner's theory:
- Reductionism. The behavior exhibited by animals is entirely reducible to the analysis of human behavior.
- Low validity due to laboratory experiments. The results of experiments are difficult to transfer to natural environment conditions.
- No attention is paid to cognitive processes in the process of forming a certain type of behavior.
- Skinner's theory does not give stable, sustainable results in practice.
Motivation concept
Skinner also created a theory of motivation. Its main idea is that the desire to repeat an action is determined by the consequences of this action in the past. The presence of certain stimuli causes certain actions. If the consequences of a particular behavior are positive, then the subject will behave in a similar situation in the future in a similar way.
His behavior will repeat. But if the consequences of a certain strategy are negative, then in the future he will either not respond to certain incentives or change the strategy. Skinner's theory of motivation boils down to the fact that repeated repetitions of certain results lead to the formation of a specific behavioral attitude in the subject.
Personality and the concept of learning
From Skinner's point of view, personality is the experience that an individual acquires throughout life. Unlike, for example, Freud, supporters of the concept of learning do not consider it necessary to think about the mental processes that are hidden in the human mind. Personality in Skinner's theory is a product, largely shaped by external factors. It is the social environment, and not the phenomena of internal mental life, that determine personal characteristics. Skinner considered the human psyche to be a “black box.” It is impossible to explore emotions, motives and instincts in detail. Therefore, they must be excluded from the experimenter’s observations.
Skinner's theory of operant conditioning, which the scientist worked on for many years, was supposed to summarize his extensive research: everything a person does and what he is in principle is determined by the history of rewards and punishments received by him.
We are accustomed to the fact that a psychologist is a person who will listen, help and give advice, and at whose appointment you can lie on the couch and cry to your heart’s content. Although psychologists were not always like this. They once tortured people and maliciously manipulated them. These psychologists were called behaviorists, and their history began more than a hundred years ago.
John Watson and "pieces of meat"
Dr. Watson's namesake was born in California in 1878. John's religious mother dreamed that her son would become a preacher, and therefore smoking, drinking and dancing were prohibited in the family. The only entertainment was the Baptist confessional meetings, which lasted three days. Watson's father did not share his wife's Christian lifestyle and, soon after John's birth, ran away from the family to two Cherokee Indian women.
When Watson turned thirteen, he followed the example of his invisible father and went to great lengths: he began to defy teachers, drink, smoke and do things that his mother never did even with the lights off. Soon Watson could already boast of two arrests - for a fight and shooting within the city.
The family decides to take their shame off to Baptist College. There, the atheist Watson becomes an outcast. But he meets Pastor Gordon Moore, a heretic and teacher of fashion psychology. Soon the odious professor was kicked out, and Watson followed him to the University of Chicago.
There Watson becomes disillusioned with psychology, which then resembled science even less than it does now. The psychologist's main method of work was self-reports from subjects, and Watson did not trust people. Instead of people, he studied rats: of course, requiring self-reports from them is pointless, but you can observe and record their behavior from the outside.
Gradually, Watson decided to transfer this principle to humans. In 1913, he published the article “Psychology from the Point of View of a Behaviorist,” where he stated: consciousness is subjective, behavior needs to be studied, and “the difference between man and beast” is insignificant. Humans are a species of animal, and the task of psychologists is to predict and control their reactions.
The article makes a splash. Watson turns speculative psychology into a serious science. In addition, by the beginning of the 20th century, German-speaking countries were at the forefront of the study of the psyche. Watson proposed the American way of development of psychology and in 1915 became president of the American Psychological Association.
Having become acquainted with the works of Pavlov, John decided to teach people reactions in the same manner that the Russian used with dogs. In 1920, Watson conducted an experiment that psychologists later called the most cruel in the history of their science. In one of the hospitals, John found 9-month-old Albert. His mother “heard something” about Watson and, without hesitation, agreed to the scientist’s experiments in a trustworthy, well-tailored suit.
The essence of the experiment (Watson did not tell Albert’s mother about it) was as follows. John showed the boy a rabbit. The child pulled his hands towards the animal. At this moment, the assistant hit the metal shield, which made a frighteningly loud sound, and the child began to cry. The experiment was repeated many times - a silent but very dramatic video about the relationship between a boy and animals was preserved. Soon Albert was hiccupping with fear at the sight of the rat, the rabbit, the fur coat and Santa Claus's beard.
Continuing to experiment on his own and other people’s children, Watson wrote the book “Psychological Assistance to Infants and Children.” “Help” became a bestseller: 100,000 copies were sold in a couple of months. Publications began interviewing John, and he began to be invited to conferences.
As a result, in the first half of the 20th century, every second American was raised “according to Watson.” Fortunately, it didn’t always work out: the behavioral psychologist had serious demands. Thus, Watson argued that in order for “pieces of meat” (yes, this is a quote) to grow independent, they should never be touched. Excessive parental love is pedophilia.
The most important thing is to teach a child to use the potty correctly: Watson devotes an entire chapter to “the den of Satan” (as Watson’s mother called the intestines that were not emptied on time). Children need to be protected from “homosexuality”: boys should not be sent to Boy Scouts, and girls should be almost legally prohibited from holding hands.
The results of Watson's upbringing are visible in the destinies of his own children. My daughter spent her life attempting suicide. The son became a Freudian and challenged his father's ideas. He didn’t argue for long: unlike his sister, he managed to commit suicide the second time.
John's other children were luckier: after undergoing psychotherapy, they began to live normal lives. True, intestinal problems did not stop haunting them.
And Watson's granddaughter, Emmy winner Maryet Hartley, wrote a book about her grandfather and her own manic-depressive psychosis.
Nevertheless, Watson's authority and his contribution to psychology are undeniable to this day. A year before his death, he received the highest honor of the American Psychological Association, and recently became one of the twenty most influential psychologists of all time.
Mr Skinner and the Kamikaze Pigeons
Burress Frederick Skinner, born in Pennsylvania in 1904, was interested in invention from childhood. Because of this, he was almost thrown out of college: he constantly played tricks on the teachers. Once he even installed a complex trigger mechanism to a bucket of water above the door. But the apparatus for sifting out unripe mountain ash made Skinner the most successful young entrepreneur in the state.
After college, Fred locked himself in the attic of his father's house, wanting to write a novel. It didn’t work out; from the pen of an unrecognized genius only sluggish humoresques came out. Skinner suffered, grew dirty, snapped. Friends advised me to contact a shrink. After attending a couple of sessions, Fred unexpectedly decided to become a psychologist himself.
In those years, experiments on animals had a drawback: they were carried out “by eye”, their results depended not so much on the rats, hamsters and pigeons themselves, but on the reaction of the scientist holding a stopwatch in his hand. The “Skinner box” invented by Fred helped solve this problem, because it recorded the behavior of animals with computer precision.
When placed in a Skinner box, a pigeon would randomly flap its wings and receive food. The pigeon began to flap its wings on purpose, but the reinforcement stopped. The pigeon, continuing its flapping, accidentally leaned over - and suddenly received food again. Increasing the reaction, Fred forced the pigeon to turn around, squat and perform other obscene things.
Unexpectedly, Skinner's pigeons came in handy in the war: as part of the Pigeon Project, Fred trained kamikaze pigeons. Under the guidance of a behaviorist, the world's birds have learned to correct the flight of a rocket. But unfortunately for the ambitious Skinner and fortunately for the world (and the pigeons), the war is over.
Like Watson, Skinner dreamed of building an ideal society. After the war, he sat down to write the utopian novel Walden 2. Fred's book, published simultaneously with 1984, described a small community built on the laws of reinforcement and punishment. The total control that frightened Orwell was presented in Skinner's novel as a common good.
In an interview, Skinner admitted that the ideas in the novel seemed creepy even to him. But this did not bother his fans at all: inspired by Walden, they organized the Twin Oaks commune, which exists to this day. After the birth of his second child, Skinner casually invented a crib that maintained an optimal microclimate for the baby. Fred sent an article about the crib to a women's magazine, not realizing that he was ruining his already dubious reputation. The editors, without going into details about the use of the crib, titled the article “Skinner's Baby Crate.” A rumor spread across America: Skinner built a training box for a man and locked his one-year-old daughter there.
But, despite the rumors, in 1972 the American Psychological Association ranked Skinner first on its list of outstanding psychologists of the 20th century. Even the fact that Skinner did not conduct a single experiment on humans in his entire life did not prevent him from bypassing Freud.
PRACTICE OF BEHAVIORISM
In the USSR, behaviorism was recognized as a “dying imperialist theory.” Now Russian authors write that it has outlived its usefulness. This does not prevent behaviorism from still penetrating into all corners of human life.
Watson himself was the founder of behaviorism in product promotion. After leaving university, he moved to the legendary advertising agency JWT, where the country's leading psychologist had to start his career almost from scratch. And although at first John believed that the craft of an advertiser was “little better than growing cabbage,” the desire to bring his own ideas to life allowed Watson to soon become vice president of the company.
Watson was the first to put science in the service of fooling the consumer. Before Watson, advertising only informed, John acted more boldly. He stated that advertising does not sell a product, but a way of life.
It was after Watson that coffee ceased to be just a drink, but began to increase productivity and help in a career. Thanks to him, celebrities appeared in advertising: they formed a positive reaction to a stimulus in the form of toothpaste or chocolate.
“Sex sells” is another Watson formula. But the point is not the symbolic acquisition of beauty, as modern advertisers explain the sultry beauty on the packaging of diapers. Watson's idea is simple: if fear can be associated with a rabbit, then sexual arousal can be associated with anything. In this case, the quality of the product is not important. A buyer who takes a product because of its beautiful packaging will buy it and will not compare it with analogues. Slogans are also important. Watson came up with many of them himself, to the best of his ideas about beauty. Behaviorism is used in displaying goods, stimulating unnecessary purchases, and building customer loyalty. You didn't buy a chocolate bar located at eye level with a child, and he lay down on the floor of the supermarket and threw a tantrum? Took 10 thousand worth of goods and received a bag as a gift? Eating at a third-rate diner for the eighth time, hoping to get your eleventh meal free? Greetings from behaviorist Watson.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Behaviorism formed the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is familiarly called CBT. According to many specialists, this is a much more effective way to achieve success with a patient than lengthy and tedious psychotherapy.
Wanting to smooth over the aftermath of the experiments with Albert, John took 6-year-old Peter, who was afraid of rats without the help of a doctor, and decided to “knock down” this reaction with sweets. Frightened by a rat at the other end of the room, the boy ate and calmed down. Watson moved the cage closer. Even closer. Soon Peter even began to feed the animal*. The rat became associated with pleasure. This method is still used in psychology today. Only instead of eating they use relaxation.
Other people's problems are self-sustaining cycles that force them to step on the same rake. A man has submitted a report to his boss and is worried about the result (can you imagine, there are people who really care about this!). The report is approved. "I was worried - everything went well." Then the person gets excited again and receives praise again. When the third report is smashed to smithereens, the person thinks that he didn’t worry enough. And the fourth time increases fear tenfold.
Registration of the level of fear and the result obtained (in order to understand that this is not connected in any way), relaxation, meditation, sex, drugs and rock and roll, as well as the skill of ignoring what is happening, help to destroy the cycle.
CBT is so effective that it is included in the American health insurance system. A behaviorist does not delve into past traumas, but solves the problem here and now. Psychoanalysts believe that understanding the problem will change behavior, and they look for it (the problem) until old age. Behaviorism works directly with behavior and copes with a number of situations in a couple of months.
The KB therapist does not coddle with the patient, but pushes him to solve the problem. Requirement for a consultant: he himself does not have clients’ problems, he must be an example, and not simultaneously solve his own difficulties, as psychologists from TV series do.
STAFF MOTIVATION
If instead of a bonus you have a corporate party with an Buyer, blame the behaviorists: the roots of “non-material motivation” grow from there.
The fact is that behaviorists have proven that raising wages does not work in the long run. Any reinforcement becomes boring. In order for a pigeon to dance a jig in a box, the stimulus in the form of food must be replaced after a while.
After a salary increase, the “hardworking” response quickly fades. The reward should vary and surprise the employee. Of course, you can surprise with a bonus in Chinese euros (not every day they pay in a non-existent currency), but there are also cheaper ways of “stroking” employees - like the already mentioned corporate party or exotic positions. Thus, Apple avoided staff outflow by renaming the position “consultant” to “genius”.
PEDAGOGY
The idea that it is wrong to spank a child existed before the behaviorists, but it was of a moral nature. Gingerbread supporters insisted that putting children on peas was somehow wrong. “Yes, it’s wrong,” the parents agreed. “But how can we raise people from them?”
Skinner proved that corporal punishment is ineffective. “The child will not change behavior. He will learn to avoid punishment." You get used to punishment faster than to encouragement. The first time a slap in the face is enough, the second - a belt. To discourage people from meddling where they shouldn’t, you need to raise the stakes. As a result, only the physical destruction of the child can stop the wrong behavior.
If punishment is inevitable, you should not flog, but deprive him of positive reinforcement: not take him to the zoo or take away the binoculars through which the child spies on his neighbor changing clothes. When punishing, you need to offer a model of correct behavior and “buns” for its implementation.
PROFILING OF CRIMINALS
The TV series Criminal Minds talks about behaviorism. Now there will be spoilers. The fact is that attempts to create a portrait of a maniac have been made since the time of Jack the Ripper, but John Douglas from the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit is considered a pioneer in the study of killers.
Douglas developed a technique for calculating criminals based on their behavior. Studying the case materials, the investigator identifies two qualities of the killer: the method of action and handwriting. Mode (modus operandi) is everything the criminal does to kill the victim. Picking locks indicates a possible criminal past, dexterous handling of a knife indicates service as a soldier in the army or as a cook in the kitchen. If the murders are committed between 18.30 and 19.00, it is possible that the killer is letting off steam on his way home from work.
The modus operandi can change (“the window keeper” can take a couple of lessons from a familiar bugbear) and says nothing about the pathology of the maniac. If there is no knife, the killer uses a hammer. The method is being improved, making it possible to determine the experience of a maniac.
But handwriting is already a murderer's fetish. The handwriting may include items stolen for collection or left at a crime scene, the type of victim, or damage caused. Handwriting, unlike the method, is unshakable, because it satisfies the psychological need to kill. That is, without handwriting, a crime is simply meaningless.
Often the newspapers get information about the method of murder, not the handwriting. This makes it possible to identify the imitator: if he reproduced the modus but did not leave a withered rose, most likely the crime was committed for personal rather than pathological reasons.
Distinguishing between method and handwriting is not always easy. It is important to remember: modus operandi is “how”, handwriting is “why”. If the killer uses any blunt object (a vase, a dumbbell, a volume of the Soviet Encyclopedia), we are talking about a method of murder. But when it is possible to establish that all the victims were killed with a can of peas, this is a signature.
For comparison. Do you prefer to meet people in clubs? But if a girl turns up in a different situation, you will also take advantage of it. But if you like to have sex in a women's bra, then without this element you simply will not enjoy the process.
The Douglas method has proven its effectiveness. But it also has its opponents, who say it is unscientific, confuses police and ruins the lives of innocent people. If you want to become more familiar with behavioral profiling but are too lazy to binge watch 10 seasons of Criminal Minds, there is another option. Watch David Fincher's Netflix series Mindhunter, in the creation of which John Douglas was directly involved.
Lecture 6. Sociogenetic theories of development
The origins of the sociogenetic approach come from the tabula rasa theory that arose in the Middle Ages, formulated John Locke(1632-1704), according to which the human psyche at the moment of birth is a “blank slate”, but under the influence of external conditions, as well as upbringing, all the mental qualities characteristic of a person gradually arise in him. Locke put forward a number of ideas about organizing children's education on the principles of association, repetition, approval and punishment.
A representative of this trend was the French philosopher of the 18th century. Claude Adrian Helvetius(1715-1771), who believed that all people are born identical in their natural abilities and the inequality between them in the field of mental abilities and moral qualities is due only to unequal external environmental conditions and various educational influences.
Sociologizing ideas were consonant with the ideology that dominated the USSR until the mid-80s. According to this theory, with the help of targeted training and education, any qualities and behavioral properties can be formed in a child. In order to study a child, you need to study the structure of his environment.
The sociogenetic approach is associated with the behavioristic direction in psychology, according to which a person is what his environment makes of him. The main idea of behaviorism is the identification of development with learning, with the child’s acquisition of new experience. American researchers took the idea of I.P. Pavlov that adaptive activity is characteristic of all living things. The phenomenon of the conditioned reflex was perceived as some kind of elementary behavioral phenomenon. The idea of combining stimulus and response, conditioned and unconditional stimuli came to the fore: the time parameter of this connection was highlighted. The main theories of behaviorism include:
1. The theory of classical and instrumental conditioning I.P. Pavlova
2. Associationistic concept of learning by D. Watson and E. Ghazri.
3. The theory of operant conditioning by E. Thorndike.
4. B. Skinner's theory. With the help of reinforcement, you can shape any type of behavior.
The very idea of conducting a rigorous scientific experiment, created by I. P. Pavlov to study the digestive system, entered into American psychology. The first description of such an experiment by I. P. Pavlov was in 1897, and the first publication by J. Watson was in 1913. Already in the first experiments of I. P. Pavlov with the salivary gland brought out, the idea of connecting dependent and independent variables was realized, which runs through all American studies of behavior and its genesis not only in animals, but also in humans. Such an experiment has all the advantages of real natural scientific research, which is still so highly valued in American psychology: objectivity, accuracy (control of all conditions), accessibility for measurement. It is known that I.P. Pavlov persistently rejected any attempts to explain the results of experiments with conditioned reflexes by reference to the subjective state of the animal.
American scientists perceived the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex as a kind of elementary phenomenon, accessible to analysis, something like a building block, from many of which a complex system of our behavior can be built. The genius of I.P. Pavlov, according to his American colleagues, was that he was able to show how simple elements can be isolated, analyzed and controlled in laboratory conditions. The development of the ideas of I.P. Pavlov in American psychology took several decades, and each time the researchers were confronted with one of the aspects of this simple, but at the same time not yet exhausted phenomenon in American psychology - the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex.
In the earliest studies of learning, the idea of combining stimulus and response, conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, came to the fore: the time parameter of this connection was highlighted. This is how the associationist concept of learning arose (J. Watson, E. Ghazri). J. Watson began “his” scientific revolution by putting forward the slogan: “Stop studying what man thinks; let’s study what man does!”
1. Behaviorism
Watson John Brodes
(1878 – 1958). American psychologist, founder of behaviorism (from the English behavior - behavior), one of the most widespread theories in Western psychology of the 20th century.
In 1913 His article “Psychology from the Point of View of a Behaviorist” was published, assessed as a manifesto of a new direction. Following this, his books “Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology” (1914), “Behaviorism” (1925) appeared, in which for the first time in the history of psychology the postulate that the subject of this science is consciousness (its content, processes, functions, etc.).
Influenced by the philosophy of positivism, Watson argued that only what can be directly observed is real. He argued that behavior should be explained from the relationship between the directly observable effects of physical stimuli on the organism and its also directly observable responses (reactions). Hence Watson’s main formula, adopted by behaviorism: “stimulus-response” (S-R). It followed from this that psychology must eliminate the processes between stimulus and response - whether physiological (nervous) or mental - from its hypotheses and explanations.
Methodologists of behaviorism proceeded from the assumption that the formation of basic mental processes occurs during life. Lipsitt and Kaye (Lipsitt, Kaye, 1964) conducted experiments on the development of conditioned reflexes in 20 three-day-old infants. Ten infants were assigned to the experimental group, and the combination of an unconditional (pacifier) and a conditioned stimulus (pure tone) was repeated 20 times. The researchers wanted to obtain the suckling response to the sound tone that a pacifier would naturally produce. After twenty stimulus combinations, infants in the experimental group began to make sucking movements in response to the sound, while infants in the control group, who were not exposed to stimulus combinations, did not show such a response. This research shows that learning occurs from the earliest days of life. It also suggests that a behaviorist approach can provide insight into development and that through conditioning, researchers can study infants' ability to process sensory information long before they acquire language.
D. Watson proved the ideas of classical conditioning in his experiments on the formation of emotions. He experimentally demonstrated that it is possible to form a fear response to a neutral stimulus. In his experiments, a child was shown a rabbit, which he picked up and wanted to stroke, but at that moment received an electric shock. Naturally, the child scaredly threw the rabbit and began to cry. However, the next time he approached the animal again and received an electric shock. By the third or fourth time, for most children, the appearance of a rabbit, even in the distance, caused fear. After this negative emotion was consolidated, Watson tried once again to change the emotional attitude of the children, forming an interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, they began to show it to the child during a tasty meal. The presence of this important primary stimulus was an indispensable condition for the formation of a new reaction. At the first moment, the child stopped eating and began to cry, but since the rabbit did not approach him, remaining far away, at the end of the room, and tasty food (for example, chocolate or ice cream) was nearby, the child quickly calmed down and continued eating. After the child stopped reacting by crying to the appearance of a rabbit at the end of the room, the experimenter gradually moved the rabbit closer and closer to the child, while simultaneously adding tasty things to his plate. Gradually, the child stopped paying attention to the rabbit and, in the end, reacted calmly, even when it was located near his plate, took the rabbit in his arms and tried to feed him something tasty. Thus, Watson argued, our emotions are the result of our habits and can change dramatically depending on circumstances.
Watson's observations showed that if the formed fear reaction to a rabbit was not converted to a positive one, a similar feeling of fear subsequently arose in children when they saw other fur-covered objects. Based on this, he sought to prove that persistent affective complexes can be formed in people based on conditioned reflexes according to a given program. Moreover, he believed that the facts he discovered proved the possibility of forming a certain, strictly defined model of behavior in all people. He wrote: “Give me a hundred children of the same age, and after a certain time I will form them into absolutely identical people, with the same tastes and behavior.”
The principle of behavior control gained wide popularity in American psychology after the work of Watson. His merit is also that he expanded the sphere of the psyche to include the bodily actions of animals and humans. But he achieved this innovation at a high price, rejecting as a subject of science the enormous riches of the psyche, irreducible to externally observable behavior.
Edwin Ray Ghazri
(1886 – 1959). He was a professor of psychology at the University of Washington from 1914 until his retirement in 1956. His major work was The Psychology of Learning, published in 1935 and reprinted in a new edition in 1952.
He proposed a single law of learning, the law of contiguity, which he formulated as follows: “A combination of stimuli which accompanies a movement, when reappeared, tends to produce the same movement. Notice that there is nothing said here about “confirmatory waves,” or reinforcement, or states of satisfaction.” Another way to define the law of contiguity is that if you did something in a given situation, then the next time you find yourself in the same situation, you will strive to repeat your actions.
E. Ghazri explained why, despite the possible truth of the law of contiguity, the prediction of behavior will always be probabilistic. Although this principle, as just stated, is short and simple, it will not be understood without some explanation. The phrase “tends” is used here because behavior at any point in time depends on a large number of different conditions. Conflicting “tendencies” or incompatible “tendencies” are always present. The outcome of any stimulus or stimulus pattern cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy because other stimulus patterns exist. We can express this by saying that the behavior presented is caused by the entire situation. But in saying this, we cannot flatter ourselves that we have done more than find an explanation for the impossibility of predicting behavior. No one has yet described, and no one will ever describe, the entire stimulus situation, or observe any complete situation, so as to speak of it as a “cause,” or even as a pretext for misconceptions about a small part of behavior.
In a recent publication, E. Ghazri revised his law of contiguity to clarify: “What is noticed becomes the signal for what is done.” For Ghazri, this was a recognition of the enormous number of stimuli that an organism encounters at any given time, and the fact that it is apparently impossible to form associations with all of them. Rather, the organism responds selectively to only a small fraction of the stimuli encountered, and this is the fraction that is associated with any response caused by those stimuli. One can pay attention to the similarities between Ghazri’s way of thinking and the concept of “predominance of elements” by Thorndike, who also believed that organisms react selectively to various manifestations of the environment.
Edward Lee Thorndike
(1874–1949). American psychologist and educator. President of the American Psychological Association in 1912.
Conducted research studying animal behavior. They were aimed at getting out of the “problem box”. By this term E. Thorndike meant an experimental device in which experimental animals were placed. If they left the box, they received reinforcement of the reflex. The research results were displayed on certain graphs, which he called “learning curves.” Thus, the purpose of his research was to study the motor reactions of animals. Thanks to these experiments, E. Thorndike concluded that animals act by the method of “trial and error and random success.” These works led him to the theory of connectivism.
E. Thorndike concludes that the behavior of any living creature is determined by three components:
1) a situation that includes both external and internal processes that affect the individual,
2) reaction or internal processes occurring as a result of this impact;
3) a subtle connection between the situation and the reaction, i.e. association. In his experiments, Thorndike showed that intelligence as such and its activity can be studied without resorting to reason. He transferred the emphasis from establishing internal connections to establishing connections between the external situation and movements, which introduced new trends in associative psychology. In his theory, Thorndike combined mechanical determinism with the biological, and then with the biopsychic, significantly expanding the area of psychology, previously limited to the limits of consciousness.
Based on his research, Thorndike derived several laws of learning:
1. The law of exercise. There is a proportional relationship between the situation and the reaction to it with the frequency of their repetition).
2. The law of readiness. The condition of the subject (the feelings of hunger and thirst he experiences) is not indifferent to the development of new reactions. Changes in the body's readiness to conduct nerve impulses are associated with exercise.
3. Law of associative shift. When reacting to one specific stimulus out of several acting simultaneously, other stimuli that participated in this situation subsequently cause the same reaction. In other words, a neutral stimulus, associated by association with a significant one, also begins to evoke the desired behavior. Thorndike also identified additional conditions for the success of a child's learning - the ease of distinguishing between stimulus and response and awareness of the connection between them.
4. Law of effect. The last, fourth, law caused a lot of controversy, since it included a motivation factor (a purely psychological factor). The law of effect said that any action that causes pleasure in a certain situation is associated with it and subsequently increases the likelihood of repeating this action in a similar situation, while displeasure (or discomfort) during an action associated with a certain situation leads to a decrease in the likelihood of committing this act in a similar situation. This implies that learning is also based on certain polar states within the organism. If the actions taken in a certain situation lead to successful results, then they can be called satisfying, otherwise they will be violating. Thorndike gives the concept of a successful result at the neuronal level. When the action is successful, the system of neurons brought to alert is actually functioning and not inactive.
E. Thorndike, B. Skinner. They identified development with learning.
Burres Frederick Skinner
(1904 – 1990). American psychologist, inventor and writer. He made a huge contribution to the development and promotion of behaviorism.
Skinner is best known for his theory of operant conditioning, and less so for his fiction and journalism in which he promoted the widespread use of behavior modification techniques (such as programmed training) to improve society and make people happy, as a form of social engineering. Continuing the experiments of D. Watson and E. Thorndike, B. Skinner designed the so-called “Skinner box”, which made it possible to accurately measure behavior and automatically supply reinforcement. The Skinner box, reminiscent of a rat or pigeon cage, has a metal pedal, which, when pressed, the animal receives a portion of food into the feeder. With this very simple device, Skinner was able to make systematic observations of the behavior of animals under different conditions of reinforcement. It turned out that the behavior of rats, pigeons, and sometimes people is quite predictable, since they follow certain laws of behavior, at least in this situation. In Skinner's experiments (as in Thorndike's experiments), food was usually the reinforcer.
A typical Skinner model usually includes the following components: discriminated stimulus, individual response, and reinforcement. A discriminable stimulus usually signals to the individual that learning has begun. In Skinner's experiments, light and sound signals, as well as words, were used as discriminative stimuli. The response is the emergence of operant behavior. Skinner called his type of conditioning operant conditioning because the individual's response operates the mechanism of reinforcement. Finally, a reinforcing stimulus is given for an adequate response. Therefore, reinforcement increases the likelihood of subsequent operant behavior. Operant behavior can also be taught through avoidance conditioning, where reinforcement consists of ending exposure to an aversive stimulus. For example, a bright light can be turned off, a loud sound can be muted, an angry parent can be calmed down. Thus, in operant conditioning, an individual learns a response when the reinforcement consists of stopping exposure to an unpleasant stimulus.
Skinner developed a method of conditioning behavior through successive approximations, which forms the basis of operant conditioning. This method consists in the fact that the entire path from the initial behavior (even before the start of training) to the final reaction that the researcher seeks to develop in the animal is divided into several stages. In the future, all that remains is to consistently and systematically reinforce each of these stages and thus lead the animal to the desired form of behavior. With this method of learning, the animal is rewarded for every action that brings it closer to the final goal, and it gradually develops the desired behavior.
According to Skinner and other behaviorists, this is how most human behavior is developed. From Skinner's point of view, it is possible to explain the very rapid learning of a child's first words (without, however, extending this concept to language acquisition as a whole). At first, when the child is just beginning to utter some articulate sounds, the babbling “me-me-me” already causes delight among those around him, and especially the happy mother, who already thinks that the child is calling her. However, soon the parents' enthusiasm for such sounds cools down until the baby, to everyone's joy, utters "mo ... mo." Then these sounds cease to be reinforced for the newborn until a relatively articulate “mo-mo” appears. In turn, this word, for the same reasons, will soon be replaced by the combination “moma”, and, finally, the child will clearly pronounce his first word - “mom”. All other sounds will be perceived by others only as “baby talk” in the literal sense of the word, and they will gradually disappear from the “lexicon” of the newborn. Thus, as a result of selective reinforcement from family members, the infant discards those incorrect responses for which he does not receive social reinforcement, and retains only those that are closest to the expected result.
Operant reactions in Skinner's sense should be distinguished from automatic, purely reflex reactions associated with unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. An operant response is an action that is voluntary and purposeful. However, Skinner defines goal-directedness in terms of feedback (that is, the effect on behavior of its consequences), rather than in terms of goals, intentions, or other internal states - mental or physiological. In his opinion, the use of these "internal variables" in psychology involves the introduction of dubious assumptions that add nothing to the empirical laws that relate observed behavior to observable environmental influences. It is these laws that are the real means of predicting and controlling the behavior of humans and animals. Skinner emphasized that “the objection to internal states is not that they do not exist, but that they are irrelevant for functional analysis.” In this analysis, the probability of an operator response appears as a function of external influences - both past and present.
In the field of education, Skinner put forward the concept of programmed learning. According to him, such training can free the student and teacher from the boring process of simple knowledge transfer: the student will gradually advance in mastering a particular topic at his own rhythm and in small steps, each of which is reinforced; These steps constitute the process of successive approximation (Skinner, 1969). However, it was very soon discovered that such training quickly reaches its “ceiling”, and this is due precisely to the fact that only minimal effort is required from the student and therefore reinforcement soon becomes ineffective. As a result, the student quickly becomes bored with such training. In addition, personal contact with the teacher seems to be necessary to constantly maintain student motivation and orderly transfer of knowledge. All of this can perhaps be explained in terms of the principles underlying social learning, and in particular observational learning.
Burres Frederick was born in Pennsylvania, USA, in the family of lawyer William Skinner and his wife Grace. The boy had a happy childhood, and from an early age he had a passion for all kinds of inventions. At an early age he becomes a convinced atheist. He dreams of becoming a writer, and in order to achieve his cherished goal, he enters Hamilton College in New York. However, because of his views, the boy will remain alien to the intellectual position of the educational institution. In 1926, Skinner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.
After this, in 1930, he entered Harvard University, where he received a Master of Arts degree.
After graduating from university, Skinner began writing a novel, but he soon became disillusioned with his literary talent. A chance encounter with John B. Watson's book Behaviorism inspired Skinner to focus his efforts on studying psychology.
Scientific activities
In 1931, Skinner received his PhD from Harvard, and until 1936 he would be a research fellow at the university. It was here that he began work on the creation of an operant conditioning chamber, a device also known as a Skinner chamber and designed to study the processes of instrumental conditioning and classical conditioning in animals.
In 1936, after leaving Harvard, he became a teacher at the University of Minnesota, where in 1937 he received the position of senior lecturer, and in 1939 he became an assistant professor. Skinner would work in this position until 1945.
In 1945, he would take up the post of professor at Indiana University, where he would also be elected head of the psychology department. After working for three years, Skinner left the university.
Returning to Harvard, in 1948 he joined the staff of university professors, where he would remain until the end of his days.
Skinner founded his own school of psychology, known as “radical behaviorism.” His works in this area are based on the study of conditioned reflexes. Skinner firmly believes that a living organism does not have its own will, but only copies behavior that leads to an outcome favorable to it.
He designs a teaching machine - a device that simplifies the educational process for a wide audience of his students. This device teaches the curriculum included in it, testing the acquired knowledge and, as motivation, rewarding for correct answers.
In 1948, Skinner wrote the utopian novel Walden Two, a highly controversial literary work in which the author refutes the theories of the existence of free will, spirit and soul. He argues that human behavior is determined by genetic factors and the influence of a changing environment, and not by free choice.
In 1957, Skinner published the work “Verbal Behavior”, in which he analyzes the use of language, linguistic phenomena and speech - a purely theoretical work, not supported by practical research.
In 1971, his most famous book, Beyond Freedom and Honor, was published, in which Skinner sets out his own approach to science, which he calls “cultural engineering.” This publication instantly becomes a bestseller for the New York Times.
Main works
Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, which helps animals learn behavioral patterns by inducing them to perform specific actions in response to specific stimuli. These cameras have been used in a number of studies in the study of animal behavior and psychology. Skinner's psychological teaching, radical behaviorism, is used in many completely different areas of modern society: in management, clinical practice, animal training and educational processes. His theories are used in prescribing therapy for autistic children.
Awards and achievements
In 1971, Skinner was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation.
In 1990, for his invaluable contributions to the field, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association.
Personal life and legacy
In 1936, Skinner married Yvonne Blue. The family has two daughters, Julia and Deborah. Julia would later become a famous writer and teacher.
The B. F. Skinner Foundation, founded in 1988 with his personal support, was created to promote the scientist's philosophy of science. The president of this foundation is his own daughter Julia.
In 1989, Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia, from which he died in 1990.
The most ardent opponent of Skinner's theories was the philosopher and cognitivist Noam Chomsky.
Skinner most often preferred to experiment on pigeons.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and writer. Skinner admitted that at the beginning of his career he was strongly influenced by the ideas of the English scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose works he became acquainted with in his youth. "Bacon's Three Principles have guided my professional life." Skinner put it this way:
1. “I studied nature, not books.”
2. “To control nature, you need to obey it.”
3. “A better world is possible, but it will not arise suddenly, by accident. It must be carefully planned and created in accordance with this plan, mainly with the help of science” (1984, pp. 406-412).
“Behaviorism is a means of making it possible to apply an experimental approach to the study of human behavior... Many aspects of the theory of behaviorism probably require further research, but there is no need to doubt the correctness of this theory. I am absolutely sure that in the end it will triumph” (Skinner, 1967, pp. 409-410).
Skinner said of himself: “I asked more questions of the organism itself, rather than of those who studied the organism” (1967, p. 409). The result of this approach was that Skinner emphasized careful laboratory experiments and the collection of measurable behavioral data. Given the richness of the human personality, this approach may seem too limited; and yet it is the very foundation on which all Skinner's theories rest firmly.
Skinner adopted and developed a scientific philosophy known as radical behaviorism. Some modern behavioral learning theorists use terms such as need, motivation, and intention to explain certain aspects of human and animal behavior. Skinner rejected such terms, since they related to personal, mental experience and symbolized, in his opinion, a return to unscientific psychology.
According to Skinner, the observable and measurable aspects of the environment, the behavior of an organism, and the consequences of this behavior are the basic material for careful scientific analysis.
Skinner believed that science is engaged in the search for the causes of phenomena, that the identification of causes makes prediction and control possible, and that carefully conducted experimental research will make it possible to establish these causes.
Skinner introduced definitions of the two, in his opinion, most important types of behavior:
· respondent behavior, which is caused by a known stimulus,
· operant behavior, which is not caused by a stimulus, but is simply produced by the body.
Unconditioned responses are an example of respondent behavior because they result from the use of a stimulus. Examples of responsive behavior are all reflexes, such as a sharp movement of the hand when something sharp tingles, constriction of the pupil in bright light, salivation when food appears.
In Skinner's ideology, behavior change simply involves finding something that will be a reinforcer for the organism whose behavior is to be changed, waiting for the desired behavior to occur, and then reinforcing the organism's response.
After this, the frequency of occurrence of the desired reaction will increase. The next time the desired behavior occurs, it is reinforced again, and the rate of response increases even more. Any behavior that an organism is capable of exhibiting can be influenced in this way.
According to Skinner, what we call “personality” is nothing more than consistent patterns of behavior that result from our history of reinforcement. For example, we learn to speak our native language because we have been reinforced in our immediate environment since early childhood by making sounds similar to those of our native language. Different cultures reinforce different behaviors. This fact must be well understood before any adequate applied science of behavior can be established.
In Skinner's attempts to understand the reasons underlying behavior and thus predict and control behavior, the similarities between operant conditioning and natural selection are important.
If reinforcement can be controlled, then behavior can be controlled.
It is not a question of whether behavior will be controlled, but rather of who or what will control it. For example, parents may guide their child's personality development by reinforcing certain behaviors, or they may enable society to nurture their child by allowing television, peers, school, books, and babysitters to provide reinforcement. However, setting the direction of your child's life is not easy, and every parent who wants to do so should at least adhere to the following steps:
1. Decide what personal qualities you would like your child to have.
Let's say, for example, you want your child to grow up to be a creative person.
2. Express these goals in behavioral terms. To do this, ask yourself; “What does a child do when he creates?”
3. Reward behavior that is consistent with these goals. With this example in front of you, you can reward moments of creativity the moment they arise.
4. Be consistent by organizing key aspects of the child's environment so that they also reward the behaviors you view as important.
A manager can use a similar approach towards his subordinate. That is why Skinner's ideas subsequently led to the development of the so-called reinforcement theory.
The process of operant conditioning takes quite a long time.
There is another approach to operant conditioning that does not require as much time. This procedure is very similar to the children's game “hot - cold”, when one child hides something and the other children try to find it. When they approach the hidden object, the child who hid the object says: “Warmer, very warm, terribly hot, just scorching.” When they move away from the object, the child says: “It’s getting cold, very cold, you can become numb.”
Modeling has two components: differential reinforcement, which means that some responses are reinforced while others are not, and successive approximation, which shows that only responses that meet the experimenter's intention are reinforced.
Skinner was very interested in the practical application of his learning theory to the educational process. According to Skinner, learning is most effective when:
1) information that needs to be learned is presented gradually;
2) students receive immediate feedback regarding the correctness of their learning (i.e., they are shown directly from the learning experience whether they learned the information correctly or incorrectly);
3) learning occurs at a pace acceptable to students.
It is interesting to note that the most common method of teaching is lecturing, and the lecturing technique violates all three of the above principles.
Skinner proposed an alternative teaching method called programmed instruction, which actually incorporates all three of the above principles.
Many behavioral problems arise because our behavior is more influenced by immediate reinforcers.
For example, for some, the taste of food in the present moment is more rewarding than the distant promise of longevity through a consistent eating routine or diet. Likewise, the immediate effect of nicotine is more reinforcing than the promise of a long smoking-free life.
Skinner believed that it was unnecessary to formulate complex theories of learning behavior, that behavioral events should be described in terms of what directly influences behavior, and that it was logically inconsistent to try to explain behavior in terms of mental phenomena. For this reason, Skinner's research method was called the “empty organism approach.”
Skinner also believed that complex learning theories were a waste of time and uneconomical. One day, such theories may prove useful in psychology, but only after a huge amount of basic/initial data has been collected. Our main point must be the discovery of the basic relationships which exist between classes of stimuli and classes of responses.
Skinner's approach to research was to carry out a functional analysis of the influence of an event that stimulates a certain behavior on the individual's behavior itself.
Factors that Attenuate Reinforcement Conditions Skinner states that there are five factors that moderate the reinforcing effects of reinforcement conditions.
According to Skinner, many of the problems arising from these “cultural habits” could be solved by reinforcing desired behavior through the use of principles derived from experimental behavior analysis.
Skinner's long and effective research programs had a significant impact on both applied and theoretical psychology. Compared to the systems of many other researchers, Skinner's system was simple and could be easily applied to problems ranging from animal training to human behavior modification. On the other hand, his work led to the emergence of the law of correspondence and indirectly influenced modern research on behavioral decision making.
